The Crisis of Negativity

Today we had a great phone conversation with someone who knows a lot about economics that turned out to be enormously beneficial. Not so much for anything specific that he told us (because, when all is said and done, all he can do is study his models and data points and try to make reasonable guesses about what's going to happen in the economy). No, the value of today's call came solely from its pragmatism, and its (relative) objectivity: his common sense has done wonders, providing much-needed counterpoint to all the noisy noisy noise of what passes for News Media these days--not to mention the even noisier noisy noise of Social Media.

I realized this as we were ending the call, and I thanked him for it. We don't work in an office (even remotely); we don't really get deep contact with the world outside our sheltered circle except what we get from the (virtual) newspapers we subscribe to, and the TV news that we occasionally subject ourselves to, and of course (in my case) Twitter, where my need for any sign of feedback to my paltry writings usually leads me to engage in what's now called "doom-scrolling," that endless fugue of variations on a theme that comprises most of the posts that arrive on my feed. (The rare exceptions are the videos of cats doing amusing things; something to be grateful for.) 

The point is, all of the above serve up almost exclusive negativity. Bill noted, accurately, that that's what generates hits; we all know this but it doesn't stop any of it. In my 61 years on this planet, I can't recall any time remotely so disheartening and despairing as these past five or so years: the continual drone of bad people getting away with bad things and the accompanying drumbeat of ever-increasing urgency. The existential crises just seem to keep ramping up and requiring more and more from us: money, time; worry, mostly.

I am not denying that the crises are real. They are. Especially the climate crisis, but all the others as well.

But there's a kind of bureaucracy that's been created around perpetuating them, institutionalizing them; I guess because it's ultimately profitable. And so it pervades us, especially those of us who are a little bit marginalized, after Covid and so on. We don't just doom-scroll; we doom-live.

This, of course, cannot stand.

What to do? I'm not sure yet. But the internet was where I made my name, such as it was/is, and I am determined to figure out how it can be rehabilitative in the face of all this fatiguing, crippling garbage. I am certainly not going to let the negativity define me. There's a way through.

Words of Wisdom

Lyrics have always mostly been my poetry. I thought today I'd put up some lyrics that I have found particularly wise and resonant: words to live by.

***

Now with the wisdom of years
I try to reason things out
And the only people I fear
Are those who never have doubts
    - Billy Joel, "Shades of Grey" (from River of Dreams, 1993)

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try
    - Oscar Hammerstein II, "Some Enchanted Evening" (from South Pacific, 1949)

And I thought if I could just be twelve again
Or was it ten?
Well, anyway
It seems to me I knew the secret then
It's so simple, twelve
It's so simple, ten
It was simpler then
    - Fred Ebb, "Colored Lights" (from The Rink, 1984)

Trouble is, Charley
That's what everyone does
Blames the way it is
On the way it was
On the way it never ever was.
    - Stephen Sondheim, "Like It Was" (from Merrily We Roll Along, 1981)

One must accommodate the times
As one lives them
    - Stephen Sondheim, "A Bowler Hat" (from Pacific Overtures, 1976)

I am what I am.
I am my own special creation.
    - Jerry Herman, "I Am What I Am" (from La Cage aux Folles, 1983)

You take your road,
The decades fly,
The yearnings fade. the longings die
    - Stephen Sondheim, "The Road You Didn't Take" (from Follies, 1971)

Move on
Stop worrying where you're going
Move on....
I chose and my world was shaken
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken
The choosing was not.
    -Stephen Sondheim, "Move On" (Sunday in the Park with George, 1984)

But the world is full of zanies and fools
Who don't believe in sensible rules
And won't believe what sensible people say
And because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes
Keep building up impossible hopes
Impossible
Things are happening every day.
    - Oscar Hammerstein II, "Impossible" (from Cinderella, 1957)

A hundred million miracles
Are happening every day.
    - Oscar Hammerstein II, "A Hundred Million Miracles" (from Flower Drum Song, 1958)

