Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Even the best are put through a daily test....

How many times during a single collection of life’s everyday chapters do you hear a constant voice or see a vivid picture of where you need to be but can’t seem to locate the proper strings to pull and if located is it gently to the right like a cloth shade draping a window pane, sharp tug to the left as if to be loosening a rightfully tight screw or without a doubt or curve of the string it’s straight down baby?



Rollingstone Magazine’s recent interview with rock legend Eric Clapton reveals a side of the music industry dreamers and fantasy collectors swiftly walk past believing the gifts they hold won’t be poured into the molds that keep those before them from reaching what critics call that single point on the often carried worn and torn map commonly called a fan base.



Clapton has written, performed and helped shape iconic collections of musicians that have blazed through, walked around, under and over radio’s unblessed curse of having a song hook twenty five seconds into the vinyl piece or locate another place or purpose. Like Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, Alabama, Rascal Flatts, Springsteen, Chicago and Elvis, no week or weekend is complete without hearing at least two of what they’ve released.



Clapton hangs his head during such news calling this description a total disconnection. His personal travels versus a series of well touted magazine victories sit on opposite sides of the ocean. Through his thoughts we learn that the Mozart of our generation remains deaf to the sound he’s vowed to create.



Although Clapton gets very little credit for founding Fleetwood Mac, the pages we keep along unpredictable journeys become books of assumption to those who see and hear only music. Eric is deeply hurt by what’s been delivered. Several collaborations with Steve Winwood, a stint with BB King, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Neil Young and Beatles producer George Martin still hasn’t gifted his life long ambition of writing the song he hears while 99.9% of the world is still sleeping.



Suddenly the master of six silver slivers of metal string becomes just like you and me.



In an age of karaoke, You Tube, Face Book, My Space and American Idol, a single set of fingerprints presented by incredible leadership and mass marketing still leaves the music maker wondering why he elected to dance with a song people can’t hear.



Ambition is self torture. Leaking from the eyes of the man or woman standing atop the pyramid aren’t humbled tears of joy but self dissatisfaction fed by rivers that refuse to stop flooding until the proper path is located in the way of making what we see, feel, hear and touch a reality.



President Obama’s oval office oath came with tremendous amounts of unexpected challenges. What we see on distant horizons won’t take the shape of the human compassion filled heart but rather reveal itself as major corporations in all walks and shapes of life continuing to fold, far away nations tossing giant bombs through the sky forcing China and Japan to ask why? An economy so timid to trust small things such as professional basketball and baseball teams are being sold to companies outside our fifty unforgettable states.



How many of us will pass knowing the soul of the American dream sat a single inch from our nearest touch and we knew nothing in the way of getting there?



Working closely with the marketing departments of assisted living centers, I’ve learned the new forty is eighty yet I create daily with interns who stopped dreaming at eighteen. I stare into the eyes of the Wal-Mart employee greeting guests with bright smiles and giant yellow happy face stickers. I can’t be the only one who wonders, “Why are you here? Are you hiding?”



I’m not challenged to think deeper by a restaurant wait staff sunk to their knees in personal worries or cashiers who find more importance in checking their text messaging than grabbing well earned cash from clients moving fast…the element of surprise arrives when I calmly stop the one smiling.



“Why?” I ask, “What do you find so joyful in an obvious place of disgruntled?”



I hear of second and third jobs, some holding down the fort with a sick mother and brother at home, a college education required to be paid, unexpected car and home expenses, a fear of being late for a meeting set up ten years ago.



A constantly heard daily search for something they can’t reach. Am I wrong in saying, “Gone is the American dream?”



Guitar Hero and Rock Band are plastic players in a real world. Last years top box office attractions were comic book super heroes. Credit is a card and now banks want to charge you more for carrying it. A forest of trees is a future empty parking lot. Who needs the Great Wall of China when nearly one quarter of the city is blessed with nothingness inside cinder blocked shells? An uncultivated imagination captivates nothing more than a reason to pick up and move on.



The pursuit of happiness says nothing about when and how you locate it. You pursue it to the best of your collection of thoughts and experiences then recreate the package to get back on the train. Once off the wagon again and again, dusted is the tail to your tales then quickly shot back on the trail of whatever success the origin of your dreams pursued while refusing to sleep. We begged and begged to finally be free of the educational system only to learn most people aren’t doing anything with what little they grasped.



I remember writing in my daily journals in 1996 about hidden fears of a world whose agriculture had selected the wrong color of green. What becomes of a nation when money no longer grows on trees? Mom is silent in the way of no longer speaking of the Great Depression…the unemployment rate isn’t expected to break lose from this tight noose until 2011. Gas prices are nearing $3 and everyday a major business tosses out another thousand.



Eric Clapton has vowed to keep reaching for that innocent piece of music. He laughs openly about the thought of retiring. He hurts while touring the world, once free for a year he goes crazy believing he's missed something. I invite you to continue hearing your dreams. As stupid as it sounds...if being who you want to be was easy to achieve there wouldn't be a story.

Steal Eric's art and let’s get this nation back on it’s feet.



arroecollins@clearchannel.com

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