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The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ and Charles Manson

I’ve been listening to The Beatle’s White Album a lot lately. I played it relentlessly in my younger years, admittedly out of curiosity. I had just read Helter Skelter for the first time and wanted to hear the songs Charles Manson used, along with the Bible, to brainwash his followers.

Mood music:

It’s been several years since I listened to the album; most days I prefer classic heavy metal. But I’m currently reading Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn, and he spends quite a bit of time talking about this album and The Beatles in general.

As Guinn tells it, Manson first heard the band on a prison radio when he was serving one of his many jail sentences in the mid-1960s. Manson had an epiphany: Once released, he could take his singing and guitar-playing and make himself bigger than The Beatles. Later, he’d write songs with the express purpose of spreading his warped messages and cozied up to the likes of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson in an attempt to land a record deal. Around that time, the White Album came out and Manson became obsessed with it. He told his followers The Beatles were predicting a coming war between blacks and whites, which he called Helter Skelter, named for one of the songs on the album.

The song “Blackbird,” Manson told his followers, was The Beatles telling African Americans to rise up against their oppressors. “Piggies” was about the white establishment and how they needed, as The Beatles sang, a “damn good whacking.” “Revolution 1” and “Revolution 9” told of the coming apocalypse. Manson fused the lyrics with passages from the Bible’s Book of Revelations and painted a picture where the blacks would rise up, kill all the whites in a race war (Helter Skelter) and come out on top.

During the chaos, Manson told his followers, the family would hide in Death Valley. The blacks would eventually realize they couldn’t rule without the white man’s help and would come to Manson and his family for help. Then, they’d rule the world.

The murders that followed were Manson’s attempt to start Helter Skelter. A bloody paw print was left on the wall of murder victim Gary Hinman’s house in an attempt to make it look like the Black Panthers were responsible. At the Tate murder site, pig was scrawled on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood, pig being what the Panthers and other militant groups called police.

Against the backdrop of Guinn’s book, I’m listening to each song. The experience is different from when I listened to them in my teens. Back then, the songs scared the crap out of me. Today, they’re just a nice collection of songs, arguably The Beatle’s best. “Revelution 1” actually ridicules the militant revolutionaries of the day. “Helter Skelter” was about an amusement park ride.

It still sickens me to think about how Manson distorted beautiful music to brainwash young kids who were down on their luck and suffering from social discontent and varying degrees of mental illness into cold-blooded murderers.

LRs-White-Album

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The Power of Admitting Ignorance

I’ve often gone through my career feeling like an impostor.

I work with some ridiculously smart people and know many more in my industry. They seem interested in my opinion on things, and I try to deliver. But many times I don’t know the answer. So I sit wondering how the hell I got here. I know people who can bullshit their way through the answer to a question, but I lack that special talent. So I usually just admit that I don’t know.

Mood music:

That answer has only led to more good fortune. We think we’ll be dismissed if we admit ignorance, but the smarter folks among us actually appreciate the honesty. When I write about complex security issues in my work blogs, I often admit my befuddlement and open the floor for discussion in an effort to make readers — and myself — more aware of the given topic. In this blog, my frequent admission of ignorance clicks with readers, who find comfort in knowing they’re not the only clueless people on Earth.

The benefits of admitting you don’t know is the focus of a new book, simply titled I Don’t Know by Leah Hager Cohen. I haven’t read it yet, but I have read the essay it’s based on and have listened to her on WBUR, the Boston NPR affiliate.

It’s a refreshing, comforting, even, take on learning to honor one’s doubt. In the essay that started the project, Cohen writes:

Fear engenders lying. If we want our colleges and universities to be bastions of academic integrity, we need to look honestly at the ways they might encourage fakery by stoking fear. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Émile: Or, Treatise on Education,” the philosopher writes, “’I do not know’ is a phrase which becomes us.” Too often we fear uttering these words, convinced that doing so will diminish us, will undermine our status and block our advancement.

In fact these words liberate and empower. So much of the condition of being human involves not knowing. The more comfortable we become with this truth, the more fully and unabashedly we may inhabit our skins, our souls, and — speaking of learning — the more able we become to grow.

As someone who used to suffer from crippling fear and anxiety, I get that now. Fear of being diminished in the minds of those you respect makes the lies pour from your mouth before you have time to process what you’re actually saying. Then you’ve made matters worse.

