This is a post that I sent to my ukulele students.
Many people consider taking a music class at some point in their lives. Studying an instrument or using your voice in new ways can be a little bit challenging, and I think people think about doing these activities when things are peaceful, and they are feeling expansive, like they have some “wiggle room” in their schedule. That makes sense.
That being said, my own music practice has grown out of my tendency to focus on music at times in my life that were difficult. For me, playing music and singing is a powerful emotional regulation tool–when life is feeling chaotic or overwhelming, musical activity helps me focus on parts of myself that I can control and nurture.
I may have spent the whole day at work having to bite my tongue or not express my difficult feelings about my working atmosphere, but then I can come home and channel all of those feelings into a musical activity that helps to lower my heart rate, regulate my breathing, and stimulate my creative mind. I can learn to play a song that I then share with my friends or family, which creates a sense of shared experience, which also helps to relieve my stress and help me feel connected to my community.
So, even though taking on the challenge of learning an instrument might seem like an extra thing to have to manage in a busy schedule, that time that we spend making music can provide a welcome balance to our regular working life.
So far so good. After 2 weeks on meds and a consultation with the pharmacist, I doubled the original dose, and i don’t see increasing any more going forward. My sleep patterns have stabilized and I am actually sleeping more and deeper. This is probably in part due to the fact that I am no longer napping in the afternoon, so at night I am actually tired and fall right asleep.
My step count is on point, and for the last week I have averaged 5 miles a day. I am down 15 pounds from my January weight. I do sometimes forget to eat, but I’m not actually skipping meals, and I have less of a tendency to just clean my plate on principle.
This is all great, but what about my attention? This is a little more difficult to wrap up succinctly. I have continued to experience a decrease in “background noise” that would pull me away from a task. I have also noticed a subtle but unambiguous change in my connection with my current instrument, the ukulele. I have always had a difficult time internalizing and retaining patterns–I have to practice a lot to memorize and integrate new material, and even then it doesn’t always “stick.” It seems lately that the circuits seem to be firing a bit more smoothly. Not a dramatic change by any means, but noticeable and welcome.
What medication hasn’t helped with is the sense of panic and dread I feel from situational sources: caring for and managing the affairs of a loved one with dementia; a marked downward trend in enrollment in music classes, my source of income; parenting a neurodivergent teen who, like me, learns everything the hard way and navigates a world that wasn’t necessarily designed for him; and watching the failure of our justice system and legislature to stop the dismantling of our hard-won civil liberties, environmental protections, and social safety net. All I can do is focus on the task at hand and avoid ruminating, and with that I feel more vulnerable and see fewer options each day. My instinct for self-preservation has seemedly not increased with my ability to focus.
My mind’s tendency toward world-building seems to continue unchecked as well–there is an unrelenting “impossible dream” that a big part of my consciousness is trying to realize, which saps a great deal of the energy which I feel should go into organizing my activities into a sustainable livelihood. Well, that’s that. To be continued …
The mindset of the people dismantling our social and environmental protections is the mindset of people who go into National Parks and push over rock formations that took millions of years to form. It is a mindset that is incapable of awe, empathy, self-reflection, or vulnerability; that can only feel something when exercising power or control. There’s no point in asking why or trying to make sense of their actions–they will say one thing one day and the opposite the next. The only answer is a mindset of greed, hatred, and ignorance.
We can overcome this mindset in ourselves, through practices that promote awe, empathy, self-reflection, and vulnerability, and so spread these qualities through our interactions.
One of the things that makes the current crisis so difficult is that this particular class of disruptors as a rule do not mix with people who cultivate awe, empathy, self-reflection, and vulnerability. They would feel quite uncomfortable to find themselves among such people. Once this corrupted mindset takes hold in a government or society, it really takes sustained effort, a grand gesture, to overcome it. What will this grand gesture look like? Will we recognize the moment for action when it arises? Are we capable of such a grand gesture?
No one should be confused about what is happening in our government. It is cultural revolution, on the scale of the program implemented by Mao in China in the 1960s and 70s. It is an attempt to create a complete break with institutional memory so as to assert greater control over the mechanism of government.
