The definition of irony might begin with the fact that I am a Kirk who prefers Star Wars over Star Trek, though the most recent “Trekkie” film sure challenged me to think that maybe George Lucas has taken a backseat to Gene Roddenberry in the battle for Greatest Geek of All Time.
Despite being Kirk, I grew up wanting to board the Millennium Falcon and race through a fictitious galaxy of weird creatures, space stations, odd planets and amazing characters. I was caught up in the magic of The Force. I admired the subtle command of the laser blaster and swooned over the charm of a Princess on a mission. While I did not in my juvenile mind see the connection between Star Wars and the classic tales of chivalry and gallantry I had read as a child, I sure found myself wishing Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi was among my kin. Honestly, who wouldn’t want a lightsaber? I have even been told that I resemble Lucas himself.
As adolescence took its usually awkward course, I drifted away from the original trilogy as any self-serving neo-nerd would (and should) want to do. I needed to get a life: I was about to drive a car, maybe get a job, and I sure as hell had better get a girlfriend (soon!) if I were to move out of my fantasy-driven world of good versus evil and into reality.
My mother delights in telling the story of how I, as a seven-year-old boy, was scared by Darth Vader to the point that I ran from the theatre crying. As well, my aunt laments the fact that I was able to convince my cousin that hitting his collection of Star Wars Action Figures into the woods as if they were baseballs was somehow a good idea. We lost the whole collection. Damn e-bay! Had it not been for the sudden surge in collectable memorabilia from the 1980’s, I would never have been accused of throwing good money over that hill.
Now that I am a father, I have revisited Star Wars, and I have found myself enjoying it all the more. Of course (insert famous cliché music to enhance your reading experience), I see it through different eyes and with a different perspective. No longer does the Death Star represent some evil empire in the sky; I see it for what it is – the headquarters of the New York Yankees. No more do Stormtroopers surprise me for having regenerated scene after scene when they had just been killed. I now see through the eyes of a humanitarian who comprehends genocide and xenophobia but also recognizes the horror and tragedy of war. The Force? Ha! Who needs it? What was once connectivity of all great spirits is now simply nothing more than life itself.
What struck me most about watching Star Wars with my son (and daughters, though they were about as interested as the girls from my 1982 neighborhood who were somehow NOT impressed that I could speak just like Yoda after having seen – and successfully stayed in the movie house for – The Empire Strikes Back) was the notion that he might find a role model within the Star Wars anthology that he could follow and aspire toward. But who?
Lando Calrissian? I hope not. A friend turned traitor turned savior is a risky friend indeed.
Boba Fett? Perhaps. But under all the really cool gadgets is just a renegade vigilante wrapped around a mercenary bounty hunter…Damn, why didn’t I think of The Dog the Bounty Hunter idea? That dude makes some serious money.
Jar Jar Binks? No! I fear my son will one day bring home a friend who reminds me of Jar Jar, and I will say something I regret temporarily that in ten years we will all laugh about.
I think it is time for me to identify with one of the characters that defined my childhood. Granted, if I had put this much thought into the plays and novels I had read as a college student, I would either be writing professionally or teaching Shakespeare by now…but that is a different legend. If I can relate to one character, perhaps I will understand how to be a better father in the light of whom my son admires.
So, here goes.
Chewbacca was my first favorite Star Wars character, mostly because that was my first action figure. When I connected the fact that he is a “Wookie” to the massive species we meet in the 6th / 3rd film, I was disappointed. I had always seen him as one of a kind, like me; but he is also brutish and stupid and strong. Keep your comments to yourself! I am only brutish when I am stupid and strong when it is overtime of a Stanley Cup play-off game. It takes guts to watch that stuff. I am no Chewie.
Then came Yoda - wise, articulate…yeah, that kid of ruled me out. As much as I want to be Yoda, just not am I.
Princess Leia? Wow, that could open a whole other galaxy to me! But, no.
I am not brave like Han Solo. That guy has chutzpah: arrogant beyond regret, tough as titanium, quick with a quasi-real cool gun, he is handsome and athletic. I was (and am) none of these. As much as piloting my own smuggler ship across the stars sounds like fun, it just isn’t me.
Nor am I intelligent like C3-PO. Who doesn’t love his entrance line: “I am C3-PO, protocol droid, human-cyborg relations. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication…”? Imagine the dates that guy could get! He is out there somewhere, though. C3-PO is the kid we all made fun of who could master French and Spanish as well as English in high school, and who in college took up German, Farsi and Swahili just to annoy us lesser-cyborgs. He is as smart as Einstein but was a worry wart to end all wet-blanket revolts. I could name the kid in high school whose dad asked me to take him to a baseball game with the guys and get him into a little trouble just to humanize him, but that would not be fair. That guy, either real or imagined, is not me.
