In the Movies

I’m grateful for a string of cloudy, rainy days. I’m grateful my back is recovering. I’m grateful for Advil. I’m grateful for a chance to see my kids this weekend. I’m grateful for busy days and getting things done. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

It is quite good to be back live and in person, and I am quite excited to bring you the song of the week. No bad mood can survive the application of this song. KC was always an idol of mine in the 1970’s and I was pretty sure I could not (cannot) pull off that white jump suit look. But if you were to tell me I could morph into one musical celebrity of the 1970’s, I think KC is going to be my guy. Coincidentally, this one is on very heavy rotation on the basketball playlist. If one were to spy a glimpse of me shooting around at the park, there is an excellent chance this song is playing.¹

It’s been a super busy and kind of crazy couple of weeks. I managed to sneak away to go visit what may be the world’s most amazing baby. Yes, I am related to said baby and I’m lucky enough to be just a train ride away from getting to do this:

This visit also included the retrieval of a dining room table that had been loaned, but was now not needed owing to an influx of baby furniture. This presented something of a quandary because I live in an apartment that already contains a piano and way too many bookshelves. I had tried to sell the table first, thinking that there was no way to fit this very large table into my apartment, but that didn’t work, so there I was this weekend, wrestling the table from the rental van into the elevators in my building.

The first night, it looked like I lived in a consignment store or furniture thrift shop and I kind of resigned myself to just not looking in that direction very often. I would figure it out later. “Later” turned out to be early Tuesday morning, like 5:30am, when I started moving furniture around, including the piano. With the application of a little imagination, it all fit, all of it. I stood back very warily, how could this be? It actually looked really nice. I sent a picture to my daughter, who wrote back immediately expressing the same opinion—this looks so much better!

I feel like there is a metaphor in there somewhere. Sometimes when things feel crowded, when I feel pressured, I tend to resist letting anything new in. You might characterize my reaction as hunkering down and preparing to defend the perimeter. But now, everyday, I look at a living room that is so much lovelier because I let something new in; I made space for something I didn’t think would fit. I was again forced to rearrange things, including my previously-formed conceptions about how things should be, and accept change.

At some point, I would like to say to the Universe, in a very, very respectful way, that I do appreciate all of the many, many lessons and opportunities that have been presented to me for growth in the last several weeks, however, I would be cool taking a Memorial Day hiatus. Maybe tap the brakes on all of that spiritual growth.

The Big Book says that the thing that destroys alcoholics, and that must, as a consequence, be destroyed itself, is the alcoholic ego. Our insatiable desire to control the world around us, to arrange the pieces on the board, to write the script and then direct the actors. We alcoholics often mourn the loss of our egotistical running buddy, but as he grows smaller in the rear view mirror, I get a more complete picture of how he (my alcoholic ego) impacted my life and I realize how narrow his vision was, how he lacked imagination and creativity.

You see, when I thought I was in control of my own life, the captain of my own destiny, my focus was too narrow, too constricted. I failed to appreciate, or even see, all of the wondrous and exciting things life had to offer. But like all of us, I had formed a narrative about what my life was really about, what I really needed, what should be happening for me, and who to blame when the things that were supposed to happen didn’t. I failed to see all of the possibilities that were always right there.

I’ve had kind of a quiet, reflective week owing to the back injury connected to the radical transformation of my living quarters and also to a stretch of very foggy and rainy weather. The me of ten years ago would have done a lot of drinking during a quiet stretch like this, made sure that I couldn’t see what was going on around me, and with me, too clearly. Now, I sit on the pirate balcony surveying the northernmost reaches of York Avenue, and feel contentment, peace and a sense of excitement wash over me. I don’t know what happens next to me, where the next page or chapter will lead; that used to provoke profound fear in me and drive me to action. What’s different?

I have what I need.

I look around and see how lucky I am, I can see the beauty in the life I get to live now, the one that unfolds in front of me in truly unpredictable ways. The old me saw life like a straight, flat train track and a very tight timetable; we had places to go and it was time to get rolling. Don’t get me wrong, I work very hard and am very busy, but since I’ve been taken out of the overall strategery role, well things just keep getting better.

I really love movies. My mom loved old movies, so I saw all of those repeatedly while growing up. Also, growing up in Iowa City with a university right there and all of the different film societies meant that there were movies to go to nearly every night of the week, if one was so inclined. I’d go to the Student Union, pay my $2 and then slide into a screening of La Piscine, or Casablanca, or Breathless, or The 400 Blows or Rashomon. I accidentally gave myself a pretty thorough film education and it’s something I still love today. New York is one of the greatest cities on earth for movies, I’ve even seen Planet of the Apes in a movie theater here. That’s how great it is.

You can often find me at the Film Forum or the IFC by west 4th Street or my favorite, the Quad cinema (they have a fantastic coffee bar and very comfortable seats). What is it I love so much about movies? I think it’s because it’s watching someone else tell a story. I sit in movies and often think, why couldn’t my life be like that? Usually the answer is because I never considered that I could do those things, my own need to control everything around me constricted my view, narrowed my focus and led me to miss a lot of the beautiful, exciting stuff that life puts all around us.

I’ve come to see the narratives we all build to explain the world around us, our own personal scripts, if you will, are usually what holds us back. Our own personal views obscure the greater opportunities presented by the Universe to grow into what we were meant to be, to learn what we needed to learn this time through, to see what we needed to see. My own narrative, the script I wrote, was like wearing blinders.

I could only see what I let myself see.

Getting sober meant accepting that there was a power greater than myself that determined what happened most of the time. That meant I needed to look at life as though I was watching a movie, instead of directing one. I do think my life is a bit of a movie and it’s made up of a patchwork of some of the scenes from my favorite movies of all time. I think of Rick saying goodbye to Elsa in Casablanca, Bill Murray wordlessly whispering in Scarlet Johannson’s ear at the end of Lost in Translation, even Kevin Costner’s “I believe” speech in Bull Durham.

The old me was often wearing a black beret and shouting at people while trying to bring my glorious vision to life, and of course drinking quite a bit. Now, there’s not too much I love more than slipping down to a movie theater, getting my coffee and some snacks and then settling down in the dark to watch someone else tell a story. Of course, that’s how my life actually feels these days, like a beautiful movie unfolding all around me, all sorts of plot twists and turns, and no idea how it ends.

The thing I feel the most these days is freedom. The freedom to do what I love and to be with the people I care about. The freedom to chase dreams and new opportunities. The freedom to be myself. And it’s that last one that is most important. If I’m not myself, none of this can happen, or it will be happening to the wrong guy. All of this freedom derives from my willingness to be myself, to accept myself and to show up as myself in the world.

Here’s the thing: If I’m not myself, how will what’s meant for me find me?

Happy Friday.

1. And yes, I do try to time the shots so that they would hit when the horns blow.