Tag: Eric Clapton

Tears for Connecticut

If this blog were written in ink, it would be blotted with tears.

The photo of a school parent on cell  phone crying says it all.

Tears over wireless. Tears over space. Heck, I am in Vietnam, and won’t be back after Christmas. But I feel the pinch, the lump in the throat (try to listen to Tears in Heaven, by Eric Clapton, while advancing the slides about Newtown memorial service).

Who is to be blamed? God? Gun? or (lack of ) Gut?

The First Lady has been hard at work to improve school lunch (healthier menu). She got some opposition there (how hard is it to add yogurt and sliced apple to the institutional menu? Just outsource to McDonald).

Now, the job is not to add fresh fruit to the school. It’s to take the guns out of it.

The upcoming battle in America is not from outside. It’s right there from within.

Hollywood has taken the path of least resistance (sex + violence =  high revenue).

Porn sites were even lazier (just upload and watch your own).

Moralists are definitely not listened to (Cultural Literacy recommends the public to read Chaucer etc…) since they are way out of touch with mainstream conversation.

That leaves the World Wild West unfiltered.

In Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe painted an America of the future, with setting in Miami (giant projected porn flick on sail boats).

Each President got a four-year term, or 8 years max. Policies and politics don’t take the long view. They can not.

Career officers, of course, just do their jobs (until it changes again).

Meanwhile, no single person, well-meaning or not, can affect the outcome of the country. It’s natural selection. It always has been since its founding.

Checks and bounces. On the other hand, it’s this and that. When in doubt, we debate. Once in a while, we listen to Ron Paul, at least, out of courtesy, since it was his last speech before Congress.

But then, we move on. Short-term amnesia. Until the next tragedy. Aurora seems so far away. Now, it’s Newtown, Connecticut. Then, who could pro-actively prevent Newton, Mass? Wipe those tears away. Then, stand up. (as of this edit, there was a similar tragedy averted in Central FL University).

Those gun laws were written in their times within the agrarian Frontier contexts. Take the meaning, reframe it in new context. Yes, there are timeless stuff (right to privacy, right to self-defense and freedom of expression; all the good stuff that makes America what it is, a magnet to the world’s braves), but then, would you, as an Iraqi refugee, an Egyptian businessman, a French chef and Australian educator, think twice about coming to America, risking everything, including the young lives of your children? It makes for poor image as world’s leader.

How do they know?

Have you ever wondered how some songs deliver just the right emotion? How do they know what’s relevant and resonating? Chicago‘s If You Leave Me Now, for instance.

On these blogs, we often mentioned the eccentric, the peculiar and oddities.

Rarely do we put much effort articulating those feelings and God forbid, meltdown or breakdown (Newtown, Conn).

This job belongs to recording artists.

In Advice to A Young Poet, Rilke was referring to being broken, being vulnerable, as prerequisites for being a poet.

Now, that’s painful.

To achieve authenticity, you to have to live through it. To pay the price (Eric Clapton‘s Tears in Heaven did not come about without his personal loss).

Who would be willing? To lose that much to gain that little? MBA candidates wouldn’t choose that route. (I was asked yesterday what’s the use of these blogs?).

Then, we touted creativity, inventiveness and “out of the box” thinking.

Serial entrepreneurs and lovers have one thing in common: they both tried and tried hard down that path (risk taking).

Without rejection, you wouldn’t get results (think of Marconi and Marie Curie).

Those in Sales know without Cold Calling, there wouldn’t be enough rejection to fill the sales funnel. Seth Godin wrote a bunch of unknown books before he got a hit (Linchpin). Colonel Sanders almost gave up as retirement was nearing.

It’s the numbers game. The Beatles logged in 10,000 hours bouncing around from Hamburg to Liverpool to become who they were.

To close : How do they know? They don’t.

They tried and failed. Then try again. Until they got it just right. It hit the spot . Think of Stephen Bishop‘s It Might Be You.

Maybe it’s you. “Wondering how they met and what makes it last”. Keep trying. Don’t give up on us, baby. It must be you. One-hit wonder is OK. As long as it’s the Whiter Shade of Pale.

Try until it’s right. How do I know? I am still trying. It’s only my 900th blog.

Tears in the here and now

I am not Italian.

Yet I broke out in tears yesterday, at least three times.

A medical check revealed that I had a minor stroke five years ago, which means I have lived on life extension without knowing it.

Had I known this sooner, would I have lived my life differently?

Or moving forward, what corrections must I make.

I forwarded medical facts about stroke to friends.

I called up close friends and families to tell them I loved them dearly.

I hated myself for letting distraction become attraction, and 80 become 20 (80/20 rule).

Clapton nailed his emotion in “Tears in heaven” after his child’s accident.

Tears wash away regrets and cleanse our hearts. One could fake a laugh, not a tear.

Not men.

Not non-Italian men.

If I had died five years ago, I would have regret not meeting new people, attending live music and seeing new places (good, bad and ugly).