I insist on miracles
If you do them
Miracles
Nothing to them!
    - Stephen Sondheim, "Everybody Says Don't" (from Anyone Can Whistle, 1964)

Let the moment go
Don't forget it for a moment though
Just remembering you've had an "and"
When you're back to "or"
Makes the "or" mean more
Than it did before
    - Stephen Sondheim, "Moments in the Woods" (from Into the Woods, 1987)

I believe if I refuse to grow old
I can stay young 'til I die
    - Stephen Schwartz, "No Time at All" (from Pippin, 1972)

My feet want to dance in the sun
My head wants to rest in the shade
The Lord says go out and have fun
But the landlord says:
Your rent ain't paid!
    - E.Y. Harburg, "Necessity" (from Finian's Rainbow, 1947)

The Best Medicine

 Like Mary Poppins's Uncle Albert, I love to laugh. 

When I laugh in public, I occasionally embarrass myself. My laugh, I'm afraid, is too noisy and too insistent to be entirely pleasing. In fact, I was once asked not to laugh so much by a fellow patron (at Forbidden Broadway, many decades ago. I did not comply, even though I tried.)

In summer school before Sixth Grade, I took a drama class. I ended up playing the lead in one of the plays we did, called (I think) The Clown Who Forgot How to Laugh. That was the premise, anyway, and during the half-hour or so of the play the clown (me) went through various experiences until he finally remembered how to laugh. I let out with an explosion of guffaws and chuckles and hohohos, falling on the floor (carefully) in ecstatic glee. My laughter earned lots of laughter. And I wonder now if the teacher cast me because she had noticed that I had such a raucous laugh.

There have been at least two times when I laughed so hard and long in the theater that I got afraid that the actors would become alarmed. The first was at The House of Blue Leaves, with Stockard Channing as Bunny; during one of those long crazy speeches about her checkered career, I lost it. And the second time was when Jim Dale was in Me and My Girl: during the second act, he had a scene where he got himself entangled with a bear-skin rug. Hilarity ensued, and I responded vigorously.

I really enjoy laughing, and I enjoy those who can bring the laughter out of me. That's one of the reasons I like Trav S.D. so much. Because when he's performing, he ALWAYS makes me laugh. (George Burns always said that Jack Benny thought everything he said was funny. That's kind of how I feel about Trav.)

I laugh at funny stuff I've seen a zillion times, because it still strikes me just so. And I laugh sometimes if I come up with something that I think is funny; and I don't feel guilty about it because I once saw Neil Simon in an interview where the interviewer asked him if he laughed when he was writing his plays and he said, sure, if I write something funny, I laugh!

It's all good, because laughing makes you feel good. No matter how much we do it, we need to do it more.

Les Miserables

We caught the very end of the 25th Anniversary Les Misérables on PBS the other night. I don't know how many times we've seen it at this point; it always makes me happy. The encore of "Bring Him Home" followed by "One Day More," featuring the original 1985 London cast and the 2010 anniversary cast, is unfailingly exciting and moving.

I hadn't expected to like Les Miz when I was first exposed to it. That was in 1986, when Colm Wilkinson performed "Bring Him Home" on (I think) the Kennedy Center Honors telecast. Out of context, the song meant nothing to me; I had an (incorrect) idea that Jean Valjean was a younger fellow than Wilkinson and that irked me for no good reason.

Nevertheless, I bought a ticket for the pre-Broadway American premiere, which was playing at the Kennedy Center Opera House (which would explain why the show was featured on the Kennedy Center Honors). My parents did not go with me, I am sure because it was the middle of January and my father never liked the idea of courting a snowstorm.

Which is exactly what we got. But I am getting ahead of myself.

So I saw Les Miz that night in January 1987, high up in the second balcony of the Opera House (the only seat I could get). And I was absolutely thrilled by it. Mr. Wilkinson was out that night, sadly; but his understudy Kevin Marcum was spectacularly good as Valjean. All the other principal players were on that night, and in succession they bowled me over: first Leo Burmester in the unexpected "Master of the House"; then Randy Graff, sitting alone at the edge of the stage in "I Dreamed a Dream"; then Terrence Mann and "Stars"; then Frances Ruffelle "On My Own"; and finally Michael Maguire, dying on that barricade.

