The best part & worst part of being in the moment

By Gene Myers

I recently read an article on toddlers' perception of time. Because my 20-month-old son, Owen, cannot understand a statement like, "I will be home in 8 hours," it suggested using routine events that happen throughout his days as mile markers.

Ready for work on a Monday morning I thought I'd give it a try. Owen ran to the front door as I zipped up my coat. I bent down and said, "I will be home before you go to bed."

His bottom lip started quivering. His eyes welled up and he started crying! Oops, major mistake on my part. I miscalculated.

When I got home that night (earlier than I had promised) I decided more research was needed. Instead of reading another article, I got on the floor and pulled out Owen's Sesame Street Garage and Racetrack. We raced cars out of Oscar's garage (one at a time) and drove them into his Fisher Price pizza parlor.

"Yum," said Owen as he pushed a slice of Sicilian into the grill of his Elmo car. "Yum" I repeated as I drove the Cookie Monster truck back to the track.
"Elmo!" Owen said, handing me his magnetic pen, so I drew Elmo for him on an Etch-a-Sketch-like pad.

I ignored the twinge to check the time on my cell phone and let its reminders vibrate ad infinitum in my pocket.

I made mental notes each time my son had what might be best described as happy attacks. From out of nowhere he would throw his hands up in the air and run around yelling enjoyable nonsense.

At least that is how it appeared from the outside. Various events instigated these happy attacks, including finding a piece of lint on the floor or the appearance of a new person in the room.

The happy attacks clearly illustrated to me that the best way to research what's going through my boy's mind was to surrender control and become the test subject.

This got easier and easier to do with each of Owen's maniacal laughing fits, like the one that followed after we crawled around like dogs, panting. Then he stood up and pet me, saying "DOGGIE!"

By the time the fun had ended I learned a lot about being in the moment with my son. Playing by his rules made it easier to get silly with him. But it also made leaving in the morning that much harder on the both of us.

Each morning he had a new scheme that he hoped would get in the way of me going to work, like stealing my shoes or blocking the door.

None of these plans actually stopped me, but they did make it harder. What made it harder still was the realization that while being in the moment makes it possible to be carefree and silly, it also means that waiting for daddy to come home feels like forever.

Get happy, FAST!

So here we are in February. With no holidays left and only the cold winds of March to look forward to, February can be the toughest winter month to get through.

If you feel your mood and energy levels slipping along with what's left of the gray snow into the spillways, here are nine ways to lift your spirits from Gretchen Rubin's article in entitled, "Nine tips for dealing with a happiness emergency."

Gleaning its highlights:

1. Boost your energy: Stand up and pace while you talk on the phone or, even better, take a brisk 10-minute walk outside. Research shows that when people move faster, their metabolism speeds up, and the activity and sunlight are good for your focus, your mood, and the retention of information.

2. Reach out to friends: Make a lunch date or send an e-mail to a friend you haven't seen in a while. Having warm, close bonds with other people is the key to happiness, so take the time to stay in touch.

3. Rid yourself of a nagging task: Answer a difficult e-mail, do an errand you've been putting off, or call to make that dentist's appointment. Crossing an irksome chore off your to-do list will give you a big rush of energy and relief.

4. Create a calmer environment: A large stack of little tasks can feel overwhelming, but often just a few minutes of work can make a sizable dent. Try to get in the habit of using the one-minute rule?i.e., never postpone any task that can be completed in less than one minute.

5. Lay the groundwork for some future fun: Studies show that having fun on a regular basis is a pillar of happiness, and anticipation is an important part of that pleasure.

6. Do a good deed: Make an e-mail introduction of two people who could help each other. Or set up a blind date. Or shoot someone a piece of useful information or gratifying praise. Do good, feel good? This really works.

7. Act happy: Put a smile on your face right now. Research shows that even a fake smile has a positive influence on your emotions--turns out that just going through the motion of happiness brightens your mood.

8. Count your blessings. Take 10 minutes to think about all the things in your life that are going right, about all the things that other people do to help you, about all the things that you're thankful for.

