GreenMan Substack Podcast

Jason Perry
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  • Philosophy
  • Updated Weekly

My interviews with interesting people from many walks of life, but especially writers, healers, and thinkers that help people improve their lives. I also discuss my personal essays on life, culture, music, politics, relationships, history, spirituality and self-help. greenmang.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Winter

    I love discovering hidden songs from favorite artists and eras. I recall a friend mentioning Astral Weeks from Van Morrison when I was 20. When I heard it years later, sitting around a campfire with friends, I was fascinated. The lyrics were visual, kinetic, and emergent--a stream of consciousness that flowed between description and exposition. I was transported to ‘another place and another time.’ The instrumentation was layered and played spontaneously. The songs exuded aliveness and joy that permeated the poesy and yet arrived in simple garb. After that seminal album, I wondered if other artists felt liberated to approach their music with similar abandon and subversion. I giddily discovered Winter by the Rolling Stones a couple of months ago. I thought it a stylistic homage to Astral Weeks and yet distinct–a stirring meditation that gave me pause. It told me something about love that I had missed, which is why we listen. Then I listen again on repeat–decoding and decanting. Letting this unearthed appellation breathe. Beckoning its strings and strums to shower their pent-up electricity onto my waiting ears. Riding the locomotion of the drums and chord changes that crash the emotional waves and stir the ingredients. A transmission from the Gods. A gleaming artifact unearthed. An artist’s expressionist rendering of a moment and a mood so distinct. We are invited into his and her private wavelength, their sacred love-bubble. Yet such offerings are a universal decree about what it means to be alive and human and ensouled. These offerings grant us overt permission to feel and yearn. To try and capture the essence of a moment–to bridge the distance between two beleaguered spirits. Like any real love song, Winter is a public baring of the soul. An unconditional surrender. When no known recourse is revealed. When no salve soothes the ache, art is the only afforded option. They and we venture to distill a fading sunset and its synchronistic starlings as they flutter and vanish. The song couches its meaning in elemental allusions–seasons and winds–and the imagery they inspire. This imparts a cold weariness, but the telling feels warm and open as I listen. He speaks his laments and and yet counters with a hope that change and renewal will arrive with Spring. I love how the narrator speaks of events and locations that don’t reveal much to the listener. Like it’s not for us to know what those places mean. The restoration plays. The bell, book and candle. California and Stone Canyon. We are left to imagine what secret meaning is encoded. But maybe the song is saying that the details are superfluous. Because the details don’t last. Perhaps it’s enough for us to just witness his love letter. And to remember the odes we’ve sent--and the missives not fired. To cherish our memories as he savors his. To honor our connections, strained though they may be. The souls we know and knew. The people and places and faces we remember--that showed us who we are. Those that awoke us from slumber. The ones that stir us. He finally speaks directly to her as the song comes to a crescendo before closing. ‘Sometimes I think about you, baby’ ‘Sometimes I cry about you’ ‘Sometimes I wanna wrap my coat around you Sometimes I wanna keep you warm Sometimes I wanna wrap my coat around you’ This is the heart of the song As the strings rise and swell No request or complaint No bid for reassurance or even connection Wanting just to keep warm his beloved To humbly protect, to shelter A bulwark from the elements A shepherd, a beacon, a lighthouse Warm love with nowhere to go A familial and timeless love Bonded and gracious And it doesn’t fade It reveals itself as other layers fall away This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    4 min

