Back to School... FOR ME
In which I offer a reasonably good excuse for a recent lack of posts: homework
Ahoy, my dear Subscribers,
I apologize for being remiss with my posts. I will do better going forward. Please hear me out. After 40 years, I’ve returned to school – to SUNY’s all-online Empire State University. I’m seeking a BA in Psychology.
I never graduated college. I barely attended two semesters. I’ve been an autodidact most of my life. I’ve learned by doing. Now I’m taking a stab at learning by learning.
Why Psychology? you may ask. Well, I’ve always been interested in it, and I’ve benefitted from practitioners of it. Down the years, friends, family, band members, strangers, mental health pros, and a few students have said, “You would be a good therapist.” After I’ve listened to someone’s story, and/or offered counsel (if that’s what they want), they’ll joke about me sending them a bill.
I can’t fully explain all of the above. Perhaps people intuit my natural curiosity. I tend to not interrupt. I’ve been told I give good advice. For others more than for myself, I can see the forest for the trees.
I don’t often feel wise, but apparently, some folks see me that way.
Meanwhile, I’m looking at the horizon of (what I hope will be) the last third of my life. As I near 60, I wonder what I could do besides giving guitar and bass lessons, performing semi-regularly on small stages, teaching preschoolers about music, and taking on the occasional writing gig. All these activities give me a lot of pleasure, and some money, but not enough to sustain me.
Barring some unforeseen windfall, an inheritance I don’t know about, and/or about 15,000 more paid subscribers to this Substack, “retirement” is not an option for me.
Perhaps I should lean in to being an elder, perhaps try to turn some life experience lemons into lemonade. Although my own trials pale in comparison to some friends’ and loved ones’, I’ve seen my fair share of loss, depression, anxiety, trauma, betrayal, disappointment, setbacks, and despair. (Turns out, no one reaches middle age without such a list.) Yet I am somewhat sound, with curiosity intact. When I see others suffer similarly, I empathize, and I’m inclined to try to help.
As a resident of New York State’s Hudson Valley, I am aware I could conceivably hang out a shingle as a “life coach,” or some such thing. (Some have advised me to do just that.) In fact, for years, someone with whom I am very close saw a therapist who had no accreditation whatsoever. She just said, “I’m a therapist,” met clients in her home, and billed accordingly. (She didn’t accept insurance.)
I can’t see myself doing that. I think I need to learn a few things, get some kind of suffix added to my name, before I have business cards printed up.
I was drawn to ESU not only because several peers had good experiences, but also because the institution gives credit for life experience, in which I am rich indeed. The classes are asynchronous, meaning I can take them whenever, as long as I get my work in on time. So far, so good.
At present, I’m getting my feet wet. I’m seeing how this goes. I’ve shoehorned two classes into my teaching schedule: Introduction to Psychology and (gulp) The History of Mathematics.
The math class was almost a deal breaker.
My Empire State mentor said, “You have to take a math class for a psych BA.”
“Ugh,” I said. “No.”
“Relax. There’s a class designed for people like you,” she said.
People like me?
“The History of Mathematics. You’ll enjoy it. Get it out of the way.”
While enjoy is not a word I’d choose, and while I can’t see using a lot of what I’m learning, History of Math has indeed been somewhat interesting. Please indulge me as I share a little sampling of my new knowledge:
Why do we know more about Babylonian math than, say, the advanced math of the Egyptians, which arose concurrently? Because Babylonians inscribed tutorials on clay tablets rather than papyrus. The elements were not kind to papyrus.
We can also thank the Babylonians for our measurement of 60 seconds into a minute and 60 minutes into an hour. That’s sexagesimal, or “base 60” math.
I was assigned to explain if I thought math was “invented or discovered,” and why. I lean towards “discovered.” Einstein asserted he was “uncovering” natural laws, abstractions he, like all mathematicians, then fit into readable, testable code. Although an avowed atheist, he was still awed and humbled by the universe, which he saw as an entity awaiting further discovery via math. So, if it’s good enough for Albert…
(I hope I haven’t lost you. I promise future posts won’t be digests of my homework. Having said that… )
In Intro to Psych, I’ve learned about the history of psychology, the pioneers, and I’ve learned some cool biology.
Regarding clinical trials for psych drugs, I was astonished to see the rate of drug study participants who respond to a placebo rather than say, Prozac, Lexapro, Zoloft, et al, is 35 to 40 per cent.
I learned Sigmund Freud contracted jaw cancer from his constant cigar smoking, but such was his addiction, he couldn’t stop, even as he endured torturous surgeries. He instructed a friend to administer lethal doses of morphine, which, as intended, killed him. It was, essentially, assisted suicide.
Of the five senses, only scent goes straight to the limbic system – the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory. All other senses are first routed elsewhere to be analyzed, broken down, but smell goes directly to the hot place, unfiltered.
The future of psychotherapy will likely include psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, and Ketamine. Prior to the Swingin’ Sixties, all were promising mental health therapies. When I was a tot, Nixon, terrified of the counterculture, made them all illegal, and shut down a lot of research. He and his cohorts’ well-oiled propaganda machine was effective. To this day, folks I know are still caught up in fabricated stories about the evils of hallucinogens in particular. (“It’ll damage your chromosomes!”)