9. Perform an action that reflects your values. Do you think organ donation is a good idea? Sign up online to be one yourself; it takes less than a minute. Worried about climate change? Refill your water bottle from the tap instead of buying a couple of bottles throughout the day? Living up to your values will help you "feel right."

--from Slate magazine

What to do when earworms strike

By Gene Myers

Remember the old 70s song that starts with the lines “What they do!” “They smile in your face…”?

Parts of this song were stuck in my head for most of last week. I sang it to myself over and over again.

I couldn’t stop. Hoping the pieces of the song would fall into place, I kept repeating what I could remember.

At first, just the lyrics of the first line came to me, “What they do! They smile in your face…”

Then I remembered that those lines were joined by a drumbeat.

“Cha Cha Cha!” I heard a snare drum in my head wedded to the phrase, stressing each word forcefully and equally. I sang it a few more times.

It felt like I was getting closer to scratching an itch in the middle of my brain as the song started to reveal itself.

The song’s good old Philly soul harmonies came back to me. I kept singing it until I got the melody right and then I remembered the next lyric, which was also the name of the song, “Back Stabbers!”

According to an article on Howstuffworks.com, this happens to 99 percent of us. The phenomenon of getting a song stuck in your head has a few really cool names, “repetunitis," "melodymania," and the best one: “earworms!”

When a case of earworms hits, it can feel like we’re at the mercy of our minds, doomed to repeat the parts of the song that we remember.

Researchers believe the compulsion to complete the song happens because the brain is trying to connect the dots and fill in the missing pieces of the pattern.

Earworms aren't just a modern phenomenon. Back in the 1700s, Mozart's children would drive him crazy by starting a melody on his piano and then walking away leaving half of a melody hanging in the air.

This drove Mozart nuts, according to Exploratorium.edu. Each time his kids would do this, Mozart had to rush downstairs to finish the tune.

I don’t mind falling prey to earworms every now and then. But for anyone who has a similar reaction to the phenomenon as Mozart’s, the University of Cincinnati has a few suggestions to aid a speedy recovery.

1. Sing another song, or play another melody on an instrument.
2. Switch to an activity that keeps you busy, such as working out.
3. Listen to the song all the way through (this works for some people).
4. Turn on the radio or a CD to get your brain tuned in to another song.
5. Share the song with a friend.
6. Picture the earworm as a real creature crawling out of your head, and imagine stomping on it.

Soaring from note to note in my head

By Gene Myers

I've been thrilled by music since my earliest memories. I've always wanted to take part in the magic somehow. So I took a few guitar lessons in the second grade-enough to play "Old MacDonald" in a recital, and I played the keyboard in a band in high school-enough to play a few dives. But neither went anywhere.

I realized that was because I never really wanted to be a guitar player or keyboardist. I've always wanted to be a singer. The only problem with that was my other realization that the sound of my singing could best be compared to Bob Dylan's voice when he is imitating Kermit the Frog. But still, the act of singing is something I've loved.

For years and years, I confined my love to the car and when no one else was home, the shower. I also fed my desire through my job as a journalist. Anytime a decent singer came around, I got them on the phone and pumped the professionals for information.

Blue-eyed soul singer Boz Scaggs (sang the hits "Lowdown" and "Lido Shuffle") describes what the act of singing feels like for him.

"It's like flying. It's like being free to soar. It's challenging-going from one note to the next and one phrase to the next. You have to negotiate it. You have to know how to get there. They [notes] are like stepping stones and you have to hop, like crossing over a stream. It’s a beautiful feeling," said Scaggs. "It resonates inside of you and it satisfies your musical perceptions. It's just like flying. That’s the closest thing I can think of."

I was content to watch others soar for years. My record collection grew and grew. I sat riveted at concert after concert. I interviewed every musician that came around. I could never get enough. Even as gray hairs started popping up, my passion never faded. I checked that passion to see if it was the same for the stars.

