Audrey Hepburn, 1929-1993

The idea of the “American Treasure” has been a part of our vernacular for a long time. Traditionally, these treasures have been expressed through places like Yellowstone and the Smithsonian. There are those who would conclude that television shows like “M.A.S.H.” and “Leave It To Beaver” are on the list of American Treasures as well as a movie like Gone With The Wind. Alec Baldwin, in a recent “SNL” episode, even labeled himself an American Treasure. (Maybe some day. He’s actually closer than you’d think.)

The idea of the American Treasure is best described as someone who embodies some aspect of the American spirit in terms inventiveness, inspiration, or sheer magnitude or cultural force. For the sake of this post, we’re dealing only with individuals who, perhaps for a generation or maybe longer, defined something about us collectively. An American Treasure, taken in this way, comes to  represent something closer to our collective heart as a culture while at the same time explaining things about ourselves through their existence that we could not have otherwise articulated.

On the way to dinner last week I threw out this question to my family: Who would be your top 10 American Treasures? It got fun real quick. My daughters started texting friends so we had to establish some ground rules shortly thereafter. We tried to keep influential political figures off the list. If the Founding Fathers were fair game, after all, the list would fill up very quickly. I lost Teddy Roosevelt in this ruling and the family lost JFK. The most painful result of this decision was omitting the genius of Abraham Lincoln. We also realized that we had to make some kind of distinction between “iconic” and “treasure.” Even though the line between these two ideas is admittedly blurry, we decided that a lasting image does not a treasure make. This put Marilyn Monroe’s place on the list in jeopardy. Also, after some debate, we concluded that even though the people on our list of American Treasures do not necessarily have to be born in America, they must be quintessentially American. And so, Julie Andrews, please accept my sincerest apologies. (That one is a heartbreaker.)

And so in no particular order … here is our list. Let the debate begin:

Walt Disney – No one left a larger footprint on the Twentieth Century and no single individual outside of our Founding Fathers and a handful of other leaders has had a greater impact on how we understand ourselves as Americans. Whether that’s good or bad is another debate. Apart from the movies, technology advances, theme parks, and television shows, Disney’s place in this pantheon results most from the frontier spirit that emerges from practically everything he did. He both re-invented and re-imagined the pioneer mentality for multiple generations of Americans. Walt then and now coaxes the deepest dreams out of all of us. You could call it fantasy but that wouldn’t make it any less real. If I were ranking this list I think both MLK and Walt would contend for the top choice.

Audrey Hepburn – This is the reason we made the “American born” rule. We forget that Hepburn walked away from Hollywood, for the most part, in her prime. In her post-Hollywood life she devoted herself to many social causes and left an impact in whatever she did. Even though she never weighed more than 103 pounds, her “weight” was off the charts. She dominates every scene she’s ever been in. Fragile, yet somehow the possessor of an indelible strength, I think Hepburn reminds us that beauty is always worth fighting for. But she also reminds us that her kind of beauty will always maintain its own address.

Elvis Presley – This was a tough call in the icon vs. treasure debate and I’m not sure we got it right. But, really, can you NOT have Elvis Presley on this list? He hasn’t needed a last name in more than 50 years, he is perhaps the single greatest contributor to American popular culture, and he defined “cool” for an entire generation and more. And, just like the others listed here, his impact continues to reverberate through time long after his passing. And then there’s the mythology and the music and that 1968 “comeback special.”

Ernest Hemingway – We threw around Steinbeck and Fitzgerald as our literary representative and both are American Treasures for sure. We went with Hemingway because the man is so much more than the product. Epics like Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls along with the short story collection, his African adventures, contributions to global affairs, and the Paris years make “Papa” an easy choice. A boxer, athlete, and writer, this guy remains a tour de force of American passion, sensitivity, and brute force.

Steven Spielberg – Movies has always been a big part of our culture and a significant contributor to how we see ourselves. But the maker or E.T. beat out other movie makers like George Lucas because he has entered so much more in the ledger of Americana. Forces like Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg remind us how magical it is to believe.

Martin Luther King, Jr. – The idea of being free is so uniquely American to me and no one embodied the tension in and the fight for freedom more than MLK. “I Have a Dream” and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” are absolutely inspiring. People like King come along once … once. And then they belong to the ages. MLK endures as a reminder of the power of the human heart as an engine for change.

Superman – The family wasn’t all that fond of this one so I had to use one of my bullets as the actual writer of the post to keep Superman on this “first ballot” list. Superman represents everything Americans want to believe about themselves. That he comes out of the comic books and movies means that he never gets old, he never changes, and he never stops fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Even today Superman—perhaps more the idea than the persona— is the single greatest influence on American masculine culture. And when (or if) we lose this we will be in big trouble. That you can’t have Superman without Krytonite will always be both a powerful and provocative truth.

