How To Really Listen

Brainstorming some ideas on what subject to write upon tonight brought me to this simple idea: How do you really listen? How do you listen to music? How do you listen to people?

The idea came to me when I was listening to some Vivaldi just now. By the way, I love baroque music, especially Vivaldi, and the Four Seasons piece. Those fast violins burn and shred hard.

First, I'll share my thoughts about how to listen to music and then how to listen to people after.

I can hear the grass grow.

So first of all, these are simply my ideas on what's best. What might be right for me might not be your cup of tea. That being said, the best way to listen to music is by listening to music with a good pair of headphones or speakers. Headphones are the best. Then, make sure you have EQ bars that have predefined presets so you can always put the music's tone on a good sound easily without messing around too much.

The next step is critical. When you listen to music, only listen to the music. Don't scroll through Facebook, don't read the news, don't read random articles, don't talk. The only way you can truly respect and enjoy the music is by giving it your full, undivided attention. So when I started writing this blog I turned off the music and put down my headphones. Why? Because you have to give the task at hand your full, undivided attention, for that is the only way you can truly enjoy it and give it the credit it deserves. Think of all the people who mindlessly do one thing while doing another. They can't really get the benefit of doing the one thing because they're doing another, they're doing themselves a disservice. 

In addition, it should be added that you must listen not only to the lyrics of the singer [most of you listen to bands with singers] but you must also learn to isolate the sounds of the bass, guitar, drums, and keyboards. Likewise, if you're a big classical connoisseur like myself, you must learn to recognize the chords/melodies, the chords/melodies of the brass, the chords/melodies of the strings, etc. Once you can recognize the melodies and chords coming from all the different instruments, then you can truly enjoy it. If you just sit there and mindlessly listen without putting all of this into consideration, it's sort of empty and soulless. Sure, you might be able to pick out a simple melody here or there, but only if the song hits you over the head with it. You have to learn to isolate chords and melodies, no matter how cluttered the sound is. That's where things get difficult, especially when you're a musician trying to learn a new song on the guitar, or a classical musician trying to learn to play in a huge orchestra. By the time you can figure out how to do all this, your ear will become trained; you'll be able to recognize intervals, chords, melodies, rhythms, scales, modes, all of it, and your appreciation for music will go through the roof. If you can't do this stuff mentioned here then your ear will always be mediocre and although you'll enjoy a good beat or riff here or there, you'll never get to that full music appreciation. It's like a guitar player who only plays power chords. If you've never played a jazz or a classical chord then you haven't done your homework. Essentially, you'll always be a rookie.

You say yes, I say no.

So you've done all the above and you can fully appreciate AND enjoy music. Congrats! That's all super hard work and it takes a lifetime to really enjoy and master, musician or not. Always remember that the people who listen to music as background noise can't appreciate and enjoy the music the same way you do, they will always lack that special something, the secret sauce so to speak; you're a seasoned connoisseur now.

Now you apply your listening skills from music to listening to people, listening to words. Reading helps a lot with this but that's for another blog. The white noise that can bleed into your auditory senses will always be there whether its background music inside your work, cars driving by, other people talking, even the wind blowing will be noticeable to your ears, even thoughts in your own head can clutter sound. You have to isolate the sound the same way you isolate the sound when you listen to music. Some people are low note baritone talkers, others are midrange brass, others are more of high violin notes. Identifying, clarifying, and isolating their voices will be key.

One of the interesting things that will occur once you're at this stage is that you will begin to hear a lot more; more of everything. A lot of people talk to themselves, say something meant just for themselves, and you'll even pick up these things too. It's not really that important but it's a behavioral tick that a lot of people have. Other times people will blatantly say something really quiet but is meant for you to hear. For example, perhaps a cute girl wants to give you a compliment but is a little shy? Or how about a passive-aggressive comment from someone you pissed off somehow. There's always something. Hell, you'll even realize that sometimes people whisper random stuff. Weird, I know. But you'll pick it up along the way.  