(You can read all about this stuff in Michael Pollan’s excellent bestseller How to Change Your Mind.)
The ongoing, legit resurrection of “illegal substances” as mental health therapies fascinates me. Every friend who has engaged in hallucinogenic therapy has significantly benefitted, a couple to a life-changing degree. I see all of this as cause for some cautious optimism. Because I daresay rates of PTSD and depression and anxiety are only going to go up, and existing pharmaceuticals and talk therapies as we know them, while somewhat effective for about two-thirds of users, are not going to be enough.
Perhaps a few years from now, I will assist in such therapies. Guided trips to make someone’s life better. To reboot their addled, misfiring brain, allow them more conscious control over their pain, broaden their perspective. It would not be the first time I talked someone through such an experience. It would hardly be the first time I was the designated driver.
Because I work about 40 hours a week, making time for classes has been stressful. But even as I’ve been stricken with deep, dark feelings of leaden stupidity, I’ve also enjoyed learning. So far, I’ve tested well, and I’ve been relieved to not need to do any actual math. That mere thought upsets me.
In high school, I usually excelled in every other subject, but I did not get past algebra, and I did poorly on my my math SATs. (I suspect I may have some kind of disability.) Despite that, I got into a BFA acting program at Emerson University, a crossroads in my life. They loved my essays and monologues and didn’t care about my math SATs. Due in part to the expense, I didn’t enroll. I attended a couple semesters at local colleges, but I recall more about the bands I was in – the songs, the rehearsal spaces, the faces at the lip of the stage – than I do of any circa 1984 classroom.
I was champing at the bit to head out into the world, to make music, be an artist, and to live totally independently. Perhaps due to my father’s untimely death at age 31 in 1972, and my dear friend Adam’s lymphoma diagnosis when he and I were in high school, my sense of mortality was acute for an 18-year-old. (Adam would pass away when we were 20.) Unlike most teenagers, I did not feel invincible.
AIDS would deepen my perception of life’s brevity and fragility. Seeing so many young peers get sick and die spurred me to seek adventure, unfettered. I am very lucky I could do so on a small budget.
Plus, while most friends were heading off to four-year programs, my band Wee Wee Pole, fronted by a twenty-one-year-old Atlanta entertainer named RuPaul, was clearly on a path to fame. We’d begun when I was a senior in high school. Our tour to NYC changed my life. I fell in love with The City, as one does with a person, and secretly vowed to return, to seek a Life in Art without the band, on my own steam.
By 1985, I was living in an illegal sublet in the still-cheap East Village, which I loved, and which would shape me. Between “money gigs,” and remunerative music and acting gigs, my time and energy were well spoken for. I was often happy. I had both good and bad luck, a lot of failures, but some significant successes, and a lot of joy. I did not get the recognition or the consistently-bill-paying life in art that I sought, but I came away from those years with a lot of great stories, and some valuable knowledge and skills. Also, most importantly: a family.
Despite not succeeding in all of my goals, I have no regrets over those big decisions. Everything good in my life can be traced directly back to those pivot points, to me putting college on hold for 40 years, and carving out a life in a beloved place that exists no more.
Lastly, re: my recent lack of posts; in my further defense, my September was pretty crazy. At the same time my classes were beginning early in the month, I played a gig as my friend The Reverend Shawn Amos’s fill-in bass player at an Indianapolis blues festival.
The following weekend, I honored an invitation to promote my book Cash on Cash: Interviews & Encounters with Johnny Cash at the Historic Dyess Colony / Johnny Cash Boyhood Home in Dyess, Arkansas. Part of my compensation was a Saturday night at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis (about 50 minutes from Dyess), a stone’s throw from legendary Beale Street, where I did some shopping at Schwab’s, frequented by Elvis, Johnny Cash, B.B. King and other icons back in the day.
Unlike Nashville, Memphis is still pretty funky. One of the best bands I’ve heard in a long time was killing the Prince song “The Beautiful Ones” on a tiny stage outside a dumpy little restaurant. I loved being there.
Both excursions were fun and worthwhile, but the timing of everything was inconvenient. I found myself in the unusual position of doing homework in hotel rooms and airports, experiencing a not-unpleasant feeling of gummed-up cogs turning in my head.
Finally, I capped off the month by bringing my semi-annual Leonard Cohen tribute to new venue The Local in nearby Saugerties. The Local is housed in a beautiful circa 1870s 120-person-capacity church. This gig entailed the usual rehearsals, the wrangling of musicians, and drilling myself on Cohen’s often dense liturgy, which requires full use of my unusual memory skills. (A mixed blessing, those skills.)
I’m glad to say it went very well, a sold out, rapturous show. The next day, after loading my gear out of the car for perhaps the thousandth time in my life, I sat down with a sizable mug of coffee and finished my History of Math “weekly module.” There’s a first time for everything.
Speaking of History of Math, I must away once again to that commitment, and to the more pleasurable Introduction to Psychology.
Thank you for reading this far. I promise to be in closer touch. There’s lots of other stuff to share, including a novel-in-progress. As ever, I am determined to find a way to make it all fit in my allotted time.
sound as ever,
RBW
10/3/23
Hallelujah. In a church. All the people singing. You did that. Lots more to do, with all my best wishes.
Great talk and best of “luck” in this new adventure of yours. ❤️🐧