Two Rare Sunday Thoughts

On a Wednesday

Photo by Maria Victoria Portelles on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

I don’t like Sundays. I can’t commit to anything. I just wait around for time to pass, unable to turn it into anything vaguely meaningful. I pay superficial attention to stuff I may hear or watch or read, and drag myself from chore to chore absent-mindedly, twirling my hair nonstop. I’ve always thought that I’m not myself on Sundays. So much so that I often hope that the day I die falls on a Sunday; it’d be like someone else passed, not me. Or maybe, who knows, I am the real me on Sundays and I’m not myself on non-Sundays. 

Anyways, ennui and existentialism aside, this past Sunday I caught myself thinking about Frank Zappa. This is no surprise -- I often think about Frank. But I wouldn’t waste some precious Zappa thoughts on a Sunday, when I know I’m unable to properly focus, hence enjoy their potentially infinite ramifications. Yet, it happened. And it wasn’t superficial.

I heard Steve Vai, a well-known, super-talented guitarist who played in Frank’s band in the early eighties (in the albums’ credits, his name would usually go next to ‘Impossible guitar parts’), say in an interview: “A day doesn’t go by where I don’t reflect on how Frank did his business and conducted himself. He was brilliant. Besides all of the things that musically he was known for, he had such a command of the English language. His sentence structure left no room for confusion. [...] He could take a situation and just have this instinctive intuition about getting to the core in a flash. And he could summarize what you’re saying, what the situation is, what you’re really saying and you don’t even know that you’re saying, and give it to you back sometimes in as little as an eyebrow.”

Then he said: “Frank was just amazing to sit and talk with, because he was a great conversationalist. He always had an opinion about things and he always gave you his attention. He listened when you spoke, and he was always interested and interesting.”

And I thought about a couple of things.

~ Thing number one ~

Giving attention, listening, and being interested are real superpowers in a conversation. However, the moment you force yourself into them, they cease to be. And it becomes obvious that they’re not your natural traits. That’s why, in their simplicity, they’re so rare. I’m sure you can learn to be a good listener, a good attention-giver. But if these are acquired traits, something you’ve trained yourself to be, you’ll naturally drift toward the real you whenever concentration is relaxed. The real you is the way you are naturally: not a good listener and attention-giver. You’ll have other qualities, just not these. 

Me, I’m definitely not a good listener and attention-giver. If I’m not interested, there’s no way I can force myself to be, and fake. I’m okay with that now, but I didn’t use to be. I used to try hard, and invariably get distracted by some stupid detail or think about what I was supposed to say next to appear smart or compassionate or conceal that I couldn’t care less. Which is very disrespectful and just plain bad. Then, once I accepted that I wasn’t a natural, I understood that not showing interest when I genuinely had none was probably better than faking it. But this doesn’t keep me from (strongly) believing that a genuine ability to listen and give attention is a rare superpower. One that I constantly seek in people. One that makes me instantly like and open myself with someone. 

Maybe that’s part of the reason I don’t have many people I like to hang out with. And maybe the other part is that not many people like to hang out with me. But I’m fine with not hanging out. So, peace and love.

~ Thing number two ~

Frank was interesting in so many unique ways. I wrote about him before. He’s probably my all time favorite human being. He was, obviously, uniquely Frank. Who isn’t, after all? I’m uniquely me, and you are uniquely you. But Frank was uniquely Frank in a unique way, if that makes any sense. Like, taking the second derivative of uniqueness. He was Frank Zappa without having to play the Frank Zappa character. He couldn’t care less about being Frank Zappa. He just was. This isn’t an easy concept to pin down, but I’ll venture to say that Frank Zappa would have been Frank Zappa even if he hadn’t sold a single record or been known by a single person on this planet. 

Because of this, he was utterly interesting. 

And so I thought that what makes someone interesting to me is their carelessness about being in compliance with a particular idea of them. Their innate, natural, unconscious ability to navigate life being in control of their infinite freedom. Frank was like that. A rarity.

--

Today is a non-Sunday, a day that has no particular feel, where I can finally be the real me. Whoever that may be. And write a brief something. This whole day-of-the-week feel reminds me of a little Seinfeld scene that I keep returning to on Sundays. 

---

If you liked this piece, I’d be truly grateful if you shared it.

And if you’re not yet a subscriber and just stumbled upon this page because someone shared it or by divine intervention, and you liked it, please do subscribe to receive my writing every week in your inbox.