The most important thing is that you're there listening. It isn't really that important what you say. If you're around people that genuinely like you, it never matters what you say, only that you listen. You can choose to listen in a passive way, almost like your not even there, or you can be more outgoing and create exchanges of sentences with people, either method works. The most important thing is to try not to interrupt someone when they're talking. If you miss some things, hey, nobody is perfect. Listening to people is very similar to listening to music; it's all ear training, recognition, call, and response. Essentially all it is is language games, even music is just that to some extent. Next thing you know you'll be able to transcribe your nervous exchange with the hottest girl you've seen all week. Or that frantic police squad car/helicopter chase down the freeway going 100 miles per hour.

I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello.

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic is a terrific book written by classics scholar, philologist, and professor David Mendelsohn. Written in 2017, the novel is part memoir, part scholarly insight into the Odyssey, and has its share of philosophy as well. I would compare this sort of writing to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, except this is much more scholarly and that is much more hippie. However, the classic idea of a novel being a memoir, the idea of how you can travel without really going anywhere by going in circles, and the bonds made in the process is what makes them similar. As the Dead would sing, "What a long strange trip it's been."

Mendelsohn compares the Odyssey to his relationship with his father. And it works. His father is a mathematician who regrets that he never got his Ph.D. or ever read Ovid in Latin like he wanted to. David, the son, and writer is a gay man who always wanted to be close to his father but his father is the typical grumpy dad type that doesn't like to be touched even by the wife sometimes. He's the conventional stiff math guy. Mendelsohn goes into great detail what type of man his father was but its a sore oversight that he doesn't say much about any of his mentors in life or his relationship to a female partner whom he has kids with. Yes, you heard that right, a gay man who has a female partner so he can have kids. Until I read this book I didn't even know that was a thing that gay people did, but apparently, it's not out of the ordinary. So yes, although it is great that Mendelsohn can describe his father, mother, and uncle with great detail and we get a sense of who they were, he doesn't really describe himself or any of his mentors much. Which makes the book lesser.

However, despite that, what makes this book truly remarkable is the scholarly aspects and the form, the way it is written; before, after, and future can happen all at once like in the Odyssey. It goes without saying that if you read this book you will know more about the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Aeneid than everyone you come across. Heck, Mendelsohn even goes into the elements of the Greek language, which is downright informative and good to know even if I could never use or apply it.

Mendelsohn teaches a university course to freshman about the Odyssey, and his father ends up taking the course. Using the class, his father, and his students as a way to explain the many ways you can, should, and should not interpret the Odyssey, Mendelsohn does a fantastic job not only of describing the experience in his book but making it fun, digestible, and easy to understand. The scholarly elements of this book are like gold, the insight I got from Mendelsohn's explanations on every part of the Odyssey not only strengthens my love for classics and the Western Canon, but also makes me smarter, so that when I reread the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, I will read them with a much more sophisticated outlook, one that takes into account how to interpret its many lines, chapters, and books. One of the things Mendelsohn stresses to his students is that you can't just make up interpretations, rather, he has been taught how to look at the Greek classics in a specific way, the way his teachers taught him. In a way, this is limiting to the students, meaning they have to listen and accept everything he says, but on the other hand, I can see things through the more traditional route as well. His father is always there in class to stand up to him and disagree at times.

For an example of some scholarly things I learned, one of them is the idea of the proem, or the beginning of the epic poem. This establishes the entire epic poem in the first couple lines and is so important to the interpretation that you can't understand it without understanding and analyzing the proem first. The last lines are equally important to the interpretation as well. Then there's the famous Homeric Question: Was he a real person? Most scholars believe that there might have been a real Homer but that if he did exist, he did not know how to read or write, thus the idea of traveling poets and bards comes up. Poets and bards who memorize some 15k lines of epic poetry and know it so well that they can improvise new lines and variations upon it while telling the same story. It's history.

