The universal language

One of my friends is in a band, which means whenever she plays a gig I get to assume the role of ardent fanboy. Mostly this entails sitting in a noisy bar and shooting her encouraging looks while I sip the suds of a paint-peeling microbrew. Which is fine by me. I get to watch up-close as she makes real, honest-to-goodness music come out of her guitar, which is a brand of magic that still thrills and mystifies me. Of course I’m easily impressed. There’s that.

Being a music lover is part of the appeal of these live shows, yet there’s also something else at play: an appreciation of music as an actual language, every bit as complicated as Mandarin Chinese but way easier to tap your toes to. Most people who become musicians, even on a small, barroom-sized scale, learned the language of music at a young age. I wish I’d developed my passion earlier, or I’d be pounding drums with Megadeth and reading fan mail on a private jet bound for Amsterdam.

This friend -- let’s call her “Shreddy,” because she shreds -- was destined to be onstage. She played various instruments from an early age, honing her fluency in the musical language by rockin’ the flute and numerous percussion instruments in her school band. That’s key. Linguistics experts say it’s much easier to learn a second language if you start while you’re young, and this extends to music as well. If Shreddy had just now decided to start noodling with her guitar, her playing would sound like mine: A key being scratched against the rusty exterior of a beat-up Ford Pinto.

I look back on my lack of musical training as a missed opportunity. Music has always had a profound effect on me. Many was the night I would lie in bed with a pair of headphones and cruise on Eric Clapton blues licks or the soaring crescendos of a movie’s orchestral score -- but by the time I got my first electric guitar I was too old, my interests too scattered, to summon the necessary attention span to learn. Strumming an E chord made a dirty, urgent scream erupt from my speaker, the kind that made my arms break out in gooseflesh. Yet after five minutes of aimless strumming I didn’t hear anything that sounded like Van Halen and the guitar was left to its place in the corner, next to my Game Boy and a rolled-up pair of Superman socks.

Stupidly, I’d spend the afternoon playing “Mario Kart” on the Super Nintendo console instead of teasing out rock riffs on my Fender knockoff. In an alternate universe I stuck with the instrument and can now play the searing solo at the end of “Free Bird’ with no more effort that it takes to make an omelette. That does me little good, because I don’t live in that alternate universe. I live in this one, and in this one, being incredible at “Mario Kart” doesn’t do much for your fame or reputation. People don’t pack Madison Square Garden to see you beat your previous lap time on Luigi Raceway.

Luck has it that it’s never too late, for music or for anything else. Shreddy has two siblings who decided to pick up instruments later in life, and now they jam together -- her brother on bass, her sister on piano. I’ve yet to attend one of these casual jam sessions, but from what I’ve heard they sound marginally better than rodents trying to escape from a flaming elevator shaft.

Being a fan of virtually all rock instruments and wishing I could play them all, when I learned of this sibling power-trio I naturally noticed there was a void waiting to be filled. Sure, they can play the skeletons of some Motley Crue and Pat Benatar tunes, but where’s the impact, the wallop, without a limb-flailing skinsman attacking a drum kit? As a thirtysomething I’d long figured my skillset was more or less cemented: I can write, sort of, and I can do impressions, sort of, and if I really concentrate I can refrain from slapping people when they say “CYOO-pon” instead of “coupon.” Having not made inroads on any new skills in years, I suspected that was pretty much it for me.

Now I long to learn the drums, but there are problems with this potentially half-baked dream. One is space. I don’t have any. Cramming a drum kit into my abode would be like trying to stuff a giraffe into a Sucrets tin. The laws of physics aren’t exactly on my side, here.

The second problem is noise. If I lived in a farmhouse out in the country, then hey, no sweat. Unfortunately for my musical aspirations, I live in an apartment building in a city, and I imagine my neighbors would be quick to protest if it was 8 o’clock at night and I was pounding out the beats to “Caught in a Mosh” by Anthrax. Quicker if I was doing it badly.

There are options, though. Electronic drum kits are small and don’t make a lot of noise -- you wear headphones and have the sound piped directly into your cranium. That may be worth looking into, and not just because it’s valuable to be fluent in the language of music. Most people, in most corners of the world, respond to this language in some form, and while it would be amazing to tap into this universal electricity, that’s not the only factor driving me here.

Simply put, I don’t want to become stagnant. Some people, as they age, become calcified in their thoughts, opinions and motivations, and they stop reaching for new things -- “expanding” is what the new-age types call it. When you stop pushing against the boundaries of who you are, those boundaries begin to shrink, until one day all the possible yous have been reduced to one definitive you, a static image in a dynamic world. Picking up drum sticks is a small way of fighting back against that. It’s a way of saying, “I swim or I die,” and then swimming as hard as I can.

