1972 and our Better Angels - Terry and Peter's Dialogue

I hope to study further, a few more years or so 

I also hope to keep a steady high - ooh yeah yeah yeah...

Mid-century American history was, for a time, thought to be a confusing maelstrom of politics and violence, of war and peace. A time when radical ideas emerged. When the past clashed with the future.

But now, the history of that generation is viewed through a different lens.

Here, in the future, the veil has been lifted. We see the complex contexts of communism and colonialism. We can better understand how the brutality of the war reflected strategies adopted by generals from World War II; holdouts from a time when it was considered acceptable to firebomb civilian cities.

We've always known that our soldiers were heros - fighting and dying in a place that many considered the wasteland of a generation. Now we know it unconditionally.

But there were others who we might also remember differently - now that we can look at the past through a future lens. That there are other heroes - ones who fought in their own way: for our soldiers to live, to come home. They painted signs that said "make love, not war." They protested, held hands and put daisies in the gun barrels of the National Guards.

They didn't know what we know today. They did it anyway.

From the sign-painters and protesters, the nation's conscience began to appear; radiating from our nation's younger, better angels. It flashed on college campuses; in protests, chaotic disruptions, gatherings and, sometimes, with a certain violence. 

This new collective conscience was coalesced, memorably and beautifully, by art and music.

It had a soundtrack by Jim Morrison and The Doors, the Who and the Rolling Stones. Joan Baez.
Poetic voices. Hippie symphonies. Beautifully blended chords and bass tracks and keyboards.

Like the Who's classic tantrum about teenage wastelands.

It had a screenplay written by Martin, Robert, Timothy and others; an historic collection of philosophers, fearless dreamers and existential thinkers.

And with that, they created dialogue.

Nixon famously despised it - and later, to his regret, he simply disregarded it. Dissonance was attacked with rhetoric, racism, belittlement and shame. Mistakenly - and purposely - righteousness was cast in the context of drugs, pot and ignorance.

But the coffins kept coming home, draped in flags; and the cameras rolled. The images indelibly imprinted and energized the young, beaded and bell-bottomed. The result was a movement that would define their generation.

From the past, the words and music can remind us - in an instant - of just how special those days - those moments - really were. They were us at our best.

And even though perhaps we didn't know it then, we do now.

For me, there is this... "Dialogue parts I & II," written by Robert Lamm in 1972. It featured Terry Kath and Peter Cetera of the group Chicago. Terry, on his lead guitar, sent Lamm's words and chords across the studio to Pete, who responded with bass guitar and a kind of glorious inspirational naïvete.

It's goose-bumpingly stirring. To sing along and replay this anthem, over and over, is to glimpse moments in 1972 when heroes came in more than one form.

"Dialogue" Click here to listen to Dialogue Parts I and II

Are you optimistic 'bout the way things are going?

No, I never, ever think of it at all

Don't you ever worry, when you see what's going down?

No, I try to mind my business, that is, no business at all

When it's time to function as a feeling human being, will your Bachelor of Arts help you get by?

I hope to study further, a few more years or so. I also hope to keep a steady high - ooh yeah yeah yeah

Will you try to change things, use the power that you have, the power of a million new ideas?

What is this power you speak of and this need for things to change? I always thought that everything was fine - everything is fine

Don't you feel repression just closing in around?

No, the campus here is very, very free

Does it make you angry the way war is dragging on?

Well, I hope the President knows what he's into, ooh I just don't know

Don't you ever see the starvation in the city where you live, all the needless hunger all the needless pain?

I haven't been there lately, the country is so fine, but my neighbors don't seem hungry 'cause they haven't got the time

Thank you for the talk, you know you really eased my mind. I was troubled by the shapes of things to come.

Well, if you had my outlook your feelings would be numb, you'd always think that everything was fine. 

Everything is fine.

The other side of the world

"I'm watching a really scary movie tonight," I texted, around the globe, to earth's brighter side.

"It's the Sixth Sense," I typed, watching Bruce Willis on the screen.