By admitting ignorance from the outset and saying “I don’t know,” you’ll have spared yourself a lot of future pain and indignity and instead set yourself up to become wiser. It’s good to see that point has been articulated in a book.

I Don't Know book cover

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Lies in North Andover Teen Drinking Case?

I’ve gotten a few messages since writing about Erin Cox, the North Andover High School senior punished by school administrators after driving to a teen drinking party to pick up an intoxicated friend. They suggested that I fell for a fabrication weaved by the girl’s lawyer, that she was in fact drunk and I should be prepared to rewrite my post.

Mood music:

The feedback I received is that the girl was in fact drinking and that it was caught on video. Maybe, someone suggested, the parents and lawyer are trying to change the story so the girl doesn’t lose her scholarships. Maybe, someone else suggested, the girl lied to her parents to avoid punishment, not expecting her parents to hire a lawyer and make a big stir in the media.

If either situation is true, it wouldn’t be the first time someone lied to generate public sympathy. When we hear these stories, we get outraged and then feel like fools when the truth inevitably comes out.

Whatever the case may be, I won’t be rewriting that post.

One reason is that I left open the possibility that the story wasn’t what it appeared to be; you never know what kind of information is revealed in closed-door disciplinary hearings. The other reason is that posts like these are snapshots in time, my reaction to a story as presented in the moment. If I turn out to be wrong, I’m not going to rewrite it and pretend it never happened. I’ll simply write a follow-up. If that follow-up consists of me admitting I was duped, so be it.

For now, I continue to give Erin Cox the benefit of the doubt, because I haven’t seen any evidence that she lied. If a teen at the party has video-recorded proof she was drunk and the video hasn’t come out after a couple weeks, that’s a lot of self-control for a teenager. Videos like that tend to make it onto YouTube in short order. I’m not saying the video doesn’t exist. I’m just skeptical at this point.

Could police be covering for the girl, not wanting to see her scholarships pulled away? It wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened. But I haven’t seen evidence of that, either.

For now, I’m still inclined to believe North Andover School officials went overboard with the punishment.

The truth, whatever it is, always comes out in the end, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Erin Cox

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Depression Takes Another Friend

Thomas John “TJ” Leduc was a constant companion during my childhood in Revere. I swam in his pool and slept over his house. The first time I was weirded out by the sight and sound of Boy George, it was during one of those sleepovers, when we were eating popcorn and watching Solid Gold, puzzling over the girl on the screen who sounded like a man.

Mood music:

TJ had a sunny personality that was often tested by those who made jokes about his weight. TJ was a big guy. I was fat myself but still joked about his weight. Sometimes, I really earned my outcast status. More often than not, we were close buddies.

As we got older, I came to value TJ’s sense of humor. That dude could make people laugh. It was always small things, like referring to steroids as “roids.”

Over the years we lost touch, but I’d occasionally attempt to find him. I checked Facebook regularly, to no avail. It turns out he had moved to Groveton, NH, and was running a market with his father, who I knew well. Based on a news article from their local paper, the market was a popular hangout. TJ is described as a great storyteller with a bright personality and sharp sense of humor that kept customers coming back.

But somewhere along the way, things went horribly wrong. TJ’s dad was diagnosed with leukemia and was quickly slipping away. As the senior Leduc lay in a hospital bed, TJ apparently learned that his father had accumulated a mounting pile of overdue bills. Maybe discovering that debt made him snap. Maybe it was the trauma of losing a father and business partner. It was probably a combination of both.

TJ died on October 1 at the still-young age of 40. His father died the next day, apparently unaware of his son’s death hours earlier. The newspaper article quotes police officers who labeled the death as a probable suicide.

If true, that’s the third friend from the old neighborhood to die that way. Before him were Sean Marley and Zane Mead.

Sad as I feel right now, I don’t feel the gaping hole in the heart that was there after Sean and Zane died. Part of that is because I’ve gained a lot of perspective about depression and suicide over the years, especially in light of my own battles with the disease.

I wrote a list of things I always try to keep in mind when someone dies this way. If you need some guidance, I direct you to “Death of a Second Sibling.”

Sean and Zane died young, with dreams and potential unfulfilled. It looks like TJ lived a good life and made many in his community happy. That article describes him as someone who cared for his customers and always had a free ear for teenagers who needed someone to talk to.