Lastly, one of the best elements of the book is that it's an odyssey itself. By talking about and interpreting the odyssey, Mendelsohn takes us on one. And like the Odyssey, the end has to do with a strong bond between father and son. Mendelsohn relates how at the end of the Odyssey, it is the reveal from Odysseus to his father that he's still alive and well, that is truly heartwarming and brings about the final end, the slaughter of Penelope's suitors, who have tried to force Penelope to marry them, taken over the palace, seduced the maids, and eaten all the food.

This is one hellova book. I recommend it to anyone who's read the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. It will give you more than enough new information to last a lifetime. Not only is it valuable for its scholarly and philosophical insight, but its also a decent memoir, and shows that you can write a book that has many styles in one; memoir, scholarly insight, and philosophy, using time in any which way you choose. Recommended to anyone who likes memoirs, the classics, or wants to learn more about the classics. 

The painting above is called The Patience of Penelope, who waited 20 years for Odysseus to come home.

The Art of the Perfect Day

Lately, I've been writing a lot of long-winded rants about the ways of the world, making it out to seem a lot more wicked than it might potentially be. While the world is still trying to kill all of us with the threat of COVID looming over us like the sword of Damocles, embodying the very nature of pure fear and danger. It's been rough. But I think I've finally hit that sweet spot where I'm not going to bitch about how bad COVID is, and cry about how I can't hang out at Starbucks or hang out with girls at the bar. 

Consider the alternative. Positive energy, good vibes, hippie energy, essentially. This is where the Beatles come in for me. With the godlike good vibes of the Beatles, there are no limits to what you can, imagine. 

Consider how difficult it would be for you to have a perfect day. Well, I had a perfect day today. Nothing got to me and it was just lovely. I want to live every day in a positive way like this. It's like a superpower. But it isn't easy. Nothing you can do if you want to sing the blues but you know it don't easy. Every day is a constant uphill battle. But you can't let the fuckers get you down. 

Here are some tips and tricks that help me practice The Art of the Perfect Day.    

1) Read books, not articles. 

A lot of people wake up in the morning and they read the news and then follow it up with either more news articles or other articles about various subjects they're interested in. While I think reading the news is essential, I don't think you should solely only read the news, nor solely read articles. If you do, you're reading potential is sorely wasted. In fact, I would say that reading the news isn't even reading, it's just politics and keeping up to date. The sheer intellectual stimulation you get from reading a great book or even a mediocre book that interests you is so powerful that there's almost no other source like it aside from maybe something like LSD. Again, no limits to what you can, imagine. 

2) Talk to people, really talk and understand.

When you talk to people, are you really listening? Are you giving them your full attention and respect? One of the things in life that is hard to get in this day and age is a good, sentimental education. With this, you will learn to treat people with dignity and respect. You will learn to treat the janitor with the same respect as the CEO. People that don't understand this don't make it far in life; their wives leave them and take the kids, they lose their top pay CEO positions, they even fail their careers and end up unemployed or worse. You don't learn this from college and sometimes even parents don't understand or know how to teach this. It comes with wisdom, age, and experience. 

3) Relax, don't try to control everything.

Take a chill pill and mellow out sometimes. Remember that you can't control everything, especially people, their actions, and their thoughts. I've worked with a lot of managers who stress out to the point of exhaustion. This is very common. This is a big no-no in life and it holds them back, as well as making them stand out like a sore thumb. While you can't be a complete hippie freak and let your freak flag fly high all the time, you should at least know how to play it cool, so cool that nobody sees you freaking out under pressure, no matter how much pressure it is. Take your time. Do things at a reasonable pace. Don't make mistakes. But if you do, don't freak out about it, just fix it, but again, be reasonable about it. If it's a serious mistake, admit to your faults, and move on. 

4) Get a little help from your friends.

Use all your friends and family to your advantage. They're there to be there for you. Feel free to lean on them in times of trouble. Likewise, always help them whenever they need you. With a little help from your friends, you can really get by.   