Willis' character, a child psychologist, believed he was treating a boy who sees dead people. But he himself was unknowingly dead.

The movie is simple and haunting, a screenplay by Manoj Nelliyattu "M. Night" Shyamalan, who grew up in Pennsylvania - but is, interestingly, also from the other side of the world.

"Yuk, scary movies," she texted back. Her final text that night.

I almost responded with, "Yuk, spicy food," as a retort; that our cinematic and culinary tastes were equally mismatched. But I didn't.

She knows.

On her side of the world, the sun was shining and she was amidst relatives and guests crowded into the kitchen, sharing curries and languages; crowding each other in a din of voices and cultural comfort.

Here, the skies are filled with a bright crescent moon and a million stars. The tiny lights of fireflies flicker among the endless rows of corn. The train occasionally flashes past, blasting a horn that makes the coyotes and raccoons howl out near the river.

It's just me and my scary movie.

Across the room, pencils, watercolors and markers are scattered across the counter, waiting for the next inspiration. My Macbook is there too, waiting for the next entry, like this one.

I keep pausing the video, exchanging texts with my children. I'm alone, but not really. I've been able to feel alive and well on my side of world, even if it's just me.

But I remember feeling so different. Just packing for a business trip could make me feel lonely. I remember, SO many times, being homesick and heartbroken, leaving for the airport as the kids rode their bicycles down the driveway, waving goodbye.

The pain of leaving was as powerful as the bliss in coming home.

They were days of parenting, of pressure, of sleepless nights. Of baby pools and beaches and water wings. School lunches and homework help. They were days of happiness, of being a part of something greater than the me that I was before.

When the tsunami arrived, every day felt like I was just about to leave for the airport.

And so, I learned to do this thing.

A thing that protects me from being broken-hearted. I somehow learned to live inside of my head. A place where I could paint the landscape, instead of living in someone else's scary reality.

And there are times when I feel like Bruce Willis, the psychologist living in a world he believes is real. Where other people are scarred and scared and different.

But one where he is the ghost.

And so, here I am, on the other side of the world, listening to crickets and watching a scary movie.

And I try to imagine a place that is filled with too many people, chattering in different languages, talking over each other, eating and laughing and being way too close.

Even though it seems so foreign, so alien, it's where I was before. And I liked it - I really did.

But that was before I became this ghost.

A happy ghost, here, among the rows of corn and all these summer fireflies.

Here, on the other side of the world.

A hundred blues, a thousand skies

Not all creative souls are crazy.  And not all crazy people are artists.

"Genius comes from pain."

In recent decades, there have been a number of attempts to find a firm empirical basis for that idea.

Some correlative points have emerged: There is research suggesting that people with bipolar disorder, as well as the healthy siblings of people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, are more likely to have creative occupations.

People with certain genetic risk factors for schizophrenia have been found to be more creative. In 1989, Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D., who herself has bipolar disorder, found a high prevalence of mood disorders among a group of British writers and artists. And in 1987, Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D., found a higher rate of mental illness among 30 creative writers than among 30 equally educated non-writers.

Recent research from Austria builds upon this idea. A 2013 study found that people who scored high for creativity and people who scored high for schizotypy -- that is, behavior suggestive of schizophrenia but not diagnosable as such -- "share an inability to filter out extraneous or irrelevant material," Fast Company reported.

So that's why.

People say we're distracted. That we notice everything, absorb everything.

Dad was like that too.

We see clouds and fixate on their shapes and colors. See a hundred different kinds of blue, a thousand skies.

Our days are filled to a level of happiness in the way a teacup is filled from a firehouse - empty from the filling. For there is too much sun, too many voices, too many colors, too much sadness.

Too many people to perceive, their subtleties and existence that stream, 4G, into our heads.

We find our happiness in the admixture of change, of revolving experiences and visions. We live our days through senses, for our minutes and our days are colored by the swirling reality of the moment.

And, as I've said before, we see ghosts.

