My Favorite Parts

I spent much of Monday watching all the pomp and circumstance of President Obama's second inauguration. I picked up CSPAN on my phone upon awakening at 6:30 am and watched the volunteers give directions to people as they arrived for the ceremony.

I followed this with pouring coffee and turning on the TV to watch closely along the parade line for Joe, my Coastie friend, who was standing in the street cordon. I strained and squinted at the appearance of every Coastie uniform to see if I recognized the face below the brim of the cap (this behavior was renewed later in the day during the parade time as well). As the President's limo reached the Capital and the news people all moved to the gathering dignitaries preparing to walk the hallway and stairwell to the Capital steps, I started to get all ferklempt (these things happen to me) as I often do when my innate, though often obscured, patriotism wells up in my chest.


I continued to check the television (and the CNN stream on my computer) throughout the day and by evening I was sitting and working at my computer with two streams from the Inauguration Ball and the Commander in Chief's Ball, waiting to catch a glimpse of the first couple doing their dancing thing.

Yes, I'm a sucker for this stuff.

Out of the whole day there were two stand out moments that grabbed me, held me, and hold me still. Moments that, for me, define the day, and not just the day, but the whole reality of what I find wonderful in this President and the way he moves through his office.


The first of these moments came at the end of the official inauguration ceremony. The President, his family, and the whole rest of the official crowd were walking back up the steps to the Capital and as he reached the top, Barack turned around to gaze out at the crowd to savor this moment and softly said, "I'll never see this again."

What was beautiful about this moment was the simple pause, and the look of what I take to be appreciation; appreciation of the moment, of the responsibility, of the opportunity, of the singular reality of an experience that will not return. It was, as Jon Stewart always closes his show, a "Moment of Zen."

There were other good moments throughout the day, particularly during the parade when it was possible to catch a glimpse of the whole Obama family as a family having fun. These were delightful moments of real humanness that it is rare to see in a president (or a candidate) without, at the same time, catching a glimpse through the bucolic scene and down into the artifice of the carefully crafted photo op.


The second moment came later in the night at the first ball appearance of POTUS and FLOTUS.

Dancing together to Jennifer Hudson's rendition of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together," the two of them (as they have done on similar occasions in the past) looked like they were having their personal private moment. Looking into each other's eyes with a softness and a presence that was the closely touching human moment that was the couple's equivalent of that pause on the steps that afternoon. It was a moment of connection in the midst of a structure and a system consistently, and somewhat intentionally, void of such personal moments. It was a silent statement of "family values" without having to demand that other people's values be trampled on to shore up our own.

I know what it feels like to look at another person with that softness, that presence, that tender hope for good, and that appreciation of the great chance to feel this way. It's a great feeling and it made me happy to see it in my President and his Partner.

These two brief encounters in a day filled with everything else give me hope for the next four years. They give me hope that the humanness can be present more and that the clear tenderness this man feels in parts of his life can be translated, past the Washington jadedness, hypocrisy, and expediency to bring out a more flowing, genuine, loving and appreciative connection in the world. I know it's a lot to expect, but I see a little crack of light there in those moments. You can keep all the broad statements and grand imaginings.

Those little looks and tiny moments... THAT'S HOPE!

Thanks Mr. President.

Like What I Think Matters...

For most of the last 9 years I've been wearing this yellow LIVESTRONG bracelet. I've taken it off from time to time, but it (or one of it's cousins) has been around my wrist since I bought my first one in the initial launch at the San Francisco Nike Store back somewhere around the Tour de France in 2004.

There were a couple of years where I wore a similar bracelet dedicated to the rebuilding of New Orleans, but I always return to the iconic yellow bracelet because it is filled with meaning for me, and most of that meaning has little to do with Lance Armstrong.

Instead, it has to do with the year I spent wishing, hoping, struggling with, injecting ugly substances into, cooking for, cleaning for, and praying for the recovery of my then partner from Stage 4 breast cancer (she's doing quite well by the way, 18 years on, but no longer is she doing well with me). Making it through cancer together never guaranteed that we'd make it through life together, and in fact, it's my feeling that the cancer, and the recovery, had as much to do with the end of our relationship as anything else. Even 7 years after that breakup, the bracelet reminds me of a time when I was strong, and good, and hopeful against very ugly experiences and very big odds. 

