Moody Blues

 

The Arkansas Rocks radio network plays a lot of honest classics from the experimental 1960s, stuff like Spirit, BS&T, Zappa, and something remarkable that tossed me back in time to my teenage innocence, married to a blonde vixen who was pregnant. Every time I hear The Moody Blues, I think of my first job, the mailroom at Career Academy, a prominent vocational technical swindle. I knew a Career Academy student, an innocent kid from Iowa learning how to carve false teeth.

 

Innocence is a big deal, flying past decades of adult experience and artistic pain, a shock to remember how it once was, faithful and innocent, 18 years old. I was okay with working, glad to pay rent, buy food. Forget about the standard measure of innocence. I was innocent of artistic ambition a couple years, a golden season of normal, no lab bills, no camera equipment, happy to be an ordinary husband. I tried to work full time repeatedly — longshoreman, door to door magazine huckster, factory hand, Motorola technician installing police radios.

 

Then I went to hell, sort of. The next four years were a creative volcano, radio comedy, film and graphic art, started a big nonprofit, ran a mayoral campaign, shot part of a first feature, then prison. I certainly plumbed hell to its full extent, barnstorming law school and losing in court. Losses were basic training for showbiz combat in Hollywood twice and Europe three or four times. It slowly dawned on me that I should play for centuries of influence, not just daring adventures that always cost more than they paid. Writing became a focused searchlight. I was willing to make mistakes, invest whatever it cost to get control of the written word.

 

I have to tie sagacity to long lost innocence.

 

Hmm. That sounds mighty close to a good second act pivot.