Tag: President Barack Obama

Hero

January 21, 2013.Reading time 8 minutes.

We are in a precarious and unpredictable world.  We are asking ourselves if we can trust each other, trust ourselves and asking if we can trust that the world to which we are all contributing will ultimately be safe enough (politically, strategically and environmentally) for us to actually survive.  What do laws mean if no one follows them?  What does faith mean if no one has it?  If you think about it, a lot of these kinds of questions have been answered in the past by the basic human nature of having heroes.  Those people our societies have held aloft as the representatives of the ideals and concepts that we collectively hold to be most admirable: the ability to overcome adversity; strength of convictions; pure talent; the embodiment of beauty, etc.

What a week for heroes.  Lance Armstrong, like him or not, was one of our heroes.  He knowingly took those ideals of ours and consciously manipulated his world so that he appeared to be in that model of human nobility and perfection.  We can’t ask why.  We want to judge someone who takes our idea of hero and turns it into a self serving opportunity.  We want to have some kind of compensation for being duped.  But we must be better than that.  He has to answer to himself and that will be the challenge and shame he carries for the rest of his life.  No book deal, no future achievement of any kind can diminish the torture that he will carry to his grave and the torture carried by those directly affected by him.  It is its own punishment.  But it is a situation that leaves us wondering what was it that let us believe that he was a hero if he really wasn’t one?  With the multitude of people who surrounded him who knew what was going on (I had actually heard about his methods in sports circles and have heard for years through people who have known him that he is a dirty competitor), why did we let ourselves believe that he was more than the “emperor with new clothes?”

And then you have Barack Obama; sworn in for a 2nd term as the 44th President of the United States; galvanizing the country toward stricter gun laws, immigration reform and even the possibility of marriage equality.  Standing tall and proud as a man of color and the winner in a game that has been dominated by an elite white male establishment for more than 200 years.  Now, if you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know that I am a big Obama supporter, but I would claim that as a hero and on a certain level, Barack Obama in triumph is really no greater or less than Lance Armstrong in disgrace.  Obama is a politician.  He has played a system (American politics), and worked the process and used the resources available to him no less than any competitive cyclist from the Armstrong era, except the stadium in which Obama is playing expects you to use political transfusions and creative medicine marketing to get your outcome.  By all means, I do not want to call the legitimacy of Obama’s re-election into question and if that is your rebuttal to this blog, I ask you to refrain from comment…that is not the point of this discussion.  My point here is that we WANT heroes regardless of what form they present themselves.   We WANT to believe that there are just some people on this planet who “play the game” who are gifted; not just lucky, but gifted, whether that be in ability or opportunity or vision or divine inspiration.

Oddly enough, we have these heroes around us all the time.  And among those heroes are some Barack Obamas and some Lance Armstrongs.  There are some who are definitely playing a game, but it is a game in which we are willing to accept (for now) the twisted rhetoric and conflict between noble aspirations and back room deals.  And on the other hand, there are some who are creating their own playing field and using the good faith of those around them for their own opportunistic desires.  Yet, for that moment while we accept all of our heroes as the beacon in the distance, we find guidance and inspiration in who they show themselves to be with us.  We WANT heroes.

So what is this about?  We see heroes around us every day.  We are inspired and we inspire others.  I am always blown away by the e-mails I receive from total strangers who see the P90X videos and thank me…I am honored to have played the hero (even if it meant someone was cursing me under their breath)…but I certainly didn’t set out to be a hero.  I just did a job that was asked of me, to the best of my ability according to my upbringing, training and education.  We all have these opportunities to inspire.  I have received some of the most truly heroic encouragement in my journey toward ministry, toward physical self acceptance, toward love…and these heroes may not realize the strength of that lifeline they cast my way. I believe that the first place to look for our heroes must be within ourselves.  We can only be absolutely sure of the integrity that we bring ourselves.  We cannot hold anyone else to our standard, but rather we must set an example.  If we bring our best selves to every endeavor, we will fill the role of hero for someone.  Even if it is fleeting, and even if we are actually more Armstrong than Obama, we must first answer to ourselves and if we are spiritual, to our faith center.  From there, integrity, hope and aspiration to a higher ideal can spread to others.  THIS makes a better world.  Remember the real hero is within.

To all of my heroes, thank you.  You are with me every day and I love you all.

