In Search of Marriage

I've been searching for a more perfect union since the day my stepfather "needed the house to himself" and I realized I had no home to go home to. This joining of dreams and fortunes was the ticket out in the ghetto called my childhood. In this togetherness a new family would rise. The core solid; the conviction unshakable, and the path directed by a shared purpose. The road would commence in romance, progress to parenthood, and build on a shared identity held resolutely by two spouses. This is the patience, the trust, and ultimately courage which the bond of dream matrimony harbors and sanctifies through the daily renewal of ritual and gratitude.

It is no secret that these paths have been scarred by realities which no marriage of mine has ever endured. Each time they have diverged. Each time they have faltered on the premise that a rightful balance had been displaced by an unshared sacrifice or a sense of isolation. It's a stretch to suggest that anything extraordinary happened to ambush or sabotage the three vows I have taken. In each case the absorptions of work and self-pity sprung from solitary trials displaced the commitment to our common purpose. It is an unintended irony that: (a) over the last 24 years marriage is the steady operational state of my adulthood, and (b) none hold the lasting power of the original bargain -- this special attraction that marriage holds for me but not my actual marriages.

The cliches work from tired scripts of infidelity, the sudden loss of income, substance abuses, and wayward children. But these plot devices are not party to any regrets to find voice in my own failures. I don't stray. I'm gainfully (and gratefully) employed. More than one beer gives me a headache. My son is the kindest person I know. If the elites had a trace of his humility all stigmas about his cognitive challenges would disappate.

The one thing I can say about failed marriages is that ommissions count as much as commissions. It's one thing to resist temptation. It's quite another to embrace the fears and uncertainties of my dearest beloved.

I can only imagine that keeping a marriage afloat requires more than two souls that have lost their individual way with each other. And that sharing cannot be recovered or sustained without a higher purpose of family, community, and spiritual renewal.

In Search of Marriage

I've been searching for a more perfect union since the day my stepfather "needed the house to himself" and I realized I had no home to go home to. This joining of dreams and fortunes was the ticket out in the ghetto called my childhood. In this togetherness a new family would rise. The core solid; the conviction unshakable, and the path directed by a shared purpose. The road would commence in romance, progress to parenthood, and build on a shared identity held resolutely by two spouses. This is the patience, the trust, and ultimately courage which the bond of dream matrimony harbors and sanctifies through the daily renewal of ritual and gratitude.

It is no secret that these paths have been scarred by realities which no marriage of mine has ever endured. Each time they have diverged. Each time they have faltered on the premise that a rightful balance had been displaced by an unshared sacrifice or a sense of isolation. It's a stretch to suggest that anything extraordinary happened to ambush or sabotage the three vows I have taken. In each case the absorptions of work and self-pity sprung from solitary trials displaced the commitment to our common purpose. It is an unintended irony that: (a) over the last 24 years marriage is the steady operational state of my adulthood, and (b) none hold the lasting power of the original bargain -- this special attraction that marriage holds for me but not my actual marriages.

The cliches work from tired scripts of infidelity, the sudden loss of income, substance abuses, and wayward children. But these plot devices are not party to any regrets to find voice in my own failures. I don't stray. I'm gainfully (and gratefully) employed. More than one beer gives me a headache. My son is the kindest person I know. If the elites had a trace of his humility all stigmas about his cognitive challenges would disappate.

The one thing I can say about failed marriages is that ommissions count as much as commissions. It's one thing to resist temptation. It's quite another to embrace the fears and uncertainties of my dearest beloved.

I can only imagine that keeping a marriage afloat requires more than two souls that have lost their individual way with each other. And that sharing cannot be recovered or sustained without a higher purpose of family, community, and spiritual renewal.

X and Y but not Z

I work in an engineering culture. This affords me the luxury of speaking my mind if I can select the correct fact base for supporting my views. This is a license I haven't had in more politically-charged work cultures and for that alone I will never take this freedom for granted. Views are meant to be: (a) expressed, and (b) challenged. That is both a given and a taken -- the taken is this precious benefit of working with engineers.