Institutional memory exists in the connections between people, and it is fragile. It’s not something that can be preserved in digital storage or even the printed page. It is even hard to articulate: it really takes place in the invisible spaces between people, and individuals may not even know that they are participating in it.
Case in point: I lead family music classes for parents and young children. A staple movement activity is the train, where one person follows the person in front of them, and we move together in a sinuous line, connected by invisible bonds held together by our individual attention and our collective intention. If you think about this, you may be able to remember doing such an activity in school or Sunday school, or at camp. It’s an activity that most people have engaged in. Instructions for such an activity could be written down, but it needs to be experienced to truly understand the subtle workings of the train.
I had been teaching and leading trains in my classes for about 20 years when Covid shut down in-person musical gatherings for a couple of years. I had 20 years of lesson plans all ready to go when things opened up again. On one level, it was easy for me to pick up right where I left off, but it wasn’t that simple. One of the first things I noticed is that people were no longer able to make a train without a great deal of description and demonstration. The first few classes I tried to just lead the train, expecting that folks would intuitively know to jump on board. Instead, people’s attention would wander, and once folks got disconnected from the train, they wouldn’t know how to get back on, resulting in a chaotic mass of divided attention. Over the course of several weeks, I was able to cultivate a community that was able to focus and have a satisfying train experience. To do this took attention, focus, patience, and trust.
So many of the structures that we rely on to get our needs met are just like this train. Understanding is passed on through overlapping groups of skilled people, whether it’s knowing how to sort the mail, understanding the needs of people who receive aid, having the wisdom to know just where to push to get an environmental protection through to legislation, or knowing first hand how a diplomat from another country will respond to certain types of language. To think that government agencies will just recover and learn how to function as the individuals change all at once is wrong–and it’s not even the point of such a cultural revolution as is happening. The current individuals in power want the institutions to cease to exist, rather than re-organize. They want to interrupt the institutional memory of how to make the train, and then to erase the cultural space that made that type of cooperation possible.
It is imperative, if we value democracy and the myriad agreements and cultural memory that makes it possible, that we stop this interruption. We must continue to nurture and cultivate the spaces where complex institutional memory can build on itself. We must focus, intend, trust, and practice patience, before the memory of how things work is lost to neglect. The time to focus is now.
While I do believe that individuals have influence, I see that we live in a society where actual power is accumulated in the hands of only a few individuals. While I do believe that peaceful protest has an influence on the powerful, I see that peaceful protest without the participation of individuals with accumulated power has limited influence. I believe that a general strike that shuts down the workings of the economy from the bottom is the only way to stand against the cultural revolution that is taking place in our government, but I see that such an action is not possible without the participation of labor leaders, career diplomats, military leaders, state and local political figures, and conscientious financial agents (if they exist).
To create the conditions whereby a general strike can be effective, I believe that social media is of little utility. We must communicate to and through channels which most of us are not accustomed to speaking with.
If you are a member of a union of some kind, speak directly to the head of that union, if possible, about your concerns about the dismantling of protections for workers in your field. Enlist their support for an organized general strike. Communicate directly with your elected representatives at the federal, state, and local levels, and speak directly about how you and your family are impacted by the current administration’s actions to dismantle government agencies that support education, healthcare, national parks, the arts, protection for immigrants and the environment. Communicate directly with the heads of your financial institutions, your insurance companies, your utility companies, your primary, secondary, and higher education institutions. Let them know about how you are impacted by the current administration’s dismantling of oversight and protections, frankly and without blame.
If you are an immigrant, or are connected with the diplomatic community of another country, communicate with the consulate and let them know about any human rights violations that directly concern you.
If you are a present or past member of the military, communicate with the highest member of your branch that you can reach, and let them know your real concerns about the policies that the current administration is implementing. We have influence as individuals, but at this time we must concentrate that influence by putting pressure on the organizations and institutions where power is accumulated. Posting on social media has limited utility, and does not put pressure on the real centers of power.
