Seabass Says:: I am assured that peace will come to me...

"…a peace that can, yes, surpass the speed, yes,
of my understanding and my need"

(A warning before you continue: This is about to get long winded and meandering, but if you've been to Seabass Says before, you already know that long and meandering happen from time to time. What can I say, brevity has never been a very strong trait for me. I'm not really sure if any of this makes a ton of sense, but I felt compelled to write.)

Its amazing what a long easy drive with a great soundtrack can do for one’s mindset and general worldview. I’ve written about Josh Ritter recently, but I just can’t help myself. He’s my favorite songwriter and “So Runs the World Away” was sitting in my car, just waiting for a little road trip to stretch it’s musical muscles. After expressing a desire to get off of our butts more often and do some running, my wife and I were given a copy of “Born to Run” as a book on tape (CD, technically, but book on tape sounds better). We’d been listening to it on our trip to and from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia to join in on a family vacation and we were finishing it up as we drove to Pittsburgh and Ohio for a wedding with a stopover to visit with family over the long Labor Day weekend.

While listening our way through “Born to Run” and hearing these inspiring and touching stories of people expressing passion, art, and joy through the simple act of putting one foot in front of another and pushing human endurance to the edge, my mind couldn’t help but wander toward big picture type thinking. Am I doing things the right way? Do my priorities need shifted? Is it really that simple? One foot in front of another and we can find peace and happiness? What is the best path to becoming a better person?

I’ll admit I’m a sap and I fall for the sentimental feelings surrounding weddings. I love that no matter how many questions someone may have swirling around in their head or how uncertain their destination in life is, one thing they are certain of when they say those two words is that they know exactly who they can rely on to help answer the questions and find the path. I always think of the song “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes and the line:

“I could go anywhere with you and probably be happy.”

The wedding we attended was for a longtime friend of mine and there was plenty of catching up to do with the assorted friends and family. Talk inevitably turned to jobs, family, and the future. A friend and I were reminiscing about our old high school and college days and wondering if we had done it all right. I expressed my regret for taking things too seriously through school and not really appreciating what I had until it was all over. We talked about finding the right balance in work and life (somewhere between doing too much and doing just enough to get by) and I was reminded of my favorite quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, it’ll pass you by.”

So I spent the drive between Akron and Pittsburgh rolling those thoughts around in my head and taking a step back to make sure life wasn’t passing me by. Instead of picking back up where we left off with the book on tape, we let Mr. Ritter sing us along our way as my wife laid down in the passenger seat to see if she could nap off the last few effects of the previous night’s celebratory toasts. The road was wide open and I was able to coast along and let things knock around as my thoughts ebbed and flowed with Josh Ritter’s songs. I think I’m starting to understand why there are so many songs about the road out there.

Ritter’s take on travel and movement has made its way into many of his songs and he weaves it especially well through the “So Runs the World Away” album. It’s the kind of album that can break your heart, piece it back together, beat on it a little to see if the glue is holding, and finally send it soaring off with hope. Not a bad backdrop for a bit of musing.

I think it is human nature to question things. It exposes cracks and faults when things look better than they actually are. It reinforces when things are as good as they look. It can be daunting to question yourself and give an honest answer. I guess its like taking to heart the last line from Ritter’s gorgeous “Southern Pacifica”:

“Southern Pacific, take me to meet whatever is hunting for me”

See, many of my friends and I are at a big crossroads point in our lives. Our late 20s and early 30s typically bring marriage, kids, settling down and saying “this is where and when I build my life and my family and where I intend to leave my mark.” As it usually does when I start into these different lines of thinking about life, love, change, and happiness (or for that matter, when I start to type up a blog post), my thinking was just circling back on itself. Questions lead to more questions and the answers are unsatisfying. That’s the problem with this stage of life. We’re old enough to have put school and growing up behind us. We’re expected to handle responsibility and make decisions at our jobs. We know just enough to realize there is nothing but future and opportunities ahead of us and it scares us to death. We want to figure it all out, but really, no one has the capacity to wrap their head around it all. All we can do is put it together little bits at a time and hope nothing gets missed along the way.

During my thinking and listening, something got triggered during “Southern Pacifica.” All that talk of travel with wide plains slipping past brought me back to a trip I took through Europe about 14 or 15 years ago. I remember a moment in that trip, looking out a bus window at the French countryside with a girl I had a crush on asleep in the seat next to me, where I thought to myself something along the lines of, “This is peace. This is a feeling I need to find again.” Coming back to present day, I looked at my wife napping in the seat next to me as we drove through Ohio and thought about how much better this all is than that little moment in France.

My thoughts coalesced while the CD played through “Lark” which I thought was both fitting and funny. Josh Ritter has said that “Lark” isn’t much more than a stream of consciousness type song. A collection of a bunch of fragments that come together to form a song. To me, it is a song about uncertainty and knowing that it will all make sense. The seemingly chaotic and indescribable inevitably will make sense (“I am assured a peace will come to me”) and there is a perfect simplicity to be found throughout (“the golden ratio, the shell”) if you can figure out where to look.

So there it is. The conclusion is simpler than those swirling thoughts and questions. Maybe they can’t really be answered after all. Or if they can, it’ll be too late to do anything about it. Through the chaos and uncertainty, we have to cling to what we know is good in life and know that a peace will come. In my life, I can be sure that wherever this late 20s uncertainty might take me, it’ll take me there with my wife, my family, and my friends along for the ride.

I may be shoehorning things in to fit with the music, but isn’t art supposed to be interpreted by the audience and not just by the creator? The next song on “So Runs the World Away” is “Lantern,” a wrenching and uplifting song about the truest love:

“Light and guide me through, hold it high for me, I’ll do the same for you, hold it high for me.”

I remembered the priest talking during the wedding, talking about living life for another. I looked to my wife again reclined next to me in the car and didn’t care about the questions any more

"...a peace that can, yes, surpass the speed, yes, of my understanding and my need.”

This morning, I took some of the advice from my trip. I woke up and took my dog for a jog around the neighborhood, through a bit of woods, and around a school. One foot in front of the other, soaking in what I could of the quiet morning, forgetting about any uncertainty, and getting home in time to see my wife off before she left for work. I sit here in my office and look at a mile long to do list and smile as it doesn't even dent my new sense of peace.

Thanks for sitting through that (or skipping over it for the music). Here's what little I can offer as a reward:

Josh Ritter - "Lark"