The challenge for a decidedly right brain in the middle of a STEM ("science, technology, engineering, and math") population is that I run a system resistant to the way my colleagues are rewarded by their clients. Their mission is to drive complexity out of systems. Simplicity is not just a virtue but a requirement. All outcomes are reducible to X or Y. There is no Z because Z represents chaos. Even if chaos sounds more rational than two choices it still wrecks the model. The third choice invites uncertainty. It tests the faith that engineers can deliver a purely causal relationship: if you do X then Y is a no-brainer.

I'm not wired to perform multiple-step calculations. I can't steer my way around the break even point or apply the needle-moving macro that will change the expectation or game the system. I'm the artful, conceptual word guy. But even so I can see there are binary outcomes that create clarity, purpose, and a useful instruction for accelerating a plan. Even a confrontation-averse relativist humanist like me can understand that there are only so many parking spaces at the Market Basket in Somerville and many more shoppers. The result is Darwinian dodge ball set to the abrupt stoppage of a musical chairs needle skipping. This is the real world -- eat or be eaten -- the zero sum game.

The allure of sports is the certainty of outcomes. Even ties need to be decided -- there's no corrupting force of interpretation. No middle ground. What could be as uncompromising as a win or a loss? As a parent it's hard not to appreciate the clarifying power of 'no' as in "what part of you're-not-allowed into-X-or-Y don't you get?"

However left to its own limitations this logic can create more false choices than it does true ones. The Profit and Loss ("P&L") statement is based on the premise that we are either revenue-generating or overhead. This model swallows the inclusionary either/or condition. The third way is the third rail of engineering. It stops the train from ever leaving the station.

A binary bias is at work whenever complexity is driven from the service centers we call to inquire about the status of our bills, terms, conditions, and ignorance (a.k.a. tech support). The computer-voiced router tells us to press "1" for the entire range of acceptable questions. Press "2" to scream what about "1" we don't find relevant to our consumption of this service or product. End result? Driving complexity from the system also drives customers away from the relationship. (Dial "3" if you want the word people consultants who fix that one).

As a Z team passenger who rides into town on that live, uncertain third rail I often tell my X and Y members that it's a mistake to equate a fact base with its ultimate usefulness or knowledge-enablement. Zero sum games around learning almost always result in a loss for the knowledge possessor. That's because it's less common for two different people to take the same actions with the same knowledge than it for you to do something differently than me. The world is not flat.

If 15 years of the web has taught us anything it's that access guarantees nothing. Having “possession” of bare facts and figures does nothing either to address their dissemination, analysis, how instructive they are, or ultimately what we intended to do with them. The corollary isn't that knowledge is power -- far from it. It's the universal pain point of recognizing that unlimited access paralyzes our ability to form plans and take actions. Microprocessors foster the illusion that given enough technology, it is both possible and desirable to know anything about everything. The real secret to our transparent world is knowing when to move beyond X and Y.

The Z world is social, interpretive, multidimensional, and easily colored by perception. It is sloppy and potentially correlated but never dualistic or directly causing what happens next or soon thereafter. Experience laughs at X and Y because no two people have the same Z outcomes in mind, body, or the actual events they trigger. Engineers need to face this music in their waltz steps with systems -- whether they partner with Z or pretend it away.

X and Y but not Z

I work in an engineering culture. This affords me the luxury of speaking my mind if I can select the correct fact base for supporting my views. This is a license I haven't had in more politically-charged work cultures and for that alone I will never take this freedom for granted. Views are meant to be: (a) expressed, and (b) challenged. That is both a given and a taken -- the taken is this precious benefit of working with engineers.

The challenge for a decidedly right brain in the middle of a STEM ("science, technology, engineering, and math") population is that I run a system resistant to the way my colleagues are rewarded by their clients. Their mission is to drive complexity out of systems. Simplicity is not just a virtue but a requirement. All outcomes are reducible to X or Y. There is no Z because Z represents chaos. Even if chaos sounds more rational than two choices it still wrecks the model. The third choice invites uncertainty. It tests the faith that engineers can deliver a purely causal relationship: if you do X then Y is a no-brainer.

I'm not wired to perform multiple-step calculations. I can't steer my way around the break even point or apply the needle-moving macro that will change the expectation or game the system. I'm the artful, conceptual word guy. But even so I can see there are binary outcomes that create clarity, purpose, and a useful instruction for accelerating a plan. Even a confrontation-averse relativist humanist like me can understand that there are only so many parking spaces at the Market Basket in Somerville and many more shoppers. The result is Darwinian dodge ball set to the abrupt stoppage of a musical chairs needle skipping. This is the real world -- eat or be eaten -- the zero sum game.