  2. Jul 4

    Sacred

    As I continue to write, I’ve noticed that the direct act of writing takes a backseat most of the time to a host of other related tasks: noticing, pondering, building the conceptual scaffolding of an essay, sensing that a concept I’m working on has tangents that could all be little essays themselves. Put together they could be a book. Mapping feels more accurate at times. Instead of writing something that exists inside of me, I experience it more like discovering a phenomenon. Mapping that can take days or weeks of intermittent study and discussions. A big part of my style of writing is noticing things. Dismantling movies and songs, messages, social movements, and propaganda. Scrutinizing. Not always judgmentally or critically either. Getting under the surface of a song, a movie or an idea seems to be the main thrust. From there one can use it as a way to see the culture, the nation, the individual. All roads lead to Rome. Lately, words and their manifold meanings interest me. I sense, more specifically, how certain words get co-opted by: religions, movements, institutions, political parties, musical genres etc. It’s not necessarily good or bad, but it’s constant, this drift in meaning. We must be aware of the ways in which our words are used. Often we get into debates because two people mean two different things when discussing something. Someone gets offended by the connotation they assume the person meant. Words are so often insufficient. The map is not the territory. We struggle to describe what we see, feel, experience and truly mean. Futile attempts to connect through words can be maddening and destructive. As I’m pre-writing for a half dozen essays, I see how important words have been co-opted by the aforementioned institutions. I don’t mean to pick on religion, but some of the most obvious and clear cases, for me, come from a very Chrisitanized view of specific words. Most of these words are virtues, like faith. In Christianity, faith means to believe without proof. To believe in one’s salvation. To believe that Jesus died for your sins. Since we are a nation with such a large population of Christians, we have loosely adopted many of the suppositions, traditions and mindsets of our dominant religion--for better or worse. And yet, a non-religious view of faith is still applicable and useful as a counter point. That faith is a different animal, though related. We can have trust in others, in their innate goodness. We can have a good-faith discussion. In this case, faith is honoring the rules of intellectual honesty. In an upcoming movie review, I noticed how a character used faith that his actions would be worthwhile because people matter. In that realization, I noticed how I had previously and unconsciously taken on the religious meaning of the word—the specific promises and theology of Christianity. When I examined that idea, I noticed that this belief system creates an external locus of control. Have faith that God will do this act or that God has done that act which saves you. This amounts to faith in something or someone external. An atheist scholar may go on to argue that said religion instills learned helplessness by causing its adherents to seek outside of themselves for said salvation. But in the movie, the character acted in a way that proved he had faith in humanity, in the value of life. Not because of a god, but because he viewed life as sacred. As a result, he acted instead of waiting for God to do so. He decided life was sacred. Sacredness is another word whose meaning can be blended. Is someone or something special because they are anointed by god? Or is sacredness a concept that we need to reconsider. Perhaps everything is sacred. Perhaps what’s missing from our culture, our nation and our planet, is a sense of universal sacredness. Not because a scripture tells us so. But because we decide that it is so. Not this holy object or this ancient site. Not this chosen people. But everyone and everything. We can take back sacredness from its narrow usage just like we can with faith. Not because those usages are wrong, but because they are not universal. Perhaps we unwittingly end up using our religions and our words and our laws to maintain classes of people. Citizens and illegals. Jews and Gentiles. Chosen ones and Philistines. Sacred land and brown sites. We pick and choose who and what is sacred by fiat or by doctrine. Even our religions are just for those who believe, who have faith. Others are not saved. Even our sacred words are used to divide and thus conquer. How does this happen? I don’t have the foggiest notion. But I know there’s a name for it. The mind virus—wetiko. The Spell. It settles upon our nation as we speak. Infiltrating our every thought. It divides. It feeds. It poisons us against one another. It is insatiable greed crossed with fear. It hates. It sees only enemies. It steals our words and inverts our nation’s principles and our world’s well-meaning religions. I don’t know how to defeat it, but I think continually naming it is a start. We may never defeat the mind virus itself, but we might as well marshal our forces to defeat its avatar. That avatar has the keys to the soon-to-be kingdom on this 250th anniversary of the independence of our nation. We must look around and see only sacredness. It is the antidote to the cynicism of abject greed and deception. But we also must defeat those forces that would usurp and chain us all to a future of totalitarianism. That threat is all too real. They are trying to create a world where nothing is sacred. All is raw material for creating more wealth for the few—grist for the mill. Everyone is a means to that end. Look in your hearts. Look to our institutions. But look at our words and see how even they can be used to subtly reinforce caste systems and dividing lines. We are balanced on a knife’s edge. Every choice matters. Break the spell of wetiko by seeing everyone as not just a means to your ends, but an end in and of themselves. They are theirs just as you are yours. This is the core of what it means to be civilized. To choose not to trespass, even when no one is watching. Even when you have been harmed. Even when you could easily rationalize it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min

