Sparks from the Fire

Pete

Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series.  If you desire the full meal, you might want to start with the appetizer first – Part 1.

I grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri.  The St. Louis football team, the Cardinals, was awful and the St. Louis basketball team, the Hawks, was decent, but the Boston Celtics of Bill Russell and Bob Cousy won it all back then just about every year.

St. Louis was definitely a baseball town with the St. Louis Cardinals led by Stan The Man Musial and company.  Our family lived and died baseball and the Cardinals, and when the baseball season was over, we simply holed up and waited for spring training to start again.

My dad, Lyman, being an ex-Canadian and growing up in hockey country would take us to games, but never really understood the game.  I remember games at old Sportsman’s Park before Busch Stadium with the huge metal columns that would always seem to be in the way of part of the playing field.  I would pray to have a seat where I could at least have a clear view of my hero, Stan The Man, as he played first base or sometimes left field.

Dad would often sit backwards in his seat and spend the 2-3 hours watching the audience.  The fans and their classic behavior interested him more than the game.  He was a dedicated people watcher.

My dad was also an older dad.  I was born when he was already 45 years old and so his sports playing days were long since past, and anyway, baseball just wasn’t his game.  Neither was basketball for that matter.  He was an accountant and spent most of his time in the office.  His only real relaxation was watching Johnny Carson every night – something he never missed.

He was supportive of our sports endeavors, but often aloof.  I used to think he was just disinterested, but now I’ve come to understand that he just did not understand those queer American sports.  He was even somewhat disgusted with the way hockey had turned so violent and seemed to emphasize the fighting over the game itself just to bring up TV ratings.

So it came to no surprise to either my older brother, Jim, and me that at our Father and Son Boy Scout picnic baseball game, Lyman decided to sit out, not play, and simply watch.  So Jim, 5 years older than me, took Dad’s place on the opposing Father’s team and played against my team – the Sons.

This was neither a surprise nor a problem for me.  It was simply normal.  Dad did not participate in our sports.  He had been a professional hockey player with the Chicago Black Hawks in his own youth and his father had actually owned the Kenora Thistles up in Canada which actually won the Stanley Cup (hockey’s equivalent to the Super Bowl) in 1907, but that was such another lifetime that it really didn’t mean much to this 12-year old boy.

Back to baseball:

The Fathers and Sons game was a close game.  In fact, we were tied 3-3 in the last inning of a seven-inning game.  It was getting late and no one wanted to go into extra innings and the fathers were up last. (more…)

Lyman Link

I grew up an athlete.  Throughout high school and college, athletics were as important to me as music and girls.

In high school I was a decent three-sport athlete (Football, soccer and track).  I did not really know the meaning of work, but the highlight was that I did play split end and defensive safety on an undefeated and unscored upon championship football team that was one of the greatest teams in the history of my school.

I then went to the University of Virginia on an athletic scholarship (soccer and track) for a year.  I pole-vaulted under a coach who had coached several Olympic vaulters and he taught me the meaning of preparation and what it took to become a champion.  But the jock’s life at a major college was just not for me and I finished up my college years at a small college in the Midwest – Principia College.

There I found myself as an athlete and was the high scoring center forward on the soccer team and a champion pole-vaulter.

I suppose, as some people might think, “I had the genes” for my father, Lyman Link, who was from Canada, had been a professional hockey player and had actually played with the Chicago Blackhawks for some time.  So he had been an athlete as well, though being from Canada, at the time, he had no experience whatsoever with either football or baseball.  Neither sport had yet become popular in Canada.

My dad was an old-fashioned dad.  He was just not the kind of dad that rolled up his sleeves and got down on the floor and played with the kids.  We never shot baskets together, though he built my brother and I a fine basketball backboard in the driveway.  He hated basketball and as an ex-pro hockey player, called it a sissy sport and we argued that one for two decades.

He came to my brother’s and my events seldom and participated in our games never.  He was an accountant and a workaholic and spent most of his time in his office.  None of this ever bothered me as a kid.  What did I know?  That’s the way most dads were.  One summer he did sponsor our Little League baseball team, but he was always more the owner than the coach.

One early fall Sunday afternoon as baseball turned to football, my brother, Jim, and I were out in the side yard tossing the football around.  Our house was on a two-house lot with room enough for a brick patio and an ample playing yard on the side.  As my brother and I worked on our passing, my dad sat on the patio and read the Sunday St. Louis Post Dispatch on his one free afternoon of the week.