Caretaking our Memories

This article was published and copyrighted in the Beacher Magazine. www.thebeacher.com/pdf/2017/BeacherMay25

The Caretaking of Memories - Omaha Beach and Uncle Bill

First Wave, 116th Division, 29th Regiment

“Your Uncle Bill was killed on D-Day,” my father would tell us. Curiously, he’d always refer to Bill as our Uncle, not his.

My earliest memories of my father talking about our Uncle were from the 1960’s. The oldest of my siblings were probably seven or eight. We didn’t understand Vietnam then, much less Normandy.

Just because we didn’t understand World War II didn’t mean couldn’t see how dad was different when he spoke of Bill. He seemed more vulnerable. Sometimes, when he spoke of Bill, he’d pull off his glasses and wipe a hand across his eyes.

In the 60’s, we were too young to understand more than that we had an uncle that was killed on D-Day. For a time, dad would spare us from learning more. But the story was there, and it would eventually need to be remembered.

Someday, but not then.

Dad was only eight years old when Bill was killed on that June morning in 1944. At that age, I’m sure he knew nothing of the “liberation” of France; why Uncle Bill and the 116^th Division would be asked to open a path on Omaha Beach. That it would allow for 1.5 million soldiers to move toward Berlin and ensure the end of the European conflict.

He wouldn’t know, until he was much older, about the bodies, like Bill’s, which floated in the French surf. Of the dead and dying that covered every stretch of beach, lying in the sand like broken and crushed seashells and twisted seaweed.

His mother, Esther, or his father John, would certainly not tell dad about what his other uncle, Robert, faced in the Pacific. Robert, Bill’s twin, was the determined and eager one, and he enlisted in the Marines.

Esther and John probably learned later that, in the Pacific, Robert and his Marines would witness unspeakable things - in battles of unspeakable horror.

Only Oppenheimer and the other physicists, working beneath the grass fields at The University of Chicago, would end that conflict. Then, Robert would return home, scarred and “shell-shocked,” as my father described him. With his brother lost, his family changed forever, PTSD likely pushed Robert to his unpleasant end.

Of Oppenheimer’s instruments, Big Boy and Fat Man, my young father would probably think they were comic book characters, not the hydrogen bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not weapons that would end the war and later change the world. Weapons so destructive that when their scientist-creator witnessed their devastation, he felt the need to cite a quote from the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita: “I have become death, destroyer of worlds.”

Dad was an only child. In 1944, his backyard comprised most of his world. In his small, leafy Blue Island backyard, he built his own sort of play-house, cobbled together with scraps from nearby alleys and garages. My grandfather probably helped.

I remember seeing a black and white photo of the play-house, a tiny Kodak picture that was like looking through a keyhole and into the past. A glimpse into his innocent pre-war world. It helped me understand where my father’s imagination was seeded; there, among the dappled shadows of the tall maples on the summer grass.

In that tiny fenced fortress, his Blue Island backyard, our Uncle Bill would visit him.

My father eventually became a sort of caretaker of Bill’s story.

He was a good caretaker, for he was quite the storyteller. One story we especially enjoyed was that of his pet rooster, Blackie. He would describe how he’d ride his bicycle, with Blackie on the handlebars, around the neighborhood; sometimes to the gravel pit, where he’d shoot his BB gun. In one adventure, Blackie’s misbehavior made him crash, and he allegedly broke his nose.

“See, that’s from Blackie,” he’d claim, pointing to the bridge of his nose as proof. But my sister would be born with the same nose, the same bump. Perhaps a Blackie inheritance, perhaps not.

My siblings and I would tease him about Blackie – that the story, while entertaining, was on the edge of disbelief. We considered it more of dad’s creative lore – a kid and a bicycle and his crazy pet rooster. Until the day we discovered a faded photograph in some attic box; that of a child on his bicycle with a large black bird perched on the handlebars.

Like the Blackie story, it was hard to imagine dad’s favorite uncle in the first wave on the deadliest beach on D-Day.

It was just anecdotal. Until a box appeared, and dad began removing items we hadn’t seen before. A purple heart. A telegraph from the War Department, dated June 6, 1944 – August William Diedesch, missing in action. Another telegraph, killed in action.