  3. Jun 27

    Take A Bow

    I grew up with Madonna songs and videos on the radio and MTV. She was and is larger than life: a world-famous pop star, sex symbol--strong, beautiful, and overflowing with taboo. I knew the songs but I was never a fan who owned her music. I recognized her talent and daring. She challenged us as a culture to accept and respect strong women on their terms. She sings with a sweet, well-trained voice. Her musical career has spanned 5 decades. With dozens of hits, not all of her songs are deep and meaningful, but she’s a good songwriter. Live to Tell is haunting. A handful of others stick out in my head. She deserves her acclaim. I would hear snippets of Take A Bow in a store when walking by, but never knew what I was hearing—just echoes of that memorable and catchy chorus. I sensed sweetness—something bare and dreamy, with a touch of melancholy. Then I listened to the song in earnest and found it wondrous, sublime and complex. This offering was deeper than the typical Madonna fare--less performative and extroverted. Her writing was subtle: using the metaphor of a stage and performance to gently tell her story of heartbreak. The title implies artifice on the part of her lover, yet she delivers no invective. She doesn’t scorn his limitations. She merely shares a sweet and sorrowful melody. Her heart stays open. Her disappointment does not stain her love, her truth. She merely asks, ‘you took my love for granted, why, oh why?’ The show is over, say goodbye. In her unabashed vulnerability, she embodies the fool archetype. The innocence, the willingness, and the risk. So many of her songs speak from a strong individualistic perspective, from feminism and empowerment. But this offering reveals the pain of losing, of the other getting the best of us. In doing so, she reveals her soft underbelly. If Madonna was singing to women across the world that they can be strong and empowered, maybe she’s saying that there is power in vulnerability. That the price of living a full life is performing our high wire act without a net. That strong people sometimes lose in love. And that no one is beyond confusion. No one is infallible. To constantly suspect others and defend against the vagaries of loss means to forego the rewards that love offers us. Perhaps our internal terrain is revealed in the wreckage of a connection that meant so much to us. We can take heart that even when we suffer tremendous loss, we don’t have one default setting. We don’t flatten the experience into seeing red, blaming supposed enemies. Static B-movie plot lines—villains and damsels in distress. We just feel bewilderment and a soft ache for those who couldn’t sustain the exposure of union. ‘I’ve always been in love with you’ is the heart’s proclamation--innocent and bold. It yearns but does not beg. Her love is a verdant and timeless river. It does not succumb and collapse into bitterness. Her love abides. It stands impervious to the choices of the other. As I explore this song’s meaning and contours, I wonder if Madonna is expressing something more nuanced than mere unrequited love. Perhaps the love was just as real for the other person, but they chose to turn it off, to move on anyway. The show is over. But perhaps she discovered that she could not, that her love wasn’t mutable, fungible. Maybe what she means by ‘I’ve always been in love with you’ is that she discovered this love, this precious and living artifact in a deep cavern in her heart, waiting there since time immemorial to be discovered. Perhaps these treasures don’t expire. Maybe they don’t die. They just are. They radiate from our depths and from a timeless place. When someone can or will no longer meet us in that place, the artifact—the love, remains. It doesn’t obey the other lover’s exit. The heartbreak is not only that the lover may have been acting. It is that he can apparently step out of the role, leave the stage, and call the whole thing finished. She cannot. For her, the love is not a scene with a beginning and an end. It is something discovered and habituated to. Love doesn’t always wither when someone withdraws. It can fill so much heart-space that we can wonder how to move forward. Perhaps instead of trying to put out the flame or turn down the intensity, we might just grow around it. Get bigger. Build a bridge. Increase our capacity to hold love. No need to shame ourselves or accept impatient cultural messages. Instead we can recognize that this person showed us just how much love we can contain and channel. We may struggle to bear its intensity. We may continue to speak its lines, even after the curtain falls, the lights go down and the set is broken down. Because for us, the play was real. The stage that housed it was temporary. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    5 min