Then an historic and totally surprising thing happened. (more…)

Note: The following is my response to a recent customer question.  Occasionally we print these to clarify to all what might be otherwise misunderstood.  The question from customer was, “Why can’t the sampled songs on your website be full songs instead of only part of the song?” The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Dear Bart,

Your letter came to me this morning from our customer service department.  I’ve asked that these kinds of responses come to me occasionally so that I could help handle them and help clarify confusions.

As CEO of Watchfire Music and one of its composers I would love that you could hear a full sample of my music on the site, but unfortunately we, as well as the rest of the industry, have learned that if we were to put the full sample on the site, then three generations of people would then steal such and never actually purchase it.

Unfortunately I have to eat.  I’m working on overcoming that limitation in life, but I just haven’t gotten there yet.  As it is, we live in a world where now much of what we create as musicians and composers is either free or stolen because of file sharing and hacking.

Your short note came across to all of us here as critical.  We pride ourselves in our giving.  We sell songs that take tens of thousands of dollars to create for 99 cents in a world where music is now even becoming “free” — thereby reducing our much loved occupations to the level of hobbies.

I guess you got me on my soap box here, but when I come across moments like this of such misunderstanding, it usually, these days, puts me right back on that box.

We do offer every possible tool we can think of to help you discover and understand our music.  Perhaps you might rethink this in terms of going to the movies.  Let’s say they were forced to let you see the movie for free and then, if you saw the whole thing and liked it, then, and only then, you would have to pay for it.

It’s a good analogy. (more…)

Note: It’s been a month since my last post.  That’s my first pause of its kind in nearly five years of writing this blog.  Sometimes ya’ just got to refuel, I guess.  I didn’t plan it; it just happened, but I’m back.  Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Poem by Peter Link

You can’t sell imagination in jars.
So what?
It’s already ours.

You can’t buy it in a box
Or learn it in the school of hard knocks

You won’t find it in the attic
Or in any way limited to just the aristocratic
Nor is it in any way idiosyncratic
It’s just a blessing to us all

Call it a gift from God
A flight of fancy
The quixotic muse of the heart
The mythic invention of wishful thinking
A fantastical work of art

An ingenious moment of genius
The conceive of make-believe
The romance that burns between yus
The extravagant dream we weave

Michaelangelo, the sculptor
Really got it right
He looked beyond the eyes
Beyond what the eyes could see
He saw the angel in the marble
And carved until he set her free.

Imagination was the key
And the door opened wide
To the treasures of the mind
That lie inside

Imagination!
Mind’s eye to the world of make-believe
The most wondrous of inventions
Designed to make the world believe
What we perceive

Imagination!
The rising of the curtain
On creative mind
The visionary’s chance
To define the undefined
And leave the world of physicality behind

Imagination …
The chance to stand in God’s shoes
And schmooze with the Muse
And fabricate a world
Out of nothing

I am responsible.  Each of you is responsible.  Not just Adam Lanza, but we as a people are responsible.

Those who war are responsible.  Those who greed are responsible, for greed makes war.  Those who ignore are responsible.  We as a human race must take action and raise our collective consciousness up past the point where this act is impossible.

So far we have known better than to start nuclear war.  If we know better on this issue, we can know better than to ever have a repeat of Newtown, CT.  How many school shootings do we have to bear before we as a people get it?

It’s not a matter of putting more locks on the school doors; it’s a matter of raising consciousness.

But I start with myself.  So what am I going to do about it?  “It” — the most shocking act of my lifetime.  What have I done to be a part of this?  What can I do going forward to heal my grief, your grief, the grief of a nation – the shame of mankind?

I can live better, that’s what.  I can speak up and not stand for this!  We talk about gun control.  Gun Control!  We must abolish them altogether.  As a race, forget they ever existed!  Melt them down into plowshares.  They have no purpose.  Limit them to the “sport” of killing animals?  Bah!  Get another hobby.

But it’s so much more than just guns; it’s a great mistake of the human consciousness.  If we can’t overcome these notions of killing each other then we as a human race deserve to be wiped out one day.  And if that happens then we as a human race will have done it to ourselves.

Newtown, CT must be our call to action – the action of consciousness.  What do we carry each moment in consciousness?  What are we conscious of?

Raise consciousness.  I need to do whatever I can in my life, to do my part, to live more and more in the purity of thought.  To enforce a higher consciousness wherever and whenever I can.  To take a mighty stand, in whatever way possible, for the goodness and purity of thought.  And I/we must start today, right now.