I have gotten my ADHD diagnosis from Kaiser. In talking with other friends about their experiences with this process, it’s clear that no two stories are alike. I’ll be describing my experiences, but it’s probably best to assume that your assessment process will look different should you choose to try it.
I called Kaiser to ask for an assessment. They gave me an appointment to have me speak over the phone to a clinician. When the day came, I was asked questions for around 45 minutes, related to my mental health history, education and work experience, and family history. They scheduled a follow-up phone appointment for the following day. The clinician told me that, based on my answers to the questions, I was in the range for going on to a more in-depth assessment that would also take place over the phone and would take about 3 hours. They also said that I showed signs of anxiety and depression, and asked if I would like to see a therapist. I asked if this was covered by my plan, and they said yes, I would receive weekly visits with a therapist with no copay. I definitely took them up on it, and have been meeting with a therapist over Zoom ever since. I guess Kaiser is really stepping up their mental health game. More on that in another post.
The three-hour follow-up assessment was similar to the first one, but I was asked for more details about my experiences. I was also asked about my history of traumatic experiences. The clinician was very kind and thorough, and I felt at ease, and even unburdened, to share my story.
The next step was to ask a friend or family member to complete a peer assessment. I sent the link to a friend who has known me for around 30 years and who is a therapist, thinking that they would probably be a person with a balanced view relative to the subject. During the follow-up with the clinician, they asked why I had chosen that particular friend to do the peer assessment. Evidently the assessment created a discrepancy with my self-assessment. They said that it was clear from my self-assessment that a diagnosis of ADHD was appropriate, but my friend’s peer assessment didn’t support my own. The clinician asked if I had another friend who would be willing to take the peer assessment. I passed the link on to another friend, a parent who I worked closely with for a number of years. This friend took the assessment, and afterwards reflected to me that the questions seemed to have little relevance regarding my symptoms or functionality. The clinician contacted me for a follow-up, saying that there were still discrepancies, so rather than offer a diagnosis, they referred me to the psychiatrist to take the tests described in a previous post.
When I appeared for the visit with the psychiatrist, they told me that my assessments showed clearly that I suffer from ADHD symptoms, but that these tests would be helpful to determine if I was trying to game the system to get meds. They asked if I am a regular cannabis user (I’m not), and proceeded to describe a common scam among younger people: evidently a cannabis user will game the system to get meds, and then trade the meds for cannabis. They had me take a urine test on the way out.
There is a place between sleep and wakefulness, where we recognize our thoughts, but also see things that are unfamiliar. There is a space between thinking and feeling, where shapes represent processes, an itch can appear connected to a firecracker going off, and a mental picture can place itself in both the center of our self and the center of the earth. This is the world I have lived in from a very young age. Juxtapositions of shapes.
There are psycho-physical movies that play on the screen of my nervous system. They could be described as dreams, and remembering them as remembering a dream when awake. I can look at the sky, and feel the wind blow across my face. Why is this any more real than hearing a person’s voice, and feeling shapes and colors moving across my consciousness? My chosen spiritual tradition eschews dreaming for waking up to the present moment, but how can I discriminate between the heat from the sun and the sense of movement from the activity just beneath the surface of my skin?
As I have gotten older, I can more easily compartmentalize the dream world from the waking world, but I fully realize I am doing that, and am not proud of the separation of worlds. Both sides imagine that there is a balance place where we can live and interact with both sides equally.
—
In 1973, the family configuration of my 7-year-old self moved into a house on Owens Street in Klamath Falls, Oregon. This is not important, except that the memory I am sharing is connected to my sleeping space in that house, and to the sidewalk and parking strip outside.
The house was a single-family home, built in the 1930s, Downstairs there was a kitchen, and a connected dining/living room, and one bedroom and a bathroom. The upstairs space included three rooms–a small family room, a small bedroom in the middle, which was my little brother’s room, and a larger bedroom that housed my train set, my record player, and my sleeping space, which was behind a small door, under the sloped roof–not quite an attic, as it was at the same level as the floor of the room. This small huddle-space where I slept was the place where this recurring dream germinated.
