The way out of meaningless suffering is not easy…
Tuesday, October 31, 2023. Another autobiographical post. LOL.. please stop me before I spill more… This is for my son Dan, and only he knows why…
I consider myself fairly thoughtful for a man approaching 70. My clients are all familiar with how I passionately seethe as I exclaim…
There's nothing more painful - nothing that causes more suffering - than meaningless suffering!
Imagine your family of origin as a set of limitations you’ve been tasked to engage with.
I love Daniel Munro’s thought experiment about being kidnapped and securely tied to a chair. Let’s re-imagine that chair as your family of origin.
Now, if you stay completely still, as if you prefer to sit in the chair, then it feels okie dokie..
As soon as you start to struggle against the restraints, you’ll probably hurt yourself and then you’ll get all pissed off and full of agita.
The aggravation of agita!
So, it sucks to be so distressed… it's really unpleasant. Also, instead of making the most of being a guy restrained in a chair, you’re just wasting time and energy struggling impotently.
But imagine what would happen if you choose to sit in the chair…even though you've been restrained by it, and continue to be restrained by it. What if you embraced the suck?
How would it be any different than a parallel universe in which, unfettered and free, you are choosing to dwell in that chair comfortably?
My morning began with a trip to the Norfolk County Correctional Center, April 1971…
I was 17. For some reason I can neither remember, nor fathom, I was in the thrall of an exacting, and somewhat unpredictable accordion teacher, Johnny “pretty fingers” Manginero.
If you think about the movie Whiplash, but with piano accordions..absent the extreme sadism and violence, you’ll get the idea. Johnny was an Alpha, and he never let me forget it…
“JESUS FU*KING CHRIST YOU PLAY TOO FAST!. YOU need more ADAGIO… YOU PLAY LIKE MONKEY GRINDER ON UPPERS…Another thing, you gotta work on your stage fright. I got just the thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I got a gig for you at Dedham prison.” He smirked. I knew that smirk always meant an interesting time. I smirked right back.
“What should I play? I can do Folsom Prison Blues, but on this thing it sounds like a wheezing carousel ride.”
Geez, you’re such a smart ass. Don’t patronize. What else can you do that’s decent? I kinda like what you do with “Stay as Sweet as You Are.”
Johnny snapped his eyebrows up in exaggerated anticipation. How did I like dem apples?
“Fu*k you Johnny, I want to do “Lover”… I like playing fast.. I want to play to my strengths.. help me play it beyond allegro… help me do it cappricio (an Italian word that means playing lively and showing off with lots of fills, trills, bellow shakes, grace notes… (the link will explain better than words).
I didn’t want to play Lover.. I wanted to murder it.
We agreed, and for the next 6 weeks, we prepared
On the day of the concert, I was guided through a number of menacing gates with guards. I was carrying my accordion case. Entering the prison reminded of of the opening sequence to the old TV show, “Get Smart.”
I was ultimates guided to sit on a metal folding chair in an otherwise bare, unfurnished room to wait for the “trustees.”
Two men ambled in with wry smiles, just oozing with mischief. They asked me to open the case to make sure I had no contraband.
Could you play us a little something while we go get our friend?
Sure…I noodled out something forlorn and sad, as the taller trustee left the room and then soon returned with a inmate who was unforgettable.
Vinny was not only a little person, he was by far, the smallest adult human I have ever met, even to this day. He walked slowly and purposefully around my accordion case…
Harry set it up, perfectly deadpan. “Vinny.. see if you can get inside that box. We need to see if it closes. Once you’re out, we’ll move on to the next stage of the plan. Don’t worry about the kid…he’s not gonna say anything. Are you kid?”
I guess the panic and distress on my face was obvious… but the brief whimper that squeaked out of me was priceless… as Vinny, Harry, and Guermo burst out laughing, doubled over, and then high-fived each other with epic glee.
Johnny was both an asshole and a wise man. I look back on him today with far more fondness than I did as a sullen and moody teen.
He knew at 17, I was quite immature, self-absorbed, and full of myself.
I’d lived a bizarre and unusually sheltered, if not cloistered life. Looking back, I think this was his way of provoking some growth in me, and perhaps some mental toughness, which I sorely lacked.
Johnny told me to arrive at 9 am. The concert was at 1:00… He planned to have me hang around with the trustees until then…
The trustees introduce themselves…
Harry Bufino (as best as I can remember his name), suffered a head injury while seeing grueling combat during the Korean war. He had also lost 3 fingers on his left hand to frostbite during the battle of the Chosin Resevoir.