So who the hell am I in the Star Wars mythology? These characters relate to us for a reason. (There must be a Jabba the Hut joke in here somewhere.) Darth Vader…I wish I could be so evil! Obi-Wan Kenobi…I wish I could be so good. Qui-Gon Jinn…I wish I could have such a stupid name and not get my ass kicked once in while.
I guess I must be Luke.
Yeah, the lamest of the lame. Naïve, ambitious, over-reactive… a little wishy-washy when he wants the girl, but he does get the girl only to find out, yeah, never mind that… nice to a fault… a bit stubborn…wants to be a dreamer but circumstances align in such a manner where he is forced into action… ultimately, he is indecisive, thus he is me …or, is he?
Who knows? I can only hope my son will learn from me because I want to be less like a Star Wars character and more like a dad. Maybe he and I will go back and forth between all of these – Boba Fett had a bad dude for a dad, and Luke’s father was…well, you know. To struggle like Darth and Luke would not be fun, but at least the fate of the universe will not be on our minds. I will not be to him what my father was to me – lost and unknown like Han Solo’s dad. Do we ever meet a Mr. Solo?
The only thing I can do is teach him along the way and be just a little pissed off to remember that when he first saw Darth Vader burst through the smoke and fog of the Rebel ship that sets the stage for “A New Hope,” my then-five-year-old son turned to me and said, “Dad, this is so cool!” So, I pass a movie along the generational line. What scared me, he enjoys; heroes for me may become anything or nothing to him. But we are Kirks together, regardless of the universe. Okay, fair enough. That solves it. I will try to be his role model.
Then again, R2-D2 is a pretty cool cat…
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
40 and Going
Those born in 1970 were placed at a unique crossroads of the twentieth century. Reared in the throes of Vietnam and under the long shadow of World War II, we somehow feel connected to the JFK assassination simply because it occurred a mere seven years before our births – come on, our generation wants its defining moment, too! We came about prior to the computer and before AIDS shocked a generation, yet a human had already walked upon the moon before we took our first steps. The seeds of the Woodstock myth had already been planted before we were even aware of that awesome musical sound. And, for a majority of 1970s babies, the Beatles had already called it quits when Paul left the band in April of that year, though officially the band would not split until the last day of the greatest year ever.
Each of us turned to our own muse to guide us through life. Some did follow the Beatles, others the Stones; a few found R&B, others Pop Top 40; some liked Elvis, others got into punk; many ran the gamut from Led Zeppelin to Boston to Styx to, etc… as that list goes. For me, it started with some old time rock and roll by an American named Bob Seger.
I have always enjoyed the music of Seger, the Detroit-based rocker from the 1970s and 80s. His work has often connected to my life, that of a late-twentieth-century suburban kid who was sometimes bored but not adventurous enough to get into trouble. Like Seger’s music, there was a longing within me to find the perfect love (which I have found), discover simple truths about life (which I've learned), and experience life in a memorable way (which I have done). While songs like “Old Time Rock and Roll” and “Turn the Page” have become radio staples, much of Seger’s music goes unnoticed in the what-have-you-done-for-my-record-sales era in which we now live and he performed. His songs tend to be simpler melodies and open rhythms, but his lyrics strike a certain tone about becoming a man within the American landscape.
“Someday Lady You’ll Accompany Me” echoes of searching and waiting for that perfect love while “Still The Same” teaches us we cannot change people no matter how hard we try; “No Man’s Land” resonates with the hope and failure and struggle and success that comes with daily living while “The Ring” tells a simple story with complex endings of remorse and regret; and “The Famous Final Scene” (a personal favorite) carries metaphor through levels of relationships, performance and even death while “Fire Lake” reminisces of times we can only recapture in our minds and through song.
Still, Bob Seger goes largely unrecognized by music critics and all but forgotten by today’s listeners who care not for rock and roll history. In his later days, he turned out one more effort to wrap up what had been a stellar career. And that is what takes us to the point of this message written today, on my fortieth birthday.
I turn forty this year, yes, 40 – the quadra-decado, the “Big Four-Oh, …one, two, 3, IIII, V, pick up six, seven-heaven, I forgot what 8 was for…you get the point. And Bob Seger has been with me for the majority of the ride that has been without a Harley but has hardly been easy, the ride that has been my life.
I discovered Seger’s music through a song that would go on to define much of my personality. “Feel Like a Number” taught this (now former) young man that he would not be treated like “just another spoke in a wheel, another blade of grass in a great big field.” It is a basic rock song of lyrical hyperbole that provides a perspective on growing up but not conforming. My path had little to do with the now cliché non-conformists of the 1980s, the “I won’t give into 9-5 and wear a tie” mantra that so many of my friends proclaimed. Rather, it was the ability to not conform within my own generation that has kept me on an even keel. Drugs were never of interest to me and beer tasted like I had just grown a cat’s tongue and licked a field of wheat until my throat had gone dry. Abstaining from vice had a little something to do with having learned that song.