John Wayne – A latecomer to the conversation. I’ve never been a huge fan of his movies, but we felt like we had to have a male actor. Gable, Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and even Tom Hanks were mentioned … but c’mon. This one is easy. John Wayne almost always played the guy you wanted to be. If size matters then John Wayne is the biggest of the big. He speaks plainly. He comes close to being an allegorical representation of American values. He is western. He even played football at USC for crying out loud. He is throw-back. And he is in every way an American Man. And it all started the minute he got on that stagecoach. Thank God for Superman and John Wayne.

Muhammad Ali – Probably the one I would fight the least for, not only does Ali teeter on the icon vs treasure line but he was also a draft dodger. We left him on our list because of his brashness. What’s more American than telling everyone what you’re going to do and then going into the ring and doing it. With your fists. And I’ve got to add that watching him suffer from Parkinson’s and that magical moment at the 96 Olympics goes a long, long way toward his place on our list. Ali’s “last third” of life attests to the fact that Ali continues to fight—continues to fight battles more epic even than Manila.

Billy Graham – There are the great photographs of Graham in counsel with American presidents going as far back as Eisenhower. There are the crusades that led to thousands if not millions of conversions. There’s Graham the statesman and Graham the human being and Graham the husband and father and humanitarian. But he finds his way onto this list due to one singular fact: No one has kept our nation in adherence to our “one nation, under God” pledge more than he has. Across the generations and the wars and the adversities, no one has played a more significant role in maintaining our moral compass more than he has.

By no means is this complete and I even have some reservations myself. Missing are any artists like maybe Georgia O’Keeffe or musicians like Springsteen and maybe Mellencamp. With nine men and one woman I’ve got to think we could have done a better job with balance, but we really didn’t run our vetting through any of these filters. Instead we just relied on the overall impact on our own ways of thinking, living, and believing.

Matt Damon and Cast

We Bought a Zoo is a good movie. I just listened to Filmspotting‘s list of top 10 movies of the year and you won’t find We Bought a Zoo there or probably any other list of the critically acclaimed. (Of course I’ve only heard of a handful of what they did mention.) And it shouldn’t be. The plot is simple and even predictable. Damon is effective in the lead and Scarlett Johansson redeems recent performances, buy neither blows you away. Thomas Hayden Church is the hammy pessimist. John Michael Higgins and Elle Fanning are show stealers. And it works. It’s good. Sitting there in the theater it hit me that, with the over-dramatic, computer generated, and suped-up special effects, the art of the good and pleasant movie is somewhat lost these days. We Bought a Zoo is just … good.

We narrowed our list of potential movies to Sherlock Holmes, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and We Bought a Zoo. I don’t know how you go about making the decision at your house, but for us deciding which movie we’re going to watch gets tough once we get the decision down to three. It came down to this: Cameron Crowe. He struck magic with Jerry Maguire. Hit Oscar with Almost Famous. Became iconic with Say Anything. Entered the vernacular with Fast Times. And struck a profound chord with Elizabethtown. Suffice it to say, Crowe is one of our favorites. And even though it felt like he didn’t really know how he wanted to shoot this movie or where he wanted to insert those great lines of his, he’s still Cameron Crowe and he can still bring it. In We Bought a Zoo Crowe creates more than a few magical moments.

What was best about We Bought a Zoo, though, was much simpler. Our world is anything but certain these days. The economy remains a mess and lots of us are upside down on our houses as a result of another bubble gone “poof.” It can and is hard for a lot of people stuck between stagnation on one side and inability to act on the other. Damon’s character, Benjamin Mee, is facing a circumstance that should resonate with all of us. Far from a passive type, Mee is living an adventure when we are first introduced to him. But then he is invited into a greater adventure by the Larger Story of life. He responds by taking a chance. He takes a shot. At its heart, We Bought a Zoo is about a dad that responds to life’s call and does something right. When faced with one of tough life decisions, he chooses to act.

Our decisions in these moments are not always the right ones. But the important thing, it seems, is to make a decision; to take your shot. And that’s what Benjamin Mee does. He does something many would call crazy—and they would be right. But in taking his shot Benjamin Mee is taking ownership of his life and the future of his family. That’s always a good story. Agonistes recommends We Bought a Zoo as a show of support for the people that make good movies.

Twitter came later. At first Twitter seemed to be everything that was bad about Facebook rolled into one single technology—minus any of the good. It came off as self-indulgent and narcissistic. Over time, however, it has proven to be a great tool for not only communicating with and within networks but also for getting news—real-time, lightning fast news—from other communities and affinity groups.

And so here we are, I think, at a place that seems logical for pushing “pause” and considering what all of this means. Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels and The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, wrote an article last year for Relevant Magazine titled “Is Facebook Killing Our Souls?” I encourage you to read it by clicking here. Yes, this is an opinion piece but Hipps makes some great points— specifically how it can create a minor split between who we are and who we think we are—and I would add, who we want everybody else to believe we are. Another interesting observation he directs at Twitter. Twitter, Hipps assesses, “begs me to step out of the stream experience long enough record it.  The affect is that we are no longer present in any of our experiences.  We are living as unpaid journalists who chronicle life as it passes by.” To me, this is just frightening at some level.

