The Thrill of Fear

It’s why we tell ghost stories. It’s why we adorn our homes and yards with creepy decorations around Halloween. It’s why we continue to watch spine-tingling scenes in a movie even when we want to hide under a blanket. There’s something thrilling about being afraid. That is, when the stakes are low enough. These days, there are plenty of real things to be afraid of, and I fear that as a result kids today are being denied the thrill that comes from being modestly mischievous.

When I was a burgeoning teenager, there were two houses my friends and I toilet-papered with regularity, both occupied by a classmate named Suzanne. We had nothing against either Suzanne. We weren’t “into” either of them. But their yards had trees, lots and lots of big, glorious trees, practically begging to be layered in fluffy cotton sheets, and we willfully answered the call.

Our preparatory trips to Kmart attracted stares from patrons and cashiers, as my friends and I pooled enough of our money together to purchase 40 or 50 rolls of toilet paper. When I consider the cost of a pack Charmin today, I wonder if this would be a feasible pursuit in 2023, but in 1981, a bunch of 13-year-olds with meager means could buy a lot of toilet paper.

We’d hang out at our buddy John’s house until late at night, spinning records and playing ping-pong. No beers. No smoking. It was pretty innocent stuff. But around 2AM we’d head outside donning dark clothing and prowl across the wonderfully unfenced backyards of Brookfield, Wisconsin, stealthily making our way a half a mile or so to our target house, where we’d launch roll after roll of toilet paper high over tree limbs, draping the maples and oaks in curtains of white while we kept watch for lights flickering on in the occupant’s home. Hearts racing, adrenaline gushing through our veins, we gleefully finished our task and raced back to our home base, careful to remain hidden from the occasional car in the early morning hours.

There came a time when TPing wasn’t enough – we needed to raise the stakes, and raise the stakes we did by adding a pièce de résistance after completing our toilet-papering: a blast of firecrackers and a glaring flare, its red light eerily glowing off the sheets of white toilet paper, elevating what could have been classified as an act of vandalism into a work of art.

If the flash of light and the explosion of gunpowder wasn’t enough to accelerate our hearts and strides, the car that went after us shortly thereafter surely was. Someone was pissed, most likely Suzanne’s father, and – especially in hindsight – understandably so. We had just jolted him from his peaceful slumber in the most abrupt way, causing a panic that I can only imagine.

Oh, but the thrill we felt! It was exhilarating and positively life-affirming. The gleeful charge of dipping our boring suburban toes into danger was unparalleled by anything else happening in our town.

I’ve raised three kids, all of whom are now adults, and I guarantee that none of them were allowed to experience the same sort of adventure that my friends and I had as youths. With yards surrounded by high privacy fences, with motion-detecting lights, video doorbells and security cameras recording our every move, and with the very real possibility that a homeowner could seek vengeance not with a call to the cops but with gunfire, I fear the days of innocent thrilling fun are over.

A shame for our youth, though I suppose not for we adults who are spared the heart-stopping panic of a brick of firecrackers exploding outside our windows. In that sense, we’ve had the best of both worlds.

A Neighborhood's Fraying Fabric

Recently scanning through my journal entries from years ago, I was taken with just how many people have passed through my life. Scores and scores of coworkers, bandmates, classmates, neighbors, friends – even family members – who were once cornerstones of my existence, I no longer keep in touch with, not because of any conflict or falling out, but through a gradual decline of contact until there was no contact at all, a sort of relational evanescence. John Lennon wrote of such a phenomenon in the song “In My Life” when he was all of 25 years old, but I’m now 55; the number of people I once knew but no longer know is staggering.  

Making me feel even more uneasy is the change I’ve witnessed recently in my own town and neighborhood. One might be quick to undermine the superficial relationships that we naturally cultivate over time, but their absence can lead to a real sense of loss. When walking my dog to a nearby park, I used to have a 50/50 chance of running into someone I “kinda sorta” knew: Chris who watched Cubs games in the garage, Colleen who could talk my ear off with her banter, Margaret who’s oldest was in my daughter’s grade. Now all of them have moved away, as have several other neighbors who once lived on my street and other friends from my town who’ve opted for greener pastures further out in suburbia, or further still in states like Florida or Colorado.

Gradually, the fabric of the neighborhood as I once knew it is fraying. People who weaved in and out of my life have left dangling threads, and I’m beginning to feel that the ties that bind me to my home of 23 years are becoming looser, leaving me uneasily untethered.

