Parents really should control the music their children listen to.
Karen Carpenter, for instance. SHE was dangerous. I can’t believe my parents let me listen to that woman.
I was eleven in 1970, when The Carpenters, Karen and her equally dangerous brother Richard, recorded “Close to You,” a veritable anthem of the Me Generation. I was a tender-hearted, impressionable, artistic lad with a hair-trigger sensitivity. An innocent, vulnerable boy.
Imagine it. I put on my headphones, place “Close to You” on the record player, and lie back. Suddenly the voice of an angel is singing into my ear, and I’ll believe ANYTHING she tells me.
And what did she tell me?
That whenever I get near, “birds suddenly appear,” that “stars fall down from the sky every time I walk by,” that all those birds and stars longed to be close to me. That on my birthday “angels got together and decided to make a dream come true” and that they “sprinkled moon dust in my hair of gold” and “starlight in my eyes of blue,” and that “all the girls in town” longed to be close to me.
These are NOT ideas you want planted in the mind of your boy child.
I’m 65. The skin is beginning to sag on my bones. Hairs sprout from my ears. I’m developing a hammer toe. Yet I still think the bluebirds of desire flutter round my head in an irresistible romantic halo. It’s embarrassing, and I blame Karen, her devil brother Richard, and my parents, who were too busy partying like it was 1969 to notice that their son was in the clutches of a pop-star Circe, trapped on an isle of enchantment called “Me.”
I don’t want to talk down the self. First, because it would be so obviously hypocritical. Most of us think we’re hot stuff. Second, because doing so associates me with that nasty brand of religion that claims human nature is filth. And third, because one of life’s greatest pleasures—perhaps the pleasure that makes all others possible—is becoming oneself, becoming particular.
I am not my data, and the good life is not fitting into the ever-growing ganglia of impersonal systems that would render me anonymous and controllable. I can love only individuals, singular characters with unique combinations of looks, histories, enthusiasms, and yes, even dysfunctions. And that includes myself. As Whitman says, “I celebrate myself and sing myself.”
Still, one feels the self is not enough.
The self has all our favorite furniture, plays all our favorite movies, feeds us all our favorite foods—and confirms all our favorite nonsense. And yet, one can’t help but feel the self is a comfortable prison. Inside it, we play warden, guard, and prisoner, so it’s difficult to see that it’s not the all-inclusive resort it bills itself to be.
The wide world around us urges us outward, beyond ourselves. “Clear and sweet is my soul,” Whitman also wrote, “and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.”
We distinguish ourselves in this life not only by becoming our weird selves, but also by the paths we choose to get OUT of the prison of self.
The path of service—the life of teachers, counselors, political activists, community organizers, child care workers, priests and pastors, coaches, nurses, and therapists—expands the self. Seeing and meeting the needs of others forces the self out of itself and into the human community.
The path of contemplation—the life of Zen monks, Eastern Orthodox Hesychasts, Zen Roshis, Islamic dervishes, Catholic contemplatives, and Hindu yogis—loosens the self so that it begins to see itself as resting in a bigger Self—God, Nature, or Being. (The contemplative knows this experience outruns the words we use to describe it).
The path of creation—the artistic life of painters, writers, sculptors, musicians, dancers, athletes, screenwriters, actors, and puppeteers—externalizes the self, pushing it into form after form. The artist puts her self into the things she makes, thereby unmasking it as a protean fiction.
All these paths can themselves become ways of inflating the ego, and there are many other paths beyond the prison of self. These three are only the ones I have some little experience in trying to walk.
When I meet a new person, these are the two questions I want to ask: Who are you? And how do you escape the prison of self?
I spent hours mesmerized by Karen’s words, but when I realized—slowly but surely—I was in a prison, I stole a spoon from the Chow Hall and began digging my way out. The tunnel is long. I hope it’s going in the right direction. I don’t know how far I have to go before I’m out from under the fence.
I can still hear Karen’s voice singing, but only in the distance; it’s fading: “Just like me, they long to be, close to you, close to you, close to you.”
Close to me? Who’s that?
This writing becomes personal for me .... especially, living alone and LOVING it, and, now, being retired. Seeking "community" and staying connected and contributing has always taken lots of intention from me, and maybe continue to take more intention. :) Thanks, Chris.