Can Do Attitude in a Can’t Do Body

One of the things my wife and I like to do together is attend performances at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre. We consider attending plays one of our better date activities because it provides us with an opportunity to break out of our normal routines and have engaging conversations together about the moments in the performances that stirred our emotions or stimulated our minds.

Recently we attended a two-man play called Best Summer Ever that was written and performed by Kevin Kling – an accomplished playwright, storyteller, and contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. Kling is an ebullient personality and there is something childlike, mischievous, and endearing about him that works to win over his audiences from the start.

One of Kevin’s most admirable qualities is his attitude towards overcoming the physical disabilities that are a part of his life. He was born with a congenital birth defect that shriveled his left arm and left it without a wrist or thumb. Then, at the age of 44, Kevin was in a motorcycle accident that completely paralyzed his right arm and disfigured his face.

Kling is open about his disabilities and tries to explain, with humor, the blessings he has derived from his misfortunes and the benefits that can come from tackling life’s obstacles with faith and a positive attitude. His family and friends stood by him while he recovered from his motorcycle accident and years of rehab.

“It’s hard to deny the power of prayer when you’re on the receiving end of it. I know it helped me heal. At times it was like skiing behind a power boat — all I had to do was hang on… As terrible [as my injuries were] and as scared as I am sometimes, I still feel blessed. And when I get discouraged I just look at my two wiener dogs because they are the best example of a ‘can do’ attitude in a ‘can’t do’ body.

Kevin Kling

Kling separates the disabilities that we are born with from those disabilities we acquire later in life and he points out that being so-called “able-bodied” is always just a temporary condition – sooner or later we are all likely to suffer from life’s frailties. He feels that when you are born with a disability, you grow from it, but when you experience a loss later in life, you have to grow toward it; you need time to grow into the new person you haven’t yet become.

Kevin wrote “The Best Summer Ever” as a way of growing toward the new person he was becoming after his accident. He does this by going back and telling the heartwarming story of his 9 year childhood journey growing up as the son of Norwegian immigrants in rural Minnesota. Exploring his childhood from this perspective became a kind of therapy; helping him to find pieces from his past to fit, not the person he was, but the new person he was becoming.

There were two moments from the play that stood out in my mind as reflections of the kind of positive wisdom Kevin had to share about life with his audience:

We all have a deep desire to feel connected, no matter what age

There is a scene in the play where 9 year old Kevin tries his best to comfort his aging grandfather who is grieving the death of his brother. Kevin is trying to understand why his grandfather is so sad and comes to the realization that his grandfather must feel like an orphan now because his mother, father and all his siblings are now gone. He is the last one of his family left.

How must it feel when the people you had the strongest connection to throughout your life are no longer here? I wonder about my 93 year old mother. After living through the deaths of her mother, father and seven siblings, does she feel like an orphan in some way? Despite her many children and grandchildren, is she happily looking forward to re-establishing connections again with her family on the other side?

Kevin talks fondly about his grandparents and the role they played in his life, saying his relationship with them was one of his strongest connections and one that most shaped who he became:

“I connected with my grandparents. And I think we were in the same light. I mean, I was in the dawn, and they were in the twilight, but we were in the same light. And because of that, they were heading to the creator, and I was coming from the creator. And it seemed, because of that, we spoke a very similar language.“

Live so that your Light outlives you

At the conclusion of the play, Kevin is looking at a nighttime sky full of shining stars and marvels that since the stars are so far away it takes hundreds or thousands of years for their light to reach the earth. This means that those of us left on on earth will continue to receive light from the stars even after they are long dead.

Kevin believes that the light from people can live on after they die too. The good that we do, and the light we share will outlive us if we act to make a positive difference in the lives of the people we love and take meaningful action against the injustice we see in the world.

When Kevin looks up at those stars at night he is happy to feel the presence and memories of his grandparents and parents shining down on him. I hope when you look up at the stars, you too can take comfort and feel gratitude for the connections you had with your loved ones. But more important I hope you are living the kind of life that will continue to shine light long after you are gone. When you think about it, being a light for someone else is one way for us to become immortal.

That wild unknown country where I could not go wrong

I was introduced to the music of Bob Dylan back in 1976 when I  was a sophomore in High School. Up until that point, the soundtrack of my youth had consisted of top 40 radio hits, 50’s rock and roll numbers from the soundtrack of “American Graffiti” and whatever my older brothers and sisters happened to be listening to at the time (Cat Stevens, Carole King, James Taylor, the Beatles and even Alice Cooper).

