The Road Not Taken

sullivan, acrylic on canvas

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita. Dante Alighieri

Ah…midlife…lost in a dark forest…with no clue what is the path forward. I bet many of us have passed through a period of questioning, of reassessing, of wondering ‘who am I?’ ‘who was I when I was a child?’ ‘where am I headed?’

I did a particularly dynamic version of all that, headlong into it, thinking if I didn’t execute a spectacular swan dive, I’d dry up and die, like a whale beached in shallow water. That is all thirty years in the rear-view mirror now, but back then I was lost, found, sure, unsure, sorrowful, exuberant. My kids were very patient, following along, hoping the parade would end up on some dazzling flower-mad meadow with free ice cream for all.

I remember wishing I could figure it all out behind a curtain, swooping out like Loretta Lynn after I had solved it all. Impossible. On bad days, I was more like The Great and Powerful Oz desperately seeking a deus ex machina, pulling all the levers and switches backstage, risking being revealed as a charlatan at any moment.

An acquaintance stopped me at the local convenience store and asked, “Are you having a midlife crisis?” I began to recite Dante in my best Italian. She pretended she couldn’t find her keys and rushed out of the store before I could translate for her.

I needed to circle back, experience a bit of my lost adolescence, to pick up threads that had been lost. What threads, I didn’t know.

Rilke must have been there.

…sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.

Inside the dishes and in the glasses…

My ‘church’ involved music, telling my story to myself through song. I created two divorce albums, as someone dubbed them. Made me wince. NINE LIVES and LIKE A CHILD reflected it all - the grief, the uncertainty, the unbridled enthusiasm. I was trying to explain it all, which of course was impossible. For the first time, I understood the AA mantra ‘one day at a time’.

I sat in a basement apartment and wrote songs - about my childhood, my hopes, about my wonderings, my worries. Was I on the right path? Maybe I should turn around! I remember so clearly the lost and lonely morning in my subterranean kitchen. I lit a candle on the little table, next to the hotplate, the natural light from the small basement window, subdued and gentle. Snow.

Nobody Knows But Me

Guitar/vocals, Sullivan; flute, Paul Marienthal; bass, Jim Whitney; drums/percussion, Ron Savage

Somewhere along the way, I re-read Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. I hadn’t noticed that it is ‘not taken’. It is about choices in life. I had read this poem before, but now it stunned me. We choose one path. ‘oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.’ Ho boy.

I set the poem to music for acappella voices. My daughter Cecily and my dear friend Marshall Hughes sang with me.

And…who doesn’t enjoy a blooper:

I have since come across Antonio Machado’s brilliant observation.

Caminante, no hay camino…se hace camino al andar.

Traveller, there is no road, the path is made clear by walking.

How beautiful is that?? We are all on different paths. None of us knows exactly what the path is (and never will). Just keep walking. It will become clear.