Now that I think of it, “Swim or Die” would be a pretty sweet song title. See? I’m tapping into the magic already.

In defense of media

Until recently, the word “media” didn’t really have a negative connotation. Sure, there was a contingent that used the phrase “mainstream media” in a derogatory sense, as in, “Don’t trust the mainstream media,” or “The mainstream media won’t leggo my Eggo.” Generally, though, media was just media. It was where you got your news, celebrity gossip and cooking competition shows featuring angry chefs with spiky hairdos. Nobody thought much of it.

Now it’s become a catch-all term for anything that’s deemed unreliable or misleading. President Trump is partially responsible for this. He has declared media to be “the enemy of the people,” and while that would be a great title for a movie about flesh-eating lizards from outer space, it’s not exactly an accurate depiction of what journalism is all about.

His assertion is troubling for a number of reasons.

First, it suggests ignorance of how a professional newsroom actually functions. I remember, barely, being a rookie in the news department. Having worked as a sportswriter for nearly a year, I was initially intimidated at the prospect of writing stories that didn’t involve inflatable balls being hurled at people. One of the topics I’d be tasked with covering was politics, and I wanted to get it right. Politics is serious business. Education doesn’t get funded, parking garages don’t get built, because the blue team scored more touchdowns than the red team. Although it’d be totally sweet it life worked that way.

At a meeting one week early in my run, the reporters hunkered down to discuss our coverage strategy. Our managing editor noted that there was a local Democratic primary debate coming up, and that we should have someone there to cover it. A veteran reporter -- who I knew leaned more to the left, politically -- chimed in: “OK, but are we going to have someone cover the Republican debate as well?” Unanimously, we all agreed that yes, of course we should.

The reporter then leaned back in her chair, shot me a sideways glance, and smiled. “‘Liberal’ media, right?” she said, and winked.

I suppose I knew, being a regular reader of newspapers, that journalists worked hard to provide accurate information to people. But that was the first time I realized how importantly they take their objectivity. Is there bias in media? Of course there is. Boutique news outlets cater to specific constituencies, cable news channels wear their predilections on their sleeves, and it’s easier than ever to find information that enforces, rather than challenges, a person’s point of view. But when it comes to the rank-and-file journalists out there in the trenches -- the “mainstream media,” in other words -- the paramount concern is getting things right. Opinions are left to the editorial board; the news section is all about facts. And facts don’t care what your point of view is. They just exist, and without journalists casting a spotlight, they’d remain in the shadows.

Even more disconcerting about Trump’s vehement anti-media stance is what it implies. By labeling anything critical of his administration as “fake news” and sowing the seeds of distrust, he sends the message that only he and his aides can be counted on to provide the real story. You’d think this would be a hard sell for him. He’s made a number of outlandish and easily disprovable claims -- that his inaugural crowd was 1.5 million strong (it wasn’t), that crime is up (it isn’t), that bad, bad things are happening in Sweden (debatable, depending on whether you enjoy their meatballs). Every day he seemingly sets a new benchmark for absurdity. Tomorrow he’ll tell the public that Senate Democrats were behind the toxic mutagen that created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Chillingly, many people would believe him. That’s bad news for democracy. The number one goal of any aspiring dictator is to drive a wedge between the public and the media. That allows them to control the message.

If that sounds alarmist, let me assure you it’s mere prudence. The Founding Fathers understood the importance of a free and unfettered media in keeping governments accountable; it’s why they protected journalists in the first amendment, and why the press is the only industry specifically mentioned in the Constitution. As Thomas Jefferson said, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” And Jefferson’s on the nickel. You don’t get your face plastered on money by being a nincompoop.

To be sure, journalists and the broader media need to get their act together. They’re far from perfect. News outlets, even respectable ones, spend far too much time covering tweets and too little time covering policy. Prioritizing news items is sometimes an issue; on the rare occasions when I visit Yahoo (I’m one of about five people who still do), there’s generally a 50/50 chance that the top story will be about the goings-on of the federal government. The other 50 percent of the time, the centerpiece story usually has to do with sports, movie and celebrity gossip, or viral videos of squirrels who can dance to “Love Shack” by the B-52s. Internet outlets are especially notorious for this dubious prioritization. Items are arranged by what’s popular, not by what matters, and this is no favor to a public that needs to be informed and so rarely is.

But as much as media needs a hard slap across the face at times, its mission is a noble one. And just as it’s the media’s job to hold government accountable, it’s the public’s job to hold the media accountable. That means avoiding news that shows up in social media feeds. It means consuming a healthier ratio of Denzel Washington-to-Washington D.C. It means rejecting attempts by our leaders to denigrate this Constitutionally enshrined tradition.