It kills me to hear that his life ended in despair. I pray that he’ll find peace in the afterlife. But I’m very happy to see that he made a difference before he left.

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TJ, with his dad.

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North Andover School Policy Trumps Common Sense

Friendships between teens is a tricky thing.

Sometimes your friends are up to no good and the right decision is to stay away. Helping friends steal hubcaps off cars or start fires are examples that come to mind. But when a friend drinks too much at a party and has the good sense to call you for a ride instead of choosing to drive drunk, you should help them out, even if the party might be raided by police when you show up.

That’s my opinion, and by that rubric Erin Cox was being a good friend — a courageous one, even — when she drove to a party to pick up a friend and get her home safely.

Mood music:

When a friend has been drinking and you can keep them from getting behind the wheel and putting other lives in danger, it’s a no-brainer. It’s simple, common sense.

Unfortunately, as we’ve often seen in recent years, school administrators are perfectly comfortable casting aside common sense when there’s a rule to be upheld. That appears to be what happened when North Andover High School punished Cox for violating their strict policy against alcohol and drug abuse. According to the article Sara Brown wrote for The Eagle-Tribune,  the school demoted the senior and honors student from being captain of the volleyball team and suspended her from playing for five games for violating the policy.

“Two weeks ago, Cox received a call from a friend at a party who was too drink to drive,” Brown wrote. “When she got there to pick up her friend, North Andover police had also arrived. Police arrested several students for underage possession of alcohol, however, Cox was cleared by police for not drinking or in the possession of alcohol.”

Tim McCarthy, a reporter with The North Andvover Citizen, quotes a prepared statement from School Superintendent Kevin Hutchinson that says, “The rules for student-athletes strongly discourage students from engaging in conduct that is unlawful or fails to promote the health and safety of the youth in our community. Each incident is fully investigated and decided upon based on the individual facts and circumstances.” As a policy, he said the district doesn’t comment on student discipline matters.

Was information revealed in the hearing that we don’t know about — something that justified punishment? We’ll probably never know. Based on public reports from police and witnesses at the scene, however, nothing in Cox’s behavior justifies getting punished.

If she was indeed helping a friend in need and, in the process, keeping other people out of harm’s way, then she deserved better.

Rules are important. They help our children distinguish right from wrong. But when rules are followed with no regard for unique circumstances, kids learn something else — that those enforcing the rules are misguided and deserve to be defied.

Good luck with that one, North Andover.

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Binging a Path from Hilltop Steakhouse to Augustine’s

Many of my friends and family are sad to hear about the planned closing of Hilltop Steakhouse on Route 1 in Saugus, Mass.

I’m not gonna lie: I never understood the affection people had for the dining experience there. I always found the food mediocre at best, particularly in later years. But I did do my share of binging there because it was close by and affordable. And I can’t argue the place’s significance as a landmark on that stretch of highway.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/cFKeEBFsZek

The massive cactus sign. The cattle statuary all across the front lawn. If you’re from around there, you can’t help but feel nostalgic.

On hearing the news about Hilltop’s plan to close, one friend lamented that all the classic eateries of the area were gone, bulldozed for unremarkable restaurant chains. He ran off some names of places long gone: Hometown Buffet on Route 114 in Peabody. Augustine’s further up Route 1 in Saugus.

Something occurred to me upon hearing the names: All my old binging holes are gone.

As a kid I loved going to Augustine’s. It’s the first buffet experience I can remember. I loved that I could eat at the trough until I was ready to throw up — which I did more than once. As I got older I realized the food was actually pretty mediocre. But that didn’t matter. Binge eaters don’t care if their drug of choice is high-quality dining. What matters is availability. It’s why college freshmen tend to gain wait their first semester. The crappy food in the dining hall is free flowing and you sort of feel cheated if you don’t pile it high.

When I worked at Rockit Records in the early 1990s, Augustine’s was still open, and I binged there daily at one point. I was almost relieved when they finally tore it down.

Some days I’d binge at Hilltop, then do the same right after at Augustine’s. I was like the shark in Jaws, chewing my way from the barrel ropes to the boat.

I don’t miss doing that shit. But I don’t blame places like Hilltop and Augustine’s for what I did. Even without them, there’s plenty of binging ground on that stretch of highway to be done if I were so inclined. I’m not, thank God.

We like to heap all the blame on our enablers. But the problem always begins with the addicted mind.