Wearing that bracelet has also had a lot to do with myself. The feeling that I had (and still have) when wearing that little piece of rubberized plastic is one that reminds me it is possible to do battle with the entropy of life in all its forms and come out somehow surviving it, and often doing better for it. I've worn the bracelet in 5K races and four and a half hour marathons, I've worn it in business meetings and presentations, and through long periods of hard writing that I thought was going to nail me before I nailed it.

It has inspired me both because of and in spite of the achievements, and failings, of the man whose life and work created it.

So what about Lance? 

As a long time believer and supporter (the only one I know these days), I've been asked by a lot of people to explain what I think. The problem is, I really haven't had a good idea about what I think. The simple fact is, I haven't really given Lance that much thought.

What I know is that what he did (failures and all) inspired me. I became a lover of cycling through watching him roll up those hills and speed through those time trials. The fact that I now know he was doing it juiced honestly doesn't take away the awe I felt, and feel, for those achievements. I still couldn't ride up Mont Ventoux no matter how many liters of my own blood I reprocessed, or how many vials of testosterone I absorbed. 

What I know is that those rides got my ass out on the road, and inspired me to make it through the most unpleasant struggle of running 26.2 miles of rugged road. It also inspired me to keep going through other hardships when what I most wanted to do was give up. I believe that inspired millions of cancer patients and survivors, for I have met some of them, and seen many pictures of others.

These effects don't justify what Lance Armstrong did to gain the reputation and status that allowed him to have that effect, but what he did in those races, practices, hotel rooms and clinics, doesn't diminish the positive results of what others received from those achievements. I was deeply inspired, over and over again, by Lance Armstrong, and that inspiration changed my life. Now that I know his reputation was built on an edifice of lies and some significantly despicable behavior, does it change the inspiration I received and that I used to better my life?

Absolutely not!

There are people in the world, and some of them are athletes, who are bigger than the reality of their own lives. Some of them, like Lance, know this and use it to pound other people into submission. Others are more humble and present and what they do, and how they do it, is more palatable to our more hopeful natures.

Many of our heroes and sheroes work hard and achieve great things despite their failings, or sometimes through their process of overcoming their failings. Some do beautiful things without revealing such boldfaced flaws. There really are as many ways of inspiring as there are people that inspire, and it is there where the real importance of accomplishment lives.

The fault, as Shakespeare wrote, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, and so is the goodness.  The real greatness of accomplishment comes through and with the people who are inspired by the great actions of others. The real effect of inspiration is in what such people and actions inspire us to accomplish. Those effects cannot be diminished because of the failings of the "hero."

The dishonesty, corruption and ugliness of the actions of Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones (another athlete who I found inspiring), Manny Ramirez,  Bill Clinton, or even Martin Luther King Jr. doesn't change the good things that came from the less than perfect lives they lived as less than perfect human beings. The real triumph of any life is found in the inspiration that life gives to others and that inspiration and its subsequent effect is not diminished by anything another person has done, or does. We are the keepers of our own inspiration and our lives become the legacy of the actions that inspire us.

Yeah, I am disappointed to find out that what I believed about Lance Armstrong (and his team members who I most admired, George Hincapie and Tyler Hamilton) turned out not to be true, but it ain't the first time I've had such disappointments and it certainly won't be the last. All of the commentators riffing on what a horrible disappointment it all is however, just don't do anything for me, because what I take away from it all has become mine. The reality of my life is different because of the inspiration of Lance, and many other very flawed people. I do not intend to allow that inspiration to be diminished because of the rabid obsession of the diminishment news cycle, because that doesn't hurt Lance, it hurts me.

Back to my bracelets... These days (and for the last year) I've been wearing a second bracelet next to my LIVESTRONG one. That bracelet, which I picked up last December at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. reads "WHAT YOU DO MATTERS." I bought it as I was leaving the museum because it spoke to me of the fact that even in the midst of the truly horrible events that can take place in the world, it is the actions of each individual person - great or humble, nearly perfect or desperately flawed - that make a difference in what happens to us all. 

My bracelet doesn't say WHAT LANCE DOES MATTERS... It's speaking to me, and it's reminding me several times every day that WHAT I DO MATTERS. Frankly, that's all I really care about. 

I'm STILL Walkin' Here!