The allure of sports is the certainty of outcomes. Even ties need to be decided -- there's no corrupting force of interpretation. No middle ground. What could be as uncompromising as a win or a loss? As a parent it's hard not to appreciate the clarifying power of 'no' as in "what part of you're-not-allowed into-X-or-Y don't you get?"

However left to its own limitations this logic can create more false choices than it does true ones. The Profit and Loss ("P&L") statement is based on the premise that we are either revenue-generating or overhead. This model swallows the inclusionary either/or condition. The third way is the third rail of engineering. It stops the train from ever leaving the station.

A binary bias is at work whenever complexity is driven from the service centers we call to inquire about the status of our bills, terms, conditions, and ignorance (a.k.a. tech support). The computer-voiced router tells us to press "1" for the entire range of acceptable questions. Press "2" to scream what about "1" we don't find relevant to our consumption of this service or product. End result? Driving complexity from the system also drives customers away from the relationship. (Dial "3" if you want the word people consultants who fix that one).

As a Z team passenger who rides into town on that live, uncertain third rail I often tell my X and Y members that it's a mistake to equate a fact base with its ultimate usefulness or knowledge-enablement. Zero sum games around learning almost always result in a loss for the knowledge possessor. That's because it's less common for two different people to take the same actions with the same knowledge than it for you to do something differently than me. The world is not flat.

If 15 years of the web has taught us anything it's that access guarantees nothing. Having “possession” of bare facts and figures does nothing either to address their dissemination, analysis, how instructive they are, or ultimately what we intended to do with them. The corollary isn't that knowledge is power -- far from it. It's the universal pain point of recognizing that unlimited access paralyzes our ability to form plans and take actions. Microprocessors foster the illusion that given enough technology, it is both possible and desirable to know anything about everything. The real secret to our transparent world is knowing when to move beyond X and Y.

The Z world is social, interpretive, multidimensional, and easily colored by perception. It is sloppy and potentially correlated but never dualistic or directly causing what happens next or soon thereafter. Experience laughs at X and Y because no two people have the same Z outcomes in mind, body, or the actual events they trigger. Engineers need to face this music in their waltz steps with systems -- whether they partner with Z or pretend it away.

You / Me Tunes

What's my sign? What's my credo? What's my line? What's my song?

No, I don't mean favorite tune. That's transitory. That's a placeholder. I mean what do I sound like on the tonal spectrum? What are the soaring flows, the thumping percussives, and the underlying textures that pulse through our internal rhythms. They spill over into the out-loud arena -- both the soft and the loudspeakers that lie beyond our headphones (and the echoes of our minds).

The answer is not likely to be one genre than a single character trait. There's multiple personality disorder but there's an order to the multiples of symphonic bursts that spread through our own chambers and into the public hearings of concert halls where our blending vibes can reverberate.

Make no mistake. Song-typing is not limited to musicians who spend every unclaimed mental moment on manufacturing and stamping their unique sound signatures on a world of commerce formerly known as the music industry. Yes, there's the goosebumps elevated by the soul-nurturing benefit of our favored musical affirmations. But we dispatch melodies of our own making through the words, cadences, and beliefs we voice. Is there a song book in our dialect? Is the spoken word a poetic extension of our unspoken and deeper selves? Nope, it's not of-thee-I wax immaculate about the swig of Kool-aid that produces those supercalifragilous blue birds on my sunshine-laden shoulder.

It's about getting to know that inner voice of the people we love. What they send through our ears becomes ingrained in our hearts long before the catch in our throats in the face of overwhelming love and friendship. Another aspect of song types transcends inputs and outputs. It's the overlap between our mutual soul grooves. That's where the goosebumps meet the road. That's why as the music industry collapses in its own dogma and hypocrisy we fork over sums for concerts that tower above our CD and downloading dollars.

We are spending several multiples of retail recordings to hear artists sing songs we know from the studio, from the live version, from the remixes, and from the remakes. These memory captures are imprinted on our heart strings and we will gladly surrender them for one more encore performance. True, we love the muse of the creator and the craft of the performer but we're also looking to share the love in the room and around the stage where our song types can connect, fuse, and energize us better than the unsung sounds -- the speeches, sermons, and pep rallies that can never storm our chambers like the courtship of two or more mutual song types.

