Semi-Pornographic

The Secret Life of Hubcaps

Three- Semi-Pornographic

I once wrote a semi-pornographic book. I didn’t do it to write a pornographic book, but rather to allow myself to write what was inside at that moment. What was inside at that moment was a sense of humor that went unused while I was in seventh grade and needed to come out. I had been in a repressive situation for years and needed to go too far just to show myself that I could. Too far is a relative term. Too far for me was still fairly mild.

I play in a bar band on the weekend for a similar reason. If you ask me why I play in my blues/soul/rock band, I will tell you it is to keep my chops up for my paying gig. I am an over paid music pastor for my main job. The truth is, I need the opportunity to go beyond self control on a regular basis. I need to know that there is an opportunity to go crazy in a safe non-judgmental environment. If I want to talk trash, I do it there. If I want to play a five minute guitar solo or leave the rhythm section to dance with the crowd, this is my weekly chance. I don’t always do it, but I need to know that the chance is available.

Every few weeks I see someone at these gigs that does not belong. They may be male or female, old or young. They are always after something they do not understand. As a professional people watcher, I understand why they are there. They come to the seedy dive bars where I play to find a part of themselves they think has been stolen. The girl became a mom before she became a woman and her wild years were stolen. How can she know who she is, when her sense of self is defined more by what she does for others? Another person wandering into my world is the dude who was unexpectedly divorced by his wife. She took the kids and he is wondering what the fuck happened as he walks into this dark place, hoping for something to ease the pain of confusion. The pain of confusion is worse than other forms of pain, because there is no way to get at it easily. If I know what hurts and why, I can easily find a way to heal. How can I cut out the pain I cannot pinpoint? What cures the phantom wound?

There is only one thing for it: medication. The treatment for this ailment is found in the affirmation of flirtation. Flirtation becomes the medication. It does not have to be sexual flirtation. It might be someone listening to you that makes you feel worth something. For women it is too often the dogs that prey of the scraps of women. A woman that is not made to feel special at home will have her head turned a dozen times each night by the hungry dogs that wait for anything vaginal to enter the bar. A pretty woman is in danger in this world. For men there is a conveyor belt of people willing to identify with their loss. “When that happened to me…” they say. “They’re all the same.” says a blurry voice two stools down. At some point he hears “Listen, you need to go to that Son of a Bitch and…”. There are only so many variations. All this goes down easier with a few drinks.

After a few months of this, the fresh meat person either sinks into this sad little world, becoming a “Regular” or they come to their senses and go back to salvage what they can of their life. The choice revolves around the strength of the original character. Those with a clear idea of who they are are less likely to be turned by the action of others. I know what they are looking for. They want to know that they are alright. The person they are is becoming something else and they need to know that that person is acceptable to someone. They ironic twist in all this is that while searching for someone to affirm who they are, they become someone new. Invariably the person becomes more like the place they choose to find acceptance and less like the place they came from. Whether this is good or bad is subjective.

As for me, I wrote a semi-pornographic novel. Am I a better person for it? I think so. I, in my new (not as pure) self, think I am a much more compassionate soul. I have grace for the people I meet. Maybe we all need to go crazy now and then.

Momma We’re All Crazy Now.

Mark

Impossible Things

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice in Wonderland.

After years of frustration at the difference between my ambition and my accomplishments, a friend suggested that I see a counselor. There was the usual delay with me forgetting to set the appointment for a few months. Eventually I arrived. The Doctor’s office was cramped. Photos and art from India lined the walls. The chair was so comfortable, I almost slept. I cannot remember her name, but I can drive you to her office. If I miss a name, I assume it will show up later on a bill or in an email. Life seems to work like that. For forty-five minutes she asked me questions about work and career cycles in my life.

Sometimes a bell goes off in my head and I learn something important about myself or the other worlds around me. The doctor leaned in and said “Maybe there is another way of looking at your life. A way that takes the negative emotion out of the way you live and work. A way that can set you free of this frustration.” DING!

You see, I KNOW I am capable of, and destined for, something larger than myself. My goal has always been to live a life that is extra ordinary. In many ways, I have lived my dream life. When I was eighteen, I decided I wanted to travel, own a recording studio, write, produce and perform music and to do it all on my terms. It is thirty years down the road and I am living that life. I am living that life with one small hitch: it doesn’t look like I thought it would. It is a case of “be careful what you wish for, you may get it.”

My wife and I have been watching Gene Simmons Family Jewels the past few months. I am pretty sure YesterMe was thinking along those lines: beautiful castle in Los Angeles, big time music tours, fame, etc. It seems likely that those were the things fueling my masturbatory dreams. The whole reverend thing was NOT in my picture perfect world. It has turned out perfect, if not the picture I had in mind. Let’s get one thing straight right here: MY LIFE KICKS ASS.

Somewhere in all this, I never stopped believing six impossible things before breakfast. I see a vision of FutureMe and move toward it. As Marc Bredencamp says “I’m somewhere in the future and I look much better than I look right now.” Doing anything I want in life is made all the more desirable if I am told it is impossible. Impossible just means we haven’t looked at it from enough angles. “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” Said the Apostle Paul and I am just stupid enough to agree. I am sure I did not know that line at eighteen, but I know I today. I grew up looking at the inspirational posters in the library and believing the slogans. By the time someone told me they were all bullshit, it was too late, it was already a part of me.

My story to the doctor was one of bands, movies, documentaries, books, CDs, publishing companies, non-profit organizations, magazines, churches, and a variety of other projects started from a dream and dropped when some other shiny thing caught my attention. The frustration of it all has driven me to sabotage good situations and spend countless hours in dark rooms looking off into space in fits of depression.