Last night between my stop at Vesuvio's and my check in at Red Devil Lounge to see Junkyard Academy, I did something that I have done many times, but never in the rainy dark. I wandered my way through the rain to the top of Nob Hill and walked the Labyrinth in the courtyard of Grace Cathedral.

I've been walking these labyrinths for nearly 20 years and I've been on them inside and out, crowded with pilgrims and alone in the quiet. One of the first times I ever walked the labyrinth inside the cathedral was at noon on my 40th birthday. Due to some weird schedule changes in the morning I wound up on the path just before noon. The moment I stepped into the center, the clock struck 12 and all the bells in the cathedral started to chime! It was amazing and blessed and it set the tone for several days of personal reflection and celebration that I still look back on for insight when I'm trying to figure out where I'm headed next. The labyrinth (a symbol of which I also keep around my neck most of the time) has provided me with 20 years of centering and focus in a life that often has neither.

Last night was dark and drippy and I was alone on the path. As I walked the flowing circles, I could look up to the top of The Mark across the way, where I stayed exactly 11 months ago; 11 months, and a whole other world, ago. That morning, I stumbled bleary eyed through the hallway of the hotel, into the elevator and up the hill to walk the labyrinth in the chilly early morning. I was alone on the path that time as well. That morning, on December 22, just after the longest night of the year, celebrating the birthday of my sweetheart, I was gazing into a future that looked cheery and encouraging, rich and hopeful, both personally and professionally. In the ensuing 11 months most of those dreams and visions have fallen to the side of the road. Despite setback and lost hopes, I still remain encouraged by thoughts of whatever might happen next, but I'm definitely not as buoyant as I was back then.

Still, I do as I have done over and over since I first moved away from The City 23 years ago. I return to my original home, the place where I learned to love city life, the place where my daughter (and now granddaughter) was born, and where I always seem to find my soul again, buried and tattered, but somehow always there waiting for the next round. I stumble my way back up the hill, I look across the city skyline, I take a breath, and I step on the path once more.

Yeah...  I'm still walkin' here!  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Death to my Hometown

For several days I've been putting my brain around a blog post about the experience of Katrina 7 years ago today and the way my life has traveled since that day, but I'm still not finished with the attempt.

At the same time, I absolutely cannot let the day go by without a beginning stab at the way I feel about such things. Oddly enough The Boss has done a good job of putting my thoughts into words with a song off Wrecking Ball that is about our more recent great debacle. There are very few things that do as good a job describing BOTH these events like "Death To My Hometown.

However... when you're done watching this one, check out my Blues Routes show about Springsteen's more specific response to Katrina when he played that following spring at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (and in so doing, won the accolades of New Orleans locals as well as his legion of fans).

And to my friends back home... Hang in there babies!!!

Follow Your Bliss

Chungliang Al Huang from pat solomon on Vimeo.

I am a big fan of Joseph Campbell and have been since the very first airing of Bill Moyers' earth shaking interviews with him in The Power of Myth nearly 30 years ago.

Watching the Moyers video again this morning, I caught the comment that Campbell makes about transformation of consciousness... "You're thinking in this way, but now you have to start thinking in that way. Right now is feeling like one of those transformational moments to me. As Al Huang comments in the clip above, it "may take some time for you to find it [your bliss], but that's what you need to do."

The confusion over the concept of "follow your bliss" has always been kind of amusing to me. On the one hand there are the people who take the phrase, not only literally, but sort of fundamentalistically. They advocate the idea that it's essentially the same as saying "Do What U Wanna" which is a GREAT tune for a second line (and oh how I miss the second lines!) but it's not really great as a philosophy of life.

It's also NOT what Joseph Campbell was saying.

The other reaction to this perspective tends to come from the opposite side, taking extreme exception to the idea that people just want to "follow their bliss..." doing any thing that feels good at the time. Or to quote an old saying from the 60s, "If it feels good do it."

That's also NOT what Joseph Campbell was saying.

What he WAS saying, is both obvious and profound.

Bill Moyers asks, "What's the journey I have to make?"

Campbell responds by saying, "Follow your bliss... find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it."

He expands from there, but the point is clearly that "follow your bliss" is the WAY to find what you are supposed to be about. It's like the "follow the money" line in All The President's Men. Watch closely the trail... see where it leads.... The path itself will tell you what's going on and what you need to do.