"What is it about singing that you enjoy so much? " I asked rock-star Kenny Loggins ("Your Momma Don't Dance and Your Daddy Don't Rock and Roll" and "Footloose"). Loggins checked his own passion against that of his daughter's.

"I have always loved singing! I am lucky that I still can...I have a 9-year-old daughter that's been singing since she was 6. She is all about music and singing and that is very much the same joy that comes to me when I sing… She's got so much bliss coming off of her. I recognize that from my own childhood."

I followed up: "What, specifically, does it remind you of when you see your daughter singing and figuring things out for the first time?"

"It reminds me of when I was a little guy in Seattle-maybe 5 years old-and we'd go to the lake. I would be sitting on the beach and hear somebody with a transistor radio on...I would try to sit as close as I could to that other blanket while remaining inconspicuous, so I could hear the music. Music was so important to me as a child, and I can see that in my daughter," said Loggins.

But what about me? I wondered. What does someone who was born with a voice that's not considered conventionally to be a good singing voice do? Was I doomed to watch the pros on the field from my armchair?

I read an interview in which folk rocker Steve Earle called Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello "great singers." Neither one of them had voices that could be considered good conventionally. So I asked him to expand on his comment. Why did he think Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan-whose nasal, shrill voice I likened to the worst aspects of my own voice-were great singers?

"They sell songs. They are good singers for the same reason that Ray Charles is a good singer and Hank Williams was a great singer. People that said Bob Dylan couldn’t sing in the early 60s were comparing him to Perry Como or something. It is an archaic idea to say that Bob Dylan is not a good singer," said Earle. "I think it’s laughable at this point."

"I don’t think people realize how much work goes into singing," I replied.

"You have to work with the equipment that you are given," said Earle. "But a voice isn’t what being a great singer is."

Bobby McFerrin ("Don't Worry, Be Happy")-who is considered a good singer in any circle-agrees.

"It has to be genuine. You have to have musical integrity, which means that there's nothing showy about it," McFerrin chimes in on what makes someone a good singer. "The hardest part, for me, of being on stage is performing. I don't like to perform. By that, I mean I try not to think about performing at all. I'd like to see myself in a place where I am just simply sitting on the stage and just singing in the same kind of voice that I sing with when I am just walking down the street. That same simple, nonchalant, naive kind of singing is the same kind of singing that I try to do on stage."

Now that sounded appealing. I could sing in a naive, nonchalant kind of way! I started to think that maybe singing is something that everyone who wants to, can do.

"What is the hardest thing to master when learning to sing?" I asked McFerrin.

"Being confident in yourself as a singer. That is the hardest thing," he said. "The other hard thing to master is not imitating others. That can be very difficult for a lot of singers, especially in today's world. The pop world just wants you the same as everyone else."

Like Dylan, I didn't think my voice gave me a choice to be anything other than myself! All the while, my wife (who actually can sing) encouraged me to get off the bench and stop living vicariously.

And so recently, about two months ago, I was emboldened to see if I could go and croak through some singing lessons. At 36 years old, this was something that I was doing for myself.

I have no illusions about being an Idol and no urge to grow my hair long and buy a pair of Bono shades. I just want to feel the notes vibrating as they resonate through my head. I want to soar from note to note as I hop across the stream of my musical perceptions.

I want to be part of what soul singer Al Green calls "The Extraordinary." When I asked the legendary singer behind the hits "I'm So Tired of Being Alone" and "Let's Stay Together" what singing felt like for him, he gave a mystical answer. His answer (describing himself in the third person) showed that if there is one thing this man has mastered, it's a total lack of fear in being himself!

"The Extraordinary is what goes into it for me. That’s what makes it click because you don’t know where Extraordinary is going to wind up at, and you don’t know really when Extraordinary is gonna start. That’s why I use backstage before the show goes on, prancing and flowing like a wild tiger because he [referring to himself] don’t know really when it’s gonna start. That’s why people overseas [at his European shows] were saying that it seems like he goes into some type of a trance when he is up there singing these songs."

