Disaster struck yesterday! I went on my Donut Walk ™ as usual, planning for Krispy Kreme to be an intermediary stop on my way to Marie’s Coffee and Gifts. I was feeling proud of myself for taking the Coffee Walk™ a few days before I was out of coffee. I usually wait till the last minute. When I got Krispy Kreme, the door was blocked by the posts with ribbons across them like they use to make lines. There were workers inside but no customers. One came to the door and said, “We only take online orders now!” What? I’m assuming it’s COVID-19 related. But now I can’t get my free daily donut! What’s going to be the focus of my walks? How am I going to get my donut fix? My banter with the staff? A way of life has end. I’m crushed. As for my donut fix, I got two churros for a dollar. It’s not free but it’s better than a glaze donut. I’m going to the Knick game tonight and there’s a Krispy Kreme in Penn Station so I can get my donut there. I’m still crushed.
After the Donut Disappointment™ I went to Fordham Plaza and stopped at one of the COVID-19 testing pop-ups. There are at least two there. The first one I went to used saliva. This one used the nasal swab but not the deep into your brain nasal swab. More importantly this one gave me my results fast, I got a text at 8 AM this morning. I am SARS-cov-2 negative. I suspected as much but as I had cold symptoms, I figured it was better to be cautious as I’m going out and more importantly, inside with other people. I should be tested weekly, you should too. It’s just not as good a reward for taking a walk as a donut.
I told you about memorable quotes by Heather Aubrey Lloyd and Jud Caswell that I heard at NERFA. The irony is that I could not remember the memorable lines. I’m asked the speakers and now I am going to take a Talmudic approach to the lines. I’ll give you the quote and then comment on it. Sorry, I can’t go full Talmudic and write it in Aramaic.
Learning to live with your noisy mental roommates. – Heather Aubrey Lloyd
Wouldn’t that make a great title for a self-help/mental health book? That’s a huge part of therapy. Meditation is the internal version of banging on the walls when your neighbors are too loud. Most of us have mental roommates. The anxiety roomies won’t shut up about the things that can go wrong. The depression gang tell you how bad things already are. They tell you that you are unloved, untalented, and a failure. This is the heart of one of my keystone books, Jurgen by James Branch Cabell. Jurgen a forty and some years pawnbroker was given his youth by Mother Sereda, the Goddess of Wednesdays. But along with the youth came a shadow, not his but hers, and the shadow whispered to him.
“How can any of us know anything? And what is Jurgen, that his knowing or his not knowing should matter to anybody?”
Jurgen slapped his hands together. “Hah, Mother Sereda!” says he, “but now I have you. It is that, precisely that damnable question, which your shadow has been whispering to me from the beginning of our companionship. And I am through with you. I will have no more of your gifts, which are purchased at the cost of hearing that whisper. I am resolved henceforward to be as other persons, and to believe implicitly in my own importance.”
Those are the whispers of the noisy mental roommates we need to learn to live with.
Now on to Jud. This was not original to him. Jud was quoting Steven Pressfield who was inspired by Socrates.
“But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.”
That is a belief held closely by me. It’s no coincidence that this blog is entitled Wise Madness because like Don Quixote I prefer wise madness to foolish sanity. There are a host of musicians that excel in the craft of music making that others admire and I can’t abide; they are missing the mad inspiration. I would much rather hear a song, a roughhewn song or read a book, or watch a movie, by an inspired madman than a precisely made but uninspired work of art by a skilled but unimaginative craftsman. Can you tell from the short passage I quoted that Cabell is both skilled and an inspired madman?
I have now ran out of inspiration, though I’ll never run out of madness, so I’ll bid you adieu until tomorrow. Now for a delicious breakfast, Eggs Horvendile.
Wise Madness 