I've been carrying a piece of advice with me for a while that I'd like to share today. Before dispensing that advice it's only fair I tell you both how I treat advice and how I came by this particular piece.
People have given me plenty of advice, information, and suggestions that would be beneficial to live by. I don't, they bead for a moment and roll like falling water. Only occasionally will I catch one in my mouth taste, swallow, and absorb. This is usually because the idea or concept has already been scrambling through my mind in the first place, half articulated in broken thoughts.When I hear it summarized I swallow because I like the taste of confluence.
Like I've said though it would be in my favor to live by more of the advice I've received and I don't.Maybe it's because I'm still young and have to live the negative side of the concept before I can retain it. As I continue to learn through experience maybe I'll gain enough to know I should swallow a good piece of advice when I taste it. That is probably what wisdom is. The ability to differentiate between what is worth listening to and what is not.
The advice I'm thinking about today comes from an eighty year old Trumpet player. I used to work with him as a day job maintaining the 40 acre property of his old stone farmhouse in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Frank grew up in Chicago the seedy parts during the 40's and 50's the seedy times as the son of a Czechoslovakian immigrant. He played the Trumpet and was doing night gigs with the big bands of clubs and dance halls at 14 to help support himself and his father. Over the years he's played for the Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia symphonies and preformed a standing ovation earning solo at Carnegie hall.
One day while sweating our way through replacing a row of fence posts there began a struggle. To replace a rotted and wobbling post you must first pull it out. Or break it off from where it's rotted in the ground and dig that "Son of a Bitch! BALLS!" out. It's usually a struggle and the previous outburst is what Frank projected when the fifth post that day snapped. Settling back against the wagon we used for carting our tools Frank caught his breath.
"You know Alex?" He said to me in his gravely voice that always reminds me of Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World."
"My father always used to say to me that cursing is just a lack of vocabulary."
I count Frank a wise man. I think that even if we don't always follow the advice we've received, there is value in remembering it. Frank told me this over five years ago and his father told him over forty. While both of us don't always adhere to the lesson it is certainly useful to remember.
Especially for a writer.
Until next time,
Balls
PS.
Here is an article on Frank imparting some wisdom during a seminar on Tonguing and Articulation. (Trumpet stuff.) Midway through the second paragraph is a classic Frank moment.
