Good Friday Jukebox

I recently discovered that John Mellencamp has a new-ish album out that continues down that road of grounded authenticity that some would characterize his entire career as epitomizing, but that seems to have become intensified lately. The lead single has caught both my heart and my ear in the kind of way that causes you to play it on repeat for hours on end – which is precisely what I’m doing now on my day off, sitting in the chilly but sunny day with a coffee, enjoying the sweetness of a day off where for the first time in nearly a decade none of my thoughts are captured in the stresses of life.

I’m really quite lucky, quite appreciative of my life right now. I have a good job that occupies the appropriate amount of space in my life, a loving partner to whom I will be married in just over two months, an impressive cadre of friends and family both near and far who fill my heart with joy, and I have the luxury of sitting back and appreciating all of this. That to me is the mystery of life, the magic of existence; to be able to look out at those myriad of shapes and sounds and colours that is the water we swim around in and take for granted and remain willing to let the awe of its beauty and pain still affect you, overwhelm you. That you get to play around in this, that it is at all, experience its ecstatic joy and leveling agony, that’s the gift, that’s the mystery to cup tenderly in your hands. Regardless of what take you have on all of this, I think that kind of sacred living is available and universal – in religion, in science, in life as lived. It all strikes me as the surprised expression of the fact that you’re here.

And so, seeing others in a way that acknowledges their existence and reconciles that existence against the felt reality of your own existence, isn’t that the kind of living within the embrace of the sacred that seems immanently available? Doesn’t it seem to stare you down in banal corners of life? There is a foundation for which we’re seeking there, I think, a deeper current that moors us to that powerful momentum that seems to animate everything around us. Not so much an explicit set of answers or axioms, but the inclination to ask the questions of ourselves that might lead to some of those illuminations. A recognition that those questions exist at all.

That kind of sacredness seems missing from much of our lives, especially our political discourse. We don’t really see each other and rarely invite others to see us. That’s not always the case, of course, and it’s not that we are missing out on some harmonious utopia where all of our disagreements and problems evaporate. Those disagreements are real; they’re important, even. But we often don’t really address them and I can’t help but think that if we were to cultivate our practice of politics from a more sacred space where we really saw each other that our whole approach to those disagreements would be radically altered. Could we stop pushing dirt around on our ego-hills and deal with each other plainly, straight-forwardedly, honestly, and maturely?

Perhaps grounded in the terrifying impression of one another’s existence we could have something approaching real interactions.

I mean, shit man, we only get seventy years, maybe ninety years if we’re lucky, to kick this can around – many shorter than that. I’m not a particularly religious person, but the brilliance of that opportunity is hard to miss today, seeing people walk by with that whimsical look of joy at being able to experience this world on their face. The importance of that opportunity seems only more pressing when one considers those people who don’t have any such luxury. Do you really want to spend your time in the face of that opportunity calling people names, persecuting shadows? Doesn’t that strike you as kind of, well, silly?

“Life is short, even in its longest days.”

Encore: Springsteen back, apparently the E-Street Band did restrict the embedding on the offcial video… those eyes still pierce.

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Tags | Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Longest Days, The Wrestler