My father loved radios and always had at least one short wave receiver around the house so he could listen to international broadcasts and eavesdrop on air traffic controller and sea going vessel communications. My grandmother gave me a small transistor radio for Christmas when I was seven years old. It was my first step toward becoming more like my dad and it gave me a tuning dial and volume knob I could control all by myself.
I started out listening to the same station my parents tuned in every time we climbed into the family car. They played soundtrack songs and artists like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet at night and featured hosts like Arthur Godfrey on weekends. Weekday mornings they broadcast news, weather and traffic updates and listener call-in shows focusing on local events and special interests like cooking, gardening and home decorating.
My older brother got his own radio that same Christmas. Our still older cousin was one of my brother's biggest influences during those years, so after just a few months my brother began mimicking our cousin by using his radio to listen to rock-n-roll and blues stations. My brother was my role model, so I naturally began tuning to the same stations he had "found." I did not appreciate the blues at the time, but rock-n-roll? It mesmerized me.
It all was pretty tame stuff. The artists included Roy Orbison, Chubby Checker, The Tokens, Ricky Nelson, Leslie Gore, Mary Wells, Dion and the Belmonts, Neil Sedaka, Elvis Presley, Sam Cook, Ray Charles, The Ventures and The Contours. These were songs about cars, puppy love, dancing, hanging out and other high school aged activities. Some spoke of holding hands and kissing. That kissing idea did not appeal to a second or third grade boy, but the music was exciting and the words beckoned me to come and discover the new world they described.
Music had changed by the time I reached the fifth or sixth grade. The British Invasion was in full force. Bob Dylan had appeared on the cover of Time and Newsweek. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones battled one another for the top spot in the English speaking public consciousness. The music from my radio became more sophisticated and more interesting as the artists competed for the attention of the radio listening and record buying pubic: The Who, The Zombies, The Doors, everything from the Motown label. Bubble Gum raised its ugly head, and The Monkeys television played off the box office success of The Beatles' two block buster movies. The music changed by degrees at ever accelerating rates so we were able to accept it but still not be truly aware of how rapidly it was happening. All these varied, interesting and alluring sounds beckoned me to turn on my radio and listen to their songs; and I did -- every chance I got.
The lyrics were becoming more sexually suggestive and anti-authoritarian. Like the music, the lyrics changed in degrees, acclimating us as we followed it wherever it took us. None of that really bothered me. I knew that stuff was out there, somewhere beyond my grasp. What it did do, without my being aware of the process, was create in me a hunger -- no a craving, for the fruit of those trees without telling me how to obtain it. Hormones alone would have produced many of these changes in a boy of my age, but the music added an attractive excitement to the entire concept and the lyrics began to produce images in my psyche that were hard wired to the feelings being generated by both the hormones and the music.
The Woodstock Festival took place about two weeks before my 15th birthday. Ninth and tenth graders of those years were becoming aware of the military draft and of the fear and hostility many of our immediate predecessors had toward authority figures in general and toward the Vietnam War in particular. The music became more edgy to maintain the audience's attention and the imagery more dark and extreme.
I do not offer any of this to demean or to denigrate any of the music or the lyrics of those decades. I still enjoy a great deal of it and listen to it from time to time. The point is that all three of those influences; the hormones, the music and the lyrics, were writing lasting impressions on my psyche and I did nothing to filter them or to influence their impact on me.
It was exciting and stimulating, so I listened. I did not just play this stuff as background noise. I listened. I played these songs over and over and over again. I listened to the music. I listened to the lyrics. (I had a difficult time deciphering many of them on those cheap speakers, but my imagination was more than happy to fill in the blanks my ears created.) I felt it. I lived the music and let the music and lyrics take me wherever its creators desired. Wasn't that why everyone listened to music?
Again, the point is not that the music was good or bad, helpful or harmful. Nor the lyrics. The point is that they necessarily did impact me. Without asking my attention, giving me any warning from the Surgeon General, or alerting me to the havoc that was to be wreaked on the lives of so many of the individuals who wrote and performed so many of my favorite songs, those songs had a dramatic and lasting impact on my view of the universe and of my place in it. The thought never occurred to me that the people writing those songs usually were under 25 years old with almost no real wisdom tempering experience. I was just an impressionable kid, for gosh sakes!
Hopefully few other people were as naive (or stupid) as I was. I cannot speak from their experience. One purpose of this exercise is to learn from my own experience; and mine had taught me to believe in a world where a life of pleasure seeking and contemplative introspection eventually would help me come into contact with some sort of soul mate whose primary source of joy and fulfillment would to give me pleasure by anticipating and meeting my every whimsical desire. That would free me to ingratiate the world with all my wisdom and clever thoughts and to indulge my senses and imagination with still more music, ideas, adventures and the occasional chemical influence. Life would be win-win. I would get the best the world had to offer and would bless the world with my best in return.
I had no idea I'd become such a narcissistic twit. I honestly thought I was just like everybody else. I'd never bothered to sit down and measure out how this Nirvana actually could take place or how it could benefit anyone other than me. That idea appeared in just enough of the songs I heard to let me believe I actually had made a contribution (I suppose by having agreed with the premise of a song that some form of giving to others was altruistic), but the ideas never resulted in any action that actually might have generated any sort of benefit for any person other than myself.
I do not blame the songs for where I eventually found myself. I do not blame my parents, society, my peer groups, or anyone else. Blame has nothing to do with this exercise or with what really matters in life. That at least is my present perspective.
I was what I was. And I did not know it. I was not aware of my self-serving state of mind or personality. Even if I had been aware of it, I had accessed no information or influences that might have suggested that a completely self serving state of mind was not the optimal position in the universe for any sentient creature. Why should it not be.
I was what I was because of the decisions I had made and the actions I had decided to take (and not to take) up to that point. My universe was tiny and contained. I did not know what I did not know.
Fortunately for me, I was to begin to encounter things I did not know. I have learned some of their lessons. I have not learned others. An additional four decades of (mostly conscious) experience have opened my awareness to many things I did not know back then. I am at least partially aware now that any life lived with that sort of limited awareness would have been worse than wasteful for a person like me. My only hope for any relief lay in the necessity that I acknowledge that my information was incomplete. There actually were things I did not know and I had no idea how useful and important they were. I did not know what I did not know.
I presently am aware of how crucial it is that I continue this process until I draw my last breath. I still don't know what I don't know. My sense of personal fulfillment and my value to others can improve only to the extent that I continue to throw off the shackles created within my mind by the various influences and events I have experienced throughout my life.
I don't know what I don't know, and the possibility that something new might be revealed today creates possibility of continuing purpose in my life.
The songs were just one of the many influences that created mental and emotional prisons within my head. There were many others. I selected this topic only to help demonstrate how the process takes place in our psyches over time, usually while we are not even aware of them.
What about you? Are there things, events or experiences that have impacted the way you view the world and your place in it? There must be, whether you are aware of them or not. If you cannot name at least three, then perhaps you should set aside a few minutes each day until you can name at least three of them. After all, you don't know what you don't know.
Until next time,
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