Journal of Fear and Hope

de lo Habitual
April 29, 2016

I had this ritual. Every time I got a new tape or CD, I would sit on my bed, listen to the whole thing all the way through, and read the lyrics along with the music. That's if a lyric sheet was included, of course. I can't tell you how annoyed I was to find R.E.M.'s Green album only had the words to one song printed in the booklet. Such a tease. But I could always count on Rush and Tom Waits to proudly publish their lyrics. I would carve out an hour or so to recline with a drink and do nothing but ingest their music and their words. I can't do that anymore. I don't have that much time to set aside. I listen to every new album in the car, between home and work or while running errands. Not that I buy many CDs these days. The last one I bought was Dio's Holy Diver. It hasn't left my car since day one. And you know what? No lyric sheet. Probably for the best;driving and reading are two great tastes that taste like death together.

I miss the ritual. The time became sacred because I made it so. It was a moment that could never be repeated because I could never again hear those songs for the first time. I have a new ritual now. For each book I read, I choose a bookmark appropriate to the book's subject or theme. If it's one I've read before, I have a better idea what to pick. I scour through my games and card collections, through the random actual bookmarks I picked up over the years at libraries I've visited (hey, when you go to a concert, you buy a band tee-shirt; when you go to a library, you take a free bookmark) for just the right thing. Sometimes the office floor ends up covered in open game boxes and dismantled Magic: the Gathering decks, which I then have to pick up then reorganize the game shelf, which sometime leads to completely changing how I have my games displayed, and when my wife asks what the hell I'm doing, I feel a bit embarrassed to say that all this is in preparation to read.

When we perform our rituals, we make the moment our own. The few minutes pass like all the others than have gone by in our fleeting lives, but when we enact a certain rite, a personal ceremony, we put our fingerprints, our mark, our stamp on that brief span of time. It becomes special because it is ours alone. It is a moment accounted for, a moment treasured. Some may call these customs eccentric. But they're really acts of survival, attempts to capture an instant that would otherwise flash and fade like a spark of static lightning in a dim room.

His Majesty
April 25, 2016

I'll go ahead and apologize now, but the Batman soundtrack is the only Prince record I've ever listened to. Those are the only songs of his I know. But I listened to it a lot. Partly because it was literally one of only two tapes I owned (the other being Living Colour's debut) but mostly because it was damn good. I didn't like the ballads all that much, but the rock and funk songs got me up dancing around my room playing tennis racket guitar. I can hear them now, "Electric Chair" and "Party Man" sung from the Joker's view point, "The Future" from Batman's, and of course the magnificent and massive "Batdance." That last song contains one of my absolute favorite guitar solos. In the video, Prince plays his guitar like he's masturbating. In the middle of the song, the music comes to a stop, and Prince yells at some guy to turn it back on and calls him a "son of a bitch." He says that on the tape. That my mom bought me. For Christmas. Now I need to hear it again. I'll have to find that tape. And a tape player. Can anyone give me a ride back to 1989?

Going to the Arcade
February 9, 2016

Back in the 1980s, video games were only for kids. In fact, it was a joke that adults couldn't play or even comprehend the complexities of Pong. A local news channel ran a series in which one of the reporters was challenged by children to go head-to-head in the newest Atari offering, and the kid always trounced the adult. Joysticks were as hard to master as the flashing clock on the VCR. Grownups had no idea why that one collection of pixels wanted to move past that other set of pixels or even what any of the shapes on the screen represented. Kids laughed in their incompetent faces.

I never got the chance to play video games with my dad. The closest I ever came was when he watched me play Dungeons of Daggorath or the time his brother gave me Zelda II because he couldn't get very far, and I astounded them both by beating the game in a week. But my dad bought the line that adults had no business touching a control pad. I guess I did, too. Before my dad went off the wagon for good and disappeared into the mists of addiction, we had some good times. But we never played video games. I never got the excitement of teaching him that infinite life trick in Super Mario or going mano a mano with my old man in Bomberman II. That's a memory I missed out on. Some men grow up wishing they'd gone to baseball games with their dads. I regret not playing Donkey Kong Country with mine.

I look forward to playing video games with my daughter. You can debate all you want the dangers of violent games or what place they have in our culture. (Roger Ebert claimed they would never be true art, but Harlan Ellison worked as hard as he did at anything to make a masterpiece of electronic escapism.) But you can't deny that any sort of relaxing endeavor is better when shared with those you love. Video games are and have always been an important part of my life. I hope one day I'll blast through a level Super Mario Bros. 3 and hand the controller over to my daughter. And I hope she'll say, "That was pretty good, Dad. Let me show you how to really do it."

Make A New Beginning
January 3, 2016

Happy New Year, all. I hope this year is better than the last, but of course that's not always possible. But I wish you some fun and excitement, warm hugs, afternoon naps, good meals, good books, a few memories that stick. Keep this in mind: if you break any of your New Year's resolutions, you don't have to wait till next January to start over. Every day is the beginning of a new year, and you don't have to wait to change yourself. You can't stop getting older; you shouldn't stop getting better.

--More Journal Entries--

"Too many flames with too much to burn, and life's only made of paper" --Ronnie James Dio

"Words are flowing out
Like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away
Across the universe" --John Lennon