But I wanted to expand his thoughts to include other forms of media, namely television in its various forms and smart phone technology. Just last night my daughter was flipping the channels and we landed on a television show called “Turtle Man” in which two Kentuckians were capturing possum in a whiskey distillery. (Agonistes can’t make this stuff up folks.) The show is not lacking in entertainment value. But relative entertainment is far from the point. Closer to the point however is the number of hours of reality television programming available to us—and sports programming, domestic entertainment, movies, and people just … being people. There was a day when (1) there were only 4 or 5 channels (2) then there was a day when there were around 30 channels (3) and there was a day when television actually ended. Remember that? The “TV Day” typically ended with the national anthem and then it either went black, went to fuzz, or to some random number with circles around it. (Which, when I think about it, is a little weird.) I remember trying to explain to my daughters how TV would end at the end of the day and they just couldn’t grasp it. The point is that it ended. It said, “Go to bed.” The day of TV ending is gone and the day of absolute media saturation has come.

And smart phone technology has, at least in my case, allowed me to become subject to the tyranny of the trivial. That is, I will break from a conversation or train of thought to ask Google what it is that I’m trying to remember, the weather, what movies are playing, the score of a ballgame, my texts, emails. Years ago I was in a telephone conversation with a guy named Leonard Sweet. Len is a very smart person and in our conversation, not so ironically talking about technology, he said that according to Moore’s Law a person would essentially be able to download his or her brain by 2020.

Admittedly I didn’t understand what Len was trying to tell me then. I didn’t understand, that is, until I asked Google who played second base for the 70s Boston Red Sox during a conversation with a friend of mine. And that’s when it hit me that I was counting on Google to remember for me. The smart phone is different from regular search engines that are really electronic encyclopedias in that they are with us all the time. So what happens, when over time, we continue to lean on a Google app for our memory instead of … our memory for our memory? What happens to muscles when they don’t get used? We are definitely moving into new territory.

This is most certainly not a rant against television, computer technology, social media, or smart phone technology. These are all useful tools—very useful. What it is, though, is something like a question: When is it too much access to information? Or maybe better put, at what point do we get to a point at which we become something less than what we were created to be as living beings?

It’s all so fascinating. If not early adopters, my wife and I have usually been in the second wave of technology adoption. That’s due in large part because of price. But in the last few months I’ve noticed media in its various forms and information accessibility saturation creeping more and more into the most sacred space of my mind. Shane Hipps makes some valid points, but he’s also right in that technology—progressive technology—isn’t going away. We need to learn how to manage it else learn how to say no. Agonistes also believes that there is a technological danger zone at which something can surely be lost.

Lets assume for a moment that Philip Zimbardo is accurate in the conclusions that he draws both from these statistics and as these statistics relate to his own research. I guess you could argue that boys have always been like this and so have men. Because I think that people tend not to change a whole lot I could go along with that … partially. But lets table that for the time being and respond simply to what Zimbardo is saying.

He opens up this discussion by citing it as fact that men are flaming out academically, wiping out socially with girls, and wiping out sexually with women. (Women, do you agree?) Throw in a fear of intimacy and a high level of social awkwardness and Zimbardo has made his opening case for the demise of guys. Even though it’s got to be more complicated, he sums it up by saying that men now prefer an asynchronistic Internet world to the spontaneous interaction of social relationship—I’m not totally sure that this is limited to men. This leaves men vulnerable to something he calls “arousal addiction”. That is, the constant need for something different. (Got to admit, that’s pretty interesting.)

So here’s what Agonistes thinks. Psychology, analysis, and the like can get us only so far, as valid as it is. We can sponsor research and draw conclusions that can address many of the issues raised in Philip’s introduction and be successful to a greater or lesser extent. What needs to happen, simply put, is that we need to expect more from men. Extended adolescence is the plague of postmodern masculinity. And, yeah, today’s world is definitely hard. For sure it’s a difficult place to navigate. But these circumstances should call out the masculinity, not suppress it.

The Tribes or Groups so common today (call the Friends Effect), the opportunity keep relationships at a distance, and the asynchronistic Internet world that Philp Zimbardo mentions have all, one way or another, provided men a place to hide-out. But so does the rescue. Entitlement programs, bail-outs, and political promises don’t exactly ask men to exercise the muscles of greatness. Instead what it asks men to do is … just wait. Hang out. That’s what the beer commercials suggest. And how many times have you heard a man’s mandatory”cave time” referenced. (Is that really what we need?) In other words, we need to our own “man on the white horse.” So essentially what you’ve got is not so much the demise of guys, but a generation of men that is yet to be “activated.”

