“There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in”

Leonard Cohen
RIP

The most amazing thing happened to me about a month ago. What I am about to tell you will not seem like that big a deal, but you would have to understand its significance to me, which is now my job to explain to you.

I put external speakers on my motorcycle, enabling me to listen to my 100+ artists on Pandora. From the very first sound, my life would never be the same. Music and the motorcycle are favorite stories for me, but putting them together is a chart buster. I now appreciate both much more deeply as a result of their marriage.

Music has been a forever favorite for me, going back to the early Fifties. I went nuts for Rock ’n Roll as a kid and the kid lives on in me, still going strong after all this time. I remember sitting on the front steps of my home at 69-30 179th St in Queens, NY, listening to “Earth Angel” by the Penguins. I have been privileged to experience an incredible run of music, slightly predating Elvis, through the Beatles and the explosion of sound that occurred in the Sixties and into the Seventies. It was a full on social movement, as young people came alive with possibility and music was the rock it rested upon. I fully embraced the importance of music from that time. As I got older, my ties to the “classics” stayed strong, but my ears opened to a much wider world of music and it continues to expand.

I love music and can’t imagine my life without it. I even worked in that business, launching a British record label, starting a radio station in Santa Fe, NM and promoting concerts there. I’ve got countless stories about those times in my life, when music was even more than my private passion, slipping over into the professional side. I listen to music when I write and right now, Jackson Browne is singing Late For The Sky. It is soul medicine that fortifies me, as I navigate a world that is sometimes painfully difficult. It is an embracing place that offers me only familiarity and joy, my anchor.

Riding the motorcycle is transportive, engendering overwhelming feelings of euphoria, just like my music. On the bike, your mind takes a break, suspending whatever was going on prior to throwing your leg over your machine. Whether in a group or riding alone, you are in complete harmony with the two wheels underneath, often inhabited by the intoxicating experience of cruising, at peace with the world you are gracefully slicing through. The exquisite beauty of Kauai is sugar for the eye, an idyllic balm for the soul.

I remember being incredibly excited about the possibility of listening to my music on the Harley I rented for my ride through northern California and southern Oregon a little over a year ago. When I picked up the bike in San Francisco, the first thing I wanted to know was how to program the sound system for my phone. I remember the feeling of riding on Hwy. 120, going up and into Yosemite. Oh, my God, I was actually listening to music as I cruised into the fantasy sighting of those huge fists of rock, punching through the ground. Their sheered faces were smiling with me, as my heart soared to the musical soundtrack of my life.

This whole story began with the first day I rode that Harley. It has come up after all this time because I revisited the ride by reading my daily chronicles from back then. I finally decided to write about that 2,000 mile odyssey around its year anniversary and read my posts for the first time since I wrote them. It was the most overwhelming time imaginable. What I got to see, experience and feel on the road those two weeks is still impossible for me to completely embrace. However, the way the music filled my heart during that journey came instantly back to life.

This tale doesn’t end quite yet. The morning after the election was one of the many gifts we are given by living here, perfect for a ride on my musically, empowered motorcycle, Flaming Lips. I rode along the Kipu Bypass Road with the music cranked. I reflected on the results of our embarrassing political circus just ended and decided the infectious joy I was feeling on the ride is the way through what is likely to come. We need to feel that joy and believe we all have the power to effect change, but only when we come together. Each time I settle into Flaming Lips and turn up my tunes, I am reminded of possibilities.