Our Text This Morning Comes from Sting's Epistle to the Yrekans

A terrifying confession. Very few people have approached me and offered to explain life, and when they have I wasn't paying attention. More planning the next thing I was going to say. So my sources of wisdom may be a little haphazard.
But I remember reading an interview with Sting when I was a kid, maybe in Spin magazine or maybe it was Musician. Not Rolling Stone because there were lots of pictures. Anyways.

He said, in text that sort of Alice-in-Wonderlanded around these b&w photos of him cavorting in beret and hoodie on some Caribbean island that has since, ich scheiss dich nicht, been more or less alemonaded by hurricane, that Great Leafblower of Jehovah. He said that he, I think it was, "honed his musicianship" during the frequent periods when he was uncreative and more or less depressed. He said that learning was what made the pain of life bearable. And I thought, man, what a bleak vision of the world. Isn't there ice cream and stuff? Can't you always make something up and play it? And there you are with your upscale Wild Rumpus catered and you still can't be brave about the Darkness?

But I get it now, Sting, and I have come here to apologize. Or no, you're right that the tone is wrong for an apology. But I see now that you were being brave, not least because you were saying this to a rock journalist who I'm sure did all he could not to elicit this sort of thing. And that you seem not to be a (conventionally) nice or modest person is neither here nor there. The origins of our unhappiness may ultimately not matter a damn, though the moral high ground from which we view the unhappiness of others feel ever so firm and fecund underfoot. The Great Leafblower's extension cord is long, the workings of its Patient and Impersonal Bellows obscure, eventually the Toddler of Fate will find an outlet and figure out the plug. And though our cabana face placidly to Leewards, yet shall the wind march through like Sherman.
Not our fault; Nature of Things.

So let us hone our musicianship while we wait for inspiration, brethren and sistern. Let us not seek too far for pattern and cause in our rubble. And let us make of our profane jobs an holy work unto the Cosmos.
Amen.
[photo: Sting doggedly multi-tasks his way through an oppressive Mediterranean morning.]