5) Realize that things are getting better all the time. Sometimes you have to learn to see the sunny side of the street. People really hate being around negative people all the time. It's a fact that they are the worst. Likewise, people who are always overly positive can be annoying. But consider the fact that the overly positive person is much more likable than the negative person. The positive person has a better personality and probably has an easier time getting through their day, and consequently, through much practice in good mindsets, even has a better life.

One day doesn't change all the other days. But's it good practice. Life's a bitch, and then you die. Better make the best of it and enjoy it to the fullest. 

"The teachers that taught me weren't cool, holding me down, turning me round, filling me up with your rules. I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time." 

Politics, Retail, An Odyssey

Hello everybody. Trying to get back into the groove of continuously writing even without a proper subject. It's a bit like Seinfeld. It's a show about nothing. Of course, I like to think what I say here is very important in terms of letting the public know what life is like working retail during COVID, as well as providing interesting, informative, and entertaining posts about well, just about anything ranging from books, movies, music, shows, to actual real life.

The summer heat has been a true heat death of the universe. The kind of heat that burns away a planet in a 1960s science fiction novel. Yeah, it's that bad! But Fall is upon us, and my birthday will come up at the end of September, my favorite month. Mostly because its nice and cool in California during that time. 

I had an awkward Lyft ride to work today. This tall blonde white guy, who was the driver, went on and on about how the coronavirus is all a scam, and that the Democrats are using it to control the masses, while they try to turn the country into a socialist state. Of course, I've heard all this drivel before and have to say that most Republicans who believe this type of conspiracies are amongst the most stupid people I've ever encountered, even stupider than peasants who don't know English. At least peasants have enough honor and smarts to know that's not what's happening. 

So what's his problem? He's white, so he's privileged. The fact that he's driving Lyft means he didn't get to where he wanted to in life, so he takes it out on other people, in this case, Democrats, and you betcha, anybody who's brown. Mindless stupidity. It could be mind-boggling, but it's best to call a pig a pig, an idiot an idiot. Of course, I didn't tell him off, there was hardly any time to discuss politics but the fact that he spewed all that so quickly shows how loyal he is to Trump, the Trump Swamp Republican Party [that sorely needs to be drained], and the fuck you, I got mine mentality of older white Republican men. It truly was a spectacle. Which leads me to say that I'm really tired of the Republican rhetoric being spewed by the masses right now. At best its a joke, albeit not a funny one. At worst, it's the destruction of American democracy, integrity, and human decency. I'm not even a real Democrat but I know right from wrong. So yeah, that was a fucked way to start my workday. 

Work has been stressful. Despite the raging pandemic, my store will be going back to normal hours starting tomorrow; 5am to 1am, every day except for certain holidays. The employees are all exhausted. The customers have become much more irate and have forgotten how to treat retail workers with respect. At the beginning of COVID retail workers were like gods, like nurses, the essential workers. At this current juncture, it seems most of the customers don't give a shit about the fact that retail workers are possibly exposing their bodies to COVID every single day. There's no real good way to deal with it; you go in, do your work, and go home. At some point, you realize that the people are what they are; essentially gray blobs but there's always a few good ones. About 90% of the customers that come in treat you like human garbage. And then there's about 10% that treat you really great. It's a low bar over there. At some point, you have to learn to let go of all of your emotions and "not give a shit," because otherwise, the overwhelming amount of disrespect will most certainly cramp your style. The 'lose your emotion,' route is where most of my coworkers go. I can't say I blame them. Like the customers, none of us employees are perfect, but of course, some are better than others, have better personalities, and have better talents for working with people and whatnot. At the end of the day, a job is a job and if we didn't do it somebody else would.

