Life Lessons, 4/8/16 from Atlanta to Memphis

Piano, Rum Boogie Cafe, Beale St., Memphis, Tn

Airports– one of the few public spaces where it’s not only appropriate but appreciated when people direct you toward your baggage.
Airplanes– designed to fulfill a tremendous human need but done so in a way that denies or disregards pretty much every other human need in the process.
Why is it so comforting to be on a flight full of airline pilots traveling as fellow passengers?
There’s nothing quite like discussing great literature with someone who loves nothing more than discussing great literature.
Reading and writing are profoundly connected yet utter divergent processes.
The fact that any serious reader knows that there will always be more to read than time to read it understands the beauty and tragedy of existence.
Creating art is one response to the nothingness that some of us suspect is at the core of our being.
Some people need lots of hugs.
As much as I’d like to think it’s the script that matters most, it’s really the reader, particularly if the script is being read aloud and before an audience.
In a way completely devoid of malice, someone’s injury has the potential to make some else’s life just a little bit easier under very specific circumstances like waiting in long lines.
After being on an airplane of Friday night instead of with my family, the rabbi in me can now conclusively dispel the magical idea that one’s physical elevation has any correlation to one’s connection to the Divine.
It’s fun to listen to the “born-again” albums of different musicians to see how renewed and intensified faith impacts their music.
When words find their perfect melody and converge on a harmonic bed of chords, even the angels can’t help but listen and smile.
Listening to music is a form of time travel that transports you to multiple times and places simultaneously.
The sooner and more fulfilling the payoff, the more like we are to come back for more.
This is totally stereotypical, but dudes with dreadlocks generally seem like they’re all musicians.
There are an infinite amount of ways to play an acoustic guitar and an infinite amounts of ways to record the same in a recording studio.
It doesn’t matter what you say if people can’t physically make out the words.
There’s nothing like not being able to go to the bathroom to make you absolutely, positively, and obsessively need to go to the bathroom.
Sometimes people paint over beautiful murals. Hopefully there’s a compelling reason when they do.
Some clocks are broken and remain broken for a reason.
Is it better to die while doing what you love or after you’ve already passed the stage when you can do what you love?
The protocol of determining when to begin the gate checking of luggage is a tragically flawed one.
In spite of all the grandeur of humanity, we still haven’t figured out how to effectively and graciously board a plane.
After a day of people telling you they can’t help you, it’s truly delightful when you decide to ask one more random person who, for some inexplicable reason, says that they can and then does. Though it leaves you wondering what that person knows that the others in more or less the same exact position didn’t.
It’s cool to sing like a girl.
Merit through association, what Yiddish speaking folks call yichus, is a beautiful and powerful thing.
Anonymity can be both the best and worst feeling in the world.
The difference between the front of the plane and the back of the plane is immense.
People will always need a way of recording their own brilliance.
It remains not only possible but incredibly simple to facilitate a transformational experience for a group of people who trust you and are willing partners in the transformation.
Labelling things is sometimes the only way we can help ourselves and others know what those things actually are.
Somehow mom knows the best time to call.
In Memphis it is wholly appropriate to ride your upright bass when playing it.
Blues music demonstrates that sometimes strict genre restraints can be a gateway to infinite creativity.

Reader Interactions

Comments