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.