Dedicated to my mother, Edwina Weston-Dyer (1932-2012) 

Not Quite Back to Before

November 13, 2012.Reading time 8 minutes.

When President Barack Obama won re-election last week, the first thing that came to my mind was hearing Marin Mazzie sing the song “Back to Before” every night while I was in Ragtime on Broadway.  That was always my personal favorite of Lynn Ahrens’ lyrics from the entire show.  It reads like a love poem to a cherished and familiar lover that one must let go.  There are so many lettings go that we do in life.  Close friends of mine know that my favorite poem is by Elizabeth Bishop (One Art) and the refrain “the art of losing…” speaks to the way we tumble through life leaving behind a trail of ourselves that can never be recaptured.  Truly on election night, the United States left behind many things that say we can never go back to “before.”

On a personal level though, this signaled a breakthrough for me.  I carefully considered what it must feel like for those who were not supporting Obama to see this shift.  There seemed to be much more at stake than just an election.  We see that now with all of the secession petitions being signed and rhetoric about conservatives wanting to leave the country.  There was something endangered and then lost to these people that was extremely dear.  Was it privilege or power?  Or was it the foundation of how they defined themselves?  Looking in the mirror, I realized that somewhere along the lines, in all of my own letting go of life, I had left a part of myself behind that I too deeply loved; something that had defined how I saw myself for my entire early life: music.  The whole reason I was able hear Marin sing in 1998 as part of the incredible cast of that original show, was because when I was 13, Dr. Theodore Davidovich from the New England Conservatory of Music heard me sing a solo in the Northeast Junior District Choir and then suggested that I speak with someone at the school about voice lessons…that someone was Kim Scown, tenor, who lovingly introduced me to the magic of making music with my voice.  This was supported by the careful, if sometimes unorthodox, methods of George Perrone at Framingham South High who drilled me in music theory and other life lessons and discipline and I emerged from my youth a fairly well formed, near professional musician. College, cabaret shows, concerts, choirs, cruise ships, Broadway and National Tours followed…

And then one day, I had to leave it behind me.

There are many reasons this happens.  For me, it was about the need to discover that I was really more than just a body and a voice.  As a performer, it is easy to feel reduced to those things.  A Chorus Line asks that wonderful question, “Who am I anyway, am I my resume?”  And it is true.  We feel reduced to skill sets and types.  I knew I had more to offer: intuitive people skills, analytical capabilities, leadership skills.  These were all things I needed to discover about myself in order to get to where I am today.

It is the same with this election.  Many of us thought that ’08 was about “change.”  Change from the nightmare that had begun in 2000.  But ’08 was only about setting the stage for change.  The real change only began with last week’s election result and it happened because of a shift in the status quo.  We are no longer defined by how white, middle aged and male we are.  We are actually defined by our total diversity (including white middle aged men) and how that diverse population wants to see the world.  Funny, back in 2002, I was inspired to start a web based movement about diversity.  Some of my conservative friends scoffed at it; well, just look where we are today!  As a country, we can never go back to ‘before’ and where we are headed has the potential to be much brighter for more of us than where we came from…if we give it a chance.  This is a defining and transformative moment in our culture.  If we are smart, we will embrace it and look at the beautiful evolution that is taking place for all of us.

For myself, I am looking at my own evolution and re-re-inventing myself.  But like the song says, I can never go back to before.  So, I am still on track to become a Unitarian Universalist Minister; but I’ve learned that my ministry must come from my heart and soul which is my music…but a ‘new music’ if you will.  My music doesn’t have to define me anymore.  I will never be the young singer with stars in his eyes who was willing to get on a Greyhound Bus at 3 in the morning to make the 6 hour trip from Boston to New York, just to be seen for a part in a show.  I left him and his selfish dream behind.  I am free.  I am now, approaching 50, someone who has embraced so much more of who I am as a person and a leader and a real “voice” committed to making real change happen for people.  I am am carried on the wave of the voices of millions of people who never really felt like they had a stake in this country before last Tuesday.  People who must now be heard in all of their glorious harmony everywhere there are ears and hearts to hear.

At last, it is time for me to really start singing.  I look forward to sharing my journey, not quite back to ‘before’ with you all.

The following is a montage of selections from two performances on Holland America Line in 2007.  Thank you Yeonae Nam and Paul Pappas for the accompaniment.