Thus, I sought other songs, bought that album and went on to collect almost everything Bob Seger played with either the Silver Bullet Band, the Seger System, or his solo work – except for that damn ellusive album Noah, a rarity indeed! Among that collection was the mid-2000s CD, Face the Promise, which featured a song that would once again proclaim a message that I had to hear. That song is called “Wait for Me.”
Was I surprised Bob Seger had written another song that just so happened to strike a chord to where I was in my life at that moment? No, I wasn’t. It almost fit like the proverbial tune in-tune with life itself. Again, Seger had made music that clicked with my thinking, but one line in particular resonated with how I feel about “growing old” – not that being 40 is old!
Seger sings, “And I’ll fight for the right to go over that hill, if it only means something to me.”
It used to be that turning forty meant that one was over the hill. Not so. Now, they say that 60 is the new 40 – great, another hill to climb for one more score.
To take a cliché about aging and turn it into inspiration (as Seger has done) is like finding the fountain of tunes. Seger has brought us to a point where we now embrace aging and recognize it as a part of the process of life. Aging is neither embarrassment nor the dwindling of one’s faculties. It is, rather, an accomplishment, a personal journey still being fulfilled. It is also highly personal. In a world over-published with fluff and anti-matter, our stories become lost under the mortal shuffle and toil that is life. Yet, if we contextualize stories within our time, within our own families, and share them with friends or just write them down for the future to read, then we have made sense of the tradition of storytelling itself.
Really, my having gone to the summit of this first hill only matters to a handful of people – family, my kids in particular, a few friends, a stranger I may have helped along the way – but I must make sense of it in order to keep on living. It is the very process that has taught me lessons, opened my perspective, challenged my views for reasons both right and wrong, and showed me how to keep going.
One who fights to go onward is not a winner, he is simply a doer. Life needs to be done. Sure, it will never be complete because some idiotic idea or moronic race will come along and screw it up for the next guy, but the perfection is sought year after year, decade after decade, life after life. To this moment, I have fought a little, not as much as Seger’s song might suggest, but I have had my share of run-ins, mistakes, goof-ups, errors, mishaps, regrets and “damn-I-didn’t-know-it-all-after-all” epiphanies. I will keep on fighting. Come tragedy, disease, high water or evolution, I have a lot of living left to do. I will indeed continue to fight for my right to go over the hill, if it means something to no one but me.
It has been said in movies and proverbs that one would be fortunate to live during interesting times. While the list of things both mundane and fascinating that has transpired in these my forty years would be a full chronicle indeed, I can attest to having spanned a nuclear age, an information age, a self-serving and selfish age, a space age, a rock age, a world-torn-apart-by-chaos age, and a world-still-reinventing-itself age; but I have also seen a hopeful age, an electronic age, a self-realization age, and a we-can-do-better age.
We 1970 babies were indeed born upon the precipice of interesting times. My hunch is that Bob Seger knew what he was saying to us (or maybe a few guys like me who still rock) when he sang:
“Take it calmly and serene…”
“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…”
“I could go east, I could go west; it was all up to me to decide…”
“Until you’ve been beside a man, you don’t know if he cries at night…”
“Dark clouds are all in the past…”
Or, quite simply,
“Turn the page…”
We move into the next decade, and I for one do so willingly and with the knowledge that I have earned a little something from going over the so-called hill.
Each of us turned to our own muse to guide us through life. Some did follow the Beatles, others the Stones; a few found R&B, others Pop Top 40; some liked Elvis, others got into punk; many ran the gamut from Led Zeppelin to Boston to Styx to, etc… as that list goes. For me, it started with some old time rock and roll by an American named Bob Seger.
I have always enjoyed the music of Seger, the Detroit-based rocker from the 1970s and 80s. His work has often connected to my life, that of a late-twentieth-century suburban kid who was sometimes bored but not adventurous enough to get into trouble. Like Seger’s music, there was a longing within me to find the perfect love (which I have found), discover simple truths about life (which I've learned), and experience life in a memorable way (which I have done). While songs like “Old Time Rock and Roll” and “Turn the Page” have become radio staples, much of Seger’s music goes unnoticed in the what-have-you-done-for-my-record-sales era in which we now live and he performed. His songs tend to be simpler melodies and open rhythms, but his lyrics strike a certain tone about becoming a man within the American landscape.
“Someday Lady You’ll Accompany Me” echoes of searching and waiting for that perfect love while “Still The Same” teaches us we cannot change people no matter how hard we try; “No Man’s Land” resonates with the hope and failure and struggle and success that comes with daily living while “The Ring” tells a simple story with complex endings of remorse and regret; and “The Famous Final Scene” (a personal favorite) carries metaphor through levels of relationships, performance and even death while “Fire Lake” reminisces of times we can only recapture in our minds and through song.
