Despite a strict adherence to hand-washing and a measured avoidance of pre-schoolers, I had one of those days that always come once, twice, a winter: A proper sweaty, chilly, shiver-shaky sick day.
On days like that I wrap a blanket over my head, brew a pot of green tea and give my agenda over to some me time. There won’t be any YOU time anyway. Not in this condition. I close down my email, open up Netflix, and chill my aches and pains with a Rockumentary.
Skipping over what I’ve recently seen (Muscle Shoals) and what I want to save for later wife-watching (Nina Simone’s still on our list), I found a Netflix Original Production on Keith Richards. Perfect.
Just to be clear here, I’m not a hang-on-every-note, true-blue Stones guy – although I will take ‘em over the Beatles if that’s the day’s debate – so this suited my fever-addled, tissue-soaking attention span just fine. If a few details failed to stick, if I missed a few of Keith’s mumbled words (or full paragraphs) no worries.
Netflix knows what they’re doing with this stuff. Like Stranger Things or Fuller House, they strike the right mix of nostalgia and novelty to rope in an audience of a certain age. Half of the film was new footage of an old Keith talking about his new tunes. Interspersed was a stroll-through-the-years rehash of Rolling Stones history.
Like a band with a smart set-list, they spaced out the hits to keep the show moving. Keith seemed to be enjoying himself through the whole adventure. And that’s what got me thinking…
I grew up with this guiding narrative that sadness and sorrow were soon to follow those that had enjoyed worldly success. All the stars, the celebrities, the rich and powerful, all of those that drank deeply of the sweetness of life were bound to fall, to flame out, implode or to drift off to a lonely, bitter end. For they have already recieved their reward.
If not disgraced publicly and properly, at the very least they would be haunted by nagging fears and inner turmoil, slaves to insatiable appetites, thralls to their devilish passions. Sometime, maybe on death’s bed, with their last wheezy breath, they’d confess that it was all a waste, all a terrible lie. All of the achievements, all of the fun – nothing but dung. Moth and rust, dust to dust. An empire of dirt.
And then I look at Keith, as wrinkled as the Reaper, and I see a happy, very happy, very happy guy.
And I wonder about the narrative. I wonder about the storyline I’ve been sold, this insistence that a well-enjoyed life leads to certain misery. It’s a smug fear I’ve held tight to all these years.
Oh sure, I say cockily to Keith-on-screen: I understand your life. I’ve tasted your libations, but I’m on to something better. You’ve just got to see as far as I can see, all the way to the pearly gates and the everlasting gobstopping rewards. It’s a fallen world, you know. Better not to touch. Better yet not to even look. Leave not thy comfort zone. Blessed are the ignorant for they have been spared temptation.
Now, I’m no Keith Richards. Let’s get that straight right off. My body’s not built for so many bumpy miles, and I’m not of a disposition to laugh it all off. My hang-ups, Lordy, they are legion.
But this whole idea that you’ve all got him beat? That everyone on the Right side of the line knows the secret? I don’t think so. It seems so arrogant, so sad, to take comfort in this myth that greater glory awaits the lily-white, a grand consolation prize for living a boring, bunkered existence. It’s not even Gospel.
Truth, as always, lies midst the golden mean, somewhere in the prosaic land of the in-between. I’m well-aware of pleasure’s oft-hollow joys, and understand the utility of delayed gratification. Indulgence is a dangerous path to Enlightenment. But the lovely, long and winding road to Heaven is surely not paved with stuck (or non-rolling, if you will) stones etched with No’s!
Keeping up with Keith? Don’t be silly. But here’s to more Yes, while the days still allow.
Humbly.