Lastly, in more enlightening news, I took a break from Don Quixote and started reading An Odyssey. It's part memoir, part scholarly classics and philosophy. This classics professor named David Mendelsohn wrote the book. He goes into great detail explaining the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid but focuses primarily on the Odyssey throughout. He relates the journey in the story to his own life, particularly his relationship with his father. Here's the thing though; he is a gay man who has a female partner that he had kids with, and his father is a grumpy sort of fellow, a stiff mathematician that never showed his family much affection except for certain key moments in their lives. I'm in the middle of the book now and plan to finish it soon. 

One of the big points of the book is that if you're going in circles all the time you will always be traveling but never get to your destination. That's what life is like right now under quarantine. It's neverending. Infinite. Kind of like how the first half of the Odyssey feels a lot longer than the second half.  

The fact that Mendelsohn chooses to focus on his conventional father and his relationship to him rather than his own relationship to his own children, or even to other male friends, or even female friends like his partner is a sore oversight on the writer. However, his insight into the classics is downright remarkable, and if you read this book, you will have a better understanding of the classics, and be able to appreciate them more in a scholarly and emotive way. It's downright terrific. Not only that, but the writing style is personable. It's a lot like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a flowing easy to read style that establishes a strong father-son relationship but requires the reader to think thoroughly about what is being read. Insight and enlightenment ensue. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who's into the classics or wants to get into the classics. If you ever read the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, reading this will make you appreciate those books a lot more. And then you'll go back and reread them with a lot more wisdom and insight.    

Keep on keepin' on, as they say. As the Dead sing, "What a long, strange trip it's been."

August Update

Hello, everybody. I thought I'd write down a what's up post. I haven't been writing for some time now and perhaps just writing anything can get my back into the groove of things. So what's up?

I've been still doing my retail gig at the market. They took away our hazard pay after only 2 months but supposedly our union is trying to get it reinstated. I still can't believe that they took it away when COVID has only got worse. Keep in mind that the company is a million-dollar organization. How's that for a big fuck you to your employees? Jokes aside, I really do hope they reinstate the hazard pay. It's only an additional $2 an hour but every little bit helps. They also need to stop kicking their workers in the balls. 

Nevermind the fact that our chances of catching COVID are still super high there. Nobody cleans anything, not that I blame them. The customers are at a super high risk of catching COVID there too because nobody cleans anything. They could probably get it from touching the payment pinpad. The customers leave their masks and gloves in the carts for other customers to be surprised by when they grab the carts. Sometimes my community disgusts me. In a way, it's brought out the real me. You see, about 90% of the customers treat me like human garbage there, while maybe only about 10% treats me like a human being. I have to treat them accordingly if you get my drift.

For the last three months, I got switched to morning shifts. It was a big deal and I wasn't fond of it but I got used to it and enjoyed the free time at night to hang out with friends and family. Well, now I'm back to my usual night shift, which I've been doing for the last couple of years. It's not fun but I'm used to it. And after working mornings for the last couple of months, I actually miss the mornings, the morning coworkers, the better preparation, the extra help. Everything's easier during the morning and daytime when everybody is there. When you have a full staff to run things, you get a lot more done. At night our managers don't give us enough personnel to get everything done. So consequently, not much gets done. 

I've been using my nights to relax and smell the coffee. I'm trying to find a new way to live during COVID. It's very difficult and stressful at times. My job has become a lot more stressful and more of the customers are assholes all the time now. Them not being able to go out and party, on top of not having work, or having their kids at school, it's set them off. They're driving me and my coworkers crazy. This is not a good time for retail or any kind of store operation. If you have to go into a store, treat the workers really well. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were heroes, now the customers are treating them like shit. 

I spend most of my time reading books on my Kindle or on YouTube, where I can listen to my precious music, quite possibly the only thing keeping me going at the moment. My friends are there for me but they can't be there all the time. And I don't want to bother my family too much, I feel like I've been a burden to them. I realize I need to eventually spread my painted bird wings and fly out of the nest. Perhaps when this whole virus thing ends once and for all. 

