Distractions Breed Bad Vibrations

A few days ago, I went to a concert of Brian Wilson - the main founder of The Beach Boys.  Wilson was joined by another band member, Al Jardine, as well as Blondie Chaplin (who toured with The Beach Boys on their album Holland), and the current band/orchestra that accompanies Wilson.  This was the 50th anniversary of the album Pet Sounds tour.

The concert was a mixture of emotions.  This wasn't the first time I saw Brian Wilson in concert, and so I had an idea of what to expect.  The band is tight, but Wilson disengaged, whether from the audience, his band, or even himself.  This time, the experience was even worse.  Wilson brought "bad vibrations" indeed with snarkiness, sarcasm, impatience, and childish introductions to the songs of Pet Sounds - what I consider to be one of the best albums ever composed and produced. He was like an impish child who is forced to eat his "Vege-tables" (read: to tour), referring to the concert as the "fundraiser," and telling the audience that he just wants to "get the hell outta here." 

It was, needless to say, disappointing.  Obviously, Wilson is in a bad place in his life, and most likely suffers from clinical depression.  My theory is that he never truly addressed his past (particularly the strange "therapy" of Eugene Landy), and we will really never know what happened after the incomplete production of SMiLE. 

Strangely enough, Wilson did not have any respect or reverence for the music he wrote.  Pet Sounds is a deeply spiritual album, what you might call an American musica sacra, and it will be forever part of the Great American Songbook.

As if taking cue from Wilson, the audience too failed to see the beauty of the notes.  I was distracted from the left, right, front, and behind with glowing orbs of distraction, i.e., smart phones.  People were either recording (the concert or themselves), taking flash pictures, texting, updating their Facebook statuses as well as obsessively hitting the "Like" button on pictures of someone's graduation or grandchildren at play.  But here is the most egregious act of them all: looking up the information on Pet Sounds album on Wikipedia!!!

As I looked around, I realized that most of these people are not living in the present moment whatsoever.  They have a patience of a two year old child, who needs to be constantly gratified, pacified, given attention.  We can forgive the child but an adult?  Hardly.

There is no doubt that is a collectively existential problem.  But why are people not seeing it as a problem?  If an unexamined life is not worth living, then all I see are a lot of worthless, meaningless lives.

It would appear that we have to break up this problem into small bi(y)tes.  Cut up those vegetables and meat for the impish children!  Before addressing the philosophical aspect of distraction (lack of spiritual and ethical discipline), we have to focus on the act itself.

If you are scrolling through the Facebook feed during the experience of concert,  you have to ask yourself why.  Are you afraid that you might miss something?  Are you afraid that someone might forget you unless you post a status update?  Why are you afraid that you might be forgotten?  Now, we're getting somewhere!  We have to tease out the perennial questions out of contemporary absurdities.

If you're looking up the information on Pet Sounds (on Wikipedia no less!) during the concert that is playing the album in its entirety, then you must ask yourself why are you at the concert to begin with?  Could it be that you are just not enjoying yourself at all, and you are only familiar with Good Vibrations, and that maybe your partner (who seem to be enjoying himself a lot!) dragged you to the concert, at which point, you may have a bigger problem than not knowing the music of The Beach Boys?

Thomas Merton, 1915-1968

Thomas Merton wrote, "Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted?  Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?"  
To be honest with you, I am not even sure whether we are ready for a question like this.  In order to ask it, we must first begin to question the meaninglessness and absurdity of our daily acts, and recognize that there is something "off" in the whole set up of our day.  (And if you do not experience this, then great!  Hopefully you won't be offended by my spiritual musings and you won't see it as a "micro-aggression").

We really have to ask why are we doing what we are doing.  Why do we have the need to pick up that phone (or as my husband calls it, the "porta-puter/pewter") when we are alone, or even in the company of others?  Of course, we are distracting ourselves.  But from what?  Only each individual can answer that for him or herself.