He told us of the heartache of his grandmother Diedesch, of her worry with both sons in the war, and her unending grief at the loss of Billy.

The rest of Bill’s story we’d have to learn on our own.  

We learned that Bill was the more peaceable of the twins. Robert enthusiastically enlisted in the Marines. Bill didn’t. He would instead go to the Blue Island library and enlist in the Army Reserves. Robert was sent to boot camp and then to the Pacific.

Bill stayed in Blue Island, a twenty-year-old Reservist. But that lasted mere weeks. After basic training, his Reserve Unit was immediately “called up” to active duty. In a profound turn of fate, his unit was placed into the 116th Division, 29th regiment, a unit destined to be the spearhead of the invasion force on D-Day.

Their unit would ride the Higgins boats into the surf - and into history.

Their story was memorialized, in part, in the movie Saving Private Ryan. Its opening scene portrayed the carnage on that infamous beach; in shocking and upsetting ways that most Americans had never imagined.

Before that movie, the reality of Omaha Beach would largely be captured in print. In its November 1960 issue, The Atlantic Magazine published a story by S.L.A. Marshall about the 116^th and 29^th.

It sought to describe the real fate of those caught in the first wave of the assault. Marshall noted that historians had taken great efforts to document what happened to each unit as they came ashore, in detailed accounts from the survivors.

“At exactly 6:36 A.M. ramps are dropped along the boat line and the men jump off in water anywhere from waist deep to higher than a man's head.  Already pounded by mortars, the floundering line is instantly swept by crossing machine-gun fires from both ends of the beach.

The first men out try to do it but are ripped apart before they can make five yards. Even the lightly wounded die by drowning, doomed by the water-logging of their overloaded packs. From Boat No. 1, all hands jump off in water over their heads.”

And that was the fate of Uncle Bill, who was lost departing his Higgins boat, there in the surf.

As I’ve discovered this more complete history of Bill, I’ve tried to keep the memory alive; to share the story more completely than my father would, or could.

When my father passed, he left me a framed collection of Bill’s memorabilia, including the purple heart and the MIA and KIA telegrams from Western Union. And I cannot imagine a more cherished, valued item among anything I own.

Thus, I also have become a caretaker of memories. To remind our family about their famous Uncle Bill. Most years, I’ve posted stories on my blog about Bill on or around June 6^th.

And thus, I come to this. I believe that we are entrusted to keep memories alive - even if we don’t have an uncle who rode a Higgins boat into the French surf. Even if we don’t have a sibling or relative or friend who served in Southeast Asia or Afghanistan or Iraq. 

It’s up to each of us, on this Memorial Day, to remember all of our Uncle Bills, from every family, who found themselves to be in the path of destiny; who would be a part of history.

For we are entrusted to remember the soldiers and families that were willing to sacrifice upon “the altar of freedom.”

In Saving Private Ryan, a letter is recalled and quoted, by heart, from a general. He recalled words penned in 1864 to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow believed to have lost five sons during the Civil War. While it authorship is debated, It reads:

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

The baby, the teenagers and me

My blonde boys were there, in soccer shirts, at their lemonade stand in the bright green summer grass. As were the little leaguers, wearing winter coats in the chill of spring baseball. Dancers. Tutus and pirouettes and bicycles with baskets. Christmas trees and birthday parties. Swimmers. Backyards and baby pools.



These were among the images I saw, sorting through our family's pictures last week; selecting those to be included in the movie - the one that we'd play at the wedding.

There were hundreds - relics of an analog childhood - stored in shoe boxes - in orange and yellow Kodak envelopes. And they reminded me of presents.

For these were the same envelopes that I couldn't wait to open all those years ago - usually in the car driving home from Walgreens.

When the envelopes made it home, some pictures would be pulled from the stack, like the best cards from a deck; intended to be shared or mailed or taped to the refrigerator. Some were destined to become priceless, like the ones I found years later in dad's top dresser drawer, next to his watch and his rings.

Among them, many showed the child who we always referred to as the baby.

