What's It All Mean?

The years I spent on Arrival, those 15 years in the back of Burger King, were driven by lots of things, personal, intellectual and otherwise. I’ve mentioned some of them on this website and in the book. but mostly it had to do with meaning, with the why’s and what if’s of ‘greatness’, of heroes, of celebrity... with the costs of such illusions, to person to family to culture. with the crap that gets peddled in their names, the crap that kids’ spirits, not to mention parents’ wallets, and all our lives, get yoked with for years.

I remember reading Rollo May early on, in the late '80s, early '90s. May talking about the “most important courage of all”, that “one quality possessed by all geniuses”, the courage to “live out their imaginations”, the courage to do “active battle with the gods”… and me thinking about that 16 year old writing to `Miss Lonelyhearts’, that 16 year old who wanted “to go out on Saturday nites”, who wanted to “have boy friends like all the other girls”, that 16 year old who “was born without a nose”, who was born with “a big hole in the middle of my face”… that 16 year old who really knew something about courage, about doing battle with the gods.

then opening yet another Mozart biography to the author’s claim that Mozart was the "best excuse ever for mankind’s existence", or reading about Picasso commenting somewhere on how he "saw that look in Van Gogh’s eyes", you know that look of determined genius…

and suddenly I see Beaner’s old man with that look in his eyes. up at Forest Hills pool pacing that poor bastard up and down… stopwatch, towel, whistle.. lap after lap, year after year. Beaner who finished second in the Foothill League finals.

and my nephews glued on the tube in their Arsenal and Man U gear, the next Beckham, Henry, Ronaldino.. or was it me and Cousy, Hot Rod Hundley..

and those 15, 16, 17 year old Harlem kids, skywalking, hot talking, slam dunking down 111th Street, those future Big O’s and Dr J’s, living out their genius on some patch of tarmac, those kids now long gone, invisible, dead on the needle.. those kids with that look in their eyes.

and later I’m thumbing through one of Eysenck’s paperbacks – Know Your Own IQ, Check Your Own IQ -- those handy little paperbacks that topped the British bestseller charts, giving everyone that essential chance to ‘Know yourself!’, to get yourself sorted in that final peaking order in the sky. and I remember Renee Andrews telling me about her piano lessons as a kid, bout the teacher looking at her hands, like there was something wrong, something unfixable.. like she’d already been chalked up on some final score card for good.

and I remember the young Beethoven, and Picasso, and those kids in Texas junior highs, on that football career ladder – lying bout their age & achievements, all trying to fiddle a jump on the old genius ladder, born to be great and shining already.

and suddenly sixth grade comes rushing back, discovering I’m not the fastest in class anymore, not even third. making that quick switch from the running broad jump to the standing, just in time for the Alhambra Relays, so I can still cop a blue ribbon. still be the best.

and Detroit, I’m back in Detroit. with those kids knifing each other… for what? for an Air Jordan jacket.

Then I remember something else. I remember Stand and Deliver - Jamie Escalante and his East LA barrio whizzes cracking that ETS Advanced Placement Calculus Exam back in ‘82. I remember Escalante and Ben Jimenez and their principal, Henry Gradillas. I remember that pipeline of junior highs offering Algebra I & II, East LA College offering those 7 week summer crams in Trig and Math Analysis… those 10 years of building a math enrichment program at Garfield High; 10 years of facing down spitballs and leather jackets, of building rep with net heads and mascara mouths, of standing together, in and out of class, for La Raza, for Chicano pride, for “the math in their blood”; 10 years of standing together, teachers and students, for a way out of the barrio; standing and then delivering those kids, year after year, out of their short order futures, delivering them into the likes of MIT, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Cal State-L.A. - 10 years of standing and then delivering over and over again in that Super Bowl of high school math, the ETS Advanced Placement Calculus Exam.