So I’m reading a book called King Warrior Magician Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Maculine. It’s a different kind of read and—admittedly—over my head most of the time. It’s somewhat liberal (it is psychology, after all) but interesting in an on-again-off-again kind of way. The most interesting point the author has made—at least to me—is making a distinction between Boy Psychology and Man Psychology. There are healthy expressions of each, of course, but what left the most significant impression was the fact that without an initiation of some kind—some event, rite of passage, or ceremony—Boy Psychology remains for the most part in play and goes unchecked. The authors hypothesize that Western culture is by and large void of these initiations. Events like going off to college, military basic training, and athletics have saved us from absolute ruin I guess. Without a rite of passage of some kind, though, the mature masculine is never realized as Boy Psychology remains a man’s primary driver, ranging somewhere between the extremes of “high chair tyrant” and “weakling”.

This all says to me, unless the man is called out, the mature masculine will never step into the role our culture needs from him. Hard economic times have the ability to call out the mature masculine if we allow it to. Staring down adversity and dealing with the challenges at hand can conjure the man from the boy. Confronting life with all its nuances and unpredictability instead of retreating to the cave—that can call out the mature masculine as well. And yes standing face to face with someone of the opposite sex, as Zimbardo puts it, that gives off “ambiguous, contradictory signals” summons the man as well. But the industry—sports, TV, gaming, media to name a few—as Zimbardo says, has become very adroit and keeping men on the proverbial couch … and the mature masculine dormant. Our failure, however, lies in not calling the mature masculine into play and allowing (even encouraging) the boy into a life expectancy beyond what is healthy and normal. Maybe we don’t have so much a “demise of guys.” But maybe what we’ve got is actually a demise in expectation. And maybe men haven’t changed over the years, as we are tempted to conclude, rather the cultural environment has changed dramatically.

I was asked about possible solutions by a reader not too long ago. I think when it comes to reversing the demise of guys the solution can be relatively simple: guard the ground that’s been won and take back the ground that’s been lost. Consider this in light of the issues raised by Zimbardo.

The Help is a very well-crafted movie. The stakes are high—survival, identity, even life and death, the story compelling, and the characters are strong. The photography is sufficient but director Tate Taylor seems to get enough out of his ensemble cast to make up for a lack of memorable shots. (But with emotionally charged material like what we’ve got in The Help, the “Don’t blow it” rule is definitely in play.) There are several really good performances but I thought Cicely Tyson (Constantine) and Bryce Dallas Howard (Hilly) were the most powerful. It’s also worth noting that I enjoyed my first Emma Stone experience and thought Viola Davis was effective in her role as Abileen Clark, the impact character that tends to drive the story. With ten nominations for Best Picture these days … who knows. It wouldn’t be a shocker to see The Help make the list in February. This movie feels important.

So I guess you could say that, yes, I liked the movie for its artistic and cinematic merit. Its content, however, left me a tad disconcerted. The Help is one of those films that rolls the proverbial snake over to reveal its terrible underbelly. The snake in this case is 1960s Jackson MS. And the underbelly is the servile industry of Jackson’s urban elite—or maybe its middle class. Regardless, there is a gentile crowd whose insensibility is on display as perhaps the most natural and subtle form of depravity I  can remember seeing on the big screen. As a result I’ve had a really difficult time taking a position on this movie. On the one hand I believe that it’s healthy and productive to revisit even the most painful moments of our past. There are lessons both to be learned and remembered. On the other hand there is a part of me that very much wants to put issues like those raised in The Help to bed once and for all.

And then there’s the tension that emerges from the nature of this fiction. I’ve got to give Stockett and Taylor credit for their creativity. Technically speaking, The Help had a touch of Renaissance drama story-within-a-story to it that gives it a classic vibe. I love what this kind of presentation asks of its audience, too. But a message this strong and sensitive needs more spine than mere fiction has to offer. In other words, writers don’t have to work hard to make a community, people group, or in this case entire region look bad. It’s easy. Accordingly I really wish this story wasn’t made up. And then I catch myself thinking that and feel ashamed because the better thing to wish for is that it never happened. I think maybe that the net effect is that  it feels less than honest to me. Not that Stockett isn’t justified or that the ethos is inaccurate—because it definitely is true of 1960s South and most likely still true to a greater extent than what anyone cares to admit today—but that these nameless and faceless individuals deserved their own voice. Not Stockett’s. This is not criticism of the author or her craft. It’s just commentary.

As a child of the South I’m familiar with the peculiar servile industry The Help uses to advance its plot. I can remember adults of my early adolescence working alongside black women of the day. It seemed benign enough to me. I certainly do not remember any uncomfortable moments and do not recall the tension that is definitely present in the movie. And that is what bothers me. William Faulkner’s Quentin Compson concluded that his Aunt Rosa told him the story of the south over and over because “we breathe the same air.” Collectively, the South has come into a unique ownership of this problem. In the end The Help isn’t about what’s going on in the movie or what may or may not have happened in 1960s Mississippi or any kind of statement that may be made about today. In the end it’s a movie about honesty and dishonesty. It is not about understanding, but an effort to understand. Or as Kathryn Stockett has posted on her web site:

But what I am sure about is this: I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially the 1960′s.  I don’t think it is something any white woman, on the other end of a black woman’s paycheck, could ever truly understand.  But trying to understand is vital to our humanity. 

