From God’s Lips To My Ear

I got to thinking about lines the other day — straight lines, specifically. By definition, a line is straight, but as I pondered the many kinds of lines in nature, I realized that very few are truly straight. Take, for example, a route between two cities, as the crow flies. If you marked a line on a map with a ruler (see “The Tsar’s Thumb”) between Moscow and St. Petersburg, or between San Francisco and Chicago, it would be straight on the two-dimensional surface of the map, but in reality it would bend with the curvature of the earth.

A beam of light traveling at 186,000 miles per second through space would seem to be nature’s perfect example of a straight line; however, its path would be compromised by many influences, such as atmospheric disturbances, gravitational fields, and no less a force than Albert Einstein himself (he proved that a straight line in space is actually a curve). And speaking of gravity, one would think that Newton’s earth-bound apple would fulfill the conditions of our search. Had Galileo possessed the means to conduct his Newton-inspired Leaning Tower experiment from a much greater height, such as five miles, he would have seen a variation in the falling objects’ paths. The rotation of the earth around its own axis and accompanying weather systems would create a set of conditions which would affect the gravitational attempt at creating a straight line.

I realized that in nature there are only two examples I could think of that would qualify as being truly straight. One is the earth’s axis. When it comes to a spinning planet, there is zero tolerance for any deviation. The line from the north pole to the south must be straighter than an unplucked banjo string. Anything less would create an irritating wobble in our journey from A.M. to P.M., and from equinox to solstice. Certainly the earth’s axis is as straight as they come.

The other example is one that I learned from my experience as a father. Aside from the axis of a heavenly body, there is no other line straighter than the connection between a toddler’s brain and his tongue. I have never seen a more direct and immediate route than the super highway linking the conception of a child’s thought to the voiced delivery. No sooner is the mere germ of an idea formed in the young one’s gray matter than it bursts forth into the world in all its raw, uncensored, and often embarrassing glory. No editing there. For a child, no standards, rules of etiquette, or even vehement warnings can keep a good thought down. There is nothing more bare, basic, or shameless in its nakedness than an observation voiced by a three-year-old in a large company of adults. The little one will comment on anything, from the size of the boss’ nose to the funny smell that eventually gets blamed on the dog. No amount of shushing can squelch his honesty. Nothing or no one is safe, and everything and everyone is fair game.

From brain to tongue there are no side trips, no extra stops to check for propriety, no deletions. A child says it as it is. Adults will “brooch a subject,” “beat around the bush,” and “side-step the issue.” We cite examples and use allegories, paradigms, and parables to illustrate a point. We have created all sorts of devices to talk around the issues without really committing to anything. A political candidate can speak for hours without giving a clue as to which side of the fence his legs are dangling. White male politicians, on realizing they need the black vote to get elected, quickly manufacture a few new platform planks that they think will appeal to those constituents. A read of a “wet finger in the wind” determines their position that day on abortion, a school bond issue, or a presidential impeachment.

How quickly we lose the honesty of a child as we mature. In growing up we learn the tricks of the trade in the verbal arena. Honesty takes a back seat to ulterior motives and disguising our thoughts and intentions. White lies and deceptions form the plots of most sitcoms on television, and we love it. We live in a climate of excuses, irresponsibility, unaccountability, and buck passing. People cannot commit to policies, positions, relationships, or above-board courses of action.

Maybe we should obtain some absolute, concrete opinions from our truly grounded three-year-olds. Hey, Mickey! If we could only speak what is in our hearts right then and there: a straight line to the tongue. No detours to evaluate what others may think. No changing our minds mid-stream to accommodate changing attitudes and agenda. Let’s all take a lesson from our straight-arrow young folk and be a little more honest with the world and ourselves, and speak our minds for a change. The Jews have a saying, “From God’s lips to my ear.” You can’t be more direct than that — unless you are a three-year-old.

© 2002 Stuart Vail

No Pain, No Gain

Pain: that not-so-subtle messenger that reminds us that we are alive. Last night my wife was very much alive. She suffered the aftermath of a root canal, or a badly-done root canal. Either there was still more infection or the temporary crown was set too high — it doesn’t matter — pain was there in all its glory: center stage, in-your-face, rock’n’roll, screamin’ the blues, triple-A, blue ribbon, first-class pain. Now, she can handle most pain; her threshold is amazing. Last night was different, though. I couldn’t imagine enduring that kind of agony. When I have my headaches and back problems, I can’t live with myself. Either will immobilize me. I’m a wimp in the “it hurts” department.