The art of making mixtapes and playlists

By Gene Myers

As far back as I can remember, I cherished any opportunity to make a mixtape. As a kid in the 70s, my earliest mixes contained such classics as the Tavares' "A Penny for Your Thoughts" and "What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)," sung by a Star Wars robot chorus.

By high school, mixes contained pre-requisite cool tracks like, "Moonlight Drive" by The Doors and The Replacements' "Alex Chilton." (Of course the lyrics of "Alex Chilton" were about the band name-checking one of its own favorite bands to listen to on its tour bus, "I never travel far without a little Big Star!")

It seems all music lovers feel the need to compile our own soundtracks for various moments of our lives, whether they be momentous moments or not.

We make mixes to soothe us in the face of mounting pressures at work, mixes that rail against loneliness, mixes that revel in loneliness.

There are triumphant, car-blasting mixes, midnight mixes and mixes for missed opportunities. Some mixes are meant to frame our lives at any given moment and some mixes are about the lives we could have lived or choices we didn't make.

We can chart our growth by our mixes. ("I used to love Billy Joel, but now I'm into Thelonius Monk. Now THAT is a piano player!") Like John Cusack's character in the movie "High Fidelity," we can even grow and figure out our feelings about people and events in our lives while making and listening to mixtapes. I made mix after mix for girls in high school and college.

I crafted collections of songs to ever so subtly send just the right message to the girl that worked at the laundromat, the library or the office down the hall. (Thinking back, I'll bet they were as subtle as a ton of bricks!) Through the songs they contained, the tapes spoke on my behalf.

They said, "Here are things that I like. Do you like them too?" or "I'll bet you didn't know this about me!" or "This is how versatile/worldly/caring I am."

But mixtapes weren't made just for girls. My buddies and I would send tapes we made back and forth to school each other, trounce and trump each other with crash courses in jazz and the blues. If I sent my buddy, Tim, a mix called "An Education in the Blues," he'd mail back a tape entitled "Blues University for G."

Of course times have changed and the word "mixtape" is already anachronistic. But I have to say, it's been replaced by an even more beautiful thing, the playlist. It's the same concept but done digitally. Now mix connoisseurs can hone their art without tape.

Venues like iTunes have even raised the stakes. Music lovers can now publish their mixes and rate the playlists of others.

The one advantage to the cold

By Gene Myers

We are busy creatures of habit running on autopilot. Sometimes we are jostled awake naturally and sometimes we create our own distractions, like officious looking groundhogs placed strategically around the country in front of news cameras and men in top-hats.

Of course it's not our fault that we need a holiday built around groundhogs. It wasn't our fault that we perked up when we felt the nip in the air and raced to put pumpkins on our porches.

We were just looking for a change. But the next thing we knew, the holidays were gone and we were stuck in the middle of winter with no end in sight.

I suffered a similar kind of psychological fate last week when I caught a bad bug. You know the feeling you get when you are sick for so long that you can't even remember what it felt like to be healthy?

You suck on lozenge after lozenge through coughing fit after coughing fit. The pressure in your head won't release even though your nose flows like a river.

With every miserable trek to the bathroom I missed the days when it didn't hurt to move. I missed them a little more each time as the memory of moving about in the sun faded. My hopes focused on smaller and smaller victories with each new ache. My cold settled in.

Ahhh...the simple pleasure of being able to breathe while lying on my back! I started off logical: get rest and plenty of fluids. But soon I resorted to my own hokum rituals, like Cold Eeze, Airborne and chicken soup.

I was stranded in the middle of a cold that was so bad, I even daydreamed about going back to work! I know that sounds strange to say. At the first sign of a fever I was thinking, "Whoo-hoo! Sick days! I'm not getting dressed! I'm staying in bed! Daytime TV! No laundry!"

But by the end of my mucus-filled forced vacation, I was hankering for the days when I could do the dishes or head to the store without thinking about it.

I was ready to take breathing for granted again. That realization was the true beauty of being sick. The only silver lining in my winter of discontent.