We just recently watched the finale during which the last 4 dancers/contestants are whittled away in 15-20 increments down to the champion. Surprisingly, this year’s finale was a little disappointing. There was one particular performance in which the dancers clearly failed to meet the standards of the choreographers. (I do know more about dance now that I ever thought I would have. Good thing? Only time will tell.) At the end of course, the dancers were all smiles. The camera shot turned to the choreographer, whom I expected to express at least a degree of frustration or disappointment or both.

The SYTYCD choreographers have become my favorite “characters” on the show. After watching several seasons and developing would-be relationships with each one of the regulars, we’ve become somewhat familiar with their work. What’s generated the most wonder, however, is how these creators conjure the dance from their own imagination and experiences, show the steps to dancers they’ve only just met, work intimately with them as they impart their vision and their art, all before taking their seat with the rest of the audience as the dancers give life to what was just days earlier only an idea—if that’s the right word. Watching their physicality and facial expressions as they sit in the audience, I’ve wondered aloud what it’s like for the choreographers to trust someone completely with the dance they have created. Just sitting there. Surely there are steps missed, personal touches both added and taken away, or even a complete mis-interpretation of it all.

That’s what I expected to see on the face of this choreographer after this particular what I would call “disaster” in the finale. But it wasn’t. The choreographer seemed just as pleased as she would have had the dancers hit every step, showcased every nuance, and bared all the heart she expected. “It must be the nature of choreography,” I said to my wife, both of us noticing the same thing. “Maybe it’s not about hitting all the steps just right, getting it perfect.” Fair enough.

Because I’ve been taught to pay attention; to note those things that move us, strike a personal chord, and even haunt us, I continued to wonder why I find the choreographers so interesting and the relationship between the dancers and the choreographers so fascinating. For one, they share the dance. One creates the dance but at some point steps back and allows the dancers to put their own touches on it. What emerges from the relationship is a shared art that allows the unique giftedness of each dancer to shape the performance. Second, it’s about intimacy. Not the kind of intimacy that is all over the sit-coms, magazine ads, and feature films these days; rather, the kind of intimacy that edifies, builds, and creates. It’s the kind of intimacy that allows both the dancer and the creator to be known to one another. This is the kind of intimacy that requires effort and, yes, even work. But will always end with something beautiful even if all the steps are not hit exactly right.

And lastly I feel that there is something divine in the nature of the relationship between the choreographer and the dancer. Not necessarily in their relationship, but in the nature of their relationship. Because God is infinite the list of metaphors and illustrations for our relationship with Him is just as endless. But there seems to be an aspect of God as Choreographer—a Choreographer for our lives as a dance. He creates the dance. He knows our strengths. He gives us the steps. He enjoys the intimacy and teaching. He shows us why we fall and helps lift us back into motion when we do. But when the time comes, I can’t help but think that He always enjoys watching us dance. Our responsibilities are multiple, but at the top of the list has got to be (1) pay attention (2) bring everything you’ve got. And don’t forget this “what if” question: What if you don’t have to be perfect?

San Simeon, California. Photo courtesy of Karen Daniel

It hasn’t happened in a while around me, but it isn’t uncommon for the question, “What do you think she is like in real life?” to be asked about an actress during a television show or, more often, a feature film. The question is innocuous. I mean, it makes sense. There’s a fake life on the screen and there’s a real life in the living room. Upon deeper inspection, however, the question can be telling. For many of us there does seem to be some sort of notion of a reality-beyond-reality—something obviously less than real yet very influential in how we process and see the world around us.

I was in Colorado a few years ago. It was Georgetown, Colorado just off I25. Great town for grabbing a coffee. (So is Idaho Springs. And Leadville. And Buena Vista. Every town in Colorado for that matter.) My family and I stopped to have lunch. I don’t remember anything we talked about or what we ate or the name of the restaurant. The only thing I remember was a button our server was wearing that day. It said “Reality: What a concept.”

There are moments that you remember for a reason. Like your first kiss. And then there are other moments that you remember for no apparent reason—like a server’s button in Georgetown CO. Again, the idea behind the button suggests that there is an option other than reality. It’s not so hard to conclude that we’re all aware of the fact that our lives are stories with alternate endings. What’s confusing, though, is what these endings are, how to get from where we are to a desired ending, and where the lines between fantasy and dream are ultimately drawn. But where “reality” is concerned, there is only one viable conclusion: there is no “alternate reality.”

I think we’ve always had a bent toward escapism. Before television there were feature films. Before films there were novels. Before novels there was poetry. Before poetry there was drama. Before drama there was … farming. OK so maybe that’s where the notion of “alternate reality” began—when somebody finally said, “Man I’m tired of hoeing this field.” So the farmer looked for something to get his mind off of work. He didn’t create a fictitious world loose from the mooring of what he knew. What he did was carve out a place in the real world to which he could retreat. Somewhere in there lies the difference between “fantasy” and “dream.” “And this is important why?” I can hear you asking. Agonistes believes that our newfound game-show culture in which all you’ve got to do is be willing to make a fool out of yourself on television for a few thousand, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, is on the verge of dropping completely into the grips of a fantasy world; a world unhinged from the sights, sounds, textures, and–yes–consequences of reality.