Women, in general, have a greater tolerance for pain than men. Imagine a man going through childbirth. If it were our role to give birth, we would become extinct after the last of our generation. But is pain something that is ever-present in all of us? Do natural antibodies and immune agents numb us to the constant grinding of joints, expanding and contracting of muscles, pulling of ligaments and tendons, and rushing of blood through stretching arteries and veins? Does it actually hurt to carry around all this weight? How about having a sac of hydrochloric acid constantly churning, grinding, and chemically breaking-down food right inside of us? Or when that sac is empty, what about the pain of the acid contacting nothing but our own tissue?

Maybe, as long as our immune system is healthy, we are deadened to all the pain that is always just below the surface. A slight dip in our immuno-levels could very suddenly make us aware of a headache, a cramp, a stomach ache, or any other symptom of the biological violence that is going on all the time, just below our conscious radar. Then on top of all that we add the pain of hard labor, stress, accidents, surgery, disease, and the disuse of joints and muscles from a sedentary life. For all that, we need synthetic pain relievers to add to what is already working overtime inside of us. We gobble copious amounts of aspirin, Ibuprofin, Acetaminophen, codeine, Valium, alcohol, sleeping pills — anything to deaden the pain of our raw screaming nerves.

What is pain? What is original pain? Was it in the death of Abel? The pain of Cain lies mainly in the plain. His brother feels no pain. He crossed the ultimate threshold. Pain is for the living, the survivors. Sometimes the worst pain is fear, loss, heartbreak, being let down, disappointment, failure. But no pain, no gain. They say that in athletics. Pumping iron actually tears the muscles. Bulk is attained through those muscles healing and then being retorn again and again on a regular basis. How about in relationships? Can we really appreciate a good marriage without having experienced a failed one? Is the deeper the hurt, the greater the balm? Will having survived a decade of marital agony make the next relationship better? In my case it did. It’s not a matter of constantly comparing, but I can fully appreciate respect, courtesy, love, and having someone who truly has a concern for my personal and creative endeavors. The terrible pain of the past is now just a memory, thanks to the great healer “time” and my new marriage.

I see young kids holding hands, kissing, dating, and going through all the necessary rituals of adolescence. For them, this is it: this boyfriend or girlfriend is the one with whom they will spend the rest of their lives. This person is the embodiment of forever. What they don’t realize is that the person in their arms may be their introduction to the world of emotional pain — a first-class, front-row ticket to Hell. According to statistics, in most cases this person will either forget them, be disloyal to them, fall out-of-love with them, abuse them, beat them, emotionally destroy them, or perhaps even kill them. The high-school-sweetheart relationship that succeeds is a rare one. And that’s not to say that the ones that do succeed are pain-free. Pain is a very necessary part of the health of the relationship. The strength gained from rising above and conquering the pains of living can only reinforce the union.

No pain, no gain. Kids have to survive the agonies of heartbreak for the next relationship. Some aren’t strong enough. A schoolmate of mine blew his brains out over a failed love affair, and he was only seventeen at the time. What a cruel, painful time of life that can be: the pain of friendships, the pain of love, the pain of parents’ expectations, the pain of not being accepted, the pain of losing one’s friends when moving to a new school. In addition to the parents bearing their own scars from growing up, they suffer the pain of their children, the pain of their jobs, the pain of money problems, their own failures, lost dreams, and . . . .

Guess what? Kids, it’s all ahead of you: broken marriages, unemployment, debt, estrangement from your children, lawsuits, sickness, death — pain everywhere. That’s life. But the mountain peaks make the valleys all worthwhile: The triumph of bliss over loss. We need to expand those moments of bliss so that they outnumber and eventually cover the valleys of pain. The triumph of the human spirit is nature’s natural pain killer.

© 2002 Stuart Vail

Hummers and Cigars

It used to be that when I drove through the streets of Santa Monica or Beverly Hills, every so often I would spot the unmistakable sight of Arnold Schwarzeneggar in his brand-new Humvee. His razor-sharp jaw with cigar centrally planted and his monstrous, George Bush-sanctioned, all-terrain Desert Storm vehicle (that perfectly reflected his own gargantuan physique) cut quite an impressive 86.5-inch swath through the lesser four-wheeled products that littered the streets: the rabble from the assembly lines of Ford, GM, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes Benz. Even Rolls Royces, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris, who normally held court on the blacktop lanes of Hollywoodland suddenly seemed like mere gnats in the wake of the Austrian’s 3.4-ton vehicular macht. Nothing less than the mightiest herculean tank of our United States Army could raise an eyebrow of Arnold’s “Hasta la vista, Baby” countenance. Anything more would cave-in the streets of L.A.

