Friday, April 3, 2009

Do we really need windshield wipers when it rains?

How often do you find yourself locked within the overstuffed and crampy elements of “thought mode?” Every day, every night, the only attempt to succeed starts with an agreement with yourself, “Please process the depths of rhyme, reason and just because.” In the car, at work in a cluttered cubical or shoved to the back of your mind until you take a long walk, the willingness to digest seems like a big secret only to learn through reality’s bite that everybody does it.



Openly, I confess, I have no clue why the journey toward the horizon has led these two feet, monkey like shoulders, a vivid imagination and complete idiotic desire to shatter rules into a shape of communication called radio. Beyond my first spoken thought on KOYN in Billings, Montana, I laid awake every night begging the decision maker to put different thoughts in the heart and noggin. But no…like anything else in life, I failed to listen and kept doing what felt unforgettably whoa whoa whoa!



The older we get, by the minute, the hour or chapters so thick we can barely pick up the book…tiny answers begin to appear on the flowers nobody but you recognize. In between the desire of swiping a quick whiff and snapping it at the stem to take home to the people we love, a sliver of the original vision becomes not clear but rather near.



Three beats into Cheech and Chong’s return to comedy I felt drawn to an energy last night that I’ve spent nearly thirty years studying. From bent, curled and flamboyant facial expressions to arms waving wildly at their side to entire body movements that mimicked the way we drive, walk through life or see from angles high above, around corners or deep below…what could be seen…was…the moment you closed your eyes.



Theater of the mind.



Our addiction to moving pictures has removed the spirit of thinking from our reasons to grow.



Comedy is laced with so much shock and aw, forced is the laugh just because we’re too embarrassed by the artists decision to cross lines once assumed taboo…or…maybe I’m just prude. Radio does that to you because we can’t use eighty percent of the words delivered during a comedy routine. Words my hero in life Dr. Ronald Mack wouldn’t chuckle over, instead, he’d jump from his bright red leather chair, scamper into his office and grab the book On Writing Well and order me to read it not once but one hundred times…to figure out better ways to communicate without using laziness to entertain.



Talk radio is propaganda. You are told what to believe. We’ve become addicted to the idea that life is going to be great if we let other people think for us. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have nothing to do with normal people or we’d react in ways that would finally get our family members home. Instead, the war on drugs, the banking and car industry and health care are nothing more than show prep for people who love to hear themselves talk. You know…like blogging.



Did you know Benjamin Franklyn is looked upon as being the world’s first blogger? A man of many brilliant talents and he chose everyday to openly discuss whatever thoughts fell from his finger prints onto a page not governed by editors whose careers are governed by managers and CEO’s basking in the comforts of big business.



Today, we’ve grown into a generation that gets its news through reaction not attraction. Jimmy said, then she replied, within moment they all cried…about what? Read about it on Face Book, Twitter, My Space and whatever outlet willing enough to let the power of open conversation become your freedom to ring.



Headlines mean nothing to most…Entertainment Tonight and American Idol have destroyed what kept listeners glued to the radio when Casey Kasum would say, “Coming up next on American Top 40…the artist that gave birth to Fleetwood Mac, even if it meant his stay was only for a week.”



Rumors and fears of constant change do nothing but rip the gift of thinking for yourself out of its socket. Gone is Theater of the mind. We no longer allow ourselves to think unless it’s accepted by the person sitting next to us. How often do you say, “You know what I mean right?”



Growing up in Billings, Montana felt like the big time. I fell deeply in love with our three skyscrapers with barely twenty seven floors, the endless one maybe two block downtown and gigantic, humungous Rimrock Mall with its thirty stores. Then to stand high atop the Rims that infamous explorers Lewis and Clark couldn’t stop writing about and Calamity Jane chased rabbits and bandits across before being discovered by Wild Bill Cody. Native American’s lived in caves that featured pictures nearly as old as the earth itself and and and…one day you wake up and realize the power company just sent you a bill for nearly three hundred dollars and the bucks you’re scoring from the chosen career won’t cover it. So you run away from the things you enjoy.



Theater of the mind…rediscover it. It led John F Kennedy down a path that put man on the moon. His original speech was made of nothing but words, each vowel and inflection sank past the wax in our ears and suddenly we could see. $860 billion tax dollars has been quickly rushed to aid this country back into better shape…the rest of the world doesn’t see it as a positive. Would they have accepted it better if Band-Aid would’ve quickly created a protective stick on that featured Scooby Doo, Darth Vader, Spider Man or Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man?



So…answer the opening question…



How often do you find yourself locked within the overstuffed and crampy elements of “thought mode?” Every day, every night, the attempt to succeed begins with a plea to please process the depths of rhyme, reason and just because.



If two old guys, deeply gray in the eyes and hair can whip from their past something that earned them the right to hold a valuable toy they each enjoyed…what are you keeping from your pages that deserves to be seen and heard in the way of discovering your true happiness? This isn’t your mom and dad’s America anymore…you have become them and your children will become you.



Theater of the mind is having the ability to see without opening your eyes. Some call it dreaming until you stop to realize what you’ve been thinking has been spoken out loud and suddenly your whisper is now the shape of a cloud. Learn to let it rain…that’s how you’re going to make it in America today.



Steal my art…



arroecollins@clearchannel.com

No comments:

Post a Comment