The barricade scene is what I remember most, vividly and indelibly. The absolute and complete hush in the audience as the set revolved to reveal the French students, poetically displayed in heroic postures of death, was unforgettable.

The thing is, once you see a show, you can never see it for the first time again. And the first time is almost always what stays with you: no subsequent performance can ever quite match it.

That, at least, was my experience, though it was not for want of trying. I saw Les Miz again later that first year, on Broadway this time. Then I saw it with my parents about a year later; my mother loved it but my father not so much (and admittedly the performance we saw that particular evening was not fully up to scratch). And then, after we moved to NYC, my mother and I saw the show again, at least two or three times, I imagine. I know we saw it right before the first run ended, in 2002. And we saw the 10th Anniversary celebration on PBS, and then, many times as noted, the 25th.

But back to the snowstorm. It was already snowing when I left the Kennedy Center at 11:30 p.m. or thereabouts. I made it home to my apartment in Rockville, pretty much aware that we were getting at least a mini-blizzard, and that I wouldn't be going to work the next day. Or, well, anywhere...for several days, as it turned out. And I was going crazy because the only thing I wanted was the London cast album of Les Miz so I could replay the show again in my home. (Seems quaint, but back then, you actually had to go to a store to buy records; there wasn't any other way to acquire music.) 

I think that having to wait so many days to be able to hear the show again was one of the things that made it special. All that lovely anticipating.

Myers-Briggs

My sister mentioned the Myers-Briggs Inventory on a phone call recently, which made me remember what I ultimately found most useful and interesting about it. (The Wikipedia article about Myers-Briggs is pretty thorough if you're not acquainted with this topic. There's been some controversy around Myers-Briggs and that's discussed in the linked article.)

So officially it's called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBI) and it's been around for nearly 80 years. The explanation that follows is entirely my own, based on my own understanding and experience of the MBI. 

Basically, it's a test that consists of dozens of questions about your personality and your preferences. When your personal test has been scored, you are assigned a "Type" which indicates your preferred approach to four different aspects of life:

1. Where you get your energy: Extroverts derive their energy from the outside world and other people; Introverts get energy from within themselves. I test as a strong Introvert and I find this to be absolutely accurate, along with the converse, which is that whenever I am required to be "extroverted" (i.e., to address a large roomful of people), it takes a good deal out of me, physically and emotionally. It's not that I can't be good at "extroversion," just that it drains me. 
2. How you acquire data: Sensing means you prefer actual recorded/observed facts. Intuition means you rely on hunches and bigger-picture estimations/evaluations about the world. I'm strongly intuitive, which means not that I can't do research properly but rather that I can get impatient when I'm feeling bogged down in a bunch of trees--I am more interested in figuring out the whole forest.
3. How you make decisions: The short version is Thinkers rely on the brain while Feelers rely on the heart. When I first took the MBI test I was a strong Thinker; later I became more borderline, which suggests that I like to balance hard facts and evidence with "softer" considerations of the human impact and cost when I make a decision.
4. How you see the world: People who prefer Judging like to see problems in black and white, open or closed. People who prefer Perception like shades of grey. I am right on the border of these two when I am tested, sometimes coming out a little bit Judge-y, other times, a little but Perceptive-y.

Your "Type" is expressed as a four-letter acronym combining the above preferences. INTJ means Introverted-Intuitive-Thinker-Judge. ESFP means Extroverted-Sensor-Feeler-Perceptive.

It is fun and illuminating to take the test and review and understand your results. But for me, the real value of MBI is that it teaches (or reminds) that there are many different personality preference types and, within each type, infinite shadings and varieties.

The strength of learning this framework is that you gain appreciation of the diversity around you. And, more important, that you not just tolerate or accept but actually celebrate that diversity. Because all of the different types are valid, and true, and worthwhile, and necessary. We need all the different kinds of people to make this world work properly.