This distinction fantasy and dream hit me during a recent  trip to Disney World—trust me, I’ve got nothing against WDW. It’s one of my favorite places. We were watching one of the shows at Cinderella’s Castle. There were princesses and princes. A villain of course. Good wins—at least judging by the music. Just as the narrator challenged everyone within earshot to “reach for their dreams”  my oldest daughter says to me, “But what they DON’T show you, though, is all of the doubt, the bumps and bruises, the failures, fear, and the work it takes to live the dream.” (She was 15 at the time.) Always on the prowl for a potential blog post, I was struck: that’s the problem. That’s the difference between the fantasy and the dream. More than work, I would couch the  primary difference within what a mentor of mine described as “having skin in the game.” (Also check out Karen Dill’s How Fantasy Becomes Reality.)

Here’s the deal. Being a professional baseball player, for me, is fantasy. It isn’t going to happen. If I was ever good enough, that day is gone. I could hire a coach, a personal trainer, take BP and infield until I was blue in the face, and it wouldn’t matter. I could, however, write a novel. It could happen. For that to happen I would need to confront internal enemies such as fear of failure and lack of discipline—a very healthy enterprise—and do the hard work of developing a compelling story with intriguing characters. It might not be Hemingway, but I could do it. Even if this isn’t the best example, it makes a point: chasing the dream is edifying. Remaining in fantasy is destructive.

But the distinction goes deeper. Lets consider something easily categorized as fantasy … just for argument’s sake … just picking one at random … let’s go with … pornography. I’ve written about this before. Try to look at this emotional pandemic through the edification vs destruction filter above. Pornography requires nothing of a person: no commitment, no emotional investment, no real effort. That’s fantasy. On the flipside, look at what it promises. It promises adventure, but ultimately robs you of adventure. It promises beauty, but delivers only a one dimensional veneer. It promises fulfillment, but only for moments and only leaves you wanting more. It promises control, but in the final analysis owns you.  Granted, this is an extreme example. But this can be applied to just about anything we do compulsively. Why do I watch football? What is that a substitute for? What are so many of us addicted to Facebook? What does that say about one’s desire and how we’ve channeled it?

There is a lyric in an Avett Brothers song that says, “Your dreams to catch, the world the cage”—and that’s exactly right. Our dreams are vast and indefinable, really, while fantasy is localized. The dream sets the heart free while fantasy requires us to be static and still. Yet the fantasy industry—fantasy football, a zillion cable channels, video games to name a few—remains a billion dollar industry.  Thing is, no one can choose for you. The process of separating fantasies from dreams can be a life-long pursuit. As I’ve gotten older and learned more about myself I have sensed the pantheon of possibility narrow—which has afforded me greater focus. The sum of it is that anything worth doing isn’t necessarily easy, but it must be natural—as naturally as leaves to a tree, as Keats might have said.

One of the things I thought about during the back-and-forth was, “What do we mean when we refer to an entire decade of music?” Like most of the decades, there is a little overlap. What we mean when we say “the 1970s” doesn’t really begin until about 1974. The same goes for “the 1980s.” For the sake of argument I’m going to start the official 1970s era in 1971 when Led Zeppelin released Zep IV late that year. And even though the 80s vibe was beginning to take shape pretty early in the decade with Air Supply and Kool & the Gang (yeah I said it), acts like Pat Benatar, Queen, Olivia Newton-John, and Blondie (did you know that Parallel Lines is on Rolling Stone’s top 150 all-time list?) were carrying the prior decade’s banner. I don’t think 1981 is that much different. Because of this I’m going to begin the official era of the 80s music with … drumroll … what else but Thriller. Footloose is really really close to being the quintessential 1980s release—happy, tamed anti-establishment, visual—and it was only a year later.

And on the subject of overlap, as I listened to the two throw out artist after artist it became evident that acts like Elton John, Aerosmith, Kiss, Van Halen, and others had hits in both decades. So which decade gets to claim them? It’s a judgment call. The 1970s get Elton pretty much because he was so bad post 1980. Aerosmith is a little more difficult. They probably sold more records in the 1980s so that’s where I put them. Kiss has got to go to 70s while Van Halen goes to both, somehow. Journey, Chicago, and Foreigner … I’m non-committal. Springsteen? He is a statistical outlier in this debate. One thing I know: the 80s get U2.

My 13-year-old daughter recently asked me, “Dad how can you tell which songs belong to the 70s and which belong to the 80s?” I thought about it for a second or two before answering, “Listen for actual musical instruments. If you can hear instruments then it’s probably the 70s.” And it’s true. The music of the 80s seems over produced. Even Van Halen’s 1984 takes one of the great guitarists ever and puts him on keyboards. The music of the 70s, on the other hand, had dark places, mysterious corners, and strange twists and turns that gave us room to explore. The 1970s is so much more nuanced than the 80s and so much more of, in my opinion, what real life has in store for us. It has edges and corners. While the 70s had musical corners where you could go camp out, the 80s was much more cotton candy and polly anna.