Still, Bob Seger goes largely unrecognized by music critics and all but forgotten by today’s listeners who care not for rock and roll history. In his later days, he turned out one more effort to wrap up what had been a stellar career. And that is what takes us to the point of this message written today, on my fortieth birthday.
I turn forty this year, yes, 40 – the quadra-decado, the “Big Four-Oh, …one, two, 3, IIII, V, pick up six, seven-heaven, I forgot what 8 was for…you get the point. And Bob Seger has been with me for the majority of the ride that has been without a Harley but has hardly been easy, the ride that has been my life.
I discovered Seger’s music through a song that would go on to define much of my personality. “Feel Like a Number” taught this (now former) young man that he would not be treated like “just another spoke in a wheel, another blade of grass in a great big field.” It is a basic rock song of lyrical hyperbole that provides a perspective on growing up but not conforming. My path had little to do with the now cliché non-conformists of the 1980s, the “I won’t give into 9-5 and wear a tie” mantra that so many of my friends proclaimed. Rather, it was the ability to not conform within my own generation that has kept me on an even keel. Drugs were never of interest to me and beer tasted like I had just grown a cat’s tongue and licked a field of wheat until my throat had gone dry. Abstaining from vice had a little something to do with having learned that song.
Thus, I sought other songs, bought that album and went on to collect almost everything Bob Seger played with either the Silver Bullet Band, the Seger System, or his solo work – except for that damn ellusive album Noah, a rarity indeed! Among that collection was the mid-2000s CD, Face the Promise, which featured a song that would once again proclaim a message that I had to hear. That song is called “Wait for Me.”
Was I surprised Bob Seger had written another song that just so happened to strike a chord to where I was in my life at that moment? No, I wasn’t. It almost fit like the proverbial tune in-tune with life itself. Again, Seger had made music that clicked with my thinking, but one line in particular resonated with how I feel about “growing old” – not that being 40 is old!
Seger sings, “And I’ll fight for the right to go over that hill, if it only means something to me.”
It used to be that turning forty meant that one was over the hill. Not so. Now, they say that 60 is the new 40 – great, another hill to climb for one more score.
To take a cliché about aging and turn it into inspiration (as Seger has done) is like finding the fountain of tunes. Seger has brought us to a point where we now embrace aging and recognize it as a part of the process of life. Aging is neither embarrassment nor the dwindling of one’s faculties. It is, rather, an accomplishment, a personal journey still being fulfilled. It is also highly personal. In a world over-published with fluff and anti-matter, our stories become lost under the mortal shuffle and toil that is life. Yet, if we contextualize stories within our time, within our own families, and share them with friends or just write them down for the future to read, then we have made sense of the tradition of storytelling itself.
Really, my having gone to the summit of this first hill only matters to a handful of people – family, my kids in particular, a few friends, a stranger I may have helped along the way – but I must make sense of it in order to keep on living. It is the very process that has taught me lessons, opened my perspective, challenged my views for reasons both right and wrong, and showed me how to keep going.
One who fights to go onward is not a winner, he is simply a doer. Life needs to be done. Sure, it will never be complete because some idiotic idea or moronic race will come along and screw it up for the next guy, but the perfection is sought year after year, decade after decade, life after life. To this moment, I have fought a little, not as much as Seger’s song might suggest, but I have had my share of run-ins, mistakes, goof-ups, errors, mishaps, regrets and “damn-I-didn’t-know-it-all-after-all” epiphanies. I will keep on fighting. Come tragedy, disease, high water or evolution, I have a lot of living left to do. I will indeed continue to fight for my right to go over the hill, if it means something to no one but me.
It has been said in movies and proverbs that one would be fortunate to live during interesting times. While the list of things both mundane and fascinating that has transpired in these my forty years would be a full chronicle indeed, I can attest to having spanned a nuclear age, an information age, a self-serving and selfish age, a space age, a rock age, a world-torn-apart-by-chaos age, and a world-still-reinventing-itself age; but I have also seen a hopeful age, an electronic age, a self-realization age, and a we-can-do-better age.
We 1970 babies were indeed born upon the precipice of interesting times. My hunch is that Bob Seger knew what he was saying to us (or maybe a few guys like me who still rock) when he sang:
“Take it calmly and serene…”
“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then…”
“I could go east, I could go west; it was all up to me to decide…”
“Until you’ve been beside a man, you don’t know if he cries at night…”
“Dark clouds are all in the past…”
Or, quite simply,
“Turn the page…”
We move into the next decade, and I for one do so willingly and with the knowledge that I have earned a little something from going over the so-called hill.
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