Wednesday
Now: Exhuberance
Since I wrote the chapter above about anger in 2002, I know I've been walking around with an attitude and behavior that not just keeps anger in check, but actually replaces its space in my realm. I just didn't have a name for this replacement.
Then I went to guitarist Leo Kottke's annual Thanksgiving concert in the place where we both live, the Twin Cities, and he clued me in. Kottke was one of the handful of treasured recording artists whose music fueled my colleage years, so I hold the chap in high esteem. During the concept, Leo mentioned that he was reading a book titled Exuberance by Kay Redfield Jamison, and voilà!, that described me.
Read the following quote from the book, and then seek your own exuberance quotient:
"Exuberance is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion. It is kinetic and unrestrained, joyful, irrepressible. It is not happiness, although they share a border. It is instead, at its core, a more restless, billowing state...exuberance and joy are fragile matter. Bubbles burst; a wince of disapproval can cut dead a whistle or abort a cartwheel. The exuberant move above the horizon, exposed and vulnerable."
In my case, I'm feeling the fragile matter around my new project researching my classmates at the Missouri journalism school for another book. As Oscar Levant said: "I have no trouble with my enemies. But my god damn friends... they are the ones that keep me walking the floors at night." I know the risks in pricking a vein of 'god damn', but this quest is too important to abandon. One of my best j-school pals in St. Louis recently railed on me simply for trying to help him over a bump. Stinging silence is the tack of others. But I'm trying to float over this vulnerable horizon. A favorite lyric from one of 2004's best rock albums, by Modest Mouse goes: "Alright, don't worry. Even if things end up a bit too heavy. We'll all float OK. And we'll all float on anyway." ¶ 1:25 PM
Then I went to guitarist Leo Kottke's annual Thanksgiving concert in the place where we both live, the Twin Cities, and he clued me in. Kottke was one of the handful of treasured recording artists whose music fueled my colleage years, so I hold the chap in high esteem. During the concept, Leo mentioned that he was reading a book titled Exuberance by Kay Redfield Jamison, and voilà!, that described me.
Read the following quote from the book, and then seek your own exuberance quotient:
"Exuberance is an abounding, ebullient, effervescent emotion. It is kinetic and unrestrained, joyful, irrepressible. It is not happiness, although they share a border. It is instead, at its core, a more restless, billowing state...exuberance and joy are fragile matter. Bubbles burst; a wince of disapproval can cut dead a whistle or abort a cartwheel. The exuberant move above the horizon, exposed and vulnerable."
In my case, I'm feeling the fragile matter around my new project researching my classmates at the Missouri journalism school for another book. As Oscar Levant said: "I have no trouble with my enemies. But my god damn friends... they are the ones that keep me walking the floors at night." I know the risks in pricking a vein of 'god damn', but this quest is too important to abandon. One of my best j-school pals in St. Louis recently railed on me simply for trying to help him over a bump. Stinging silence is the tack of others. But I'm trying to float over this vulnerable horizon. A favorite lyric from one of 2004's best rock albums, by Modest Mouse goes: "Alright, don't worry. Even if things end up a bit too heavy. We'll all float OK. And we'll all float on anyway." ¶ 1:25 PM