So reveling in the specialness of your own Myers-Briggs type is not, for me, the point. Being an INTJ or an INFP (as noted, I've tested as both) doesn't define me or inhibit me; rather, it's a thing that I try to transcend. Indeed, the compliment I most appreciated when I was working at Marriott International back in the '90s (where I was first introduced to MBI) was when Fred Weis, the head of the Systems Development team that supported my department in Corporate Finance, told me that he knew I must be an ISTJ because he and I worked together so well (he was a strong ISTJ). 

I didn't know it at the time, but my Myers-Briggs exposure pointed the way toward Mindfulness Practice, which is so much about taking people and situations as they are and finding constructive ways for change and progress. (For example, learning how to act like an ISTJ was an important way for me to be successful in my job 30 years ago.) I expect to explore Mindfulness here on the blog soon...

  

Binging TV

I won't bury the lede: I don't want to binge-watch TV.

I wonder how this became not just a thing, but, apparently, the thing. On Nick at Nite, you can cycle through all ten seasons of Friends in a couple of months. On FETV, Perry Mason is on four times each weekday. On Decades, at two episodes per weeknight, you can get through all of The Dick Van Dyke Show in about four months. Which means that I'm watching shows today that I just saw in May.

The binge concept is pervasive. Buzzr programs old game shows like Classic Concentration and Super Password in gigantic chunks, many episodes every day.

Not to mention that the relatively few older shows that are deemed worthy of re-running these days (e.g., Golden Girls, Two and a Half Men, Wagon Train (!)) are on multiple networks, multiple times a day, ad infinitum.

You would think with all the programs that have been on TV over the past 70+ years that a bit more variety could be mustered.

My own dream idea would be for a network like Decades to run a different slate of shows each night of the week, with each slate drawing from a single decade. For example, Monday night could be "50's" night, with episodes of Sgt Bilko, Our Miss Brooks, I Love Lucy, The Danny Thomas Show, and Leave it to Beaver (or whatever). Tuesdays could be "60's" nights (Get Smart, Bewitched, etc.). And so on.

It would be even cooler to re-create actual lineups from the past: I would totally watch an evening of 1973-74 Saturday night TV: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.

And once a week per show is plenty. When I see the same episodes over and over and over again, I get tired of them. Real tired. I would much prefer to savor these old favorites.

The Sound of Pangloss

Scene I. The castle in Thunder-ten-tronkch. It is a beautiful castle, perhaps the best of all possible castles. It sits on a hill (one of the best) which nestles between many other hills (others among the best) which are bright and green and beautiful. CANDIDE comes rushing up a hill, singing exuberantly:

CANDIDE: The hills are alive
    With the sound of Pangloss!
    The words that he says
    Ring so loud and clear.
    The hills fill my heart
    With the sound of Pangloss!
    Those best of all possible sounds are dear.

    He tells me that cardinals are red
    So they'll match the sky
    As they fly overhead.
    He tells me that this is the best of all worlds --
    Yes, that's what he said!
    The best of all fates
    Is to be the Baron
    Whose home I share;
    And then, after that,
    Is to be Lady Cunegonde Fair!

    My life is sublime
    Thanks to wise old Pangloss.
    His knowledge of life
    Hasn't any hitch!
    This best of all worlds
    Plus the sound of Pangloss --
    They make my life rich!

*****

Thus begins the very best musical I ever wrote (with apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein).

I wrote this for an assignment in AP English in High School, and I see that it got an A++. I am quite proud of it. The opening scene, above, is the best part; though I am also pleased with the song I wrote for Cunegonde (sung to the tune of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria"):

CUNEGONDE: I am a very popular young lady.
    Loved by many; two, to be exact.
    I am a very popular young lady.
    Shared by two:
    A bishop and Jew,
    That's fact!
    Don't believe I don't find you attractive,
    Don't believe I think you're less than best.
    But I am in awful straits!
    This is the worst of all fates!
    To be loved by two with so much zest!
    Yes, I am a very popular young lady!
    I'd go with you, if only for some rest!