Being Sixty
David Gray gave me my sixtieth birthday present…amid a pandemic. My family would have normally done something cool, but I chose to stay home and stay safe, and I had a fabulous birthday. I took a few days to spend time with my sweet, sweet wife and contemplate the null value of age. You live, and each day rolls by and on every single day, you find you arrive at today.
I could fill pages with the tales of Rusty and Russell Beard, I have lived a very disorderly life. Only recently have I been able to look back into the eyes of Rusty, the one who lived my todays as a kid and then a teenager. He had it all figured out and at the same time, he had nothing figured out, but it all lead from one to the next and they were all just today. It accumulates, one day after another and if you can, just try and live today, it is simply always today. When I grasp this and take all the memories of the things that I have seen, walked, and completely fucked up. I realize that I am so flawed, yet this is me.
I am honest with myself about the who, that is me…I have looked down from the high rise and stared back into my own eyes. I have seen the greed in this world, but I also saw the deep unabashed beauty of this world. From working in the asparagus fields in eastern Washington, to fixing computers in a kindergarten classroom. I have lived a full life and I am not even close to done, that is what being sixty means to me today. On May 29th of this year, I will see my twenty-two thousandth today. I have absolutely no idea or attachment to that, it will just be today. It accumulates…
I have had so many amazing days in my life, but there was one I had with David Gray. Well not just him and me, it was more like he played Marymoor Park in Redmond WA, and I was in the audience. That night I witnessed the deepest magic of music. I have never left my seat when I am at a concert, but on that night, I did. I went for a pee and decided to have a smoke. While smoking, I saw a woman weeping. I really wasn’t sure what to do so I asked her, “are you ok”, she nodded yes. We talked for a bit and she told me that her friend told her she was going to an EDM show and that she had never experienced music that brought her soul up so close for her to see…she had never felt the magic of music and how it can reach all the way in. She was so moved by David’s music, all she could do was cry. We just hung out for a while until the tears were replaced by the joy of what she had discovered, she gave me a hug and went back to her life. It was not long after that, I was back in my spot and David gave the stage to Caroline Dale.
That night, I experienced the magic of the music in a way I had never known before. Surrounded by the mighty Pacific Northwest, the lights went down, save one, that settled quietly on Caroline. She was sitting center stage, her arms wrapped around her cello, and she played. She gave me a beautiful glimpse of eternity that night. At one point I was convinced that the trees themselves were singing to me… Caroline played, and her notes rode up into the branches of the trees, her voice surrounded us. It was a roar of quiet beauty that sang a song that will be etched in my memory forever. It all accumulates.
That was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life…
Being sixty is weird, it shakes you and laughs at you…it grips you, and yes it grins…. Being sixty means the world can swirl around me as it propels me across a threshold, one that allows me to look back at all my failures along with my successes. I am just beginning to understand what the accumulation of all those things adds up to. They can grip you; they can whisper to you and shine a light on things, especially your least likeable traits. I have accumulated so many whispers and some I have listened to; some were important to my survival; most were just noise. I do not consider myself that special, I am just a strange version of the man I expected, but I am content. Joy is an accumulation of these things that whisper from the wings. I have accumulated so many tiny moments of joy and they are sustaining. I have also accumulated a vast number of todays filled with pain, many of my own accord. But today, I learn from those todays and I walk into the next choosing joy and the hope that it can bring.
We walk through this life wreathed in smiles, the joy from those smiles guide us down paths that have nothing to offer. We never want to hear from those who can see where we really live. That’s where we wrestle daily with the truth of who we are and ask ourselves, what will I ever be? Then tomorrow becomes today and over the years, if you watch and learn from those around you, you might find a love that enters you and accumulates. I am blessed with people with whom I share a deep love and I am blessed with an inordinate desire for music, I am a rich man.
Caroline’s cello playing on this song is haunting and takes me right back to that night. It was not unlike meeting god, that evening in Marymoor… that is the magic in music. When David sings about the amorphous state in this song and I hear her strings in the background, I hear magic. This is the magic of music, it’s like the love of God that enters you and it sings in all kinds of amorphous states.
Her cello will haunt you; it will amuse you. It is the voice of the trees.
Brilliance abides around us, but we focus on the dingy bits that lose us and betray our joy. Don’t settle for the structures of Eden or strive for the goals of that mythical place.
It Accumulates… every day that you wake up, you can walk, and you might get there. It accumulates and it is still today…
With Accumulates, David Gray has written something that encourages you to sit back and immerse yourself. Let his beautiful weaving of the album Skellig seep into your bones and lift you. He has been a safe place for me since my sister sent me White Ladder twenty years ago. There is a very comforting familiarity to his voice and how he arranges music and I hear years of thought and a renewed sense of his value for life, today. That resonates with me in a deep way. Like me, I think David is just living today, not “for today”, just today. When I write, I find joy, when I write about music, I better understand myself and what I want from today. In all my life I spent very few of those some twenty-one thousand nine hundred and some odd days living just for this today. There has always been a tomorrow and it always just turned out to be today. It can grip you, and if you are listening to its whisper today, you can reach for hope. Today you can breathe a new breath, you know the competitive rates.
I have lived a life that some would say is unredeemable, but I am me. I am the one I was one when my little sister and I laid in our beds and listened to our dad tell us the tales of Indian Jake and what his travels across Montana showed him. I am the same one who saw the people of Casablanca stream to answer the call of prayer on the banks of the Mediterranean. I am that one who lived every single today that brought me to this day. If I have learned one lesson, it is to live for this today, not the one that might come as the sun rises but this one. Who can I give a small piece of hope to, who can I grasp a small piece of hope from? You can suck on the teat or you can give life, this is reaching for hope.
My experience and appreciation of music has changed so much over these sixty years. There are so many today’s that I was so blind. I’ve had experiences that changed my thinking right at that moment, but others that I kicked and screamed at, and their changes accumulated over the years, subtle changes in the way you see things, hearing the stories of those around you… seeing the world…it really does accumulate. Recently, my soul was shaken at how weak and close minded I have been in my life. I watched the HBO documentary about the Bee Gees, and it showed me how foolishly closed minded I was. I had kicked and screamed at the idea of disco versus rock, just like the fools in Kaminski Park. As I look back on it now, I realize just how foolish I was and just how much I missed on those todays. Please do not put music in a box of your own design, let it be whatever it needs to be for those who can hear it. What you think is noise, may be a lifeline for someone who needs it today. We all can point to a time that a song gave us a light and gave us one step forward today…
It accumulates…
I am looking down from that highrise and staring back with my own eyes. I can see when I succumbed to the sweet propositions and how that only led to sucking the teats. If you have had the great fortune that I have found, you will get the chance to at least acknowledge your mistakes, but most importantly you can learn from them and keep listening and then grow. Music is one of the loves of God, it enters you, it can give you a moment in today. It can free you and transport you, just like the stories my dad told us. But you will still wake up to today. You will still have the life you lived and only you know the truth of who you are. Reaching for hope is the one thing you can do with today, you might be able to change one thing or twelve, it just depends on where your today takes you. It could emphasize your least likable traits. But it’s still today, reach up and smile…
Listening to this song I can easily envision a summer night, in the not too distant future, in Marymoor park, David regals us with the beauty of Skellig and when they get to Accumulates, Caroline will let the trees sing once again.
Listening, learning, and growing
A Connoisseur's Lullaby 
Good info. Lucky me I discovered your blog by chance (stumbleupon). I have saved as a favorite for later!
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