What do you really love? What excites you? What gets you out of bed in the morning? What is your answer when you look in the mirror, as Steve Jobs suggested, and ask yourself if what you're planning for the day is something that would be satisfying if it was your last day on earth.

For me... in the passage of the last several years (and especially the last eight months) I've been digging deeper into the excitement and love I have for certain ways of being and certain things I think and feel and do. As Al says above, it's taken me a long time to catch the through line, to truly "follow my bliss." To watch the way things go... to see what makes me laugh and smile and fall in love with being in the world. And I - to my great disservice - give up the path easily and often. I don't trust the basic feelings at my core. I let the dragon slay me (to use Campbell's metaphor) rather than slaying the dragon.

I am once again at a place where I am seeking the courage and the strength to stay on the journey down... to figure out exactly what I... "need to do.

My life depends on it... According to Campbell, all our lives depend on it; the very fate of the earth depends on it.

Just... Be

A friend of mine from a few years back, Marc Lesser, has a great blog out this week that focuses on the topic of a new type of corporation that has just come into being in California (and many other states as well). The B Corporation (officially a Benefit Corporation in California legal parlance) is a relatively new development within the world of corporate structure, and for many in the business world it seems to come across like some kind of strange hybrid beast from a mythological land. For others, like myself, it's something that we've been waiting for, longing for, and trying to make happen for a very very long time.

The first discussion I ever had about the concepts behind Benefit Corporations occurred in my living room in San Francisco in 1982, the year my daughter was born, as a group of us were forming a record company that eventually became known as BrierPatch Music, Inc. Starting a business that we hoped would be about more than making money... that WAS about more than making money... led us into a struggle about whether to form our new little company as a non-profit or not. At the time, I was the lone voice of entrepreneurial capitalism in our bunch. I believed then - as I believe now - that businesses have not only an obligation, but also a great opportunity, to do wonderful things in the world AS BUSINESSES. I believed then, and still believe now, that the music we created and the products we produced were important in their own right and deserved the basic respect that standing up on their own in a market economy suggested of them. To me, developing our business as a non-profit (and I've spent 30 years of my life working with non-profits, so I am not about dismissing the importance and significance of non-profits) was a way of suggesting that the work didn't really stand on its own; it felt to me like asking for help from people, when what we were providing held intrinsic value (and deserved to be treated that way). The circumstances of our business were such that to do otherwise felt akin to beginning our project with a corporate self-image problem. Something akin to saying, "we're not really that good, but we want to be, so won't you support us anyway?"

I didn't believe that about what we were doing and I don't believe it now.

In the U.S. we exists in a corporate free market (mostly) economy. The rest of the world is rapidly moving in that same direction. Many see that as a bad thing. I am not one of those people. I believe the danger of capitalism is not inherent in the free market concept, but rather in the destruction of the free market concept through a distinct lack of concern for the basic factors of corporate responsibility and good citizenship. The greedy nature of so much corporate wrong is based directly in the idea that its not only possible, but indeed profitable, as well as conceptually important, to rig the system by fouling the planet, abusing employees, stealing from governments, and lying to customers. This is not only bad business... it's bad morals.

If corporations are effectively "people" then they have the same basic moral responsibilities of people. They have the responsibility to take care of their environment, to treat people fairly, to refuse to lie, cheat, steal, and murde, and to tell the truth about who they are and what they do. Corporations as "people" have the same responsibility as REAL PEOPLE. They have the responsibility - and the joyous privilege - to be good citizens.

Back in 1982, I won my argument and we formed BrierPatch Music, Inc. as a California C Corporation. I had some great heros and mentors (chiefly Ben & Jerry, Paul Hawkin, and Yvone Chouinard) to lead the way and provide exemplary guidance in the journey we set out upon.

What I was not aware of at the time was that basically my concept of socially responsible business was a great idea.. a good thing... a mitzvah, if you will, but it was not in any way supported by corporate law. Corporate law was (and largely still is) based on the idea that the only thing a corporation is to consider is the maximization of shareholder wealth... period. For a great little tutorial on that reality have a look a this TED talk from the B Corp Website.