I would be a lost soul, floating near Earth‘s surface to “crash” the gates of aristocrat’s parties, rock concerts and launch parties (movies and books).

I would nest near my daughters’ beds, so as not to wake them.

I would cry, shed ghostly tears when boy friends broke my daughters’ hearts.

And I would laugh at friends’ jokes without consuming the beer.

I would still submit requests for my favorite 70’s songs and wish that generation never disappear.

My spirit will continue to look for a heart of gold, still do it my way, and clip a flower on a girl’s hair in San Francisco.

Yes, there have been tears to pepper laughter. After all, it’s part of the script. Life script . Of growing up, growing old and growing wise.

Best part of living in spirit and not in body is that you get to travel for free. In weightlessness, we are free to carry one another’s burden. He ain’t heavy, he is my brother.

Strange sounds, familiar shores

Instead of “I woke up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me…” like Paul McCartney,

I woke up to strange sounds these days: peddlers who use “low tech” au parleur (bull horn) mounted on bicycles or tri-cycles (selling boot-legged CD‘s). In fact, it was my first time got chased by pleasant sound from behind (most of the time, it was emergency vehicle with a sense of urgency). By music here, I mean, not Beatles‘, but Slow Rock (nhac Sen), lamenting heart ache and heart-break.

In the evening, you can hear metal belt sound for in-home massage ( I have never tried).

I miss those wood-on-wood sound of a noodle peddler.

Those were the best snacks a boy could wish for. Speaking of Vietnam childhood and music.

Steve Jobs and friends were listening to music with headsets so they could do it while laying down.

One of his signature photos was an empty room with just a lamp, with him sitting cross-legged.

Very Zen-like. Minimalist. Pure simplicity in design.

He went on to take classes in calligraphy (even Reed College curriculum was still too restrictive for his type).

The sum of all these experience gave us the I-pod with ear-plugs, and later on the I-phone and I-pad.

Studies mentioned that babies could hear before birth.

If this is true, I must have heard an early scooter, a vendor on wheels, someone trying to get the grill going, or a rooster announcing a new day.

Dawn in Vietnam and dusk in the US. (You can experience similar feel, let’s say by traveling down Mexico, but then they got the same time zone as in the US).

Sharing the same Moon.

Sharing the same hope, fear and dream:

Will my kids grow up “con nha lanh” (teachable), and not into drugs.

Will they stay or leave for strange shores?

Will they listen to our voice, those familiar sounds, or they will just “follow the money” and “hearing voices”.

In the end, especially in our flat world, the sound of jet engine and popping soda cans will bring us home from any strange shore.

For a moment there at my friend’s party, we danced and jumped to a familiar tune (sound), felt our hearts go on beating (The End of the World) and saddened “when you say, ‘goodbye'”. The day can’t go wrong when you “get up to the sound of music”, let’s say in “Beautiful Sunday” (when you said, you love me, hey, hey, it’s a beautiful day). Or at night, when soothing sound you first heard while inside Mummy’s womb was that of the noodle man’s peddling.

My list of Influencers

Despite their flaws (who doesn’t have one please cast the first stone), these are the people I look up to:

– President Carter with his commitment to build housing for the poor

– President Clinton out of that place called Hope

– Jim Elliot, the late great missionary who died for his cause

– Danny Devito who despite his “short-coming”, managed to secure a starring role in Taxi

– Nelson Mandela, there is no need to elaborate here

– Cheryl Crow for touring and making it as an artist in a predominantly male rockers club

– Norman Mailer for speaking out and writing up monumental pieces of literature

– Charlie Chaplin, who saw the inhumanity of the system, and in the process makes us laugh without a need for words

– Robert Redford who started Sundance Festival to encourage young film makers to step up to the plate

– Kevin Costner whose ambition has been unmatched, and he has lived out his role in Water World (not oily world)

– Hillary Clinton who personifies multitasking, self-reinventing and America itself

– Steve Jobs who got booted out of corporate America, but somehow, turned crisis into opportunity, the Yin into the Yan

– John Travolta, the comeback kid to become the star that he meant to be in Pulp Fiction and still counting

– George Harrison and Eric Clapton, to have their sweet guitar “gently weeps” for Bangladesh flood victims

– and most recently, senator Kennedy, who could have just kept quiet and sailed around the world for 40 years.

Each one of us take a play page from the many “sparks of divinity” without knowing it.

They inspire us, and show us new heights.

No, they are not naive. They know the costs and consequences of their action.

But they also know the opportunity cost of their inaction.

While  TIME and Forbes lists are updated annually,

Our pantheon of the gods need daily update.

Like our heroes, we are to use talent and technology for social change.

In the process, we better ourselves,.

Silicon Valley has come to you. It’s up to you to start meeting “gentle people” online.

No wonder TIME People of the Year a few years back was YOU. The burden is now on YOU.

Become my new influencers as I yours. We do need each other to make it through this world and leave behind a better one.