I've been thinking about moving in somewhere with some roommates. Or with closer friends. Or perhaps joining a hippie commune somewhere? That would be like the ultimate hippie move and I would perhaps even be down to do it, provided my other plans in life don't work out the next few years or so. That would be so wild, born to be wild.

As you can tell, I've just been pretty stressed at the retail gig. But not only that. About a month or so ago, I sprained my right-hand pinkie, and playing the guitar isn't the same. It might be another month for it to completely heal IF it completely heals. If it doesn't heal, playing the guitar will never be the same. In a way, I've been super pissed ever since the day it happened, long story about that but I won't go into the excruciating details. But let's put it this way if you're a guitar player and you get a finger injury, the only thing you really have to say to everybody is, "go fuck yourself, fuck you." That sums it up perfectly.

But there's good news too. I've finished Livy's Early History of Rome and started reading Don Quixote again. Perhaps I'll finally get back to blogging about books again and albums. The whole lifestyle/rant blogging style has sort of run its course somewhat for the time being. Thanks for listening.

Enjoy your evening. 

The Summer of COVID

Hello, world.  

It's been quite some time since the last post, which was a great one if you missed it. I wrote a post entitled How the Beatles Saved Me During Corona, it was a super fun post. If you missed it you can check it out here.

However, this post is about the Summer of COVID. This has been the most unprecedented summer of my life. Nothing went as planned, there was no great vacation, nor will there be. I'm continuing to work in a retail environment where I can easily get COVID. The threat is always there no matter what I do at work. If I get it, I get it, as they say. 

The summer heat has been unrelenting. Even as I write this now at 10 pm on a Thursday night, the humidity outside would make you sweat like a pig. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 100 degrees. 

I think the main thing for me this summer has been to just find a way to live during COVID, maybe even reinventing myself a bit. For example, I started playing less video games and playing much more music, increasing my creative abilities. I've been playing both guitar and keyboard every day. 

In addition, I've been reading outside my usual literary genres. I started reading more history books, starting with the Greeks and Romans. I even got into a popular podcast called Mike Duncan's History of Rome. 

Let me go on a tangent about some of the history books. Let me be very clear; I think everyone should know at least a little bit about Greek and Roman history. Start with the literary classics like the Iliad, the Odysee, and the Aeneid, and then read Plutarch's Lives. I think those are all essential readings for anyone in the modern era. Why? Because everything about the Western world was already created with the Greeks and Romans. Understand them and you get a much better understanding of how the western world was formed, shaped, changed, yet in some ways stays the same. This is one of the most important lessons I learned from books. I did not learn this from school. It doesn't matter what your idealogy is; Conservatives already know this stuff, and Liberals learn it from liberal arts college courses. No matter how smart you think you are, if you don't know much about the Greeks and Romans, then you're not that smart. You add this history to your repertoire with lots of philosophy and BAM! you're already smarter than most of the people you'll come across. Don't let it go to your head.

But it's not always about learning something new. I've also reverted back to some of my old school ways. I started listening to more classic rock music of the 1960s; the Beatles, the Kinks, Cream, Hendrix, Black Sabbath, the Rolling Stones, and more. What I found was that I was burning myself out on so much new music all the time and that I needed to listen to the classic music of my youth, rock music. I still love jazz and classical but now I save a little bit of time each day to kick out the jams. So while I recommend learning and doing new things to find a new way to live during the coronavirus, I also think going back to your inner self, really reflecting upon it, will reinvent and reinvigorate you as well. There's always a balance. 

Then there's the social distancing thing. While I've still been able to see some friends during COVID, I've mostly been staying at home with family. For a while, I met a lot of new friends that really liked me. But alas, I'm definitely a painted bird, and although I can pretend to fit in anywhere I go, in reality, wherever I go I'm a big target. I actually believe that even in my own inner circle, this is the truth. They're nothing like me and we don't really have much in common but our friendship is strong and keeps us going. It's actually pretty damn cool. So I guess what I've learned is that you should always strive for strong friendships but its always easy to tell who's worth keeping around and who's worth ditching. You might find that the harsh reality is that these people need you around them more than you need them. What do you do in that case? It's all up to you. 