  4. May 24

    On Mercy

    I was surprised at a recent epiphany. I had to double-take when the word came to my mind because mercy usually denotes a situation where force and aggression were on the menu. But it rang true in a deep place, despite the apparent mismatch with the situation I was considering. Yet I didn’t know what to say about it without my words sounding forced and trite. So I left it alone for days. I was in the middle of watching the original Star Wars trilogy. They’re great movies and still, they’re super campy. There’s so much to say about them, but I wasn’t so much watching them as a film critic but letting myself get lost in the story after a long absence. Somehow I couldn’t help but enjoy the craft and make some observations. A New Hope was a slow and methodical exercise in world-building. With fun, memorable characters, we felt the water warm as Lucas gradually wove mystery and intrigue into the beginnings of a hero’s journey with real stakes. The sequel, The Empire Strikes Back was just so bleak--such a dark and effective movie. By the end, our heroes were reeling and wounded--splintered and near defeat. All seemed lost. Yet that’s where character development happens. They and we are at once galvanized in the forge of loss and doubt. These static characters become dynamic before our eyes. Damsels show ingenuity. Lunks soften. Boys become...well, larger boys, but with really cool gizmos and improved parlor tricks. Cowardly droids sometimes even save the day. There’s definitely some Wizard of Oz factor in Star Wars. And just like that journey down the yellow brick road, we grow with our stand-ins as they mirror our foibles and strengths back to us in technicolor. These movies are about courage and self-discovery, daring-do and grit. In turning those very tables we see how luck and commitment and belief conspire to level the odds against seemingly insurmountable forces. At the end of Return of the Jedi, the archetypal good vs evil face-off reaches its zenith with rich complexity. I felt riveted once again as I saw the depth and nuance of this interaction. The Emperor, the epitome of evil and avatar for the dark side, had seduced Darth Vader and now was trying to ensnare his son, Luke. (spoiler alert!) This changed the dynamic, because Luke kept appealing to his father’s humanity. Everyone kept telling him that his father was gone, that the machine and the dark side of the force had long since dispatched him. But Luke believed differently. As a result of his inner knowing, Luke had abandoned the idea of defeating Darth Vader and had come instead on a rescue mission. A mission of mercy. By throwing down his weapon, he opened himself to attack by the Emperor. This allowed the humanity within his father to overcome the programming, the hatred and the false identity he had worn for years. His love for his son caused him to risk his life and destroy his teacher, his false spiritual father--to reclaim his humanity and to change his destiny. Luke’s belief, his mercy and his steadfastness made him invulnerable to the urgings of the dark side. And this allowed his father’s inherent mercy to overpower his dominant false self. Love finds a way. Maybe there’s more to mercy than I thought. Perhaps sometimes mercy means sensing the humanity hidden deep within another, and letting that impulse dictate the agenda. Maybe mercy is just another face of love. And if I love them, then I’ll do whatever serves them. I’ll fight for them. Not for me. Not to win, not to defeat, but to preserve and honor them. To set them free. To believe in them. To see them, to see past their armor and their programming. To completely relinquish agendas that control and steer and self-seek. I thought mercy meant not killing a feeble enemy or not punishing the guilty. But I see it now as a form of surrender. A means by which the ego’s gambit is relinquished and the higher self can reassert: with the goals of healing, seeing past the mask and seeing the other with the eyes of love. Mercy says I’m not the judge and jury. I do not see all. It is not for me to be the (self-appointed) agent of your karma, but of mine. I see now that Luke didn’t ‘save’ his father in Return of the Jedi. Instead of salvation, Luke did ‘the work.’ He did the inner shadow work. He trained. He discovered himself. He gained proficiency, spiritually and otherwise. He was humbled and received tutelage from an elder. The hard work of individuation. His first attempt to help his friends and fight his enemy ended with him losing a hand and barely surviving the fight. He was defeated because he tried to fight force with force and not with power. Darth Vader was his father, but, until that moment, he was unaware of this fact. That’s when everything changed. Because he could then humanize this formerly faceless, anonymous villain, this caricature of evil. Vader was no longer a nemesis to be defeated, but a person with reasons and faults and a story. A person who could be redeemed. A dynamic character with agency, not a mere puppet, under the spell of the dark side. That’s when the careful craftsmanship of storytelling pays off. When static characters become dynamic. When we see ourselves in our fathers and our lovers and everyone in between. And we realize our fight is not with the spellbound, but with the spell. Luke threw down his weapon because the battle between good and evil was a trap. A false choice. Love doesn’t battle. Luke didn’t save his father. He showed him another way. He released his anger and fear as one impelled by love does not fight fire with fire. This freed him from the grip of the dark side. His father then merely modeled the same behavior. Because there was finally something worth living for and dying for—his son. The stakes offered him redemption. Luke’s non-violence showed Vader that he did care and he acted according to his true nature, not the second nature that had come to dominate him. Then fittingly, he removed the mask that both kept him alive and enslaved. Someone reminded me years ago that we can hold multiple ideas in mind without having to concretize our stance. In Return of the Jedi, Luke, considering his path and his previous battle with his father, was a perfect example. He saw/believed/hoped/manifested that his father was still in there, under all the armor, the indoctrination and the sunk cost. He wasn’t Darth Vader or Anakin Skywalker; he was both. Both things can be true. Both/and instead of either/or. Every situation does not reduce down to a 2-dimensional light switch, a black and white binary. One must recognize that sometimes, multiple choice is an option, even when given a true/false question. That’s what Luke did. He changed the rules. And he won. What’s different about our lives? Besides the lack of light sabers and adorable Ewoks? We don’t always have the opportunity to show off our insights and sublime understandings in a grand showdown between us, the valiant hero, and the forces of darkness. Yet, it doesn’t mean we don’t see. Sometimes there’s just no grand gesture, no riveting climactic scene. Nothing to do and no one to save. We may not even have anyone to articulate our truth to. It just sits there, seeing the truth, the reality of a situation. We can wish or hope for a moment when we can act upon it. But until then, we can rest in the knowledge that we know this truth--this secret. That we can see past the masks and window dressings. This sense can offer solace when we realize we’re only the director of our movie. And some greater director has plans that don’t fully correspond to our wishes. We commonly talk about love being a verb and it’s so apt, usually. Maybe sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s a realization that we’re right about something, but it’s just for us to know. And maybe that’s enough. Because to see the truth means not being fooled by the circumstances, but not needing the world to conform to your preferences. And perhaps that’s where Mercy can guide us again. The same Mercy that helped Luke humanize his father may help us see that it’s merciful to let others be. No fixing or saving. Just seeing and knowing. We don’t need an external triumph where we receive and offer redemption. Luke gets a great payoff. The characters save the day and live happily ever after. But life is not a movie. Those moments of high drama are the exception, not the rule. Yes! Seize them and act valiantly when life affords the chance. By all means, be the hero in your life. But we must learn what to do when we never get the chance to say our mic drop line. When the passion play can only take place internally. When our internal discovery of Mercy is the reward and the payoff. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    10 min

