There Will Be Music

 

“I know the world is being shaven by a drunken barber. I don’t need to read about it!”

-      From the movie Meet John Doe

 

Like everyone, I was glued to the news, trying to keep in touch with the horror in Washington. After a while, it felt like a deja-vu of 9/11, watching those towers fall over and over and over and over again. And that brought up the question, “How much is enough?”

 

I just listened to a Podcast by Michael Meade (The Darkness Around Us) where he said:

 

“The healthy thing is to be able to see both sides. Witness the tragedies. To not witness it is to turn away and that makes it worse, makes it more unconscious, makes it more limiting for everyone.

 

But not simply to look at that. Everyone has to determine for themselves when they've seen enough. And then we each need a way to turn to something more healing, more imaginative, more creative, more empathic, more beautiful.”

 

This idea resonated with the E.B. White quote on this page that I mentioned recently: 

 

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes is hard to plan the day.”

 

And all of the above reminded me of some lines from a Jack Gilbert poem titled A Brief for the Defense(you can find the whole poem online):

 

…We must have 
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless 
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only 
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. 
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, 
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. 
We must admit there will be music despite everything…. 

 

So there you have it. My strategy for both getting through and planning my day. After sharing these ideas and signing various petitions to impeach the s.o.b., it’s time to play the piano.

 

Enjoy your day!