Time to sleep: I would crawl into the crawl-space under-the-roof, where my mattress was on the floor. I remember a heavy fabric sleeping bag, from before the days of puffy, light, slick sleeping bags. That was my bed, with the slanted ceiling, under the roof-space. A cubby-hole, as we called it in those days. I slept in a cubby-hole.
This particular memory is in the form of a recurring dream, that began before I fell asleep, and ended with me awake and disoriented. I can’t say how much time passed between these two states, or how deeply into dreaming or sleep I had gone. During the time that I was falling asleep, my consciousness was drifting between what I knew and what I only suspected. I would feel my body engulfed in the heavy sleeping bag, and my mind would wander around the world that I knew: sidewalks, grass, car rides, the radio, casserole.
My mind would stretch out. At first, it was aware of everything that was solid: rocks, hills, water, the vast landscape that I could imagine as the firmament that supported the next layer that came into my consciousness–plant and animal life.
Something inside me could feel the breathing of the plants and animals. It was too big to zero in on any one thing, just a layer on the firmament that was pulsing, and oozing, and breathing.
Next, another layer emerged–the layer that included mechanical things, and electrical things–gears and wires, machinery and circuits, all covering the planet, interconnected with the plants and animals and rocks and water.
Perceiving all of this together was literally mind-boggling–not being able to see any one thing, my rational 7-year-old mind was overwhelmed, and yet breathed along with it. I knew that I was feeling life itself going through all of its processes. As soon as I would feel the layers merge, and my sense of space dissolve, the scene would shift, and I was watching a scene that might happen on any normal day.
The sidewalk in front of our house, deeply cracked and crumbling from the cycles of freezing Winter and sweltering Summer, from the point-of-view of my eyes. I felt myself walking on the sidewalk and noticing the yellow dandelions among the grass in the parking strip. My attention rested on a single, yellow dandelion, surrounded by green. I was attracted to it, and I bent down, and plucked…
And at the moment that I plucked the dandelion, all of the multi-layered universe that I had been overwhelmed by moments before, that had been breathing, and struggling, and whirring, and grinding, and beeping…
…stopped.
Vast silence seemed to stretch out forever.
There was an understanding that the stopping of everything was related to the plucking of the dandelion. And also, it was all gone–the multi-layered universe was gone, and all that was left was just me, in my cubby-hole bed, wondering how I could possibly live life without breaking it.
I’m pretty sure everyone has a scary clown story. Here’s mine:
1968-69: My eyes opened. I was in my bed. The first things I took in were the walls. My bed was set into an alcove. The wall of the alcove was to my left, and the head and foot of the bed had their own half walls. My view widened to include more of the room. Past the foot of the bed, and slightly to the right, there was a window, about the level of the head and torso of an adult. I awoke, opened my eyes, and allowed my eyes to adjust to the light coming in the window, and slowly took in the shape that was contained within the window.
There was a human form crouched in the window, maybe squatting on the window sill–it’s not clear. As my eyes focused, I could see that the person’s face was obscured by makeup-white pancake base, big red oversized lips, bulbous red nose, eyes like horizontal slits with vertical slits slashed through them. There was some kind of collar, but I only call it a collar in retrospect, as I didn’t know what a collar was. I didn’t know what a clown was, either. I am describing an experience through adult eyes that didn’t make any sense to me as a young child, but that I can recall as clearly as I experienced it as a child.
This character was looking at me. He was a character, but he was also a person. He was looking at me, and pointing at me. He was looking at me, and pointing at me, and smiling at me, with that painted-on smile that I was not able to interpret. Was this a happy face? What was the intention behind this painted-on smile? Was I supposed to smile along? I did not feel like smiling along. I did not trust this character. I did not trust this person.
He was looking at me, and pointing at me, and smiling at me, and saying, over and over again, “You…, you…, you…, you…,” and laughing. And laughing. And laughing. “You…, you…, you…”
I felt my eyes widen, and my breath catch, and then rush in in a big rush, and an electric feeling of terror, and I screamed… I awoke screaming. Someone came and got me, and picked me up and hugged me.