“Have you considered that you may be a Pioneer and not a Settler?” as she explained her theory of me to me, her words sprang to life in my heart. “A Settler comes into a situation and creates order. A Settler manages the growth and the day to day operation of a thing.” She continued “A Pioneer dreams, explores and creates something where there was nothing. You lack follow through on projects because you simply do not care about the long term of the thing. You are curious to see if it can be done. You want the experience of proving to yourself that you CAN do it.” Her words were now exploding in my sole. “As soon as you are satisfied you have beat the challenge you set for yourself, you are off to something else.” She continued “The down side of all this Pioneering is that other people are involved in the achievement: people looking forward to the benefit of this new thing. That’s why you like to work alone. Working alone leaves less people disappointed by your lack of interest in the final result.” She commented that this pattern may only show up in a few areas of my life, but is the dominating influence in those areas. She then gave me a few tools to help work around this issue in my career.

I walked out of her office and was very quiet for about two days. It all made perfect sense, but is it just a cop out for being a slack? I had already spent most of my life beating myself up over a lack of follow through. I have never seen the movie Failure to Launch, but that phrase runs through my self talk. No one can hurt me as completely as I can hurt me. What do I have to lose by looking at my life from a different angle? I long ago embraced the impossible as a life choice.

In the months since that meeting I have decided to come out of the closet. Look at me world: I am a dreamer that, like Don Quixote, is always chasing windmills! I will not be deterred by what is or is not possible. My life does not need to look right to anyone but me. Sometimes I will win and sometimes I will fail utterly. I have found the failures make better stories. 

Mark

The Secret Life of Hubcaps- A Chapter A Day

The Secret Life of Hubcaps

ONE- A Chapter A Day

Every six months or so, I start/continue writing a book called the Secret Life of Hubcaps. I get a few chapters pulled together and something shiny happens. Something shiny that takes my attention off the book. Often that something is the simple act of remembering some other project I have forgotten about for six months. The cycle goes on and on and I drift along remembering one thing after another. As I have mentioned before in this book, by the time I finish a project, there have been many deaths and many rebirths.

I have books all over my house. Each one has a few chapters read. I vaguely recall the beginning of many, many stories. As I write this, it is 1 am on a Sunday morning and I got out of bed to write. I had been reading a Richard Bach book that I have started several times. This time I made it past the introduction. Something in the few pages I read sparked a thought: What happens if I give myself permission to be who I am and work the way I work? I have been writing songs since Nixon was in the White House. I (almost) always write the same way. The first note comes with the first word. The first line is followed by the second line. A verse or two are followed by a chorus. I arrange the song as I am writing it. I write the way you hear: sequentially. The music comes into my head as a finished piece. In my preteens and teens, I was unable to get out what I heard in my head. My musical journey has been learning to translate the thought into a reality others can hear.

Markology 101- Every song ever written is in existence at all times. Music was created outside of time and is waiting for someone to catch it as it goes by. Every bit of melody, word couplet and so on is energy vibrating in the spiritual atmosphere. This comes through to the rest of us by a person willing to be used. Tin Pan Alley songwriters like George and Ira Gershwin or hard core rockers like Kip Winger are all feeding off the same source: energy. It is a thought from Creator that floats in our collective consciousness until thought again or remembered by an individual. We learn to receive or hear the thoughts that appeal to us as “writers”. I can improvise a song and call it Manna and say God created it or I can “write” a song and call it the brilliant work of the Reverend Mark Steven Archambault © 2010 Humnal Music ASCAP. It really is all the same. It is like a microphone and a speaker. Vibrations move a diaphragm (microphone), it becomes energy and that energy in turn moves a diaphragm (speaker). Spirit creates a vibration (song), it is vibrating in us until someone amplifies it by receiving and playing/singing it again.

When a song comes to me, I do not write it down unless I feel I have it completely. If I have not received the whole of it, I let it go. When it is ready for me, it will come back to me. For years my life was filled with notebooks of lyrical bits that I might use someday. That day never came. When I looked back at things unfinished, they made no sense to me. They were not yet complete. The burden of carrying every half cocked idea from my waking existence became too much for me. When I moved from Wisconsin to Arizona in 2004 I burned over fifty notebooks. It is now a matter of faith with me. If I never write another song or book or whatever, so what? I went for a few years with no new songs and rarely thought about it. Surely if Spirit wants me to have a song, I will have a new song. They drop out of a clear blue sky when I am thinking about other things. Driving seems to produce the best ones. Doing dishes is another song generating activity. When I had a lawn mower, and a lawn to mow, I cranked out tunes every week. The point is that the song is already there. Bringing it into our world is about relaxing and trusting that I will receive.

I used to listen to NPR religiously every day. For a complete list of why I no longer do that, buy me a few beers and get me started. On Public Radio there was a program called Chapter A Day. I loved it. A book was read aloud one chapter a day. It was a model of simplicity. One thought laid out after another in sequence. The shiny thought that ran through my head at the top of this page was simple: why not write a book the way I write songs? Front to back, start to finish? What do I have to lose? Who am I trying to please? I can write one chapter a day without editing or attempting to pull it all together. To the best of my knowledge exactly 16 people have heard my original music and only slightly more than that have read my published articles. Given that no one is beating down my door begging for my thoughts, I can be free to be honest with me, about me and for me. No one else will care because, well... no one else cares. Not unless those 16 drooling music fans tell two friends each. At that point it could become chaos right here in Picture Rocks.

So here goes, a chapter a day. Check back in a month and see how I am doing.

Mark