Not just pray for the grieving.  That is not enough.  We must raise the consciousness of the world – through prayer, through good deeds, through sacrifice, through our thinking.

For we are all responsible.

Last night I made a house call to one of my student’s apartment.  I had to travel there by subway around 8:00 in the evening.  While sitting in the subway in a car about one third full, I noticed a Spanish gentleman literally falling down drunk standing in the doorway holding on to the pole with both hands, but trying mightily to remain erect.

He then began to talk to two African-American women sitting beneath him – one a pretty and sweet looking woman in her 30s sitting with probably her mother.  Because he was so drunk he began falling all over them.  They were obviously bothered by this and were leaning the other way so as to not be touched by this man.

One learns to pretty much to mind one’s own business in the NY subways – the dangers being obvious, but this continued intermittently for several minutes.  People were watching, but nobody was moving to help.

I stood up and walked down the car to the doorway where the man was now bothering the ladies again and heard the drunk blubber, “Aw c’mon Shweetie, I thought you was my frien’?”  The younger one and closest to him responded, “OK, we’re friends, Mister, but you have to stay at arm’s length.”

At that she held out her arm and held him gently away as he staggered and tried to keep from falling across their laps.

I watched his hands.  I just wanted to make sure he was not carrying any kind of weapon. (more…)

I was channel surfing the other night on the tube and I came across a rock concert on AXS TV, my new favorite channel on TV’s great wasteland.  It was an AC/DC concert.  For those of you unfamiliar with AC/DC, they are a high voltage rock ‘n’ roll band that has been consistently selling-out concert tours for over 40 years now with global sales totaling more than 200 million albums.

I was surprised to see an audience full of young people following this group because the group looks “old.”  The rock and roll, drug induced, no sleep lifestyle unfortunately does not produce baby faces and ever-young images.

The kids in the audience were having a ball though, and I was glad to see that groups like the Stones, Metallica and AC/DC were still happinin’ and appreciated.  After all, these are the guys that had a large hand in creating rock and roll to begin with.

The stage was replete with today’s necessary light show, fireworks and other pyrotechnic effects, and number after number went by projecting basically the same theme over and over – Hell, fire and brimstone, the devil and all things dark and spitting from the center of the earth.

Probably the typical message of many bands preaching to teenagers revolting from too much parentally enforced Sunday School.

As I watched, enjoying the power of the music, I began to tire of the same theme over and over.  They had given out little red devil’s horns for everyone in the audience to wear and even some of the musicians in the band wore them  — actually rather dopey and goofy looking …

I began to wonder, “What is this really all about?”  Devil worship?  Revolution from the good old straight and narrow?  Even worse, some sort of pagan ritual played out on a Saturday night?

The band, and especially the lead singer, screamed constantly the same message and the stage effects backed it all up, but then I began to look deeper at the whole scene.  The audience was simply having fun.  They were smiling, joyful, singing along, all standing throughout — they in their little red devil horns were one of the happiest groups of 20,000 I’d seen in a long time. (more…)

Several nights ago I woke up with a cramp in my calf.  As I lay there trying to relax both leg and mind, I knew that the pressures of my recent days had brought me to this point of dysfunction.

Finally, being unsuccessful in letting the thoughts go and the cramp worsening, I got up, put my robe on, and left the bedroom so as not to disturb my sleeping wife.

I began to first hobble groggily, then walk through the living room, kitchen, hallway, circling through my apartment praying and stretching as the pain and tension subsided.  I walked for about 10 minutes until my mind cleared and the pain went away.

On what was to be my last lap I suddenly stopped in the middle of the living room rug as I contemplated both mental condition and body and this thought came searing through my brain: We are the inventions of a far greater mind. 

I began to think once again about what a wondrous invention my body is and how it has really very little to do with me.  I didn’t create it, I don’t understand it, I don’t really maintain it, it even appears, at times, to be self healing, etc., etc. – thoughts I’ve had all to often of late.

I walked on …

I began to imagine a man sitting somewhere in another dimension, an alien from outer space perhaps, ;o) certainly a mind far greater than my own feeble flutterings, perhaps working on a hobby like a person might build a ship in a bottle.

This mind or ‘man’ or ‘woman’ or ‘being’ decides, in its spare time, to occupy his giant brain by building a universe and placing in the middle of that universe a fascinating little ball of matter called Planet Earth.

Then being bored with this universe thing, he (or she) decides to populate it with little beings – all different, with these fascinating micro bodies that are splendid inventions of technology …

You get the idea. (more…)