I also wanted to talk about money. In this time of COVID, I feel like there's nothing really to buy because you can't really go out and buy stuff without putting yourself more at risk, being in a large store with a lot of people, and also, just because you can't go out and do anything, so there's really nothing to spend money on. I have no desire for things, therefore I don't buy anything. I buy musical equipment and I want more guitars but really there's no point. I think we're finally almost reaching the climax where money doesn't really mean as much as it used to. I find this to be a good thing. Mainly because I'm not rich. I believe the economy will get much worse before it gets better. The fact of the matter is that the average American doesn't have $500 in their bank account for an emergency expense. That's scary. If we as a nation can't figure out things like affordable housing, rent, and affordable food, and affordable education, then the country will get much poorer. The rising inequality will eventually reach a breaking point until the inevitable worker's revolution. Possibly even during a liberal administration? 

In conclusion, it's just been one hellova summer. I don't think things will go back to normal anytime soon. Now is the best time to truly find another way to live. Whatever you do, do it well, and really love it because although we're all in this together, we're all forced into isolation. Some of you will sink and try to find comfort in other people all the time, but the real ones will create an interior life, away from the world, away from their friends, their families, and truly live. That's what I' talkin' about.

How the Beatles Saved Me During Coronavirus

Hello, ladies and gents. How's it going? Well, the answer to that question is probably all over the place. To be completely honest, the world has pretty much gone to shit, 'in it? That's my British slang for you. There's actually a perverse goodness and grace that has come out of all this disorder and chaos. Consider the fact that if it were not for all of the terrible things that have happened, Trump just may have gotten re-elected, and easily too. Of course, we will see in November. 

But I'm actually hear to discuss music. The Beatles saved me during coronavirus. No other band or musical style have resonated with me this much during the crisis. It's pretty easy to see why I like them so much and why they've made such a big impact on me during this particular time in my life. 

For starters, they're one of the best classic rock groups of all time. Of course, they're more pop than rock, but they had their more rock and roll moments, especially early in their career, like the Revolver album or A Hard Day's Night. Consider the fact that Jimi Hendrix only agreed to go to London and become a rock star there only if he got to meet Eric Clapton and the Beatles. They're so famous they're bigger than Jesus. No offense Jesus, you're pretty cool yourself. 
 

Second, the lyrics. The lyrics in Beatles songs are the bread and butter of their music. The lyrics are always simple but they are powerful. Sometimes the best lyrics are simple everyday thoughts, patterns, and phrases that have been rewritten into a more catchy form. Easy to understand, very difficult to master.  

Third, the guitar and drum parts. Okay, so to actually perform their songs, its nothing really all that special. However, they did it so well as a band, that I'm actually impressed with John Lennon and George Harrison's guitar work. Harrison and Lennon are two of the best guitarists in rock history and Paul McCartney is one of the best bassists in rock. In terms of Paul's bass sound you can judge for yourself, after hearing countless great bass runs throughout the Beatles catalogue, you just know he's a great player. Ringo laid down the groove. 

One of my favorite time periods for the Beatles was when they first came to America, and they were playing stadiums full of screaming girls. John played a Rickenbacker guitar and really strummed the hell out of it. Those were the days. 

Lastly, the personal connection through loneliness, isolation, listening to the music, and feeling so good despite it all. Their music makes me feel good. Sometimes I'll listen to them all day and I can still hear the songs in my head when I lay down at night. Even at that level, their music calms me down and soothes me. The positivity is so strong.

This is the ultimate band for the ultimate cheerful person, the person who smiles when everybody else complains. It's the soundtrack to my life. At least for now.  

The world is burning outside, but it's all good because she loves you, and you know that can't be bad. She loves you and you know you should be glad. [wooooooooooooooo!]