  5. Apr 28

    Graceland

    I remember decades ago when Paul Simon’s Graceland album and the title song arrived on the radio and in our collective imagination. I was a middle school student, learning about Biblical allusions in novels like The Old Man and the Sea. So when I heard the title track, Graceland, I knew he was talking about heaven as much as Elvis’ sprawling mansion. The meaning was layered and I was privy because I had been lucky enough to be taught. I was made savvy by others who were learned in the subtleties of meaning as transmitted through art. I remember explaining this to someone less versed, someone who didn’t know about allusion. It just didn’t register for him. I was sad for the flattened perceptual experience he was living. A year or so ago, when in mourning, I was focusing on the song Graceland again. The line, ‘losing love is like a window in your heart’ gave me pause. I liked the simile, and yet it was the revelation and the commonality that Simon imparted through his rendering that was and is most operant. He was reaching for truth and we were along for the ride. ‘She comes back to tell me she’s gone. As if I didn’t know that. As if I didn’t know my own bed. As if I never noticed, the way she brushed her hair from her forehead.’ We revel in his use of lyric and music, feelings and unvarnished scenes, to get to the real. To help us slip into ourselves and under our defenses. To embody our most tender inner being, to feel seen. We discover commonality there with the writer and all who choose to withstand and soften through life’s vagaries. And yet music and art don’t automatically shed light. We can watch a film that propagandizes and distorts. We may read misleading pseudo-history and come to wildly inaccurate conclusions. We too often believe false narratives about pivotal scenes in history and the actors who played upon the world stage. Through art and speech, sound and image, we can be taught or tricked, aroused or sickened, ginned up for war or mollified. Our capacity to perceive is fallible. See death cults and abusive relationships for context. We can reject the trustworthy and embrace the charlatan. We don’t know what we don’t know. So humbly seeking truth via education is a choice to accept our functional incapacity to learn, to perceive clearly without the intervention of not only experts in a subject but teachers—exemplars of discernment—those who dare us to think, to examine, to wrestle with truth. They challenge our assumptions and show us the stakes. We must be willing to see the chinks in our perceptual armor, the fizzures where deceptive arguments seep in to court our core wounds. How the algorithm cases the joint. It sizes us up and glamours our prideful egos, luring us to court deception, mapping where we harbor half-truths and false beliefs, where we entertain fallacies that are at once tantalizing and life-threatening. Extinction event catalysts in sheep’s clothing. So in the school of life, all art is not created equal. Some works free us and others serve us a 1-dimensional script for who we are and will be. Media can feed us generalized narratives about our identity that too many seemingly lap up and wear with pride. I see this most egregiously in radio country music. I have always found it mindless and deeply insulting. Easy tropes about tractors and trucks and other facile identity cues make me shudder. It feels like a Kincaid painting but with barbs—with consequences that would become all too clear as politics shifted and metastasized in the only nation I’ve called home. I sensed that country music was selling its listeners a soft propaganda—a ready-made script. A hokey caricature of patriotism, regionalism, masculinity, rural life vs city life, American-ness that you can slip into and skip all that useless introspection. No nuance, no search, no layers. Here it is. Plop. Eat your gruel. Whatever I see on the surface is what everything means. No inquiry, no risk and of course, no doubt. No time for nuance and no need to veer into the uncomfortable, the messy or the taboo. No stark encounter with self and shadow. No subtle urging to face our biases, to humanize those different than us. It seems innocuous, but it’s not. Radio country brainwashes and dumbs-down vast swathes of our population with results that have become all-too apparent in the last 10 years. My disappointment is not that there is such a Nashville machine that churns out fluff for profit—that makes mindless grist and calls it music. Capitalism is like that. I’m incensed that so many consume such tripe so willingly. They wear it like a badge of honor. Coupled with dogmatic religions that asks people to have faith in unseen saviors, too many have become the unwitting pawns of those who would usurp—the highwaymen who would gladly separate us from our sovereignty. These engineers of chaos, of the demise of our American Experiment. The stakes could not be higher. And yet all is not lost. Our capacity to course-correct may be our saving grace. Our willingness to see past the surface is needed now more than ever. Cynical times led by cynical politicians leads to cynical citizens. We are starting to resemble our counterparts in Russia and other non-free nations. They are wise to the propaganda. They vote and yet they know that this vote is a charade. They are initiated in public deception. We must become so and yet not lose our sense of people power. We do this by examining, by employing awareness, by seeking understanding. By measuring our capacity for discernment with humility. We must listen to our guts, but assess the conclusions we would jump to with scrutiny. The appreciation of art is part and parcel of the embodiment of discernment. Art presents us information in a fashion that deeply soothes and harshly confronts. It blurs lines and breaks rules as it contorts and swirls and toys with the permutations of meaning. It seeks to meld the ethereal with the mundane, the vulgate and the sacred. Art dissects and scrutinizes. It magnifies what it encounters. It passes judgment and redeems. Art demands and rewards presence: something that is often in short supply. Humility and beginner’s mind go a long way in our vigilance against misinfortion and disinformation. Let’s investigate the seemingly innocuous streams of entertainment that we digest, for they could be our custom-tailored and bespoke Trojan Horse. True art does not lull us to sleep. It does not typecast. It does not generalize. It beckons: awaken and experience your humanity and alchemize your suffering through rhythm and integrated chaos, not mere spectacle. Witness yourself through the mirror that art and nature provide. Come back to center. Metabolize the detritus. Venture out once more and see the world anew. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min

