Ode to the Apple

There's no doubt that living breathing legends exit the earth the same way the rest of us do. Some, painfully, some painlessly. Perhaps what is left unsaid, greater than what is left undone, becomes the more painful element of loss, for the one who is going and for the ones who remain, because we're remarkably aware that saying something actually costs us nothing - except, perhaps, a swallow of our pride, a bit of forgiveness, one long fell swoop of acceptance, maybe; and in that case, no one can ever quite be sure what muddles below on either side of life's coin except those left holding their tongues. I don't know. I don't have enough experience with loss to know much about anything, really.

But there's something strangely affective about Steve Jobs' death. Maybe it's because the artifacts of his life's contributions blink alive vibrantly, metamorphically, inside our pockets, inside our strung together world, inside our habits. There's literally a physical connection a billion people have around the world to a man's inner genius. Granted, great people die everyday; most of us have no close personal affection to the late Tocqueville, or Edison, or King, despite the dents they too made on the universe. And maybe the lesson of Jobs' death is of no greater value than anyone else's. Thinking of an angel like Mattie Stepanek, a messenger of God's love, and then thinking of Steve Jobs, I wonder - maybe less of life is about how many people we reach and more of it is about how deeply we reach just a few. The judgment isn't ours to make, either way. But undeniably, every messenger needs a medium; Jobs built us a few pretty damn good ones. Yet, we cannot quite commemorate the death of someone who built an unmatched empire of innovation with a missing pillar of philanthropy and believe that the worth of his life means more than that of the man, and woman, and child who passed away the very second after he did.

Still, I find it's just too stirring a moment to not reflect upon - to watch possibility die and live at the very same time. One man does not stop the world; the world does not stop for one man. No matter how powerful, rich, bad, good, or transformative. We're each just a blink of God's eyelashes. Ideas will flower, change will come, innovation will burst through the seams of our world, for good and awful, and by faith, neighborhood, and humanity, people will persist and resist the nature of history - that it is both controlled by us and controlled by no one. It is the complex, simple design of God no one has figured out. And definitely, not by Steve Jobs, or else he would have controlled his fate, I can assume, for a little while longer.

This is just a rambling, really, to maybe arrive at the emotive estimation that we cannot all have the same impact on the world like Jobs did. But in terms of making a dent on the future universe, I think it causes me to pause, longer, to redefine where my universe is, and who lives in it. What needs to be done, what needs to be said? Undoubtedly, we all have something more to say, so, what is it? Maybe I think of Jobs as one of those unbridled folk who said what he needed to say, and loud enough for the outer limits of his own small part of the universe to hear him. From a distant ariel view, you could say we all just get one long day, one fat chance, to do just that. Jobs was 56, Mattie was 13, I am 30, so I guess not being able to find the time or overcome the fear are just terribly lazy excuses for not living like we're going to die at some moment between now and then.

In my recent unpredictable oddities, I wrote a short jingle for Apple on my way to Mystic, CT (seriously, who thought I'd accidentally join the ranks of Uncle Jesse/Uncle Joey). Maybe it's because we had just been given an iPad, our first Apple device, a few days prior, and maybe the funny joy I felt for owning a small piece of the spectacle made me do it. Maybe because those dang catchy tunes of theirs stick the roof of our daily hum like peanut butter, so I thought maybe I'd try humming my own, and then, teaching it to my kids so I could hear the funny sound of someone singing your song. I don't really know, but anyways, I think it's only appropriate to throw it out into the universe, because, why the hell not.


Ode to the Apple

Circle your dancing finger with mine
'round the world seven times c'mon and play
Shout to the clouds "Open up the orange sky
the day ain't done there's something more we want to say"

We say, Hey hey hey, hey hey hey,
Love love love
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey, LOVE

We say, Hey hey hey, hey hey hey,
Love love love
We all got something more to say

Peel back our wings we're all kind of strange things
Who fly and try the hocus pocus of our dreams
You might float there and I may be here
But we'll find each other somewhere in the air

Then say, Hey hey hey, hey hey hey
Love love love
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey, LOVE

We say, Hey hey hey, hey hey hey,
Love love love
We all got something more to say
We all got something more to say.