I’m a creature of habit. I like my house and the stuff in it. I like walking the dog and seeing the same people every morning. I like sitting on my front porch with my wife and having familiar neighbors stroll by and say hello. I’d like it even more if my kids lived a few blocks away, stopping by for a quick chat or a Sunday dinner, but this is not to be, as none of my three children even live in the same state as me, much less the same neighborhood.

Carol King once sang, “Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?” Very few it seems. And I fear becoming the last old guy on the street who people point to when discussing the history of the neighborhood. “Ask Paul. He’s been here forever.”

One day I may have to make the choice of either relocating simply to move with the times or staying put and becoming lost in time. I wish there was a third option: everyone staying where they are.

That’s Just Like, Your Opinion, Man

The Dude abides in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski, and he also has something to say about opinions. Namely, that opinions are just that – opinions – and not all of them are valid.

Case in point. Last week I had drinks with a few friends, and one of them who’s not really into music said, “Rap isn’t music.”  In my usual diplomatic and courteous way, I went on to lambaste this absurdity before he retorted with “It’s just my opinion.” But I took issue with this comeback for two reasons:

1) He made his statement as if were fact, not an opinion.
2) His opinion isn’t credible because it can be proven false.

On the first point, his utterance sure didn’t sound like an opinion to me. If he had instead said something like “To me, rap isn’t musical,” then that would have been a statement of opinion and entirely legitimate, if not sadly limited. But of course, we all make statements that are meant to be taken as opinions. In my podcast, I’ll often say something like “that guitar solo has no place in this song” or “this song goes on too long.” I don’t preface these statements with “It’s my opinion that…” or “I didn’t like that…” Instead, it’s tacitly implied that what I’m offering is an opinion – it’s one of the premises of the podcast. Now, perhaps I should have been more gracious to my friend and recognized the spirit with which he made his claim, but to me he had crossed a line and was speaking with a level of authority on the matter, as if determining what music is and what music isn’t fell under his jurisdiction.

Here’s what it is, according to one definition:

music (myoo͞′zĭk) noun

1.   The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.

Sounds like a definition that includes rap to me.

Which brings me to my second point: the “opinion” that rap isn’t music isn’t credible because it can be completely invalidated based on facts. Rap music does in fact arrange sounds in time to produce a composition, and furthermore, rap ­is a genre now well into its fifth decade that has sold countless records and CDs in music stores, is played on music stations and is viewed live at music venues. If not music, then what would you call it? Poetry with a beat? Come on!

If you’re going to make a controversial claim, you should be able to back it up in some way. Hell, even flat-earthers do this, albeit with ridiculous “facts,” but I’ve never heard a flat-earther say, “It’s just my opinion,” because saying the earth is flat isn’t a statement of opinion; it’s a statement of fact based on faulty data that can be proven false, just as my friend’s “opinion” that rap isn’t music is based on faulty data – probably having to do with a narrow definition that music must contain identifiable melodies that can be reproduced on a tonal instrument like a piano or trumpet. But saying rap isn’t music is like me saying Beethoven’s works aren’t music. I may not like his Eroica Symphony (except I do), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t music. 

And although you can form an opinion about the above, one conclusion can be made unequivocally: The Dude abides.

The Way We Communicated (or don't)

If you were to look back on my journal entries from, say, 1996, when I was living out east and newly married, you would see countless entries devoted to phone calls. Nearly every evening has an entry or several entries about the people I spoke with that day: siblings, parents, friends from college and high school…it seems that there was no shortage of people to talk to and things to talk about.

Flash forward nearly three decades, and phone calls are mostly a thing of the past. Even when they do occur they’re likely to be prefaced with a text. Calls can almost feel invasive or pushy now, though I still have a handful of friends who’ll call me occasionally out of the blue, and I cherish them (both the friends and the phone calls).

But as people have pointed out over the years, emails and texts don’t ring, or at least they don’t require that you pick up a receiver and converse right now. Back in the internet’s infancy, I recall responding to emails immediately. Today, people might be bombarded with a hundred emails or more a day, and responding to everything has simply become impossible. Some people (my wife, for example) struggle mightily with the prioritization and organization required to manage the unfortunate reality that there is always more to tackle, even when the work day is over.

When text messaging emerged, it was generally understood that they were more urgent then emails and required a fairly quick response, but after several years of this medium, I find that they too have been relegated to the same level of importance as emails: get to them at some point or maybe not at all.   