and I remember last summer in Miltown. Martin Hayes in his father’s chair. 1, 1:30 in the morning, 400 dripping set dancers, sweat dancers. Martin, filling in his father’s chair with the Tulla… two three fiddles, boxes, couple flutes, keyboard, drums. the lot of us driving, flying full clatter round that plywood floor in the Mill – the plain, the corofin, the caldonian... 3, 4 hours of home, house, home, of battering, shuffling, scuffling, swinging, passing thru. Martin Hayes from east Clare, the international fiddle star of Irish traditional music, in his late father’s chair for that week in Miltown, the festival he prefers to all others becos there are no stars, no solo concerts, no autograph hunters. becos Jackie Daly and Joe Burke and Anne Conroy, and Aoife and Paudie and PJ and Brendan Begley and … might be at that session in Curtins or maybe Queally’s or maybe outside your B&B at 4am, with four men and a dog.. cos there’s a 1000, 2000 sweat dancers, fiddlers and broken bodhran box players from Tokyo to Salthill, from Detroit to Mullach jamming hammering Guinness and tea breaks round the Mill, the Armada, the Crosses of Annagh, that parking lot outside the Belbridge.… cos the rubber man from Belfast and that bollix from Ennis will all be there, probably in your set.

and as I got further on with the writing of the book, particularly with the gradually letting go of one of my heroes, Woody Guthrie, I discovered some other things… you wouldn’t wanna be Mozart at 12, or Keats at 24, or Van Gogh or Norma Jeane or Emily D most anytime. and you wouldn’t wanna miss the ‘Aida’ at Verona, or Delibes’ ‘Flower Duet’, or Callas, or Dylan Thomas’ “gandering hubbies moaning through Milk Wood for those naughty mothering arms, that body like a wardrobe’’, or Hardy’s “sweethearts prinked in sables” or Stephen Dunn at 50, walking onto that basketball court, a “sloth in a country known for its cheetahs and sunsets”… or the first movement of Mozart’s G Minor symphony, you know, the one with that wee bit of a gallop Wolfgang mustta needed, no doubt some rainy Monday morning, driving to work.

and I noticed something else, something even odder, suddenly I could watch a soccer or a gaelic match, or even a basketball game, without rooting for anyone. just enjoying what they were doing and able for… in fact I wasn’t even pissed at Billy Bragg anymore, you remember, for taking all the jump out of Woody’s lyrics.

After giving a talk on Arrival the other day, at that same session where Pat Burke was telling us bout Tom Murphy’s ‘dead, junior fuckin footballers’, a guy in the Q&A said what he liked about Arrival were the implications.. that “nobody had to feel less of a person”… and the woman who came up to me afterwards to say, “you know maybe there are more matches out there than we think… when you get a chance, you gotta go for it”.

which brings me to the real question…

after you’ve had a read of this website, maybe have a think. what do you make of Arrival, what’s it mean to you? the implications for own life, hopes, dreams, possible ways of looking at world. or maybe your take on the bigger slice, the likes of individualism and meritocracy, or maybe on those global chancers, the Nikes and IMFs, the Microsofts and Exxons, those Ronald McDonalds ever supersizing us up with their latest ‘wonderful plan for our lives’.

and with your permission, I’ll publish your thoughts here as best I can, simply identified by first name and location, as in 'Bill, Dublin'.

Just send them along to me at: Contact.

Whatever.. one’s things for certain.. as Pat explained to me after my talk about the role of chance in attaining ‘greatness’: “Lucky for us Joyce lost that Dublin Feis title to John McCormack… I mean, imagine trying to sing Ulysses."

For a few other thoughts re the question of What's it all mean?, have a look at "And you and me???"

And finally if you'd like to give me a hand finding a publisher or are simply curious re why the whole book is not in print, have a glance at: Info re Book

most of quotes and info above come from:

May (1985) (re ‘courage to create’)
Goffman (1982) (re ‘Miss Lonelyhearts’)
Ballinger (1981) (re Harlem geniuses)
Eysenck (1982) (re IQ books)
Dylan Thomas (1954) (quote slightly changed)
Stephen Dunn (2000) (quote slightly changed)
Jerry Jesness (2002) (re Stand and Deliver)

see: Sources.