Chapter 32
My interview with Bill Jaker on WSKG www.wskg.org was pretty enlightening to me. I’ve listened to the exchange several times for several reasons. First, there’s the egotistic or insecure part of me that wanted to hear how I did. I’ve done dozens of interviews over the years with print, radio and TV media, but public radio is somehow different. They’re serious and take you seriously. And a one-hour interview means you stay on your toes for a long time. I've talked about when you’re “in the moment” nothing else exists, and that was certainly the case with this interview. It flew by and when it was done, I was whipped. Bill is an extremely well-rounded man in the arts, history and politics. Before the interview he and I sat in the WSKG lunch room as he ate his bowl of indeterminate something that we all pull out of the fridge and zap in the microwave. “Who do the three characters represent?” He asked. I thought about it and for the first time I truly realized who the characters represent. “Me,” I said. “They are me. Mendel is the artist. His whole existence revolves around the creative process. He doesn’t think about it; he does it. He creates. If I couldn’t create, I would not have meaning. Poul represents money. All artists want to get paid for their work, but that’s only secondary to the creative process. Money provides a means of survival so you can continue to create. Beasley represents recognition. Yes, in the book he wants to be successful. His rivals think he’s power hungry but he’s not. He wants success, which is recognition.” So it gets down to the creative process, compensation, recognition. . . and death. Mendel thinks a lot about death because death means the end of his creative explorations in this life, this dimension, and he’s not found the perfect song. Just as life is all around him and he’s fashioning it into music, so is death all around him. As he continues into years, he realizes that death is an inextricable part of the life cycle and man is the only species on earth that fears it . . . . . . I’ll come back to the interview a few more times because each time I listen to it, I learn something more. And like a recent story on This American Life, I think of things I wish I’d said. Here I can say it. Like the riots. Bill referred a couple times to the riots. What in the music would cause people to fight? Well, I’ll tell you . . . . .
I nearly flunked out of college my freshman year because I was working as a reporter. When I finally reconciled real life with academic life, I did well. I took a lot of literature, English, philosophy, psychology and art courses and have never regretted it. The emphasis now is to prepare students for the work world with practical courses. This is the antithesis of education. Liberal arts is life. Study things you don’t agree with! Argue! Search! Life is learning, discovery and change. Change is personal evolution.
(Commercial: If you haven't bought The Perfect Song yet, I do have PayPal. Go to the store and check it out. All profits from the book will be used to create a scholarship for future writers).
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