one of my favorite hours

Back in the mid-late 1990’s I was working at a record label in Hollywood. I won’t say the name, but the offices were in a giant round building that looked like a stack of records. I really liked working there at first because I got a lot of free records and I naively thought I was making connections for my band.

Stuck in the finance department, most my days turned out to be not very exciting. Occasionally some famous people did make there way through the building though. The basement held two of the most famous recording studios in Los Angeles, so they were always busy making records down there. I rode the elevator with Dave Navarro one time. Another ride was with Art Alexakis. Both seemed to be very polite and genuine guys. Better than the average day gig moments for me for sure.

Mostly though, it was a grind. Tons of paperwork and errand boy shit. A lot of the people were pretty cool, and I did learn quite a bit about the record business, but I didn’t enjoy the job all that much. I really wanted to be making the music myself and not crunching numbers for the big machine and their roster of other artists.

One day I had an especially bad row with my boss. I guess I messed up something and she was pretty pissed. Looking back on it I’m sure it was my fault, but at the time I felt attacked and unappreciated. So I went down to the lunch room on the second floor to grab a coffee and smoke a cigarette on the patio. You know, cool myself off a little bit before I went back to my desk.

After a couple of smokes I headed back inside and asked for a refill. There were only a few people in the lunchroom milling around and looking at the snack selection. It was around eleven so the real lunch rush was still an hour or so away. I noticed a small, dark haired guy sitting at one of the back tables drinking some tea by himself. A flash of recognition ran through my head as I turned back to thank the lunch lady for my coffee. I knew who that guy was! I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but I just had to introduce myself.

I walked over to his table and sheepishly cleared my throat. “Um…Hi.” I said.

“Hello.” He looked up from his magazine and smiled quizzically.

“I don’t want to bother you, but I’m a huge fan.” I shuffled my feet glad for the styrofoam coffee cup in my hands. I wouldn’t have known what to do with them otherwise.

“Oh, thanks man.” He smiled and seemed truly grateful.

“Are you in one of the studios downstairs?”

“Yeah. We’re working on the new record in A.” He said.

“Cool.” Of course I couldn’t come up with anything more impressive to say.

“Have a seat.” Three more impactful words had never been spoken to me. Well maybe my girlfriend sating “I love you” was pretty close, but this was AWESOME!

“Wow. Thanks!” The chair squeaked on the linoleum as I pulled it out and sat down.

I didn’t care that I was going to get into more trouble with my boss for being away from my desk for so long. I didn’t care that I might even get fired. I was going to hang out as long as I could. We talked for close to an hour and it was one of the best conversations of my life.

He was very grateful that at least one person at the label connected with his music. He felt at odds with the whole major label corporate thing and was worried he was going to get lost in the shuffle. I was worried for him too, but I chose not to tell him and make him regret his decision to sign with the label even more than he already did.

I mentioned before that I have been extremely fortunate to meet a number of my “heroes”. This was perhaps one of the most fortunate of those encounters I have ever had. He was kind and even funny despite his reputation. We didn’t only talk about music either. He was just as interested in me and what I was up to as I was in him. I kicked myself subsequently for not telling him about my band, but it felt like it would have been rude and self serving at the time.

Honestly I wish I could remember more specifics of what we talked about, but it’s all buried somewhere in my brain behind the whoosh of the adrenaline fandom rush I was in the middle of the entire time.

He mentioned that he was going to get another cup of tea when a voice came from the elevator in the hall, “Hey Elliott, we’re ready to get started again.”

“Okay.” He replied quietly and stood up. “It was really nice talking to you. You should come down to the studio and hang out for a while.”

“I would love to!” Needless to say I was blown away. But the dark shroud of responsibility reared its ugly head over me. “I should get back to work though.”

“Okay. Well, nice to meet you.” We shook hands and he headed off for the elevator down to continue recording what has since become one of my favorite albums.

Unfortunately I didn’t get down there to any of the session that day, or any over the next couple of days either. When I got back to my desk, my boss slammed her door loudly to prove a point and there was a pile of punishment work stacked up for me to finish ASAP. I didn’t mind though. I got to it and started to mow through all the paper with a smile on my face.

I never really told anyone about my cup of coffee with him that day. I kept it too myself. I guess because I selfishly thought I had made a new friend and if I told people about it I would appear to be bragging or showing off. I just got lucky. I was in the right place at the right time and had an hour that I will never forget.

A couple of years later he died and it broke my heart apart. Fortunately I can still listen to his music and be inspired by him. I don’t know if he remembered the time we spent talking that day, or if he even remembered meeting me at all. But I certainly do and it is one of the fondest memories that I have.

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stamp my gross happiness visa!

