With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
November 14, 2009 - 1:00 p.m.
I actually have things to write about today; insight into me. So much so that I'm not going to edit the trillion photos I took last night till after I write this and I'll post them next entry.
Last night I made the trek in bad weather out to Montclair NJ during Friday evening rush hour. Now Montclair isn't that far, when Leah lived there I visited every week, but the traffic can be horrendous
I was there to see Red Molly at the Outpost in the Burbs. I thought I was doing merch till I got there when I discovered that I wasn't, the Outpost volunteers were doing the merch, but that I was on the guest list. I didn't even have to give my name as Annette at the door knew who I was and that I was on the list. I love that Cheers, "where everybody knows your name" feeling. I dropped my stuff on a chair in the front row so I could take photos then went back out on the line. I didn't need to do that. Nobody wanted to sit in the front row other than the reserved seats. The seat next to me remained empty. I was just happy to get my coat off. I was boiling wearing it in the lobby.
Before the show I talked to Joe Crookston, the opening act, WFUV volunteers, Redheads (Red Molly fans) and random strangers. That's me at a concert, a social butterfly.
The funniest interaction happened after the show as I was leaving the bathroom. A woman asked me, "What's your name?" I said, "Gordon."
"Who are you?"
"ummm, Gordon."
"No, are you a singer or something?"
"No, I'm just their friend (Red Molly)."
"Oh, I was going to ask for your autograph."
During the show Red Molly mentioned me a number of times and pointed me out and she thought I was a celebrity. She was so disappointed to find out that I wasn't.
They did an experiment last night, they didn't charge a fixed price for the CDs. People could pay whatever they wanted to. I took this as a challenge, guessing how much the average CD would go for. I told Laurie that my guess was $12. She said they've been doing this the last few nights and the highest was $11. I thought that Montclair was affluent so I had a chance. Laurie emailed me with the final tally, $8.40. I was way off. My new theory is that the smaller the crowd the higher the expected amount as people will feel a great share of the responsibility. They are playing a smaller venue tonight and we'll see if that holds. I hope they are keeping accurate records. I'm going to want to do a statistical analysis when they are done and see if I can come to any conclusions. Have I mentioned that I'm a geek.
Joe performed in a new configuration, as a duo with Peter Glanville. Peter played tenor guitar on most of the songs. It really worked. I love the contrast between the tenor and the standard guitar. When Peter overheard me saying that to Joe he raced over to join the discussion. I love when musicians get enthusiastic about their craft.
OK, so now on to what I wanted to write about me. When I was a kid I watched The Little Rascals just about every day and The Bowery Boys on the weekends. They resonated with me. I grew up feeling that the normal social setting was a gang. That feeling didn't go away. I love Cheers and Seinfeld as an adult. I didn't get that in real life. It wasn't how I interacted with my friends, it was all one on one. My first experience with it was at the Y where we had out little club. It was somewhat artificial as we weren't all friends going in but I did have a bunch of friends in the group and it was great when we had projects. In late 1968 early 1969 we made a movie, Who in '72 about the 1972 presidential election. I played Gerry Atrics, the conservative Republican. David ws Petey Etrics, the liberal hippie Democrat. For the Y carnivals we made haunted house rides (the ride was us pushing someone in an office chair on wheels).
I had almost no social life in high school, the next time I had a gang was the Math Lab and Physics Club in college. Neither was really a tight social circle. The physics club did have a ski weekend. The Math Lab's idea of a wild time was going to the Barnes & Noble Sales Annex in Manhattan searching for discount math books.
I got something closer to the ideal at the end of college and during grad school with my New Eleusis friends. New Eleusis was a game I learned from Martin Gardner's column in Scientific Americans. Some subset of Farley, Willis, Carey, Lauren, Steve, Dave, and I, would get together and play the game a few times a month, maybe more. There were other related groups. Farley, Willis, Lauren, Dave and I would play bridge. Carey, Lauren, Ira, and I would play monopoly. We'd often go to films, plays, and concerts in groups too. I loved it.
When that era fizzled out I started playing bridge in clubs and hooked up with Andrew, Larry, Warren, Marco, and JJ, and their friends. We'd all pile into Andrew's parent's house in Rye for the bridge tournament there in January.
Then I discovered Moxy Früvous and more importantly Früheads. Now Früheads are not my idea of a gang. It's too big and organized. It's what Vonnegut would call a granfaloon, a false curass. A curass is the kind of group I love. A real natural association.
Within the Früheads there were curasses. Most notable for me was the Batnose Brigade; Carey, Shelly, Leah, Lawrence, and our friends. My first house concert was really a party with an expanded version of that group, Joy, Melissa, and Neal were there. This is when I really started to think about my relation to social groups. I still remember a conversation I had with Carey about it. I pictured all our friends in ever widening and intersecting circles. There were inner groups, bigger groups, and large groups. Carey and I alone had a circle to ourselves. Carey and Neal had a circle to themselves. There were all kinds of meaningful divisions. Carey wanted me to draw the diagram but of course I never did. Too bad, it would be a interesting documentation of a moment in time.
We're now coming to the present where I could draw similar diagrams. There's the The Budgiedome Executive Committee. There's the Red Molly Advisory Board (Nobody has ever heard me use that term but everyone in it will know who they are). There are the music junkies. There are the subgroups of WFUV volunteers. I was talking to Brian last drive about how Lori not LORi has taken the place of Gary in one of our little groups. She's the only woman in it so she's Darla in the Little Rascals, or Elaine in Seinfeld. See it all comes back where we started. It really fits in that the book I'm reading now is Gangs of New York.
Don't Mind My Body - I Don't - November 19, 2009
Thoughts from the Shower - November 18, 2009
If You're Reading This You're Elite - November 17, 2009
I'm Not A Number I'm A Free Man - November 16, 2009
Ives-y League - November 15, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile November 14, 2009
