All Work & No Play

I will write something worth reading soon.

• C# Minor
• Modal Stuff
• Like a Student Film, Only Music

Over the past year, I have spent a great deal of time trying to understand music - what a scale is, why certain tones sound good together and others don’t, etc. I’ll be writing about all that as soon as I get used to my new keyboard layout, but meanwhile, here is my first musical composition! I wrote this using Acoustica Mixcraft, a very good music program ala Garage Band.

Opus #1 for 2 Cellos in C Major

I would like to distinguish between two related psychological states that I believe are rarely, if ever, distinguished. The first is fear, and the second is what I call “blockage,” as to my knowledge it does not yet have a name. Fear is an emotion with which we are surely all familiar; blockage is also familiar, though it is not often discussed, and when it is, it is considered as either part of fear, or as merely a failure of free will. Blockage is what makes action impossible. When a man is afraid to approach a woman, that is fear; when he does not approach women, even though he wants to, that is blockage. Although these two things are related, they are not the same - one may be afraid of women, but approach them anyway; also, one may find oneself completely avoiding certain activities without actually experiencing the emotion of fear. One is simply blocked. A pernicious but common misconception about blockage is that it is something over which a person has immediate and absolute control. One may be afraid independently of the will, the story goes, but whether or not to act is “up to you.” What is really being said here is that blockage has no cause; after all, what has a cause cannot simply be the product of free will, and advice like, “You just have to do it” is meaningless if blockage has a cause external to the will. I claim that, in fact, blockage does have a cause. When we see a pattern in nature (including human nature) we assume that pattern has a cause. Only when something is found to be random under even the closest scrutiny- as in the case of quantum mechanical measurement - are we allowed to claim that it has no cause. And blockage is by no means random - in fact, it follows very clear patterns, both in and between individuals. Whereas fear is unpleasant and troubling, blockage is debilitating; thus, it is incumbent upon us to understand this state and, as nearly as possible, find a cure.

Sometimes people say that one who cannot act is “too afraid,” thus implying that the solution to the blockage is to become less afraid. We can see this to be a false diagnosis, however. One may be as afraid as can be imagined, and yet act; likewise, one can be only slightly afraid of it, and yet be blocked. The fact that these two scenarios can occur in the same person in two different contexts is strong evidence that blockage is not merely a “weakness of the will,” but a complex conditioned psychological response in its own right. A coward is not one who is afraid, but one who is blocked. I do not imagine any coward ever was or could be cured by insisting that they “grow a spine,” or by any related advice. I think many have attempted (including this one), and I think they (we) have all failed.

Since making this distinction in my mind a few days ago, I have made it my foremost goal to “unblock” myself. I made a list of things I have not done because of being blocked, and have made it a point to do at least one of them every day. This has been much more effective than my previous, failed strategy of doing one thing I am afraid of every day. Focusing on inaction as the problem instead of fear has given me the freedom to feel afraid, or not, and act anyway. Two different problems, two different solutions. And I finally updated my blog!

This morning an old black woman say in front of me on the train. She smelled wretched; she had what my friend Mark had once called “a geriatric smell.” I did not move from my seat, mostly because there was nowhere to move to. I felt short of breath, as I frequently do, but the woman’s cloying smell was overwhelming and I could not catch my breath. I tried to just read my book, in which Thomas Merton was describing his surroundings on Perry St. in Greenwich 1939:

The air outside my window is quiet, and light hangs among the leaves and is soft and blue and warm. In one of the next houses I could hear pots in a kitchen, and water running from a tap, and I can hear the voices of kids. … This sunlight, this warm air, the sounds of the kitchen, speak of God’s goodness and His mercy. I can sit here all day, now, and think of that, and ask God to show me everywhere more and more signs of His mercy, and His goodness, and to help me regain my liberty. Peace.

Merton would later take vows as a Trappist monk.

I was breathing only through my mouth now, something I am unaccustomed to doing as I am so often short of breath. I chose not to complain within my mind to an imaginary listener, but instead to begin writing down my experience. This too was a change. As the train pulled in to Glenside where I work, I considered remaining on the train, to extend my experience. I chose not to, however, and went to work.

This is an excerpt from the first draft of a book I am writing. I am publishing it here, side notes and all, only at Pat’s insistence that he could not stand to be bored.

As I left I could see, between the tops of the brownstone canyon that was 43rd Street, the full moon peering in, and it seemed to me it had appeared just so I could notice it. Now was the moment I had been waiting for since I moved to New York, though truly I had waited since I was sixteen, or even younger: the moment of walking away. After ten o’clock the streets were quiet (by Queens standards, anyway), though the wind made a dull din in my ears. On my back was a book bag, not a hiker’s pack or even a rucksack, and a thin sleeping bag with a broken zipper tied to the top (with the rope Brendan had eye-knotted for me - see p. xxx.) It was the twentieth of March (year 2002) and winter was only halfway out the door; you could feel that at any moment he might come back in to grab his hat, and then linger for another bout of small talk with his exhausted and increasingly impatient hosts. And nevertheless, my only protection was a few shirts and a blue work jacket of the kind people wear in garages, with someone else’s name on the breast. “Ben”, I think. When I saw that big full moon I smiled, as I always do when I am delighted and alone. It was a sign. (See “Chasing the setting sun,” p. xxx). At the end of the very long block, I turned left onto 34th Ave. I had made this walk every day, even on most weekends, and now I would make it for the last time. At the end of the long block I turned left, and walked three blocks north to the R stop on Steinway St. I looked into the bodega as I walked by, caught a last glimpse of the Indian clerk/owner. [I would miss the $1 pint-bottles of Rebel Beer] I waited at Steinway for a few night motorists to clear the broad [for the East Coast] road, and crossed to the sidewalk that was both at the top of the subway stairs and in front of the Goodwill, donations for which, as usual, littered the area near the door.

I’d found many valuable scores in front of that store, including the best cookbook I ever owned,and Ben’s work coat. For some reason, maybe just habit, I took a look [by the light of the street lamp] at the night’s offerings, though I could not imagine what I could find there that would be valuable enough to warrant the carrying. I had sworn to leave the city by midnight, but everything was going my way, I felt; I could take the time. Such things were there as generally populate a thrift store: undesirable knick-knacks, books no one would ever read, women’s clothing over a decade out of fashion and plain ugly at that, children’s shoes. a black coat lying in the middle held a sliver of promise. The coat was heavy in my hand, certainly wool, about waist length. It may have been a woman’s coat, but it fit me just fine. I knew this was a sign; this coat had a meaning - that joy is a path, and your first step on that path is followed by others. This the universe saw fit to tell me before I even left New York. I left Ben’s garage jacket right where I found the wool coat, and took off as fast as I could down the subway stairs, deciding exuberantly and suddenly that I really ought to hurry.

I snatched my wallet out of my right front pocket (where my wallet had lived for at least ten years) and extracted my monthly train pass, an unexpectedly wasteful purchase this particular month. The air was warm and dank; I had not appreciated how pleasurable the chill of the wind was on my face until I was standing on the subway platform and everything felt still. The R train came quickly. After three stops, when we were shuttling beneath the East River, I started sweating, and unfastened the three large buttons of my very warm and rather unwieldly new vestment. I got off at Time Square and walked the one block underground to Penn Station. Like a bird I was flying, like one of those pigeons that happens into the train stations; for the hundredth time I read that Norman B. Colp poem, and I flew right in its face:

Overslept
So tired
If late
Get fired.
Why bother?
Why the pain?
Just go home
Do it again.

I flew right into that picture of a bed - smack! And I laughed even if my head was bleeding.