If someone flashes you a smarmy grin, spouts factually deficient rhetoric, and punctuates it with the phrase “Believe me,” believing them is probably the last thing you should do. Better to leave the truth-telling to professionals.

Your local newspaper is a good place to start.

Sweet memes are made of these

Even if you’re not familiar with the word, you probably know what a meme is.

The term was coined by famed biologist Richard Dawkins, and while Dawkins originally used the word to describe brainy biology-type stuff, it eventually spread to the common vernacular. It now describes “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture,” and in the context of internet culture, it describes something even more specific: Those pictures or graphics, usually smattered with “witty” captions, that pop up in your social media feed. The ones with frowning cats and sarcastic text reading, “Yeah, take a picture, that’s helpful.” Or a smiling politician in front of an American flag with a caption telling you you’re unpatriotic if you don’t like him/her.

People like these things, obviously, because liking them is precisely what causes them to spread. They’re sort of like chlamydia in that way, only more annoying and less avoidable.

On Facebook in particular, memes rule the day, with about half of them exploiting the country’s raw and divisive political bickerings, and half seeming to offer a mindless escape from all of that. Memes are a curious phenomenon in that they seem to be both the poison and the cure, the instigator and the diversion. It’s a peculiar feedback loop populated with google-eyed Tabbies, long-dead philosophers and cantankerous public officials with beaver-like combovers. And it’s made the social media landscape an increasingly unreal -- and unhealthy -- place to hang out.

Since I enjoy subjecting people to ridiculous fictional scenarios, consider the following. Rosario is hard at work in the local doll-making factory; it’s her job to screw heads on all the dolls, and it’s an enormously tedious task, involving no more than a conveyor belt, piles of plastic doll parts and the grim will to not go insane. A whistle blows to signal that it’s Rosario’s lunch break. Do whistles actually blow at these kinds of workplaces, or is that just “The Flintstones?” In any event, it’s time for her to go outside and eat something with tuna in it.

Rosario’s new to the whole dollmaking gig, so she hasn’t made a whole lot of friends at work yet. Rather than sitting around jawing about the weather, she whips out her phone and starts scrolling through her Facebook feed.

Within seconds, she encounters two memes. The first makes her smile. A disembodied lampshade is lying on its side in what looks like a carpeted living room, and through the hole in one end pokes the head of a small puppy. Pasted on the dog’s face is an endearing smile with the small red nub of a tongue sticking out, and below this picture is a caption that reads, “You can’t handle the cuteness.” Rosario is delighted. She loves puppies, because let’s face it, puppies are adorable, and she immediately taps the “like” option below the meme -- which in turn funnels the image onto her friends’ feeds, and so on and so forth until it’s been seen by half the tri-state area. Digital chlamydia. They never warned us about that in health class.

After riding this brief emotional high, the second meme slaps Rosario across the face, and hard. The photo is of a politician she vehemently despises. Senator X is standing with his hand over his heart and gazing into the middle distance, and below him reads, “If you don’t agree with Senator X that all puppies should be euthanized, then YOU’RE NOT A REAL AMERICAN.”

The meme was posted by Dirk Dipstick, an old high school friend of Rosario’s. Rosario has two thoughts. The first is, “That’s a shame. Dirk’s an idiot now.”

The second is: “Why?”

Why indeed. The Senator X meme provides no supporting evidence, no reasoned argument. And even if it did, it’s making its case in the most abrasive and confrontational fashion possible. It’s meant to provoke, not inspire thought or logical debate. Memes like this are the equivalent of a giant foam finger at a professional wrestling match -- a rallying cry based on emotion, and a primal desire for bloodsport.

Much has been made about the degradation of public discourse in this country, and naturally you can’t place that squarely on the shoulders of memes. They’re a symptom, not the cause. Still, they’ve become a disturbing manifestation of how people choose to express their views. They act as stand-ins for actual conversation, a way for people like Dirk to say, “Here’s what I think, world,” and then leave it at that. Only, in our current political and social climate, you can’t just leave it at that. Either we start talking to each other, or the things that divide us are simply going to rip us apart.

Social media is the ideal place for us to share photos of our Caribbean vacations, our dance recital videos and wry observations about yogurt. When it’s used as anything more than a receptacle for triviality, it loses its mission. There’s nothing inherently wrong with frivolous junk in small doses, but there needs to be a clear dividing line -- cat memes on one side, serious discourse on the other. Facebook is not the place for confronting our differences. That’s a job for debate stages, for city council and board of selectmen meetings, for newspapers’ letters to the editor and the unfairly denigrated media. It’s a job for real communities, not online ones.

Luckily for Rosario, she doesn’t spend much time perusing social media anymore. She met a friend at the dollmaking factory, a sweet and unpolitical fellow named Chip, and they spend their lunch breaks talking about ’80’s dance music and old episodes of “Hee-Haw.”