Harry had flashes of rage. On such flash sealed the fate of his wife and mother-in-law in a few vague seconds. Harry was never leaving Dedham.
I will never forget Harry’s slow and deliberate manner, the way I could sense that this was a man in the throes of a deep and ancient grief. After 15 years in Dedham He was sad, and oddly serene.
I remember him saying. “I belong here. Not just for what I did, but for the fact that this is only the sort of human companionship I can handle. I can be patient here, because I know what to expect. I have predictability. Sometimes I can even sleep and I even dream about my daughter Edna once in awhile.”
He sighed deeply and faintly smiled a crooked smile. “And every once in awhile something special happens… like you today..and I don’t have to remember to laugh.. it just slips out.”
Then there was Guermo. The widow of a pharmacist in Mattapan wished that he too, would die in Dedham.
After 9 years, Guermo never adjusted to life on the inside, but he did manage to eventually control his rage, but he lacked Harry’s serenity. Guermo always seemed in motion, squirming, unsettled. He seemed to rely on Harry for cues on how to respond to any given situation.
Little Vinny’s story was the strangest of all. Vinny’s parents travelled with the circus.
One day, in 1947, the circus left the Boston area.. but Vincent was deliberately left behind. He was, at 14, a cunning, incorrigible thief, addicted to amphetamines since he was 12….
“It seems that I had picked one too many pockets, there were far too many inquiries..” Vinny used his giant intellect and small stature to better himself, to the considerable annoyance of the retail jewelry industry.
An accomplished cat burglar, and beloved jailhouse lawyer, Vinny quipped.. “Young man, I appreciate you visiting us this fine and momentous morning… and I do have an abiding interest in your case…” Harry and Guermo guffawed.
On a bright and luminous afternoon in April 1971, I played “Lover” on the stage of the Norfolk County Correctional Center…
Lover was dead on arrival. I killed it.
But Johnny feared I would choke, so he somehow arranged for an accompanist on piano who frankly, blew me away and almost made me look bad (I warned you he could sometimes be an asshole).
Well, in my 17 year old vanity, that’s what I thought at the time… but I made a beeline for him immediately after my performance.
“Wow! are you one of Johnny’s student?” I asked.
“Who the fu*k is Johnny, boy?”
“Pretty Fingers” I said it as if he would now remember.
“Yeah, I know my fingers are pretty…”
“No, that’s his nick name. So are you a professional? Were you hired to play today?”
Son, I fu*king live here for the next 16 months and 13 days.”
I learned that his name was Phil. In 1970 he was known in Dorchester as “Phil Thrill.”
“I got a good deal. I’m grateful. But I don’t go by Phil no more. My wife Millie calls me Shag, and that’s good enough for me.” Shag started to fidget talking about Millie giving birth while he was in Dedham.
I found Shag to be as thoughtful as he was musical.
“I had it made.” Shag glowered. “I was playing at the Parker House making $200 dollars a night. “My daddy says come back and help me fix this situation and you’ll make $2000 dollars a night’
So I made a very bad move, and I find myself here…if you can choose the situation you're already in, by saying to yourself, ‘this is what I have to work with, so I will work with it’, you don't get no sense of struggle and suffering.”
Shag looked my me furtively… like he was asking himself…why am I talking to this boy? But he kept talking, and I kept listening…
“…if you try to work against what is, even though it's out of your control, you gonna suffer no matter what the situation is. Some situations and circumstances are objectively out of your control. Like mine…
I could not control the fact that my daddy had me dealing on Bird street when I was 9. But I can control what my grown self does…
My mamma tried to make me better by teaching me piano, and I liked it. I could have worked harder and slower on my music in church, but I chose daddy’s way in the world, again,… instead. Cause I had no damn patience.
Because I chose to accept his example, I’m experiencing the suffering that I am required to experience in order to be a better man for my wife and baby son. Once I leave here…” his voice started to rise and crack…”I ain’t nevah, evah comin’ back…”
“Now I know why he plays so well… he’s returning to love with a new name… “ I remember thinking, feeling like I had connected some long lost dots… I knew something about new names…
Final Thoughts…
Suffering’s baked in the fu*king cake.
It’s only a matter of time before it finds us, perhaps unprepared. But the ancient stoics nailed it.
There are situations and circumstances in life (i.e. being tied to a chair, or living in a prison in Dedham, Massachusetts) that are simply beyond our scope of action as intelligent, goal-directed humans.
When we accept the things that can not change, and yet still humbly keep endeavoring to change the things we can, perhaps it is somewhere, lurking in that patient work, that we find our true selves, perhaps even our manhood.
Be well, stay kind, play slower… and Godspeed.