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Neuropsychological Testing Sounds Scary, But It Isn’t

I’ve told you about our challenges helping our son Duncan manage ADHD. We recently ratcheted up our efforts by getting him neuropsychological testing. When his pediatrician suggested it, I wasn’t particularly happy. It sounded scary.

I pictured our boy hooked up to electrodes with his brainwaves being scrutinized on a bank of computers. The experience turned out to be nothing of the sort.

He spent three hours with the specialist, who walked him through a bunch of exercises she could use to observe his responses. He did a bit more testing Wednesday without his morning dose of Ritalin so the specialist could compare and contrast. The testing is designed to measure things such as how long it takes a child to respond to questions, write down lists of words and math problems, and so on. All the reading I’ve done suggests it’s a deliberately tedious process to ensure no mental stone is left unturned.

I got a taste of it with the thick stack of forms I had to fill out. The forms asked many of the same questions, in different orders and wording from one to the next. Questions include how long it takes my child to do homework, how long he takes to get dressed in the morning, how he reacts with other children, and whether he has any out-of-the-ordinary facial and hand movements. It took me more than an hour to complete the paperwork, and the specialist was surprised I did it so quickly. I explained to her that I read a lot of technical documents for work. But after she reacted that way I found myself worried that I wasn’t careful or thorough enough. So I took another half hour to read over what I’d filled out.

Why do all this?

Because even though it’s been a couple years since his diagnosis, there’s still much we don’t know. For example: Is it just ADHD that dogs him, or are other disorders mixed in? Is the medication he takes truly what he needs? Ultimately, we’ll use the information — as will his teachers at school — to make the necessary accommodations to help him succeed in school and elsewhere. He does very well academically and his teachers are working hard to give him what he needs, so I have hope.

It all goes to show that this is an ongoing process. I don’t think we’ll ever have all the answers or the perfect learning environment for Duncan. The key for us is to be consistent and keep hammering away at the problem. I really feel for Duncan when he has to go through the testing and classroom inconsistencies. We just want him to be happy. More importantly, though, we want him to realize his true potential. If this is what it takes, so be it.

He has much in his favor. Despite massive inconsistencies from one school to the next, we have many more tools to deal with childhood mental disorders than when I was a kid. Whenever I need a reminder of that, I just pull out my fourth-grade report card. Compared to the fourth grader I was in 1980-81, Duncan is light years ahead in mind, body and soul. I chalk most of that up to the fact that he’s got a deep creative streak, a fighting spirit and a heart of gold.

But the support system he has at home and school certainly don’t suck.

adhd

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Getting The Band Back Together (Sort Of)

As some of you know, I sang in a band called Skeptic Slang in the early 1990s. I’ve also been playing guitar religiously for the past year. A former bandmate has decided to start playing again as well, which can mean only one thing: The band is back together.

Mood music:

Well, sort of.

We don’t plan to go in a studio and record an album, or line up a bunch of gigs. This will be something more laid back: Jamming in each others’ living rooms, writing songs and recording them on my laptop recording software. We’ll upload MP3s to Soundcloud, where you’ll be able to hear them.

Though I sang with these guys last time, I’ll just be playing guitar now, mostly holding down the rhythm while the other guys — Chris Casey and Elias Andrinopoulos — do the fancier melodies and lead.

Some have suggested we make more ambitious plans. After all, we have plenty of friends with kids and busy careers who still manage to put out CDs and gig on a regular basis. A good example of that: My friends in the band Pop Gun (see my review of their new album “American Soul” here). I don’t want to speak for the other guys, but my schedule is way too crazy for that — at least at this point in time.

My overriding need in doing this is simple. I have music in me and a good friend told me last year that no one should go to the grave with their music still inside them. My playing is still amateur, but I’ve learned several songs — The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bell’s, Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” etc. — and I’ve come up with a whole bunch of original riffs. I say original with half a grin, because no riff is truly original. We’re always drawing off our influences.

I regularly use mood music in my blog posts. I figure why not have some of my own music to use as well?

Above all, we want to have fun and burn off steam. I can picture us rotating to each other’s living rooms, playing while our kids roughhouse in the back ground and our wives critique our work. It seems like some good family fun to me.

Stay tuned to hear what happens next.

Below: The younger, thinner and long-haired version of Skeptic Slang

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Hope and Happiness Amid a Government Shutdown

Forget about the effect the government shutdown has on mental health services; government mental health services suck anyway.