One of the other irresistible fetishes about sketching your friends through song comps is that you can design the interstices between musical genres and the overlapping loves shared by two and reviled by the rest. Often a wonderful tune will find itself tugged in several directions because it's evocative of more than one song type. The tie-breakers are left to the subtexts underpinning the segues and lyrical overtones that resonate in each compilation.

Misfitness for Life

I keep friends. If I make one, that means it's for keeps (my bromances anyway). Another theme coursing through these strong characters is that most of them are iconoclasts -- they wouldn't join any group that would circulate a sign-up sheet. Independent of thought and social endorsements we never met a trend we didn't smash. We never entered into agreements that required the active cooperation of adults. Authority was conferred by expertise, not tenure. And we never met an authority figure that we didn't question.

That Groucho-styled opt-in marketing approach describes the braintrust known as Garo Bolishuk Bank that hails from the mid-section of lukewarm Long Island -- Walt Whitman High School, circa Carter administration.

We renew our friendship vows, rotating hosts for our annual reunion. Each year I indulge in assembling a compilation CD that chronicles the melodic imprints of each member -- a work-in-progress musical persona. That might sound a bit presumptuous. Painting the self-portrait of another person's identity through song leaves out the chance for musical self-portraitures.

What I like most about this exercise is that it includes a lifetime of feedback about favorite bands, songs, and even bridges or chord progressions within those songs that lifted the spirit, parted the clouds, and raised the occasional goose bumps in our tonal beings. For me part of that ascension of an altered musical state is the overlap between us -- the experiencing and re-experiencing of it with these friends. That's where I'm going with these compilations.

It's not a coincidence that we were highly competitive with each other when it came to the three third rails of our teenage years (baseball, sex, and music). When we re-opened our music channels years later everyone was able to reveal their guilty pleasures (aural, not carnal). Soon after music was dropped from the competition. We grew comfortable in our collective musical skins and passed the rapture around with willingness and reverence.

In hindsight it makes sense that as legendary we were in our own minds we were still in a restless joust over the epic shows and songwriting talents, and studio panache, and even the rock critics themselves that we were somewhat channeling in our posturings. The most common rivalry and one returned to many times was the theatrics that arose over the defense of glossily-produced, bordering-on-bombastic, progressive bands in the art rock camp versus the stripped-down sound of the fashion show surrounding the more danceable likes of the new wave set.

It was never much of a fight. Each faction walked away more convinced it knew talents that would outlast the opposable trends and excesses. What's so wonderful in our grown adult stage is that these arguments have proven hollow, false, and easily collapsible into a keener and more speckled sound spectrum that any of us could have imagined in the heyday of record labels, payola, and 'classic rock' when the delivery arrived in heaviest rotation through the formulaic simplicity of 'corporate rock.'

The album is a dead medium. True, artists need day jobs more than ever -- even the ones we pay to go see. However, no one can convince me that assembling 100 stellar tunes from an equal number of me tune contributors is anything but a golden age unlike any song markets we experienced as teens. Yeah, it's a challenge to keep something so fresh and fluid straight but the rich pageantry of sounds and choices keeps my brain spongy and heart bouncing. The tunefuls of Garo, Dish, Bal, and Canuck pulse on to the pandemonium of our perpetual and different motion drummers.

You / Me Tunes

What's my sign? What's my credo? What's my line? What's my song?

No, I don't mean favorite tune. That's transitory. That's a placeholder. I mean what do I sound like on the tonal spectrum? What are the soaring flows, the thumping percussives, and the underlying textures that pulse through our internal rhythms. They spill over into the out-loud arena -- both the soft and the loudspeakers that lie beyond our headphones (and the echoes of our minds).

The answer is not likely to be one genre than a single character trait. There's multiple personality disorder but there's an order to the multiples of symphonic bursts that spread through our own chambers and into the public hearings of concert halls where our blending vibes can reverberate.