It is much harder to be happy than unhappy. Why is that? Ask anyone. Go ahead. I dare you. Ask them if they are really, truly happy. Chances are you’ll get a few people who put on a brave face, smile and tell you what they think you want to hear. Don’t let that be the end of the conversation. Push them to go deeper and tell you what’s really going on.

Most people are struggling to make ends meet, dealing with dysfunctional families, friends and/or crappy unfulfilling jobs. It seems like most everyone is just trying to make it through the day until they can get home, turn off their minds relax and float down the television stream. That’s not happiness if you ask me.

It is so much easier to allow the detritus of modern life to fall all around, building up a wall that corrals us in with our unhappiness than it is to be the wrecking ball that swings and just might let in some splinters of light through the cracks it struggles to break. Happiness requires work. Happiness only reveals itself to the vigilant and determined. Unhappiness is easy. It is lazy and requires no work ethic at all. It makes itself available to us whether we like it or not.

I try really hard to be happy. Unfortunately I don’t quite get there most of the time. Little things plant themselves in front of me and set me right off the course of having a perfectly sunshine day. I can be walking down the hall with a smile on my face singing “I Feel Good” and then my hand will slam directly into the hall closet doorknob. Maybe I’ll be watching the newborn baby goats stumbling around acting all cute like and my foot steps into a pile of dog crap. I might be right in the middle of some hard found inspiration, writing the greatest song since “Across the Universe” when all of a sudden my B string breaks and I don’t have a replacement set anywhere.

The old cliché “nothing good comes easy” is a cliché for good reason. It’s true. It may appear that some people don’t have to work as hard as others for their happiness. I don’t believe that’s true. If you equate happiness with material things, then maybe it is. But I have known quite a few “trustifarians” that have never had to work a day in their blue blooded lives because of family money and I can tell you, it’s pretty rare to find someone in that position who smiles so deeply it can change the mood of a room. Put me on stage next to an eighty five year old bluesman belting out “Crossroads” for the ten thousandth time and I’ll show you some happiness at its purest form.

There is a Buddhist retreat up the road from here that has an interesting approach to enlightenment and happiness. You hear the word “retreat” and the images that rise up are massages, cucumber slices on your eyes, steam baths and never ending piles of rich, delicious food. Not at this place. Every time I have driven by, the property has been spotlessly clean and beautiful. The lawn and shrubbery are perfectly manicured, there is not one spec of dirt or bird poop on any of the surrounding statues, and all of the hundreds of prayer flags have not faded one iota from their original bright and beautiful orange hue. Do you think that it’s the Dalai Llama that keeps the place so clean?

The path to happiness according to their philosophy is achieved through hard work. When you sign up to spend some time there, you leave all of your worldly trappings behind. No laptops, iPods-Pads-Phones, clothes and no satellite television receivers. You put on one of their beautiful orange robes and start getting it dirty. Apparently all of the stress and aggravation brought into our lives by technology, supposedly to provide the assistance to a faster and easier life, can be erased and soothed away by good old fashioned dirty knees, sweaty brows and sore muscles.

King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of the country of Bhutan was so concerned with the happiness of his people that he created the concept of Gross National Happiness. He developed it as a way to measure his countrymen’s quality of life. Imagine that. A leader so concerned that his subjects were happy and fulfilled, he actually created a system to measure the amount of happiness, contentment or sorrow of their daily lives. If they were unhappy, he and the government would actually take steps to remedy their problems. Where do I sign up for a Happiness Visa?

It seems like we here in the Western world are in love with our stoicism. In order to fit in we are not able to smile. Think about it. If you are walking down the street and someone walks toward you with a huge, shit eating grin on their face, you’re first instinct is to give them a wide birth as they pass. We are much more likely to accept someone with their head down, frown on their face quick stepping their way to their next miserable appointment with other miserable people.

We don’t want to see happy people. Maybe because it reminds us of how unhappy we might be and how much work we have in store for us if we want to raise the corners of our mouth and show those pearly off-whites.

Children laughing
Baby’s cooing
Wisps of clouds slowly swimming across an ocean blue sky
A gentle breeze caressing your skin
A hearty belly laugh that hits you so hard you see stars
Puppies
Kittens
The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies…
Other stuff that cynical me would normally roll my eyes at.

I guess these are some little things that may counteract the slammed doorknob hand or dog crap foot. I have to work harder in my life to remember them when I need to. I know I do. Even if we discover that reincarnation is a possibility, we only get one shot at this particular go around. If it’s going to be happy ride, it needs to be one that's worked for and earned.

So I’m going to head outside and look at the new baby goats for a minute and then play some fetch with the dogs. I’m going to smile more. I’m going to work harder.

What are you gonna do?

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