In this debate I think we’ve got to consider the launch of MTV in 1981, too. Growing up in a rural community … don’t think I don’t remember the day MTV landed on my black and white television when that guy dressed in an astronaut’s costume put the MTV flag on the moon. Remember Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn? I mean, really, how cool were those guys. And don’t forget Nina Blackwood. Looking back, however, MTV sounded the death knell for true musical artistry for more than a decade. Think about it. Once the era of the music video hit, “music” became less the cultural ethos of a generation and more about the dance, the face, the clothes, and the shock. MTV created Boy George for crying out loud!  Also because of MTV, music ceased being the collective story. And on that note, I hold MTV accountable for almost killing the concept album, too. In some ways, MTV introduced an era of American music when music was no longer music.  With all due respect to the 80s songs I know by heart and love, the 1970s is the greatest musical decade. Not only is the artistry superior, but it’s the last decade of the true storyteller (until recently, but that’s another post).

Is this a trivial conversation to have? Good question—especially in light of our economic woes. But maybe that’s exactly this conversation is important. I’ve come to conclude that the playlist is never trivial. Right or not, the playlist has come to define us even if it’s just for moments at a time. I think most of us would agree that it’s in these moments when we feel most ourselves and maybe even most alive. And I’m not buying the position that music is mere escapism, either. Admittedly it can play that role. But more than escapism, our music gives us a means of expression and articulation—a means of expression when our words come up short. In fact, very often it’s the playlist that speaks on behalf of our deepest places. It’s the playlist that speaks for the heart.

Instead of “romance” as something syrupy sweet I will typically use the word in the Coleridge/Wordsworth sense: the awakening of the mind’s attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us. In this manner as well, “romance” may take us into the darker places, the “twisted and turned” places, the surreal and the mess. More simply put (you can thank me later), “romance” in this way only points to those things that move us most profoundly and deeply. It creates an environment that opens the doors wide to possibility and opportunity, allowing us to see things–perhaps–for the first time at their rawest. It is pathos. It’s what William Wordsworth himself cited as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion.”

We’re picking up where I left off in the first in this series in a post some time ago called “The Case for  New Romanticism.” All this is sparked by the decision to pick up Flood by Robert Penn Warren to re-read. Bear in mind that, to date, I think I’ve only re-read one book – Faulkner‘s Light in August— so this is BIG! In this novel the town of Fiddlersburg TN is on the brink of being flooded as a part of the Tennessee Valley Authority project. This project ultimately led to the creation of the two largest man-made lakes in the nation, Barkley Lake and Kentucky Lake, and the Land Between the Lakes area we have today. Making this happen, of course, necessitated government buy-up of all the land that would be flooded to make the lakes. It stands to reason that within the scope of the TVA project there would be several actual and legitimate towns.

As Flood begins Hollywood screenwriter Bradwell Tolliver has returned to his ficticious hometown of Fiddersburg on the virtual eve of its flooding. He has returned for the first time in a generation. Maybe everyone isn’t like this, but in my experiences and the experiences of those closest to me, you are unable to be indifferent to the place of your adolescence, eg “your hometown.” You may love returning or you may loathe it, but rarely are you indifferent. The physical location of one’s childhood is irrelevant, right. It’s not about the place. It’s about what the place does to us. It’s about how the physical place opens up wounds, hearts, and minds. It’s about how these places drag the voices of the past into the new vernacular of a different stage in life. But through their sights and smells these places als0 remind us a day that was so pregnant with possibility, inviting us to recollect the days gone by and the journey of a lifetime, where it went, and where it is going. These are all strong moments. Romantic moments, if you will.

It’s no different for Brad Tolliver when he returns to Fiddlersburg TN with producer/director Yasha Jones for a movie project. Interwoven into Warren’s narrative–this is my favorite part–is an attempt to define the south and what it means to be “southern.” For Warren, the southern experience is one predicated on lonesomeness. But this isn’t the kind of lonesomeness that concludes in a trip to the physician and a prescription for anti-depressants. It’s more the kind of disembodied lonesomeness that leads to introspection and the kind of romanticism described by Wordsworth and Coleridge; the sort of lonesomeness that winds down a dusty gravel road to some decaying homestead with its little-used and blue-faded tobacco barns and a yard that’s seen a share of Fourth of July picnics. It’s a romantic lonesomeness. It’s what Tolliver describes as a “high lonesomeness” in Flood right before he makes his way to the bed chamber of his youth:

“Well, in the Deep South, in certain circles, upper-class circles—upper class, that is, by old-fashioned standards and not those of Dun and Bradstreet … It is the nearest even the State of Mississippi comes to Zen. It is the nearest even the State of Tennessee comes to Zen. It is the nearest Bradwell Tolliver comes to Zen, and he is coming there now because, in the flood of moonlight and memory, he is about to retire to the chamber where he, as a boy, lay and, while moonlight strayed across his couch and the mockingbird sang, indulged what the bard has so aptly termed the long, long thoughts of youth.”