Yes, it used to be that I could spot Arnold a mile away. It also used to be that if I avoided Arnold I would rarely encounter the stench of those foul cigars. Now-a-days those with a spare eighty-thousand dollars and the need to bolster one’s ego by sucking on what amounts to the back end of a Havana bus, thus emulating Mr. Terminator, can drive around in their own war machine and impress everyone they pass. Or do they? Whenever I see one such display I cannot help but think that there goes another idiot with a lemming mentality, another fool who has easily parted with his money. He is driving and smoking nothing more than status.

The Hummer is not a pleasant ride. Sporting such features as a 40% side-slope capacity and a central wheel inflation system, its civilian use is only good for driving down into the Grand Canyon or if one wants to commute to work through backyards, store fronts, and the La Brea Tar Pits. I can’t imagine dating in such a vehicle, either (a stiletto-healed blonde in a tight dress trying to manuever that first step is funny enough). The two front seats are separated by the immense back-half of the engine block, a design feature I’m sure the Army did not put in to discourage the driver from getting too friendly with the person reading the map.

Had Arnold influenced the world by driving a souped-up laundry truck instead of a Hummer, perhaps our concept of chic/macho modes of transportation would be entirely different. Had he smoked a pipe rather than a cigar, I’ll bet that everyone else would have followed suit. Have you ever smoked a cigar? It’s bad enough during the act; however, the next morning the mouth surely must taste as though one had licked the men’s room floor at a bikers’ bar. Imagine having to kiss a woman who is polluting the air with the essence of a smoldering manure fire, and who has decided that she is now someone just because she has a phallic, albeit soggy, cigar butt jammed in her maw.

I once saw two young couples emerge from a limousine outside of Shiatzi, Arnold’s cigar-friendly restaurant in Santa Monica, California. Each male immediately reached into his tuxedo breast pocket for what was left of a mangled, half-smoked cigar, and proceeded to light up. Equipped with their new status-symbols—not to mention their dates—they were then ready to enter the restaurant. I wondered if cigars were required, and if I arrived sans stogie would the restaurant provide me with the requisite appendage. Humans as lemmings: once Arnold was seen in public with a Cuban, the wannabees and the already-theres suddenly stampeded to jump off that same cliff.

Here we are desperately trying to fit in with the rest of the world. As a teenager, I simply had to have a pair of blue corduroy bell-bottoms, just like everyone else. Years ago, my son had to shave the sides of his head, leaving a bowl-shaped clump of hair on top. I saw a TV program about men whose cars represented to them their importance and stature as human beings. One such poor soul had a Clenet, a custom, rolled-fender job which he would park in front of a ritzy Beverly Hills restaurant, in view of everyone inside. He would tip the valet to keep the car where it was and then make his self-important entrance to sit at the bar and gloat with his drink. About every forty-five minutes there had been enough turn-over in the clientele to render him anonymous, so he would go out to his car to make a call on his mobile phone (never mind that there was a telephone right there in the bar), immediately reestablishing himself as the owner of the exquisite vehicle and elevating him once again to being someone. He would continue that procedure for the rest of the evening. During the interview he acknowledged that without the car he was a nobody; with it he felt all-powerful. He must have been related to the aspiring actor I once met who, though very poor, was saving his money to buy an expensive pair of Porsche sunglasses so that he could gain some respect at Hollywood parties. I assured him that for that kind of respect I would rather save my money and stay home.

Donald Trump and his family once had to fly first-class on a commercial airliner because his own private jet was “in the shop.” His then-wife Marla Maples reported that for the entire trip he was livid that he had to fly as a commoner with the rank-and-file. Imagine him stranded in his Bentley in the middle of the Mojave Desert: given the choice of accepting a ride to safety in an old Dodge Dart or sweating it out with his last sip of Perrier, his previous behavior would venture me to guess that Messieur Trump would choose the latter. I once saw an enormously over-weight woman wearing a skin-tight T-shirt with the name Yves Saint Laurent in huge colorful letters printed across the front. She looked ridiculous, but in her eyes the designer label “qualified” the situation. Remember the gangsta rap influence on kids wearing their underwear on the outside? How about the fast-changing lapel and tie widths, or the ever-fluctuating hem lines? If eight-inch cuffs were hip today I guarantee that they would be outmoded two weeks hence. The public stampedes the clothing boutiques, clamoring to buy the latest froo-froos from the fashion runways of Paris, only to discard them tomorrow and be spoon-fed the next new “look.” Lemmings, all.

