“For those of you in the cheap seats I’d like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry!” John Lennon
Sometimes, I wish I was famous, but not for reasons you may think. Notoriety seems to accrue credibility, most of the time undeserved, but that is our society for now. You can score big time with a Tik Tok schtick and bingo, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of loyal followers.
Now, I could walk outside in the middle of a lightening storm and do a Ben Franklin, holding a kite with a wet hemp string attached. All of a sudden, my every move would be fascinating, what I wear and who I am with and where I go would be headline news. Admittedly, Uncle Ben was a major dude, unique for his time. I think he kind of liked it and it apparently paid off on his visits to Paris, where there was no shortage of courtesans.
Every now and then, I do feel somewhat conflicted. I am pretty sure I have always been opinionated, but liked to think I was not just running my mouth off for attention, which has always made me feel uncomfortable. OK, don’t tell anyone else, but I am actually fairly bright, no genius, but pretty smart. I think before I shoot my mouth off. Age has made me more thoughtful, having nothing to do with delusions of always being right either.
When I started writing my memoir for my grandson, just around ten years ago, I ended up building a platform for my ideas about most anything, shared on paper. For most of you, who are not my age, you will find that the accumulation of years and experience will add to a growing sense of clarity about all sorts of shit. Now, unless you swallow a daily dose of humility, you can easily start sounding like a nuisance to others.
I really had no idea writing would become a kind of catharsis for me. In the beginning, all I wanted to do was tell my life story to my grandson. I think I have been luckier than most, because I have lived a life filled with adventure, not the heroic kind, rather one filled with wonderful variety. I am grateful beyond words to have been afforded the privilege. Between us, I can’t believe I pulled it off, seriously.
Around a year ago, I decided to do a podcast. I made a really big deal about finding my voice when I decided to write my story. In hindsight, I can’t believe I tortured myself. I knew my voice, because I had been listening to it for years, both the one between my ears and the one that fell out of my mouth. It was who I am, not who I want to be. The more comfortable I got writing, the more it made sense for me to give it voice, my voice.
Just like how long I labored over my writing voice, I did the same for how I’d engage the microphone. I did some serious floundering. Initially, I started reading from my stories and sounded like a zombie doing books on tape.
I have always had a thing about knowing what is going on and I don’t know why. As a kid, I thought smart people were well informed. Keep in mind, I grew up a Jewish boy in a neighborhood surrounded by my people. Man, it has certainly been a mixed blessing for a minority to be too goddamn smart for their own good and sometimes a bit too showy about it. Well, that’s how I grew up.
Trust me, I am not one of the great minds of the 21st century, but I fell in love with the microphone and the idea of speaking to the universe. I decided I would stick a fork in stories I liked and put them on my plate, chewing over them, then sharing them with an invisible, imaginary audience on the other end of that microphone.
You know, if you make a practice of going through the news every day, just like I did, something is going to get your attention, because it keeps coming up. For me, it is the climate catastrophe, which is how I refer to it and I know I am not alone. The idea of being in the cheap seats is directly related to this. The deal is, nobody gives a shit about what I think, because of where I sit and that’s how it goes.
For the very first time in the history of our species on this magnificent planet, we are faced with a crisis we have created and we will not resolve it, we will react to it. We are unique in our ability to adapt, but we have never been able to get out of our own way and here it comes.
I suck at writing terminology, but I think I have an analogy. Based on everything I have been reading for at least a year now, this is what I see. Imagine this huge card table with nearly two hundred country-players, some small, some gigantic, kings, queens, presidents, premiers and tyrants at the table. Everyone is cheating, looking for any advantage they can get and they don’t care about anyone else at the table. To make matters even worse, the deck is marked and the richest and most powerful don’t even have to look at their hands, because they always win.
We are all in the goddamn bleachers, because that’s all we can afford for this game. Out here, we have a clear, unobstructed view of the playing field and the outcome of this game is in our hands. If we don’t re-shuffle the deck, the game will be the same it has always been. The truth is, every one of us, whether person or country, are holding the exact same hand, either we all win or we all lose
That’s my view from the cheap seats.
My podcast: Mind and the Motorcycle
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1292459
Foster and Feinstein on Youtube
I think we’ll get it done. The present system is so top heavy that it’s starting to collapse under its own weight.
Hey Pal. I think people like you, who tend the land, are remarkable. You are resilient and quietly optimistic, or you would never be able to manage your marriage to nature. For better or worse, I don’t have that kind of connection and am far more dispassionate as a result. You need look no further than how the Covid vaccine was provided to the global south. It was not. In order to “get it done”, it requires a level of cooperation and compassion never before exhibited in the history of our species. This planet ain’t going nowhere and neither are we, although we will be forced to adjust to our selfishness and mistrust of each other and that goes far beyond the borders of this country. Weakness has always been exploited in our history, the jackals of opportunism waiting to strike. There was a reason I imagined you as a Knight in the Quixote Order of the Windmill and I can’t think of a higher compliment, at least from this aspiring writer.