In one photo, taken on a Florida beach, the four children all sat in the sand, oldest to youngest. On one end, the baby had his small hand over his eyes, shielding them from the bright sun. On the other end, the eldest, our teenager, looked bored and embarrassed.

"Oh wow," said my friend, looking at that photo in the wedding movie, "I didn't realize there was such an age difference. He's such a baby in that picture."

Indeed, the baby. The one who surprised me the most. For he was the one I thought would be the most challenging - given that his older siblings were so in need of attention.

But he was a blessing, a tonic. He was the anti-teenager. Without him, I wonder if I would have survived the teenage years - the attitudes, the distance. Everything that comes with acne and braces and junior high.

It was the baby. His innocence and wonder. His unconditional love for each and every one of us. Wanting to be held. His love of my stories, my character voices. That he thought my Mickey Mouse Pancakes were still really cool.

And when I'd had enough of teen drama, I'd get down on one knee to be at his level. Or just sit down on the kitchen floor and be right there with him. He'd hug my neck or ask me a question. And I remember thinking, in those moments, "I need to remember this goodness. It's there in the others, their braces are just too tight."

And so, the baby and the eldest. The baby will be in his tuxedo this week. Standing taller than his older sister, the bride.

And, even though I no longer need to kneel down to see into his eyes - to get a hug around my neck - I still feel that way about him.

He laughs at my silly jokes. Shares his deepest thoughts with me. Laughs out loud in his room, chatting with his friends. And, this baby, he recognizes things about me that few people could ever understand. And he unabashedly offers these thoughtful kindnesses that no self-respecting college kid would normally tell his father.

That's why it is important to kneel down, sit down, be still. And appreciate the innocence of the baby in your lives.

Maybe those moments will last forever.  
  

The one that I want

We had tickets to see Grease.

I was the dad-chaperone for Katie and Anne - two sister-cousins, born just a few months apart.

They were seven-year-olds that still loved storybooks and princesses and had embarrassingly early bedtimes.

It didn't matter who was in the cast that night. It wasn't about Sandra Dee. It was the velvet curtains, the stage, the music and the magic that the girls would remember. The wonder of theater.



The sister-cousins wore their winter wool coats, dresses and patent leather shoes. I held their mittened hands as we walked against the icy Lake Michigan wind. It was fittingly snowing, a Christmas powder gusting and swirling around taxis and L-trains.

When we finally reached the theater and the posters announcing Grease, they were giddy.

This was the first of several holiday theater trips for us. And it was as special as Christmas on Michigan avenue could be, among the snow and twinkling tree-lights, the Marshall Field's windows and  green shopping bags and bell-ringing Santas. The honking taxis and madness and chaos of Loop-land.

As we entered the theater and walked down the aisle, I remember how it felt.  I think it was a lot like how boys feel at Wrigley Field when they see the green summer grass and ivy for the very first time.

The dance and the music transported the girls as far from their suburban neighborhoods as Narnia. As far from their second grade classrooms as Rydell High School was back in the 1950's.

Which was the whole point.

Watching them that night was like watching someone cast a handful of sparkling glitter on their souls.

During the musical, they had to kneel in their seats to see. They sang with the cast - Summer Nights, Beauty School Dropout, Hand Jive, Grease, Sandra Dee, and of course, You're the One that I Want. They were wide-eyed with the music, the dancing and the pageantry.

Watching them, I wished that their happiness and innocence, their smiles and enchantment - would never end. That those patent leather shoes would never be too childish, that the plastic barrettes would forever hold back their hair.

That they would never be too old to ask me - to need me - to hold them, higher, to see the stage. To see the dancing and the music.

And while those wishes didn't all come true, some did.

The turbulence of real life was just around the corner then. Pressures and expectations. Junior high. Life would try to steal some of the magic.

Thankfully, Katie would always love music and dancing. Her world was about song. Spontaneous ballet poses. Pirouettes and tumbling.

And everyone knew that Katie's handstand flourishes on piers and backyards and swimming pools were normal. They were so Katie.

Later, in college, she had to explain why she was on the Dance Team.