Where do we go from here? If Arnold decides to trade-in his wheels for the new Volkswagen Beetle, used-car lots won’t be able to give Hummers away. The world awaits his next move. Imagine him realizing the dangers of smoking, and declaring a movement for a tobacco-free planet: R. J. Reynolds would fold tomorrow. We saw an example of the power of celebrity when Oprah publicly disdained beef. If Arnold had joined her cause, the cattle barons of Texas would now be overcrowding the unemployment lines. Imagine his deciding to learn Spanish: Mexico, Spain, and most of Central and South America would be the tourism capitals of the world, Los Angeles gardeners would find themselves very de rigeur, and there would be a global taste for paella, sangria, and bull fighting—not to mention speaking with a Castilian lisp.

What worries me is Mr. Schwarzeneggar appearing in public one day extolling the virtues of, say, eating stir-fried killer bees and jumping off bridges headfirst. Come to think of it, there are a couple of benefits to that scenario: idiots will quickly be removed from further contributing to the already-contaminated gene pool, and the earth would be rid of the stinging insect in a very short time.

© 2001 Stuart Vail

The Fattening of America

The American population is becoming fatter and fatter, but you won’t get that impression from the ubiquitous fast food commercials. Ads for McDonalds, Burger King, and Carl’s Jr. show only young slender people at the trough (eat our food and you will look like this?), but if they continue to chow down as they do in the commercials, they will soon be unfit to hawk the very products Madison Avenue is paying them to inhale. Pay attention next time to any of those ads: attractive and physically fit men and women crank open their mouths so wide that “I’ll-be-back” Arnold and spouse Maria could drive their twin HumVees side-by-side into those gaping maws. The catch-phrase for Carl’s Jr.’s enormous hamburger is “If doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face.” We watch as the actors devour in three bites enough cow to satiate most of Ethiopia’s starving populace, while dribbling and drooling catsup and sauce down their shirts and on the floor. With eating habits such as those, it’s no wonder the rest of the world thinks Americans are glutinous pigs.

Well, we are! Eating used to be something one did at home or in restaurants—or perhaps even on a park bench during a lunch break or at a family picnic in the woods. Now, everywhere and anytime is considered acceptable for noshing: while shopping for underwear at a department store, while gassing up (no pun intended) at a filling station, and even in a public toilet (that is one spectacle I wish I hadn’t witnessed!). I’ve noticed that people tend to eat in their cars quite often, especially over-weight people. Are they packing down a burger and fries on the way to dinner? Can they not eat on an empty stomach? I was especially horrified and enraged to see a person not signal his oncoming left turn in front of me because he was talking on his cell phone while hefting a Big Mac.

It’s only a matter of time until standard equipment in all vehicles will be a small refrigerator for soft drinks—or better yet, a 25-gallon cola tank with a flip-down nozzle feed that is attached to the visor. A constant input of high fructose is needed for those frequent lane-changing, me-first acts of aggression that have become such a staple of modern driving habits.

It is interesting to consider the kind of diet that has evolved in the age of the car. Most items one can buy at the drive-through involve the use of only one hand. Think about it: with the left hand on the steering wheel, it is entirely possible for the right hand to culinarily maneuver through a fast-food meal of any size. All of the following items require the help of only one extremity to deliver said food substance from lap to face: hamburgers, fries, chips, cookies, and soft drink. Salads are difficult at best, a banana needs peeling, apples need washing, and forget about corn on the cob. Those unfortunate foods will never make the menu at Blitzo Burgers. They also will not give you arteriosclerosis, distended colons, or a heart attack.

My wife has a theory about the current trend in vehicular dining. Take a look at the person driving the next Navigator, Suburban, or any flavor of American Chrome Mountain that passes you by. As cars get bigger, people are enlarging to fill that space—almost as if the new philosophy of the auto makers is “build it and they will grow.” And as cars increase in size even more to accommodate the ever-growing human bodies, so will the width and number of lanes on the highway. At that point the obese population will no longer need sidewalks because 1.) people will be unable to walk any distance at all, and 2.) they will always be in their automobiles. America’s sidewalks and front yards will soon be replaced by new lanes of highway, and someday we will all sell our vacated houses and move into our fully equipped LUVs (Lifestyle Utility Vehicles), with all the comforts of home (each seat having a built-in Porta-Potty and full access to a centralized refrigerator and pantry). Every abandoned neighborhood, from the inner city projects to suburbia’s gated communities, can be razed to make room for yet more lanes (as will all wildlife habitats, forests, and National Parks), and the planet will be one big smoking asphalt ball, covered with a sea of LUVs jockeying for position to fill up at Government-operated gas pumps and red-meat drive-throughs. Take a tip from my trusty insider at Wet Finger in the Wind Investments: buy up all the beef, auto, and petroleum stock you can afford. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to pick up a few shares of Big Boy Clothing either.

