Framing the Sound

Category: Aging

  • The Things We Leave Behind

    Something about my 70th trip around the sun has me reminiscing about the years gone by and some of the important—or perhaps more accurately, unforgettable—events I’ve witnessed along the way. Here are a few that stand out in my memory.

    The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. I was seven years old, in the second grade, sitting in school when it happened. The memory that has stayed with me all these years is watching my teacher wipe tears from her eyes. I didn’t fully understand what was happening, but I knew it was something terrible.

    Jump ahead five years to 1968, when riots broke out in Louisville, Kentucky, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I was twelve years old, and those were some pretty frightening things to witness and experience as a boy.

    The next major event that comes to mind takes me to January 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. I was 30 years old and on my way to a job interview in Kentucky. Like so many people, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news.

    Then there’s September 11, 2001—9/11—which was probably the most traumatic event of my lifetime to that point. I was 45 years old, sitting in my garage, when I received a call from my brother in Kentucky. I had moved to Pennsylvania in 1988. He simply told me to turn on the news.

    Such a terrible tragedy.

    Most of the other “happenings” I’ve experienced over these 70 years—aside from the births of my children, of course—pale in comparison to those I’ve mentioned above.

    And yet, as I think more and more about my time here on this little Blue Dot eventually coming to an end, I find myself wondering about something else.

    Will any of the “events” I’ve created along the way be remembered by those I leave behind?

    Will my YouTube channel mean anything to someone someday? Will any of my photographs still be looked at? Will the many home recordings of music I’ve made with my boys bring back a memory or a smile?

    I hope so.

    Because maybe that’s what a life ultimately becomes—not just the big historical moments we happened to witness, but the little pieces of ourselves we leave behind.

    I hope some of mine remain.

  • The Big Unknown

    I never really thought about getting old until I got old.

    I suppose that’s how many of us think as we begin to enter what people call “old age.” But what is old age, anyway? I don’t know that there’s one correct answer, but I’d like to explore the question.

    First, let’s see what Merriam-Webster has to say.

    Old age (noun)

    • The fact of being old.
    • The time of life when a person is old.

    Old (adjective)

    • Having existed for a specified period of time.
    • Showing the characteristics of age.

    Age (noun)

    • One of the stages of life.
    • The period contemporary with a person’s lifetime or active life.

    I chose definitions that relate specifically to a person’s lifespan because, whether I like it or not, they now apply to me. I’ve completed 70 trips around the sun, and by most definitions, that means I’ve arrived at what many would call old age.

    So what does that really mean?

    There are probably hundreds—maybe thousands—of answers. For me, it means I’ve started thinking more about something I rarely gave much thought to when I was younger: my own mortality.

    Questions quietly find their way into my mind.

    What’s on the other side?

    Is there another side?

    If there is, is it a physical place?

    Will I still see, hear, feel, taste, and touch the way I do now?

    Eventually, every one of those questions leads to the same place—the biggest unknown of all.

    Is there life after death?

    And if there is… what does “being alive” mean then?

    I was raised in the Christian faith, where I was taught there is life after death. I learned that Heaven awaits those who have accepted God’s gift of salvation, while Hell awaits those who reject it. Those beliefs have been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

    But as I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself thinking less about having all the answers and more about appreciating the mystery itself.

    Maybe that’s part of growing old.

    Not having fewer questions…

    …but asking better ones.

    So I’ll leave you with the same question I’ve been asking myself lately:

    What do you think is on the other side?

  • Echoes and Ghosts: Somewhere Between a Listening Room and a Sonar Shack

    The other day, I found myself once again crawling under my desk to unplug an LED light strip that had decided it no longer wished to communicate with the rest of my setup. The software said everything was fine. The firmware was current. Nothing else had changed. And yet—no light. No response. Just silence.

    So I did what I’ve done most of my life.

    I pulled the plug, waited a moment, and brought it back to life.

    That made me laugh. Because I’ve been chasing ghosts in machines for as long as I can remember.

    Some of those machines lived deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea.

    As a sonar technician aboard a submarine, I learned early that machines don’t just behave—they communicate. You learn to listen for what they’re trying to tell you through noise, interference, and uncertainty. The world outside the hull was invisible. Everything depended on interpretation.

    That habit never left me.

    Years later, photography gave me a different way of listening.

    You go out with intent, but the image you come home with is often something else entirely. A shift in light. A quiet detail. A moment you didn’t plan for but can’t ignore. Photography taught me that not every mystery needs solving—some just need noticing.

    Then came the listening room.

    A vintage stereo system has its own language. Scratchy knobs, warm sound, the occasional imperfection—it all tells a story if you’re willing to hear it. Unlike most modern devices, it doesn’t hide its condition. It speaks plainly.

    And I’ve always preferred things that speak plainly.

    Whether I was interpreting faint signals in a sonar shack beneath the Mediterranean Sea, searching for a photograph worth keeping, learning a new piece on guitar, restoring vintage audio gear, or rebooting a stubborn light strip, I’ve stayed drawn to the same space: where technology and creativity overlap.

    Somewhere between precision and imagination.

    Somewhere between a listening room and a sonar shack.

    The ghosts never really go away. They just change form. And if you’re lucky, they keep you curious enough to keep listening.

    USS Mariano G. Vallejo SSBN 658
    Rose
    Listening Cornerroom

  • Pluses Outrank Minuses

    It’s considered morbid (I reckon) to think about death and when your check-out ticket might get stamped. And I don’t want this blog post to sound morbid, but I recently completed my 70th trip around the sun with relatively uneventful health issues.

    Until now.

    In my last blog post, I wrote about an unexpected companion. Since then, I’ve been analyzed inside a small tube that, once I was slid into it, reminded me of the rack I slept in aboard a submarine during my Navy days. They call what happens inside that contraption magnetic resonance imaging.

    Suffice it to say, the images produced by all that magnetism showed there’s some “stuff goin’ on” within the confines of my flesh — mainly along the spinal column and discs. I won’t go into greater detail because, truthfully, I can’t explain all the medical mumbo jumbo anyway.

    Turns out, 70 years of living comes with bonuses… and drawbacks.

    Those drawbacks are ones I never really considered until now. I was informed that I’m more or less a case study because I have two conditions not commonly seen together. One involves my discs, and the other is known as lumbar spinal stenosis — which sounds terrifying until your chiropractor explains it in terms a regular ol’ Kentucky boy can understand.

    The good news is this: it’s something I can learn to tolerate and manage with proper exercise and, perhaps most importantly, mindset.

    Having the right attitude when facing the dilemmas life throws at ya is paramount. A positive mindset helps block the negativity that can sneak in and convince us to stop facing what we cannot immediately fix.

    Now, I’m no psychoanalyst, but I don’t think you have to know much about the differences between positive and negative to understand that pluses outrank minuses by a pretty wide margin.

    At least that’s what this 70-year-old fella intends to keep believing.

    North American Male Bluebird