XI: In Which I Ignore the Advice of a Great Man

"Don't look back," Satchel Paige once famously advised, "something might be gaining on you." He also said "Work like you don't need the money; love like you never been hurt; dance like nobody's watching," so one ignores his dicta at his own peril. The man was clearly wise beyond his many, many years.

But I have been looking back lately. Not so much in that wistful "What could I have done differently?" way that doubtless afflicts a lot of us separated folks; I do some of that, of course, but not as much as I thought I would. The time for that was back when my future ex and I were trying to reconcile, I think, and that time has passed.

No, these days I'm looking back in an effort to find an anchor at a time when my life feels a little cut adrift. I'm looking back at where I've been in hopes that it will provide some clues about where I want to go.

Some of my backward turning has been the psychic equivalent of comfort food. I've returned to music I haven't listened to in 20 years or more, stuff I thought I'd never listen to again. When was the last time you checked out Katy Lied? It's a damn good album, in case you've forgotten; I had. I dug it up because I suspected its penultimate number, "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)," might be a fitting personal anthem for this period of my life, and I was right, although I am still reluctant to embrace a personal anthem that features Michael McDonald so prominently.

I also rediscovered Talking Heads, especially 77 and Fear of Music. In retrospect, I'm glad I let these records lay fallow for so long; otherwise, I doubt I would have recaptured the euphoria I felt when I first heard "Pulled Up" and "The Book I Read" and "Animals" and "Air" and "Cities," and then I'd never have experienced the joy of driving around Durham screaming "I know the animals are laughing at us/And they don't even know what a joke is!" over the blasting stereo and laughing like an idiot, or an animal.

Both of these records take me back to a time when I was just figuring out who I was, when I was emerging from my role as my older brother's kid brother and heading off in new, unprotected directions. I was leaving behind--temporarily--the pop of the Beach Boys and the Beatles and embracing music with more obvious pretenses (Dylan was my new god), reading Nietzsche and Kafka and Camus and lots and lots of Vonnegut, and discovering 'serious' cinema by folks like Scorsese and Coppola and Michael Cimino. I was turning into a pretty morose kid who, like a lot of adolescents, found a measure of happiness in my unhappiness. The exuberant neurosis of Talking Heads and the deep cynicism of Steely Dan were great fits for me. Today, what's such a pleasant surprise is how well that music holds up outside the framework of youthful angst. The Who, The Doors, and Pink Floyd, among many others, all demonstrate that the music that meant so much to me when I was young doesn't necessarily stand the test of time.

I've also reconnected with a lot of old friends. This was mostly an accident of fate, the happy coincidence of my life transition and the ascent of social networking, but regardless I'm glad for it. There is, of course, that awkward moment during initial communication when I'm asked, "So, what's new?" and I answer, "Well, my golf game's improved. Oh, and I lost my wife and my job!" but, as previously noted, many of them have endured much greater traumas, and we are soon commiserating and occasionally competing to see who's life is more Job-like. I almost always lose, my longstanding devotion to the Baltimore Orioles notwithstanding.

These reunions too take me back to a time when I was someone completely different, someone I don't expect I'd much like--too pretentious, too judgmental, too friggin' collegiate--and yet they are extraordinarily comforting. We've all grown together; our sharp edges have worn away, our arrogance and ambitions have been tempered by real life, and the deterioration of our youthful charms has forced us to develop other assets in order to get along in the world. We have weathered catastrophes we were truly incapable of imagining back then and we have survived them more or less in tact. We have figured out how to reconcile ourselves to the likelihood that we won't change the world and even to be glad for it, as changing the world is probably a lot of work and we're plenty busy as it is, thank you. We are the grownups we despised and swore we wouldn't become, and we're better people for it. And we still think that "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" is a kickass song.

Maybe this is where I'm going. Maybe I'm already there.

So there you go.