the gambler and kenny rogers and know when to fold em

For the last week or so I have been thinking of starting a "Salem Metaphysical Club." The underlying idea is derived from a couple of clubs that met around Concord and Boston, MA in the 1830s and 1870s (I get them confused but I don't want to unravel the confusion now) in times when a fresh ferment of ideas was stirring people's minds and souls. The group in the 1830s was filled with ideas we might vaguely denominate "transcendental," while the 1870s group was fueled by the possibilities and dangers inherent in the post-Civil War era, when all was seemingly "up for grabs." Ideas and conversation seemed to be the cornerstone of young men's lives, and the nation was enriched as a result of their conversations.

If I was to (were to?) start such a club today, I would call it, actually, the "Salem Metaphysical and Autobiographical Club." I would add that little word "autobiographical" because, unlike the men who gathered in Concord in the 1830s or Boston in the 1870s, I am in my 50s and have lived enough life to have reflected considerably on it. Parenthetically, I recall asking my students this past semester about the writing of an autobiography and whether they (mostly in their late 20s) would have much to write at this stage of their lives. To a person they said, "What would I say?" Maybe it is true that you don't really begin to see your life as an asset, a source of deep knowledge, until you are in your late 30s at the earliest. My first autobiography, 39 and Lost in America, was both insightful and, as I now know, incredibly naive.

But if I was to form the Salem club, it would have to be about ideas and autobiography. It would need to consist of people who knew they had a life, and that they had made choices in life, and that life had precluded them from making choices and that both of these things were not in themselves good or evil but simply that they contributed to making them what they are today. How autobiography overlays ideas isn't always clear, but I know that the two cannot be separated. And, so I want people who think deeply about their lives and about the interdisciplinary world of "ideas" out there. And, people who want to share the shape of their ruminations without much care of whether they get it "right." This, I guess, is my "manifesto" for the Salem Metaphysical and Autobiographical Club. I don't know if I will ever get this idea off the ground. The reason for this follows in the remainder of this (and the next) essay.

Two Songs

I was in a pensive mood after viewing the not-too-inspiring film Proof last night. I am only gradually coming to the conclusion that lots of good things come out of bad things, and that stimulation to develop useful and true thoughts can come as well from poorly written books and non-compelling movies as from "classics." Thus, others' mistakes and poor performances can often suggest as many fruitful avenues as a brilliant performance or riveting book. Maybe quality is overrated.

Two songs have been in my mind of late for no particular reason, but which form the backdrop for the constellation of ideas leading to my thought of forming a "thought" club. I want to give you the words and tell you then what they suggest to me. Let's start with the more "conventional" one, Kenny Rogers' The Gambler. The setting is on a train bound for nowhere, where the narrator met up with a gambler who uses his way of reading a hand of cards to read the soul of another person. The gambler observed that "I" was out of aces and that for the cost of some whiskey he would give some advice. His point was this: "If you're gonna play the game, boy/ You gotta learn to play it right." Then comes the familiar chorus:

"You've got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run
You never count your money
When you're sitting at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done."

Timing, as they say, is everything. Then, another song has been flitting in and out of my brain from a completely different context: Evangelical Christianity. I recall the staying power of these songs long after a person has "left the (ideological) camp" of Evangelicalism through a story told me once by a very liberal Boston pastor. He had grown up the son of Nazarene Missionaries in Swaziland. I bet if you do a google search on Nazarene in the same sentence with Swaziland you will come up surprisingly many entries. But then you can "narrow" your search by typing in Sobuza III, the "great and fat" king of the Swazis in the 1940s and 1950s, when they were growing up. Well, this is getting me to my point. My friend, Joe Williamson, was brought up to be a fundamentalist, but he rebelled. He rebelled big time, and ended his illustrious ministerial career as Dean of the Chapel at Princeton, having been a liberal congregational minister for more than 40 years. He confessed to the congregation on one occasion that as he was walking through the Boston Public Garden, one of the most vivid and distinctive symbols of that town, he was humming to himself the Gospel hymn "I Come to the Garden Alone." Schmaltz with a capital "S." But it was on Joe's mind.

Thus, I am not so embarrassed to continue the story by relating the other song on my mind this a.m.

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