And so the “high lonesomeness” works in the same way as the romance: it brings clarity. Melancholy is different from despair in that it can be both cathartic and redemptive. A lament is to be embraced, not avoided. It’s in these raw moments that we are able to see into the reality of things. Another character in Flood puts it this way, “… that moment when some place is just overpassed but still extant and waiting for the flood, that’s the time you can see its virtues and vices most clearly.”

For me this has only served as a reminder to remain in the moment, regardless of what sense of foreboding or euphoria I may detect. Life can be defined in a number of ways, but certainly one of those ways is a series of moments that are strung together like freshwater pearls on a necklace. Regardless of their shape or size, they are all pearls.

On the eve of a national government shut down I can’t help but think back to the story of Westward Expansion long about the turn of the century and pushing through to the late 1930s. A century or so removed from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the west was blown wide open to migration largely due to the railroad, but also the telegraph and prosperity. But the people weren’t really moving. As contributors to the lack of interest there was WW1 (and the 1920s were pretty comfortable for most).

Because the federal government had this huge investment in the west and a need to get people on the land, it launched what amounted to an enormous PR campaign created to stimulate movement into the area. The campaign included free trips to visit the Texas panhandle, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and even Nebraska and the Dakotas.  Our US government published pamphlets that highlighted how this land could be put to agricultural use. Heretofore only used for ranching, the area that would later be known as The Dust Bowl only recorded about 16 inches of rainfall a year—not the 20 inches annually required for successful agricultural endeavors. But here’s the kicker: the promotional pamphlets led people to believe that there was enough rain to raise successful crops year after year.  At worst it was a blatant lie. At best it was misleading.

Of course the cowboys knew it. They knew that the land was only good for cattle ranching, not farming. And the US Department of Agriculture did too. But the people came. They responded to the lure of cheap land and the American Dream. And they kept coming. And they bought tractors and they turned the prairie over and grew more grain than any nation had before or since. What they didn’t know—neither the government nor the farmer nor the cowboy—was that the prairie grass was the only thing holding the dirt down. Within two decades the prairie was gone, the Great Depression had settled in like an unwelcome relative, and the Dust Bowl was beginning its long run into our history books as one of the single most traumatic events in US history.

Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time chronicles the story of the Dust Bowl with abject detail. He describes the rabbit runs and the great dust storms of the 1930s. In vivid detail he tells the stories of the families that lived in “homes” dug out of the ground with dirt floors, no roofs or windows, with cow chips their only source of fuel for the stoves. (Can you imagine the permanent smell of manure on your skin, hair, clothing.) There were so many centipedes living in the walls that you could hear them crawling around you at night and the dust so bad that people died from a malady known as dust pneumonia. There was enough static electricity in the air to short cars and knock people down with an ill-advised handshake. Food was so scarce that people canned tumbleweed to eat in the winter months.

So what relevance does this have today? Why bring these events from first half of the Twentieth Century up on the eve of a potential government shut down? Because we made it. Not only did we survive the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, but we went on to become the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. And to its credit, I think, the administration of Roosevelt knew it. That is, the government believed. It believed in the fortitude and heart of the American people. It believed—and the irony is not lost on me—that we would ultimately not just survive, but find a way to thrive. What they knew is that we were and remain a nation of cowboys, so to speak, with indomitable spirits that cannot be tamed and that do not accept defeat. Stuff like that made us tough … for a generation anyway. All the government of the day did was plant a seed and make a better life possible for us (and with a little half-truth, too, I guess), then stepped back and let us do whatever we could with what was available. To a large degree, this was noble.

So here is what I wonder. Should talk of the shut down even matter? Think about it. When the Founding Fathers were building the framework of what our nation would become, the question was not so much what the federal government should be, but if it should be. When James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were writing the Federalist Papers–the documents would ultimately contribute the most to the framing of The Constitution– the big question was associated with the power of the central government as it related to the state governments—not what it would or could do to help us. Their resolution was to let the balance of power remain ambiguous, thus creating what Joseph Ellis described as something like an on-going yet slow-moving revolution and perpetually re-create the federal government A/K/A “genius”. And so perhaps that is where we find ourselves.

The role of government—any democratic government—is really quite simple: (1) remove obstacles (2) protect the people. Any Charlie Daniels song will tell you that maybe we don’t even need that. Circumstances amidst the Great Depression were so outrageous as to lie beyond any help the federal government could possibly provide. It was overwhelming. There were programs that worked with varying degrees of success, but by and large it was the people that pulled themselves out of it. A nation of cowboys found a way. Yeah it was hard. Terribly hard. But it’s only in those situations that you can find out what you’re capable of becoming.

I love this nation and what it stands for. Here’s to hoping we haven’t lost any of that along the way.