Make no mistake. Song-typing is not limited to musicians who spend every unclaimed mental moment on manufacturing and stamping their unique sound signatures on a world of commerce formerly known as the music industry. Yes, there's the goosebumps elevated by the soul-nurturing benefit of our favored musical affirmations. But we dispatch melodies of our own making through the words, cadences, and beliefs we voice. Is there a song book in our dialect? Is the spoken word a poetic extension of our unspoken and deeper selves? Nope, it's not of-thee-I wax immaculate about the swig of Kool-aid that produces those supercalifragilous blue birds on my sunshine-laden shoulder.

It's about getting to know that inner voice of the people we love. What they send through our ears becomes ingrained in our hearts long before the catch in our throats in the face of overwhelming love and friendship. Another aspect of song types transcends inputs and outputs. It's the overlap between our mutual soul grooves. That's where the goosebumps meet the road. That's why as the music industry collapses in its own dogma and hypocrisy we fork over sums for concerts that tower above our CD and downloading dollars.

We are spending several multiples of retail recordings to hear artists sing songs we know from the studio, from the live version, from the remixes, and from the remakes. These memory captures are imprinted on our heart strings and we will gladly surrender them for one more encore performance. True, we love the muse of the creator and the craft of the performer but we're also looking to share the love in the room and around the stage where our song types can connect, fuse, and energize us better than the unsung sounds -- the speeches, sermons, and pep rallies that can never storm our chambers like the courtship of two or more mutual song types.

One of the other irresistible fetishes about sketching your friends through song comps is that you can design the interstices between musical genres and the overlapping loves shared by two and reviled by the rest. Often a wonderful tune will find itself tugged in several directions because it's evocative of more than one song type. The tie-breakers are left to the subtexts underpinning the segues and lyrical overtones that resonate in each compilation.

Misfitness for Life

I keep friends. If I make one, that means it's for keeps (my bromances anyway). Another theme coursing through these strong characters is that most of them are iconoclasts -- they wouldn't join any group that would circulate a sign-up sheet. Independent of thought and social endorsements we never met a trend we didn't smash. We never entered into agreements that required the active cooperation of adults. Authority was conferred by expertise, not tenure. And we never met an authority figure that we didn't question.

That Groucho-styled opt-in marketing approach describes the braintrust known as Garo Bolishuk Bank that hails from the mid-section of lukewarm Long Island -- Walt Whitman High School, circa Carter administration.

We renew our friendship vows, rotating hosts for our annual reunion. Each year I indulge in assembling a compilation CD that chronicles the melodic imprints of each member -- a work-in-progress musical persona. That might sound a bit presumptuous. Painting the self-portrait of another person's identity through song leaves out the chance for musical self-portraitures.

What I like most about this exercise is that it includes a lifetime of feedback about favorite bands, songs, and even bridges or chord progressions within those songs that lifted the spirit, parted the clouds, and raised the occasional goose bumps in our tonal beings. For me part of that ascension of an altered musical state is the overlap between us -- the experiencing and re-experiencing of it with these friends. That's where I'm going with these compilations.

It's not a coincidence that we were highly competitive with each other when it came to the three third rails of our teenage years (baseball, sex, and music). When we re-opened our music channels years later everyone was able to reveal their guilty pleasures (aural, not carnal). Soon after music was dropped from the competition. We grew comfortable in our collective musical skins and passed the rapture around with willingness and reverence.

In hindsight it makes sense that as legendary we were in our own minds we were still in a restless joust over the epic shows and songwriting talents, and studio panache, and even the rock critics themselves that we were somewhat channeling in our posturings. The most common rivalry and one returned to many times was the theatrics that arose over the defense of glossily-produced, bordering-on-bombastic, progressive bands in the art rock camp versus the stripped-down sound of the fashion show surrounding the more danceable likes of the new wave set.

It was never much of a fight. Each faction walked away more convinced it knew talents that would outlast the opposable trends and excesses. What's so wonderful in our grown adult stage is that these arguments have proven hollow, false, and easily collapsible into a keener and more speckled sound spectrum that any of us could have imagined in the heyday of record labels, payola, and 'classic rock' when the delivery arrived in heaviest rotation through the formulaic simplicity of 'corporate rock.'