© 2003 Stuart Vail

Walls

It would be hard to imagine that earthquakes and trumpets could have something in common, but historically, they do. Whereas the effect of quakes is well known, according to the Bible the walls of Jericho were not victims of seismic activity: it took trumpets to fell those ramparts—a wall of sound to level a wall of stone. Never underestimate the power of a Jewish brass band. But I digress—“walls” is the topic. Mankind has spent the greater part of history building, maintaining, repairing, destroying, and rebuilding walls. Man has built walls around walls, as with the curtain walls around the keep in medieval castles, or the multi-layered temples of the Maya. There are walls that tower to unscalable heights, and “walls” that plunge to dangerous depths, such as moats, deep trenches, or even canyons. Walls keep out the unwanted: enemies, strangers, wild animals, the weather, the sea, in-laws….

Walls can be made of stone, wood, concrete, bamboo, barbed wire, water, distance, time, zip code, and attitude. Perhaps it is the last of these that is the most impenetrable: the wall that man chooses to put between him and the rest of the world. Walls keep out the foreign, the different, the unknown, the daring. With his attitude, man walls-out acceptance, love, understanding, tolerance, and forgiveness. His insecurities are the powerful building blocks of his complex system of walls. He locks his gates against sex, racial differences, emotions, accountability, love, innovation, and religion. Walls of hate are more impenetrable than those of the thickest Dover stone. The chilly fortresses of the Middle Ages were by far more accommodating than today’s dungeons of bigotry. The Great Wall of China pales before the barricades of White America. Where are the trumpets when we really need them?

Upon learning I was a musician, a shop owner in Boston tried to tell me of a famous trumpet player he had once seen in a hotel lobby. He couldn’t remember the name, but the only clue he could give was that the man was a “spear chucker.” Trying to ignore the racial slur I searched my mind for all the black trumpet players I could think of. No one I suggested was the right person, so the shop owner turned to his sixteen-year-old daughter for help and said, “You remember, the spear chucker.” After about ten minutes we finally determined that the musician in question turned out to be none other than Duke Ellington! Never mind that the shop owner had the instrument wrong, he was unable to see past his bigotry to acknowledge anything other than skin color. Poor Duke. For all of his achievements, his musical innovations, his vast output of recordings, his awards, and his incalculable influence on music and musicians to come, he couldn’t earn a label in this person’s mind other than “spear chucker.”

At least the Israelites were able to render Jericho impotent with a few blasts of the lip. A couple of high “C’s” and the walls were history. The Duke had a more formidable problem. He wasn’t dealing with inanimate stone. His legions of scales, armies of improvisations, and battalions of chord progressions—not to mention one hot band— were not able to make a mere pinhole in the shop owner’s dike. The bigot was holed-in for the duration. The only thing that will eventually smoke him out is the grave—death by natural causes, mind you, for killing a man because of his beliefs is not the answer. Killing the animal would just make ourselves animals (and that is an insult to animals).

An alternative would be for the man’s daughter to marry a black man. Now, wouldn’t that be poetic justice? Pity the poor son-in-law, though. This is all highly improbable, however, in light of the fact that the term “spear chucker” was in the daughter’s vocabulary to begin with. She was doomed from the start. Raised in that household, she never had a chance. It’s no wonder that racism continues to breed. It begins at home. The impressionable young adopt the white-sheet mentalities and hangman’s-noose attitudes of their parents. They come into this world with a built-in arsenal of hate. The foundations of their walls are laid at birth and the blocks firmly in place before they even know how to ride a tricycle.

The deepest insecurities build the strongest walls. The weaker the character, the harder the stone. Again I ask, where are the trumpets when we so desperately need them? The fanfares of Martin Luther King were silenced by an assassin’s bullet, yet the same method toppled the bigotry of George Wallace. What good is a legacy of hate? What can possibly come of it other than rampant anarchy and destruction? Is that any climate in which to raise our children?

We need to expand the music programs in schools, and teach everyone to play an instrument. Imagine if every person on the planet were a jazz musician. Imagine if we were all playing in time, with no time for guns. Then, King’s “mountain top” music would truly live on, as would that of Duke, Bird, Trane, Prez, Diz, and the Count. Play on, sweet trumpets. Never stop, and that little bit of “Jericho” in all of us will soon vanish; for in your music lies the power to temper, to heal, and to unite.

© 2002 Stuart Vail