  6. Mar 4

    Open Letters

    A year ago I awoke with a melancholy song in my head and a knowing ache in my heart. Enter Springsteen’s Bobby Jean: his tender goodbye to a band-mate and dear friend. The song reminisced about their shared history over a sentimental soundtrack. Through this transmission I sensed that I had to reluctantly let go of someone I cherished–someone I was certain would be my forever person. Spirit ushered me captive into those bitter mornings via such songs to soothe and broach that unwelcome reality in my preferred language and medium–these artist’s homages to those they knew they must release but couldn’t bear to do so. In those early days, dawn would arrive with a jolt–a caustic reckoning with the stubborn truth my mind could not fathom and my soul would not accept. Bobby Jean, aka Steve Van Zandt, soon returned to the band, but our lovers often don’t. We find our way eventually, despite the loss, or because of it. Or maybe we don’t. Perhaps these songs aren’t mere entreaties to loves lost, but are woven to serve a deeper purpose. Lately, Billy Idol’s Sweet Sixteen haunts me. A lament to his girlfriend while on tour, this song’s title invoked the story of Coral Castle and its creator, Edward Leedskalnin. He moved to Florida and built this impossible stone monument to his love, his sweet sixteen, who would not marry him and who never came to see his otherworldly creation. Yet thousands of visitors grace his halls every year and honor his testament to love. Perhaps grand gestures like his are more than meets the eye. Maybe they’re not just for the love object. What if they are the hard labor of one’s soul excavation? Toiling in vain, these bittersweet monuments to those we couldn’t have—to unbridled love with nowhere to go. Channeled revelations, discharges of divine spark, harnessed with ghostly reverence. Pleading and shedding. Forswearing and exhausted relenting. The nihilist in us can discount these odes to passion as empty melodramatic charades cast against a cruel and soulless abyss. What apparent folly, what hapless futility. Yet, perhaps love finds a way around the stumbling blocks. Yes, Pattie Boyd didn’t come back to Eric Clapton and Stills chased Judy Collins to no avail. But these titanic homages stand regardless as each artist’s respective magnum opus. Layla and Suite: Judy Blue Eyes preside atop rock and roll’s pantheon of lost love offerings—the blinding zenith of both artist’s towering creative capacities. They aren’t mere masterworks to be viewed in some gallery, lauded for their technique and tidy brushstrokes. These open letters reached me. They engulfed and riveted me before I had tasted agony, before I had lost love, before my soul had been torn down. They lit up my circuits with an intensity and aliveness that forewarned and celebrated life’s impending tragedies and deep joys. With each acrid gulp of loss and longing, they met me with understanding and permission to mourn and plead. To implode, to grasp and clutch. To need. They met me with grace and honor. With rage and confusion that accompanied me in the devastation. With the sense that I might trudge through my sacred wreckage in the windswept footfalls of these weary troubadours. By metabolizing my pain like they had recontextualized theirs: through creating art. Because there were no better options. No wonder we revere our singers and writers and rock stars. They channel their pain into medicine for the listless listener. They lead by example. Risking everything to share their deepest secrets in hopes that they might be accepted, seen and loved for their flaws and frailties. In their smallness. This offers the listener permission to be small and sad and hurting. In return they humbly ask to be seen: naked before the world. They let us in. Neither the singer nor the listener is above the other. The artist is not a god on a pedestal. The fan is not a supplicant in the cheap seats. Both are humans in pain, reaching across the void for meaning and love. And they each oblige. Both are no longer alone. Love finds its way. Thus an inextricable bond is forged between these long distance lovers. The fans offer the artist the love he or she needs. The singer’s art heals the listener and makes them feel vested and linked to the pain of their heroes. We realize the venerated star is just like you and me: a simple human. We can heal through their words and sameness. But greater still, the artist shows the fan that true healing comes when we choose risk and metabolize our inner struggles. To consume art is fantastic. To create it, to reveal oneself, to offer this magic to the world: that is transcendence. In a time where there is so little cultural cohesion, the musician serves as bard—as shaman to a weary and rudderless populace. This is not mere entertainment or distraction. That’s the surface, the trance. A circuit is created to heal all parties, to link them with love and solace. Appreciation and adoration. Each reveals their wounds. Catching the other as they fall. Love Finds A Way. Epilogue: After 3 years of intense struggle and 1 year of the deepest mourning, life is starting to make sense again, thanks to friends, family, and the catharsis of receiving and creating art. I didn’t believe I’d ever feel alive again. The worst storm of my life has dissipated on all fronts. Never had I experienced such loss and despair–especially while so hamstrung by complex circumstances. Music and art purged what I could no longer carry. Such a transformation is uncanny to experience. It’s a process. Thankfully, I had my own vehicle—my writing, to help me process the losses and revelations. This helped me sidestep learned helplessness. If my writing does anything to you, let it be to coax you into your own introspection and creation. The world is waiting for your medicine, and so are you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min