The album is a dead medium. True, artists need day jobs more than ever -- even the ones we pay to go see. However, no one can convince me that assembling 100 stellar tunes from an equal number of me tune contributors is anything but a golden age unlike any song markets we experienced as teens. Yeah, it's a challenge to keep something so fresh and fluid straight but the rich pageantry of sounds and choices keeps my brain spongy and heart bouncing. The tunefuls of Garo, Dish, Bal, and Canuck pulse on to the pandemonium of our perpetual and different motion drummers.

Planning for the Last War

They say that military strategy is a slow learner. They say that the battlefield is the only classroom where any educating happens and any real learning passes into the lessons of history. The other truism is that the more palatable the war effort, the sooner the next conflict will follow.

This is the lowest hanging rationale for accepting the inevitability of Surge the Sequel (as opposed to Gulf War II) which we only officially won after a fake news host declared it so on an overseas telecast last summer.

This winter season GI Joe will once again be sporting the road jerseys against the hometown Taliban, suiting up in their olive drab fatigues and black turbans. Perhaps it's the war on terror under the guise of the rule of law. Maybe it's Obama eating a campaign pledge to the tune of a Dick Morris re-election strategy. Whatever the rationale it is an enemy of the rational. I am immune to its allure. I can't pretend to understand all the thoughtful partisan elites who throw up their hands and say: "there's no good option!"

Even the term "option" suggests that this is a question best massaged by delicate hands and answered by a middle ground between retreat and aggression -- the greatly nuanced least-objectionable path where no leader is completely wrong, close-minded, or surprised by what happens next.

I don't believe propping wobbly, pro-Western extortionists in what our military planners call our AfPak foreign policy is what our military families are counting on when we claim our future dead. Their bodies and their passions are buying us indecisive time. What we can't conclude is that a lost battle is not ours to lose.

I do believe that American civilians like myself find it far too comfortable to hide behind the friendly lines of our brave soldiers and special effects weaponry. That's the national security that an occupation of Afghanistan provides. That comfort is not a recipe for victory but the last defense against the slippage of our powers of reason for unleashing such force.

And what's the point? Is it about proving those thirteen deaths at Fort Hood were not in vain? Is it really about remaking a basket case country whose only relevance to our stomach for war was the temporary harboring of the 9-11 crew? Or is it making certain that we can carry the fight of our choosing to whoever stands to gain by hosting the war preparations they legitimize? The answer is more fickle and sinister than the no-good option folks have factored in.

Planning for the Last War

They say that military strategy is a slow learner. They say that the battlefield is the only classroom where any educating happens and any real learning passes into the lessons of history. The other truism is that the more palatable the war effort, the sooner the next conflict will follow.

This is the lowest hanging rationale for accepting the inevitability of Surge the Sequel (as opposed to Gulf War II) which we only officially won after a fake news host declared it so on an overseas telecast last summer.

This winter season GI Joe will once again be sporting the road jerseys against the hometown Taliban, suiting up in their olive drab fatigues and black turbans. Perhaps it's the war on terror under the guise of the rule of law. Maybe it's Obama eating a campaign pledge to the tune of a Dick Morris re-election strategy. Whatever the rationale it is an enemy of the rational. I am immune to its allure. I can't pretend to understand all the thoughtful partisan elites who throw up their hands and say: "there's no good option!"

Even the term "option" suggests that this is a question best massaged by delicate hands and answered by a middle ground between retreat and aggression -- the greatly nuanced least-objectionable path where no leader is completely wrong, close-minded, or surprised by what happens next.

I don't believe propping wobbly, pro-Western extortionists in what our military planners call our AfPak foreign policy is what our military families are counting on when we claim our future dead. Their bodies and their passions are buying us indecisive time. What we can't conclude is that a lost battle is not ours to lose.

I do believe that American civilians like myself find it far too comfortable to hide behind the friendly lines of our brave soldiers and special effects weaponry. That's the national security that an occupation of Afghanistan provides. That comfort is not a recipe for victory but the last defense against the slippage of our powers of reason for unleashing such force.

And what's the point? Is it about proving those thirteen deaths at Fort Hood were not in vain? Is it really about remaking a basket case country whose only relevance to our stomach for war was the temporary harboring of the 9-11 crew? Or is it making certain that we can carry the fight of our choosing to whoever stands to gain by hosting the war preparations they legitimize? The answer is more fickle and sinister than the no-good option folks have factored in.