I once had lunch with an astronaut. He stuck me with the $80 bill.
Thirteen guitars sit in my closet. They’re covered with a dusty discouragement, rusted in service of the wrong reasons. They’ll rise again when I recalibrate.
After many steps down a new road, the green of the beginning countryside withered into the familiar ash of anything I had ever closely studied. My foot slipped. I was deeper in the pit than I realized. Just as the fetid waters were about to close over my head, there was a glimpse of a way out.
Uhh….what?
I’ve been thinking about fame and corruption a lot lately. This post is a bit unusual. I’m thinking out loud, and even plan to bring up God. That’s a bit risky, don’t you think? Buckle up!
November 9th’s blog crystalized this. There’s a video of Lex Fridman asking Jordan Peterson if fame had corrupted him.
I think the answer is “yes.”
But, this isn’t a post about just Dr. Peterson. (For the record, the man changed my life. I’ll be forever grateful.)
What happened? And how can we remedy it in ourselves? While it sounds like worrying about imaginary Ferraris getting door dings - I think we’re all comfortably humble - corruption has keener eyes than the limelight. It’s already found me, and probably you, too.
(I say this to include you in the journey. From here on out, I’ll keep you out of it.)
The Astronaut’s Two Martinis
I met an old astronaut once. Really. He told me he’d show me the shuttle that he flew if I’d drive him to the museum. (One of the benefits of being in the DC area.)
My old car rattled, and I hoped the popcorn-smell of occasionally burning oil wouldn’t drift through the vents too noticeably.
The brothers were waiting at the museum, mom was in tow in the car.
“John” behaved…at first. Well, he announced he didn’t even bring his wallet.
Then he kept talking about getting lunch at the Irish restaurant.
Then the jokes started. They got worse. In front of my mother. I won’t write them. They don’t deserve continuation.
We went inside. I made the mistake of introducing him to people near the space shuttle. “This is ‘John Smith’, he flew this thing.”
A bright young woman looked up, her kids flocking around her.
Unprintable joke here.
He cackled. Everyone else was grossed out.
Hey, how do you make Serbian fighter pilots cry? (It’s not a joke.) Introduce ‘em to an astronaut! Really! Three tough men stood looking at the display. I introduced John, with less enthusiasm than before. They were elated. One teared up at meeting such a hero, shaking his hand with reverence. They wanted to hear, listen, learn.
He barely paid attention, turned to me, and mentioned the Irish restaurant.
After about ten minutes, that’s where we went, my brother bravely substituting for mom’s place in the car.
John ordered two vodka martinis (“a bird’s gotta have two wings to fly!”), and talked about himself. We ate some hummus. Yikes, eighty bucks for lunch hurt. (Remember - old car and burning oil.)
We dropped him off at his retirement home. He was drunk, and I was still hungry. He punched the handicap door button with his cane. “It’s a F$%^$ miracle!” he roared as the door opened.
Cars
In retrospect, it was worth every penny. What a story, and I’m still sorting the lessons.
Here’s how I figure it: “John” had done something darn cool. But then, he became that thing, fusing to it until it defined him.
I imagined him souping up a magnificent convertible, proudly driving around town. “Hey John, sweet ride” everyone would say until one day, he found that his skin had grown into the upholstery, his bones had joined the frame, and he had become the car.
I can’t say the same thing hasn’t happened to me. And I’ve never been famous.
Guitars
The years of playing and teaching guitar flew by, but there was ever a growing darkness. “This seems stifling” I wondered, privately and aloud to a few friends. The open pastures of unknown disciplines beckoned with a seductive call. "Your identity is tied up in six measly strings. Learn to paint, and not care what anyone thinks.”
Still I played, but slower.
The call persisted. “You’d get a great tan as a marine biologist.” And eventually…
“Hey, what about writing?”
Words
Oh, how I loved to write. I didn’t care. “Hack it to bits, fine. Whatever. I’m not a writer.” And so I wrote with the levity of any beginner. The crushing ideal of Eddie Van Halen hadn’t been replaced yet by Fitzgerald.
But then, gradually, it was. My fingers became sticky on the typewriter keys, starting to fuse.
Caring is a paradox. One must care to progress past the basics, but then a terrible wrestling match of ego happens. That fusion of self into craft sets in. Will one become Astronaut John, trapped forever in his own deeds?
Art
And then Jordan Peterson came along. (Dr. Peterson, if you ever read this, I’d love to talk about it. There’s an entire sector of the “journalism” industry devoted to cheap shots. This isn’t one of those pieces.)
12 Rules for Life changed mine. If you haven’t read it, please do. If you’d like to criticize it, please read it first, in it’s entirety.
I had the feeling of visiting an art museum for the first time. Dr. Peterson was the docent, eagerly pointing out the Great Works of history and culture.
For the first time, I was stunned by the wisdom and beauty of the Bible.
Carl Jung was someone I started quoting. Do people have ideas, or do ideas have people?
A funny thing happens when I stand up and talk about astronomy. I say “we” a lot, as in “We need to adjust our theories of early galactic evolution.”
It’s wild how easy it is to grab onto Einstein’s lab coattails.
It strikes me that Dr. Peterson has moved from beyond museum docent, to museum itself. Sitting there in a stony gray suit, imposing as a building, stern as granite, arbiter of ideas.
His daughter is trying hard for celebrity. Now his wife has a podcast. The weight of their seriousness almost breaks the screen of my phone.
I miss the wonder of the security guard in a goofy sweater, marveling at paintings of dragons.
Ideas
The hazy lights of a rock ‘n roll stage seem infinitely safer than the danger of the Intellectual. For starters, you’ve gotta be good at something, like playing guitar.
Who cares what I have to say? (Obviously, I think somebody does. I’m writing this.) Are my memories of a distant place I saw once a decade ago pertinent?
Worse yet, I believe I can make them so.
And so, last night, I found myself right back where I started, sinking into a morass of ego and overvaluing my own opinions. (Not having them seems a shirking of responsibility, and a delay of the inevitable.)
I sat at the writing class, slashing words out of friends’ manuscripts, offering suggestions that I stand by, but still…something was off. There was too much me in the monitors.
How do you take the craft seriously, but detach? How do you avoid growing into your car?
The Unthinkable
I saw a church sign last week. I was stunned. I liked it.
“Give your life to Christ. He can do better things with it than you can.”
What’s happening to me? I’ve been wrestling with the idea of surrender, holding myself a bit too dear. But I’m getting tired of stumbling from pit to pit.
The Wind
Last night, an answer blew in. First the problem: if I’m the only one in charge, the ego pit seems unavoidable. But…What if we’re trees, and God/The Universe/Outside/Bigger Things is the wind?
Viewed from afar, the trees on the mountain dance. But they’re not the ones generating the movement. The north wind is.
A tree must grow tall to dance. It must use skill to thrive, photosynthesize, and look like a million bucks in the fall.
But it’s not moving of its own accord. The Wind is.
What is the Wind? Is it God? Jesus? Odin? The World?
I’m not sure what I’d call my belief system, except “in transit.”
God strikes me as a sophisticated phrase. Maybe it’s God as popularized. Perhaps it’s the highest thing that transcends and lives outside of and is good and most importantly…
Isn’t me.
Oh, how I’d love to dance.
Thoughts?
Josh
The eclipsed moon sets in the dawn sky. An oak tree watches.