I’m not really sure when it all began. I suppose part of it was when my elementary school teachers started telling my Mother the myth of my under-achieving abilities.
“He’s not living up to his potential,” they all agreed.
Yet, none of them could seem to tell us what that potential was. It was an elusive Olympus that created a legend of gold flowing from my mind only to be flushed away as so much waste after too many baked beans.
Legends die hard, though.
You see, even though the adult experts in my life told the myth, the results told a different tale. If I was indeed squandering this God-Given Gift, then why was I still in the upper 98th percentile on all their guiding metrics? Why did those quarterly reports of every student’s academic worth constantly contain the only vowel allowed?
I could coast and still bring the gold.
Yet, I was never able to make the Powers happy.
I did have one or two teachers throughout who thought that they could play the game better than I could. One, in particular, thought that by giving me and incomplete in his class would awaken the hidden genius within. So, even though I scored the highest of anyone he had ever taught on the season-ending Final Exam, he made good on that with a great big “I.”
So, I figured, I’ll show him. I signed up for his class the following year.
And, proceeded to receive another “I” for Idiot.
Not even that stopped me. I graduated well above average in my class in spite of doing only about half of the work.
Maybe they pitied kids like me.
Part of my issue, well maybe, more than part, was my inability to respect authority. I was a rebel from the beginning. I viewed most rules as mere suggestions. They were not meant to be bent or broken. They were simply beneath my consideration. Especially, the ones that made on sense other than, “because I told you so.”
This attitude could have cost me dearly. But, I also developed an ability to speak the language. My dad had a sign at his desk where he worked that read, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then Baffle them with Bullshit.”
I found that I was able to do both.
Not a great combination for someone with a larger than life sense of Self.
But, that wasn’t really an accurate assessment.
I was, (and Am), extremely insecure. I developed the persona of a rebel thinker mostly because no one else at that point in my life had staked out that patch of real estate.
I could hold my own with anyone who thought that they could actually reason with me. The ones that I had problems with were the people who wore their Bullshit Monitors. They didn’t speak my language at all. So, we developed a kind of mutual understanding. I wouldn’t BS them; they wouldn’t kick my ass. That worked pretty well.
As I grew older I met others who were far more human than me. I was just a little shit who could talk his way out of a beating. These others, who stood head and shoulders above me in awareness, were aloof to all of the petty crap that I tended to wallow around in. These were the ones who had read about the “Bay of Pigs,” and who knew about Jerry Reuben and Abby Hoffman. They were the intellectuals who were “woke” long before that term meant something other than what we all did in the mornings. They were the people who understood what that first “Moratorium” was about.
I, on the other hand, was trying to figure out how to get a girl to like me. I joined a band when I was 12. I was the rhythm guitarist. Which in my mind meant, Second Fiddle. For someone who had achieved greatness in his own mind, that was simply not going to fly. So, I left that band and through myself into playing the instrument. I strapped on my guitar when I walked in the house after school and it didn’t come off until I went to bed. I practice 8 hours every day and more on weekends. I played the grooves off of Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, Led Zepplin, and James Gang.
This was the first time in my life that I actually gave myself wholly to any endeavor.
Eventually, my work paid off as I became a bonafide lead guitar player who could jam for hours with anyone. I had worked into a niche where I refused to learn other players’ solos. That was their voice. I developed my own. Improvisation ultimately led me to listen to other players.
Phil Keaggy from a local band called Glass Harp opened my mind to the limitless possibilities of the instrument. Al DiMeola, Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, Steve Howe, and other players ushered me into the world of Harmonic Melody and piano style. Vast horizons of the Ether became accessible.
Yet, I was always what my dad called the “Also Ran.” You know, Johnny came in first place. Mike also ran.
Here I was, destined for greatness. I mean, just ask my third grade teach and my Mom! But, I got a job, joined the union, and put a sign on my desk in 1980, “Vote Republican for a Change.”
What happened?
One day I was watching as Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Bobby, James Earl Ray murdered Martin, and Chicago erupted while Mayor Richard J. Daly sat at the Democratic National Convention with his arms crossed not realizing that the world was giving birth to something new.
In all honesty, I was a thirteen year old kid whose dad muttered something about, “about time someone did something about that N——r” when MLK was cut off from the living. I didn’t understand any more than Daly what was happening. Hell, I just played the songs! I didn’t really listen to the lyrics. Even as young people fell on the grass and concrete of Kent State a few years later, I was more concerned about learning CSNY’s “Ohio” than about the message that Neil was shouting to us.
“Wake up!” he was saying.
“What key is this,” is all that I heard.
So, I guess it wasn’t at all unnatural for me to join the crowd of Republicans in the 80s. After all, the revolution never really got off the ground. Woodstock was the last hurrah of a tribe of coddled, over-indulged white kids who found out all too quickly that what was said in “Cabaret” was all too true; ‘Money makes the world go around.’
Maybe that deep sleep overcame many of us.
We “grew fat and got lazy” as John Kay accused us.
I don’t know for sure what kind of haze enveloped my mind. It certainly wasn’t Purple. I lost many years bowing to a god that was less than even my own ability to underthink and underachieve.
It took crisis to put a fire under my ass.
I walked into that fire and got burned.
The scars are still visible. And, to my ever living shame, burned those whom I love.
But, that’s another story for another time.
I believe that I’m opening my eyes a bit. The sun is shining through the windows of my heart and bring warmth. It’s also illuminating the dust and cobwebs that have accumulated in a rather lackluster lifetime.
But, there are also some gems set in gold lying about that shine with brightness of burgeoning hope.