And that was it. That’s the end of the memory. I can still recall it like it happened yesterday. I have described this dream to each of my parents, and as far as I can tell, I was maybe 2 or 3 years old, judging by the description of the space. The clown form in my memory is the clown from a box of straws (you might recognize it), and I remember that box being in the house, and I remember being confused that the clown from my dream was on the box of straws.
As an adult, I can totally enjoy clowns, slapstick body-humor, the thrill of the unknown intention, and of the obscured identity. But it is an enjoyment that is a bit like enjoying the feeling of jumping into a hole in the ice of a frozen lake, having almost drowned once, and having trained oneself to get past the initial reaction of panic as one’s body is engulfed in bitingly cold water.
Feb 14, 1976: I had done something wrong. I don’t remember what, but I had been sent to my room. It was after dinner. I was almost 10, but not quite.
Being sent to my room was not the worst thing that could happen. Sometimes, when I did something wrong, I got the belt, or the nearest piece of two-by-four. Sometimes I got a talking-to. Sometimes I had to write a penance 50 times–”I will consider my words before talking back.” But tonight, I was just sent to my room. It was after dinner, so it was just my time, as far as I was concerned.
I had a train set–a pretty nice one–with it’s own plywood platform (my dad worked at a plywood mill), and a few plastic trees, stations, and railroad workers. I developed some facility in using the connectors, and could sculpt some satisfying layouts. This night, I was just enjoying watching the train respond to the gentle pressure of my fingers on the potentiometer that controlled the speed of the train. And I was listening to the radio.
The radio was my church from a very early age. I had been given an incredible radio as a child. It was the size of a modern toaster oven, and had buttons like piano keys that allowed one to choose from multiple bands that one doesn’t see on most consumer radios: Long Wave, Short Wave I, Short Wave II, AM, FM, etc. You could tune in the local AM station, or you could find stations that broadcast in Morse Code, or random tones that sounded both cool and ominous.
This night, I was listening to KAGO Klamath Falls, the AM station that played American Top 40 (as I write this, I am audiating both the American Top 40 jingle and the jingle for KAGO, though it’s been 45 years since I’ve heard either one). Watching the train go around the track, and through the tunnel, and get faster and slower in response to my hand on the dial, I listened to Casey Kasem describe the top 40 hits of the time. Each song was familiar, as KAGO was a Top 40 station, and it was what was playing in the school bus, and my step-mom’s car. I remember thinking about the ranking of the songs:
Wow, that song Bohemian Rhapsody is so new-sounding and weird, but it’s also sad, and I like it
Junk Food Junkie is funny
Dream Weaver should be higher. It’s really cool
Golden Years! I love that song! Should be in the Top 5!
Oh! What A Night: I don’t know what it’s about, but it seems very grown up, so I think I should like it
I Write The Songs: I sing this to myself all the time, except when no one is around, and then I sing it at the top of my lungs! Greatest song ever!
So, as I was watching the train go around, and mentally commenting on the hits of the week, I was also formulating in my mind what I thought would be the number one song in the nation on that evening. Even before Casey was at number 15, I had decided that 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover was going to be the number one song.
I didn’t have any evidence that led to this conclusion. I just knew it. It wasn’t necessarily my favorite song that week (I think I Write The Songs was my jam at that point in time), but I just had this feeling in my shins that 50 Ways was going to be the number one song.
And then I forgot about it. I got lost in the train. I got lost in hearing ELO sing about an Evil Woman, which was so interesting, and exciting-sounding, and new, but confusing as well. What was an evil woman about? I got caught up in imagining what a Love Machine would look like. I tried to imagine what the sexy part of You Sexy Thing looked like. Remember, I was almost 10. And the train was going around and around.
And then, it happened. It was time. The number one song in the nation was: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.
I knew it. How did I know it? I was right. How was I right?
A great stillness came over me as I realized that I had merged with the will of the nation, and the list of possibilities of how this could have happened ran out. That stillness, and the wonder of having been correct in my projections, lasted a long time.
I can still call it up, as I struggle with more current concerns–the memory that I was right, once, when I was almost 10, somehow sustains my 50-something self. That stillness…