"They have a team for dancing?" I remember asking, thinking how funny and perfect it was for Katie.

As I write this, I remember the lyrics from this 1970 song:

On the day that you were born
The angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of golden starlight in your eyes of blue

For it's the glitter and dancing and dreaming which makes Katie - Katie. It's the essence of her charisma, in so many ways.

It's what draws special people to Katie as if she were karmically magnetized.

To me, to her fiancé, to so many others - we can say of Katie, two decades later -

Katie - you're The One that I Want.

Citations -
from the album Close to You
Released May 15, 1970
Format 7" single
Recorded 1970
Length
4:33 (LP version)
3:40 (7" single)
Label A&M 1183
Songwriter(s)
Burt BacharachHal David
Producer(s) Jack Daugherty

Link
You're The One That I Want

On the Barrier Island

When I Dream of Michelangelo 

I can't see why 
you wanna talk to me

"You seem to need a lot of unplugged time," she offered; a subtle ultimatum.

It was time, I guess, to take measure. As my twenty-somethings might say, to - well, check your junk. Or something close.

It reminded me of a woman calling down into the basement, to her long-estranged husband in his man-cave. Alone with the Bears, working on a paunch and faithfully growing his Blackhawk beard. With 400 channels of hi-def, wife-cancelling isolation - alone with his buzz, his beer and the W flag, deaf to the call from the top of the stairs.



Well, that wasn't me. Mine was a different sort of Walter Mitty existence. It was a love for  escapism - of the word and of the ink, the spoken and the scrawled.

For I was the the writer and the dreamer, working on my blonde-grey stubble on some barrier island.

A barrier of sand, water, and Trumpian walls of isolation. Moody and reclusive. Alone with smoke and the rich and real smells of caffeine and the sea. Shuddering with the hangover of the most recent nightmare.

"Yeah, I've heard that," I said, acknowledging her discovery.

She added, "I need to be around other people; to be close. I'm not sure if this is going to work."

It was part challenge, part reflection. And I understand, I do.

I dream of Michelangelo 
when I'm lying in my bed

If you know me, you might understand. That you wouldn't be kicked off the island; you wouldn't be  asked to leave. You'd just give up.

And I wouldn't blame you... all the smoke and the isolation; the endless days of humid mornings and stormy afternoons. How could I expect you to understand the zen of a horizon filled with anvil-like thunderheads, building and darkening and shifting the barrier world?

She wanted to snuggle and plan and plan. To build a raft of plans and float to the mainland.

I wanted to read, to dream, to think. To meditate my way, Thoreau-like, among the sounds of pond-frogs and summer cicadas - well into the deep night.

I see God upon the ceiling
I see angels overhead

"I think you need something different than what I can give you," she said, slipping some sodium pentathol into the dialogue, as if she were adding it to my wine during a bathroom break.  

"Look," I started, "Sometimes, I just want to be alone - in a place that's safe from all this pain I've known for the last four years. Alone, inside my head. A place that I control. I can't pretend that's not true."

And he seems so close
As he reaches out his hand
We are never quite as close
As we are led to understand

I wanted to tell her that her John was just a confusing string of emojis that only existed on a screen until it was deleted in frustration. That her John might be an oasis without water - an optical illusion of shimmering heat waves. I don't know.

But an answer needed now was an answer already there.

She already knew that.

Here, on the barrier island, there is a kind of existential loneliness; in the dark; in dreams, in shadows and under clouds.

Yet, I can hear my son's voice in my head, telling me about his day, telling me he loves me. My sister calling me, telling me her dog misses me. My daughter is texting me green hearts. My friends occasionally checking on me, having remembered our laughs, my redneck voice echoing in their heads.

And there are those, like her, who need to know if their John is real. Or simply ethereal, like the blowing sand and swirling smoke and warm wind; an illusory oasis, with the promise of drink and water and solace.

Wondering if their thirst, also ethereal, can be quenched there - on the barrier island. Or, if they should start looking for driftwood, other driftwood, to make their own raft.

And float away.