Then one day, I happened to hear the Dylan song “Hurricane” playing in my brother’s car. It was unlike any music I had ever heard before. The song was rough and unpolished and the words were being shouted out rather than sung. I had a hard time making out all the words to the song and I remember thinking to myself that this guy can’t sing. But the song definitely got my attention and I somehow knew he was saying something important.

Of course, I was vaguely aware of Bob Dylan prior to that event – after all I had read about him in my school History and English books as an influential musician during the 1960’s Civil Rights movement and the author of important songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’“. This only drove me to dismiss him as a character from the past who was not worthy of further attention.

As fate would have it, however, a few months later I was at home, switching between the three television stations that were broadcasting back at that time, when I came upon a CBS special broadcast of a a Live Dylan concert called “Hard Rain“.

This first glimpse of Bob performing live had me mesmerized. There was Bob in an outdoor concert venue, wind blowing and rain falling, head wrapped in a turban, a gypsy caravan of supporting musicians surrounding him, spitting out lyrics telling complex stories about love, anger, regret and redemption. He was like a modern day Homer singing epic ballads about the state of the world and the human condition.

The man I saw on TV that night was a force of nature and I decided I had to learn more about him and his music. The next day I paid a visit to my local record shop to purchase his album “Desire“. I played that record over and over again over the course of the next month – becoming hooked by the songs and marveling at the scope of the topics, the exotic background melodies and the cleverness of the lyrics.

The album was filled with unconventional songs – songs shining a spotlight on societal problems like racial inequality, corrupt legal systems and the struggle between the genders. Other songs delivered keen observations of the human spirit – people struggling with broken relationships, greed, mortality, doom and the vagaries of love and fate. It seemed like no subjects were off limits

Dylan’s sympathetic portrayals of mobsters, criminals and outlaws on the run echoed themes from the folk tradition (like Woody Guthrie’s song “Pretty Boy Floyd” who warned that “some people will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen“) ; and from Dylan’s own previous work ten years earlier when he observed that  “to live outside the law you must be honest“. Dylan asks the listener to consider that the biggest villains in society are often the rich and powerful who take advantage of a system that protects their wealth and position.

Beyond the song topics was the immediacy of the performance. It is obvious from the first listen that perfection was not the goal of these performances. Emmy Lou Harris who sings backup vocals on many of the songs remarked that she had to learn the songs on the fly in the studio and regretted that she never got a chance to correct some of her mistakes.

Scarlet Rivera, the violin player who provides a haunting background melody to many of the songs, was just an obscure struggling musician who Dylan happened to see crossing a New York City street with her violin while he was on his way to the recording studio. He stopped to speak with her and invited her to play. She had to play songs she never heard before, without the benefit of sheet music, by following along with the other musicians as they played their instruments.

This casual recording process gave the songs a freshness and spontaneity that is lacking compared to the sterility and auto-tuned perfection of most modern recordings. The songs were captured in a moment of magic that could never be reproduced – like catching lightning in a bottle.

It would be impossible for anyone who is a lover of language not to appreciate the richness of the words, the casual inclusion of French, and Spanish phrases, the occasional use of profanity to reinforce feelings of outrage, the clever rhyming patterns (like Mozambique with cheek-to-cheek!) or striking verses like:

The way is long but the end is near
Already the fiesta has begun
The face of God will appear
With His serpent eyes of obsidian

It is not an understatement to state that my discovery of the Desire album when I was young and beginning to form my view of the world changed my life and had a profound influence on the man that I was to become. It led to my lifelong relationship with Dylan’s incredible body of work which has been a comforting companion throughout all the circumstances of my life and powerful medicine to ease the sorrows of my soul.

I don’t know why the album was named Desire. Dylan is not in the habit of explaining what his songs are about or what message he is trying to deliver with them. Instead, like most artists he leaves it up to the listener to determine what the song means to them.

In that spirit, I think the album title was perfect for me because it left that young 16 year old boy with a lot of desires:

• A desire to be a man of substance, to make a difference in the world and to be a force for good.
• A desire to fight injustice and stand up for those on the margins of society.
• A desire to think for myself and not blindly follow the crowd or their leaders.
• A desire to be creative and spontaneous and not worry when what I do is not perfect.
• A desire to seek out truth and not view the world not as black and white but with a lot of shades of gray.
• A desire to find companionship and connection and to love without regret.

To borrow a lyric from the song Isis on the Desire record, Dylan became for me “that wild and unknown country where I could not go wrong“. May each of you find such a place to help you successfully navigate your life journey.