As you can see from the talk above... that perspective, and the law that supports it, is changing. In California, on January 2, 2012, a new law introduced in the California legislature by Jared Huffman established California as one of only a handful of states where it is possible to establish your corporation as a "Benefit Corporation" with the right AND THE LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY to act for the benefit of, not a single, but a triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profits.

This is joyous news to me personally, because not only does it vindicate what I have believed for most of my adult life, but it also provides a new corporate form that allows my business partner and I to establish our new company , Barrier Free Adventures, Inc. as such a company. While we formed last October as a regular California C Corporation, we will be resubmitting our Articles of Incorporation in the next few weeks to take advantage of this new corporate designation.

What's that do for us? It allows us to move forward with the clear declaration that we are a company (like BrierPatch Music 30 years ago) that is intentional about doing good in the world while also seeking to do business and make a profit. Mainly it gives us the platform to declare what we already believed, that Barrier Free Adventures will not simply be about increasing the single bottom line of profit (which we expect to do very well at by the way) but also to state that we intend to also do good in the world, provide community service for our clients and communities, and to treat our people well. We are a "triple bottom line" company that cares about Planet - People - Profits. It also gives us the protection from people who might still feel like the only reason for a corporation to exists is maximization of profit.

I'm excited about this... I believe, as Jay Coen Gilbert of B Lab states it, that this is the beginning of a new way of doing business in the world. I believe that it is a world changing meme that I am happy to be a part of.

If you'd like to know more about how things move forward with us at Barrier Free Adventures, leave a comment here, check out the website at http://barrierfreeadventures.com (with news on a whole new suite of services coming within a couple weeks) or drop me a line at thom@barrierfreeadventures.com

The Story's Still The Same

Tonight I am working at Petaluma's Aqus Cafe with an actor friend - Roger Marquis - on a set of readings from two different wars that have, to a certain extent bookended my life to this point. The show will be presented on Monday and Tuesday evening at the cafe and if you're in Petaluma this week, I hope you will drop in (Aqus Cafe - 7:30pm Monday and Tuesday admission FREE).

As a whole - along with my rather personal involvement with issues that surrounded the Central American wars of the Reagan years - this is a theme that has occupied my life from the time I was fourteen up to this moment as I type this on my computer. I even produced a song (now 25 years old) by Ken Medema that I will be playing as part of the show, and which could not be a better lead in to what we have conceived for this performance, The Story's Still The Same!

It would be nice (and rather a bit fanciful) if I could imagine that these wars really are bookends in my life and that we might be moving to some other place in world reality, but that seems unlikely. We seem, instead, to be moving to a time, similar to that which Orwell imagined, of endless war for the purpose of commerce and distraction.

In the shadow of Armistice Day and in the presence of a Petaluma Historical Museum exhibit that glorifies the VietNam War and refuses to give appropriate attention to the questionable (and immoral) circumstances that took us into, and kept us in, that war, while so many people (both U.S. and Vietnamese) died and suffered, I find this one of the most important things I have ever worked on.

Act One of "Winter Soldiers" is a dramatic reading of the direct testimony of veterans at the first Winter Soldier hearings in 1971, Act Two comes from the testimony of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, given as testimony at a second set of hearings in 2008. As I work with this material, dig through photos, videos, writings, and testimony, I find my emotions torn apart.

I have been actively working against war for 42 years!

One of the most important conversations I have ever had in my life occurred in Los Angeles about the time I produced the song I mentioned above. My friend (who will likely be reading this) made the suggestion that out of Justice, Truth and Beauty, he had been inundated with Justice and Truth and was ready for a little Beauty. The statement stopped me in my tracks, and I conitnue to reflect on it - regularly - today.

Has anything that I did, am doing, or will do made a damn bit of difference in all of this? I don't think so.

The wars still go on... the excuses still fly... the military/industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about continues to make bank on the spoils of war.

The Story's Still The Same... but I keep wondering if there is some way to change it.

Is it possible to BE THE CHANGE that Gandhi referred to?

My life has been turned upside down once more by the process of working on this show. Even in this embryonic form that we will present in Petaluma on the next two nights, the testimonies, the questions, and the declarations of courage and hope have given me a determination to seek and hope for justice, truth and beauty once again.

Semper Fi is what the Marines say... These principles, hopes, dreams and desires for Justice, Truth, and Beauty are the things to which I can similarly dedicate MY life.