Guaranteed

Words beget words beget words. Sometimes I need something to light the spark and music is often the flicker that gets me going. Today I really needed to tame the other thoughts and pull myself back into the story.

What is Lives Lived about? Underneath the narrative and the characters that intertwine and clash there is the sentiment that if you trust your heart life will be good. What exactly does that mean? Well, to me it means waking up in the morning and following the path that you naturally find. Openly loving the person in your heart. Doing the job that you love and makes you feel good. Never being in flux with the differences you encounter in others. Follow the path that has the stones your heart knows. Not the ones that someone else laid for you. Or the ones that you think are suitable. You don’t have to think about what you love. You always know. If you are doing those things you will find peace and the great times will far outweigh the not so great ones. Good things will happen because you are being good. Your heart, if you really listen to it, will only breath love and truth. I know that for sure.

I needed to get out of the grumpiness of the morning so I could get back to the important stuff. When I get off track, I think of something that has inspired me in the past. What souls have I felt close to? A few months ago someone told me that I just had to see the movie “Into the Wild”. I read the book years ago but I had heard good things about the movie and the young man, Christopher McCandless followed a road that could have been mine. Reading the book I felt a kinship with him. I was one of those kids, struggling to escape and find a place to be. I am still, on occasion, in that position.

If you haven’t seen “Into the Wild” I highly recommend it. I liked the book but I loved the movie. After watching the movie I felt like I had a better understanding of the entire situation. Like I mentioned before, that kid could have been me. He had a liberal Arts education, which he seemed to undertake to find a deeper meaning to the days and nights. There were some family struggles that pushed him into a place of isolation. Like myself he was a sort of orphan rambling through the world finding family in friends. Driving to Alaska is one of my dreams. Living in the quiet wilderness is one of those things that I idealized when I was younger. The money and comfy upbringing of my youth often left me wanting something different. Chris McCandless may have understood those yearnings in my heart. I believe I understood some of his.

I’ve never been a Pearl Jam fan. Over the years they’ve had a few songs that have grown on me. However, Eddie Vedder did the soundtrack for “Into the Wild” and it is wonderful. So I spent my afternoon listening to that. “Guaranteed” is probably my favorite song on the CD. There is something to be said of the outsider who really doesn’t have a place where they belong. You get to see so much that those that blend are never aware of. Once again, the seer sees. The listener listens. If you are a combination of these entities you collect pieces of others and the world. You have a million different examples to sample from.

Gabrielle listens and sees. She spends a great deal of time in her own head. Some of that is by necessity. If you have some mental difficulties and you do not wish to be churned through the pharmaceutical machine you better spend some extra time sorting out your thoughts. A good deal of people wake up in the morning and stumble through the day on automatic pilot. Wake up. Go to work. Clean the house. Pay bills. All of these tasks that elicit declarations made up of a few words. No explanations as to why these things are being done and no peering beneath the surface. “Why?” is the question that too few of us ask. Gabrielle learns to ask this questions often. If she doesn’t she has a few possible fates. All of those fates are a death of some kind.

Gabrielle has to find a way to exist. The rules surrounding how she is supposed to survive don’t work for her. She wants something else and she struggles to find solutions no matter how unconventional. As I read over scene from Gabrielle’s youth I think, wow, I almost don’t like her….As a youth she is impulsive, abrasive and hard to deal with. The world is out to get her. Of course, as a youth she is struck with a severe mental illness. That, along with the usual hormonal struggles of youth and teenage angst, leave her in a great deal of mental pain. The Gabrielle of youth is a completely different person than the adult she becomes. Of course, that is pretty standard in life, we do mature from the teenage beings we once were. But it is very striking to see it in a character I love.

That leads me back to Ian McAllister. He and Gabrielle are best friends from the time they are very small children. He takes on the role of caretaker and defender during their youth. Ian is the person that keeps Gabrielle alive. This is quite an undertaking for a young boy. As they age the roles reverse. Their relationship, no matter what stage it is in is always one of caretaker/invalid. I was not looking at it that way before but now that I am reading through theses scenes I do. I like it.

“Leave it to me as I find a way to be


Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting


I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me


Guaranteed”

Eddie Vedder, Guaranteed