Instead, let’s focus on keeping ours head on straight when political horror stories send our fear and anxiety into orbit.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/lpRzYEHwnUo

I mentioned last week how I used to latch onto world events as if my life depended on it. TV media reports political squabbles as it would report about war: loud graphics, chilling music. Coverage of the government shutting down at midnight was no different.

I don’t want to minimize the impact. A lot of good people get screwed when the government shuts down. Family trips to national parks are ruined. If you need a passport renewed in time for, say, a honeymoon abroad, you’re likely throwing things across a room about now. Some of my conservative friends are making comments about how nobody will notice the shutdown and how, as a result, they’ll have proof that we don’t need government. Some of that is true. But some of that is hyperbole, too.

All that is beside the point. Here’s why I’m not quaking in my boots right now.

I realized a long time ago that I can’t tie my happiness to the success or failure of government. I used to believe that electing the right people would lead to a sunny future for me and everyone else.

But our leaders disappoint us again and again. Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t matter. Politicians are far more interested in keeping their jobs than standing for the greater good. To some extent that’s always been the case, yet it seems worse today. A few years ago, I realized I’d have to find my hope and happiness someplace else.

In the process, I found that the main components of that happiness were in front of me all along: loving family members, loyal friends and work I could take satisfaction in. I also realized it was completely in my power to be loving and loyal to others as well. That support system keeps the world spinning, and no folly of government could ruin that.

We’re all imperfect individuals. While I try to be a good father, husband and friend, I’ve done a lousy job getting along with some family members. And while I’ve exercised my absolute power to have a healthy, fit body and mind, I’ve also done my fair share of abusing both, consequences be damned. The government hasn’t played much of a role in either of those things.

Realizing that elected officials could only have a minimal role in my day-to-day life set me free in a lot of ways, for better or worse. The government shutdown isn’t bothering me in the slightest.

But that’s just my personal experience. If you do depend on government services, I’m sorry you have to go through this.

Super Broken Government

Image source: CNN.com

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Objects in the Media Are Often Smaller Than They Appear

After yesterday’s post on the Washington Navy Yard massacre fueling the stigma around mental illness, I got the usual assortment of feedback after that post published.

If you’re for gun control, you told me I was minimizing the reality of gun violence by suggesting more gun control laws will accomplish nothing. Those of you who don’t see this as a gun control issue took me to task for picking on NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre for suggesting the mentally ill be committed.

Mood music:

One good friend commented, “What he REALLY said was ‘that the nation needs to do more to lock up mentally ill people who are dangerous.’ He did not make a sweeping generalization about the mentally ill, just the subset that are dangerous.”

Truth be told, I agree with a lot of things LaPierre said on Meet the Press. The mental healthcare system is broken, especially in the schools. I also agree that it takes good guys with guns to stop bad guys with guns and that security personnel at military facilities need to be better armed.

My main criticism here is with the media, which sliced and diced his words to make more dramatic headlines suggesting people are homicidal maniacs if they are mentally ill.

Wife and OCD Diaries editor Erin Brenner said of the phenomena, “Shocking things, like mass murders and mentally unstable people committing murder, get over-reported so that we think there’s an epidemic.” I agree.

I’ve been a journalist for most of my career and will believe in freedom of the press until my dying breath. But we also have the freedom to ignore the press. In my case, I try to find the more objective news sources and avoid the loud, obnoxious networks that are guilty of over-hyping the causes and effects of national and global tragedies.

Perversely, the hyperbolic drama of the mainstream media is contributing to the mental illness of many. When I was at my worst, I watched the news nonstop. If there was a shooting in London or LA, it may as well have been right outside my bedroom window, because in my sickness, that’s how it felt. The music and graphics TV news used magnified the feeling exponentially.

Is there a mental illness epidemic? Yes, but there always has been. Depression and mental disorders have been woven deep into the fabric of humanity since the beginning. But people are much more open about it than they were 20-plus years ago.

You could say that’s good, because a society more open about mental illness is more capable of devising remedies. Or, through the filter of mainstream media, you could say it’s bad; that recent shootings were the handiwork of mentally sick people. Therefore, there’s a mental illness epidemic, and if a depressed soul acquires a firearm, watch out. The truth is probably more of the former than the latter.

Just remember: Objects in the media are often smaller than they appear.

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