A month ago or so I tried to get a group of guys together via text message and got only one response.  After a little prodding I got two more, but several recipients simply didn’t respond at all, even after a week had past. Now, I don’t think anyone was maliciously ghosting me, but I do find the habit of not responding to invites – whether by mail, call, email or text – to be frustrating. It’s a foreign concept to me, but the reality is that people have changed their habits around previously established principles like, “when you receive a gift, you say thank you” or “when you receive an invitation, you respond.”  That’s no longer the case, and for those of us expecting old decorum under the new social order, it can be a rough ride.

(And please note, this has nothing to do with being old and scolding young people: I’m explaining habits of my own generation.)

So what to do with this trend? For my invitation to my friends, I pulled out and cancelled the event; I really had no choice. So what about the next event? Do I continue to send invitations to people who don’t respond? If they text me for something in the future, do I respond? I think yes, because it’s the right thing to do, but I also recognize that at some point I’m being a bit of a sucker – I’m practicing behavior that benefits others while not insisting that they behave similarly toward me. Alternatively, I could be very direct and say, “if you no longer respond to text invitations, I’m taking you off the invite list,” but this seems rather snarky and unlikely to encourage better behavior.

So, the end result is likely to be a) learn to live with it and be happy when your friends’ behaviors surprise you; or b) direct your energy elsewhere and hope for better results.

It’s a lousy choice to have to make.

Loneliness, Yoga and Isolation

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

Kurt Vonnegut said this in 1982, decades before humanity would become steeped in a world of social media, cellphones, pandemics and artificial intelligence. I think he would be horrified at just how un-lonely the world was in the early 80s compared to today. I’ve read more and more headlines about today’s loneliness epidemic, and have observed firsthand the decline of clubs, sports leagues, religion and spontaneous gatherings, along with the rise of privacy fences, ear buds and cellphones, all of which are built to quash potential conversations. My daughter, while attending orientation at the University of Louisville eight years ago, lamented the fact that in an earlier era when students waited for the festivities to begin, they would have struck up conversations rather than leaning on the comfort of scrolling through their phones.

By contrast, I can still remember the first person I spoke to at my graduate school orientation in 1992. Today, that conversation would likely never occur.

But hell, when it comes to disengaging, I’m exhibit A, or at least B or C. After being a late holdout on the purchase of a flip-phone, and eventually a smartphone, I’ve become adept at passing time via a screen versus speaking with a fellow human being, and after years of heavy involvement at my synagogue and other volunteer activities, I’ve pulled away. And, for the moment, this disengagement feels…good. Comfortable. Cocoon-like. But as Roger Waters concluded in Pink Floyd’s magnum opus The Wall, isolation decays the mind. It places us too much inside our own heads and our own echo chambers, and the inevitable result is loneliness and perhaps even a descension into fear and paranoia.

All of this brought to mind something I read in Benjamin Lorr’s book about groceries that I blogged about a few months ago. In it, he references a previous book of investigative journalism that he authored called Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.

Lorr writes about his immersion into the world of yoga, where people “would enter a studio and bend for eight hours a day, busy doctors, lawyers, bankers who would sneak off to fit in an hour and a half on their lunch break. In yoga it was self-betterment, self-improvement, or becoming a stronger, more radiant version of yourself.  And in it, I found a whole community based on this ethos: people reveling in the very real ways they had transformed from couch potatoes and addicts, remarking after every class about just how much more capable they felt now. But wat was the end? What did you do once you became a better version of yourself? Where did all this self-improvement lead? The answer was always back to more yoga. Never volunteer at a clinic or a food kitchen, never for a studio owner to open more classes to the poor or injured. Never to take our radiant yoga bodies and put them to use in the service for others. And so those lawyers or doctors would go on to use that extra energy to bend for longer house, and when they had a vacation they went off in search of themselves, spiraling deeper and deeper into the practice, becoming ever more capable humans, who could push their bodies into ever more drastic positions.”

It’s similar to the philosopher who devotes a life to the study of ethics while never lifting a finger to help another person, or the theologian who reads the scripture in one hand and turns away the beggar in the other.

And how lovely it is to judge others and think, “Well, that’s not me.” But most of us practice our version of self-immersion, perhaps in worlds other than yoga. For me, it’s writing and composing, record-shopping, listening to music, watching baseball, organizing photos, etc.

And when was the last time I volunteered? It’s been a year, a full five months past the deadline I’d set for myself to get started again.

Time to make a change, I know. Studies show time after time that one of the best ways to cure loneliness is to volunteer to help others, to engage with our fellow human beings. So why are we working so hard as a society to do anything but?