Thoughts on Doing
and not doing
(photo of me in my acid-washed jeans.)
We listen to music on our boom box for hours on end as we stare at the ceiling in our shoe-box-sized apartment in Reseda.
Eucalyptus incense burns.
Pizza boxes are emptied.
Cheap beer and boxed wine consumed.
The room is smoky from the incense, but it doesn’t bother me, nothing much bothers me: I’m young and in love, and let the music transport me to another time: a time that took place before I was born. A time that seemed incredible to me: the 1960s. I so very much wanted to be a teenager in the 60s. Sure, I’d be older now, but I’d have all of those groovy hippie memories. (Or would I?)
If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren’t really there.
-Paul Kantner
Instead, I was a teenager in the 80s, watching a VHS tape of Woodstock on a loop with my boyfriend.
When I watched all of those free-lovin’ hippies at Woodstock, I longed to be there. Nothing seemed to matter more to them than being together in love, peace and music. That made sense to me.
But here we are now.
And in this now, this here and now of ours— I’m overwhelmed with information, images and noise—I find myself too busy doing to get down with the being. The idea of hours of nonstop music listening seems a far-fetched dream, a distant memory. I mean, listen to an entire album? Without multi-tasking? That’s crazy, man, I got stuff to do!
The doing to become.
The doing to get.
The doing to make a mark.
The doing to prosper.
Last night I listened to two songs in a row, in the dark, in my bedroom and I remembered that beautiful long-ago feeling of letting go and non-striving. Those two songs, those four minutes and thirty-two seconds, were the best four minutes and thirty-two seconds of my adult life. (Hyperbole? Yeah. Totally.)
Still, it’s pretty great every once in a while to say,
Enough with the doing already.
How about, for just a few peaceful moments,
we pretend we have no place to be and no problems to solve.
We make like Ram Dass
and just
be
here
now.