The best part? Chip loves puppies. He and Rosario make such a cute pair that they should probably have their own meme.

A matter of life and death

Hospitals are odd places. Not everything that happens within a hospital’s walls is bad, certainly; people get well, they receive visits from Uncle Wally, they regain strength and motor function and they give birth to their children, a joyous occasion I’m told. Sometimes someone drives to the hospital for no other reason than to visit the cafeteria and eat lunch. That’s sort of like going to an amusement park just to use the restroom, but hey, whatever shakes their salt.

Despite all the positive things going on, hospitals project a kind of foreboding. Because bad things happen there, too. Disease. Death. Stale granola bars in the waiting room vending machine. All manner of heartbreak, really.

Which is why driving to the hospital is always a subdued, clenched-teeth kind of experience, even if the reason for going there isn’t inherently scary or life-shattering. Thing is, you simply never know for sure what’s going to happen. You could be headed there for a simple cholesterol test, or to have an MRI done, but there’s always the possibility that the attending physician looks you over and says, “Oh, I’m sorry Janet, but it turns out you have a newly-discovered illness called Dumbfoot. You’ve stubbed your toes so often that your feet have gone into revolt, and soon they’ll morph into flat slabs that look like cinderblocks. Plus you have four minutes to live. So I guess the Dumbfoot doesn’t really matter.”

Even as a six-year-old I was aware of the bizarre, random discoveries there that can blindside you. I remember going to see my great-grandmother in the hospital when I was that age, and because she spoke almost exclusively French, the visit consisted mostly of sitting quietly while she and my mother exchanged rapid fire dialogue punctuated by exclamations of “Oui!” and “Bon!” I recall zoning out, or trying to, until my great-grandmother decided to get up out of bed and retrieve something on a table near the far side of the room.

She turned around to grab said item, and I realized for the first time that hospital gowns are open in the back.

Great-grandma was about 81 or 82 at the time. I had never seen the nude posterior of a woman that age. It’s worth interjecting here to point out that, as I myself have gotten older, the women to whom I’m consistently attracted have stayed in my own age range -- the younguns don’t it for me anymore. So when I’m an elderly gentleman, I’m sure the sight of an 81-year-old woman’s backside will be just fine. Peachy, in fact.

At six years old I merely found it fascinating, much in the way that previously undiscovered underwater species are fascinating to marine biologists. Thankfully I had the tact to keep my mouth shut in the moment.

Later, having lunch at a diner with my mother, I asked her, “Mom, why does great-grandma’s butt look like the California Raisins?”

There was another first that day: I saw soda squirt out of a human nose.

The following year I spent loads of time at our local hospital. My father and grandmother were admitted to the same facility at roughly the same time, and while they both ended up fine, there were a few months in which I became all too familiar with the trappings of medicine: the gurneys, the soft colors, the aquamarine scrubs.

Mostly, though, it’s the smell I remember from that time. All hospitals seem to share it -- that sterile, disinfected odor that doesn’t quite burn the nostrils. I think the experience of being in a hospital would be completely different if they could invent a powerful cleaning product that smelled like baking doughnuts, or a fresh-cut lawn. Think of how much that would alter the vibe of the place. The way it is now, the disinfectant wafting through the air is a subliminal reminder of what it’s cleansing and camouflaging. If the rooms smelled like cake frosting it would be a whole different affair. You could repurpose a few of the rooms and rent them out to people seeking a space for their children’s birthday parties. “You’d like to book a birthday room? Excellent, sir. Will that be lilacs, fresh bread or a general potpourri?”

The good and the bad -- very few hospital experiences fall in between those two extremes. With the exception of those adventurers who casually dine in the cafeteria, you rarely have a humdrum, banal, so-so kind of day there. You never hang out in the waiting room, play three forgettable games of backgammon and then leave. You never wander into the children’s wing, find a TV and just sit down and start watching Ninja Turtles. Everything that transpires in those hospital walls is life and death, in an unnervingly literal way.

Because of these two extremes, there’s a kind of dynamic tension that exists. Every time I see a hospital I half-expect to look up at the sky above it and see a whirling vortex of clouds, with a couple of old-fashioned Biblical lightning flashes thrown in for good measure. Doesn’t it feel like they’re the center of the universe in some way? Life begins and ends there, and if you had to distill the hospital vibe down to a single word, for many of us that word would be “heavy.” They just feel heavy. The air inside them is thick with meaning.

Or maybe that’s just industrial-strength Pine Sol. Hard to know for sure. I’m telling you, if the hallways smelled like Lucky Charms marshmallows it’d be a whole different ballgame.