  7. Feb 3

    Today

    Like many, I knew the powerful, yet over-played Jefferson Airplane hits from the 60s like Somebody to Love, sung by Grace Slick. Yet, among others of the time, this band was deeply talented; their repertoire went far deeper than the singles. The Marty Balin offerings really struck me: his rich voice, his ballads tender and unabashed. The eclectic album Surrealistic Pillow epitomized the San Francisco sound and the Psychedelic era: a time and place of enchantment for me to this day. My favorite number, the ethereal Today, occupies rare air because it behaves in contrast to our expectations of standard love-song fare. In lieu of glowingly describing his lover, he regales us with his overflowing love, his burgeoning reverence. We know little of her, save the grandiose state she inspires. Not her perfume nor the shape of her eyes. Because he’s chosen instead to narrate the primeval force that subsumes him. His soul has become love’s vessel. Yet his is no parasitic possession, no mere infatuation—but an inner saturation, heralding the august arrival of the overman. The song is a procession. As verses advance and pervade, the harmonic intensity grows—rippling, stirring, and swelling at the transcendent unity of his love experience. As a listener and a lover, digesting such a song inspires similar states. Through these offerings, we acknowledge love’s embodiment. We relish the splendor of our love stores which the song captures and colors and translates. The towering adoration it reveals and reawakens: our majestic capacity to see and want and choose. We savor and project this affinity to the other, even in absentia. There exists no feeling more certain or more rare. When reciprocated, the joy is boundless. Yet even as I awoke in the absence of she who I adored, my love radiated so pure, so humble and so alive. It would conquer any obstacle. No circumstance could deny this love’s veracity. I stared back ensconced as she revealed with unguarded eyes and hushed sobs her innermost secrets. They kissed my heart and rang bells in my mind, these words lost on pages wet with tears. But the movie didn’t end that way. Yet when I laid down worry and fear and the deep sense of loss, this unyielding Love was all that remained of me. An open letter, a promise, a message in a bottle, bobbing and floating up to eternity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    3 min

  8. Jan 1

    It Was Real For Me

    I tried to write this post about a movie but it turns out the movie wasn’t that interesting—except for one key scene and the meaning it imparted. X-Men Wolverine: Origins is that of which I speak. Logan is one of my favorite characters, and not just for the talented actor or the cool healing powers, but for the deep mythic meaning. He’s a survivor, a warrior, but not a 1-dimensional cliche. He’s a reluctant messiah and an enigma who finds his own way to heroism when it counts. In the pivotal scene, the villain began describing his treacherous plan: how Logan’s girlfriend’s death was faked, and how she was in on the ruse. And how their relationship was never real. Logan didn’t flinch. He replied, ‘It Was Real for Me.’ I paused and let the moment sink in. I had seen the movie 5 times but I never caught that meaning, that scene, and that sureness. There’s exposition that would put you, the reader, there—the stakes, the nuance and the layers. But it doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that Logan honored this moment and this love any way. By doing so, he served as a stand-in for us, for what we can be when we look inward for guidance. He had all the tools to be a mercenary—cold, calculated, impenetrable and stoic. But he chose vulnerability and risked everything to love any way. In so doing, he inverts and controverts all the bogus themes of men (and people) protecting themselves instead of opening to life and seeing love as a zero-sum-game. A pitched battle between seemingly natural adversaries, vying for control. A chess match but with real stakes. A sad and unnecessary zeitgeist that decimates our culture and civilization. Logan didn’t need to win. He needed to be authentic. He knew that we gain nothing when we risk nothing. He knew that vulnerability was real strength, despite what the culture hawks on social media. Despite what everyone was doing around him. Despite the pain and disillusionment of betrayal and loss. He didn’t let these events make him cynical. When he loved, it was real, even if the other person couldn’t meet him there. Even if he looked like a fool. Because it was real for him. Because he was real. His love was real. Because vulnerability is not weakness, it’s the opposite. It’s strength. We risk pain and loss in the quest to meet the other in the hallowed space of intimacy. Our culture wants to sell us fantasies of control, stoicism and power moves. But Logan was at peace with being fooled. Because always operating from a position of advantage means never risking and never truly living. Only when we risk loss, failure, and blame, do we live. As manly as Logan looks and often acts in these movies, it’s his sensitivity in this scene that makes him Logan and not some caricature of manliness from some collective fever-dream. He has a heart and it can be broken. Otherwise, it’s not a heart, but a wall that isolates and stagnates our energy. Love is not a game. It’s not a competition. Love asks us to strip off our armor, to lay down our weapons. To soften and to view the other with the eyes of empathy. To humanize and forgive the limitations of our partners. Love is not at war. Even when we lose. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit greenmang.substack.com/subscribe

    4 min
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About

My interviews with interesting people from many walks of life, but especially writers, healers, and thinkers that help people improve their lives. I also discuss my personal essays on life, culture, music, politics, relationships, history, spirituality and self-help. greenmang.substack.com

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