It keeps bubbling up. The scene. The message. My Flaw (capital F, denoting the alpha of many.)
The missing of the Blessing.
Count ‘em up, write ‘em down, do whatever it takes so you don’t.
The Jobs movie was…icky. Ashton Kutcher did what he set out to do, portraying the brutal genius of Steve Jobs. It’s been years since I’ve seen it, but that one scene…Steve, fired from Apple, brought low from the blinding heights.
(Blinding heights - what a great phrase. Check out Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name” to return the poetry to its rightful owner.)
Steve returns in ruin to the garage where it all started. As he’s sobbing on his father’s shoulder, the camera pans out just a bit.
On the shelf, a photo of sunny days, Wozniak beaming in nerdy elation, thrilled to be building something incredible, reveling in the moment. Jobs, looking forward, hungry, not tasting the Blessing.
And there he cried, smashed under the rubble of the present, shattered.
Steve Jobs would be reborn, and then ultimately die. But did he ever taste the Blessing? Did he ever partake of the joy in that photo of hope, naïvety, starry-eyed hope and the dawn of something new?
Did he miss it?
It’s rare that a scene sticks with me, let alone directing. That image haunts me, floating up when I’m about to be a Jobs and not a Woz. When the Flaw shows up. Or when it threatens, and I try to put it back on the rails, and not miss the Blessing.
The Present
The evening was warm yesterday. A cricket’s song drifted in the screen door as I hunched over my laptop. Skype rang. “Amir” answered. (That’s not his name, but Indian culture came up. Inside joke.) We’ve been learning guitar, learning to think, tossing ideas around, sharing triumphs and tragedies, and enjoying darn good music together since he was in seventh grade.
Now Amir is about to head off to GW in the fall. (Man I couldn’t be more proud of him! I’m gonna miss him, but have already threatened to visit him next time I’m in the city. We’ve decided that I could pass as a homeless bum given the urban environment of the campus.)
“Dude, we’ve gotta add some college jams to your repertoire.”
Somehow, in all these years, “Wonderwall” was neglected.
We fixed it. And the ghost of a memory floated right through the screen door, along with the cricket song.
Spence
It’s been a long time since I’ve talked with Spence. I was going to drop him a note on Instagram, but, he’s an artist too, and figured he’d appreciate a shout out.
I think we met at an open mic or something, two guitar players honing their craft, trying to build an audience.
And then, the street music.
Curtis Blues showed me the ropes. “Make it easy for people to pay you. Be loud. Involve kids and get ‘em to sing along.”
Spence joined in the ruckus one evening.
Now, we weren’t quite characters in a Kerouac novel by standards of living conditions. We all drove there, and we all had homes to go back to. And nobody was high.
But to anyone strolling with a posh latte, we were scruffy enough, and jangly enough, and definitely not rich enough for any of the yacht girls who smirked on by.
Oh what times, tasting of Potomac river humidity and sweat, the sun relenting behind the concrete skyline, and the endless shuffling of sandals on a warm evening.
One night on the docks we made twenty one bucks.
“We are gonna eat good tonight!”
Bugsy’s pizza probably wished we didn’t have a pile of damp dollar bills, but we were oblivious.
Snap a photo, and put it on the shelf next to the picture in Jobs.
If I squint, sometimes I’m Woz. Sometimes I’m Jobs. It varies.
Threads
“Okay, Amir, so it’s an E minor seven chord to start it off…” Back in the present, I was puzzling through the forgotten progression of “Wonderwall.”
The evenings on the docks came flooding back. Spencer did such a great cover of the tune. His voice would echo around the bricks and boards. A seagull would ruffle his feathers, listening, and a sandaled boater would fish around in khaki shorts, lean over and drop a buck in the guitar case.
“Thank you very much!” I’d say so Spence could keep on singing.
The mighty Potomac river flowed south, right past our street music stage, under the Wilson bridge, down to a hundred thousand blue crabs in the Chesapeake bay, carrying the sound of sweaty guitar strings to the Atlantic, and to a scrapbook like this.
We gradually drifted into our separate projects and paths, and it’s been years since I’ve played the docks in Alexandria.
Spencer has been off doing his thing, and crushing it. I see him on the socials, and he’s always grinding, racking up the views and gigs and miles and making it happen.
And now here I sit, on a warm spring night, wondering what on earth I’m doing. Oh, don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. But that Jobs scene was tugging at a corner of my mind earlier.
Then, jamming with Amir as he readies for the next stage of his journey, I thought of Spencer and those street music sessions, and the photo clearly emerged. The line, although written to sing to a girl, seemed to fit many other things tonight, a repurposed philosophical gem hidden in jangling guitars, the brilliance of a psalm that’s almost cross-stitched into oblivion, reaching across time:
And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things I’d like to say to you
But I don’t know how.
Circa 2013
Don’t miss it.
Josh