People often ask me what’s the best music to listen to. Being as old as I am, I’m not one to suggest anything modern. It only confuses me. Stuff like dubpunk and smashstep just isn’t in my library. I like Alaskan music.
Alaskan music is pure and good. It’s called bluegrass but it sure isn’t blue to me. Might even call it “yellow” grass, because it’s as bright as the sun.
Sometimes I go to Alaskan fairs, and there’s cotton candy, rides, hippies, loners, weird men with too-thin mustaches, normal men with great big mustaches looking angry at the men with too-thin mustaches, the occasional circus freak begging for spare change, and always, rain or shine, famous Representative Don Young yelling at someone.
Alaskan politicians are great though. Once, at some high society shindig in Juneau, I saw the great late senator Ted Stevens. He was famously mocked near the end of his career when he described the internet as a series of tubes. It was right after the incident, and so I went over to him to ask him about the incident.
I said, “Mr. Stevens, I am a big fan of yours, thank you for inventing the Permanent Fund Divided, but I wanted to-”
“Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday… Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially…”
“Mr. Stevens?”
“They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”
And then I began to weep, for no man had spoken as beautifully about the Internets before.
I don’t mean to bring up politics. Politics is the game for those who want power. I don’t want power. Life is tragic enough without being deluded into thinking you can control any of its flow. The only steady flow seems to lead to sorrow, to pain, to a tragedy.
And people react to the tragic nature of life differently.
It’s kind of like a certain painter. He was constantly told no. But he kept on going and became a famous painter. Another painter kept on painting. But he was told to give it up. But he kept going. And they told him no, give it up. But he kept going.
There was another painter.
He was told to give it up. And he said no, he kept going. And they told him no, you can’t, you’re not good enough. But he kept going. So, they said no, and he finally gave up. He wept. He kicked a stray tin can. He walked an empty street glumly. All seemed hopeless. But then, a strange, warm feeling arose inside him.
And he thought, “You know, even though this painting thing hasn’t worked out, maybe something else will. Maybe I can make something else with my life. Maybe the saying is true, ‘revenge is a dish best served cold.'”
And so, he figured, being Adolf Hitler, maybe HE SHOULD TAKE OVER GERMANY AND START THE THIRD REICH.
The point is people take tragedy differently. Say a loved one dies. Some people end up doing a volunteer arts and craft class every week. Others end up mired in sadness, maybe joining a group to talk about their feelings.
While others get involved in the bad stuff, you know, horse gambling, the bottle, stealing another farmer’s seeds so they’ll have more for their own fields of hay.
And others take it as a sign THEY SHOULD TAKE OVER THE WORLD AS THE FUHRER.
That’s why, when I see a painting, I buy it, no questions asked. Even watercolor.
Notes From the Cabin 