"Your work is to discover your world & then with all your heart give yourself to it."- Buddah
Another grey day, the clouds pressing low to the earth, but
at least on this morning there was a fresh layer of snow and flakes floating
lazily to the ground.
I headed out with no real plan. Letting
the music in my headphones and the direction of the wind guide me. Turned on to lake of the Isles as the song
Bertha by the Grateful Dead played, my mind wandering...
Nearly 9 years ago while living in Marquette, MI I worked with a guy we called
Big Mike. Mike was, obviously, a big
dude, tall, with a mustache, glasses and always with a big smile on his face.
Big Mike loved the Dead, in fact Big Mike loved all music and I owe a
substantial portion of my music collection to him. About once a week Mike would swing into my
studio, we'd talk sports, and music and he would always drop off a stack of
cd's. Take this home he'd say, listen to
them and load the ones you like on your computer. Bring them back whenever you can.
The album that played through my headphones as the wind picked up around Isles
was one that Mike had given me. I put
my head down and made my way along the lake, bent into the wind and remembered
doing this same thing along Lake Superior and coming up on Big Mike out for a
walk.
He was always walking on the path by the lake, his Michigan State hat on,
headphones and carrying his Discman. He
would walk, listen to tunes and stop to pull a small notebook out of his breast
pocket. I asked him once what he wrote
in it and he said 'When I hear a song it makes me think of other songs that I
want to hear so I always write it down and search for them when I get home.'
It's amazing how music can do that, just take you down a path of memories. I crossed the road into a park at the north
end of Isles and started doing hill repeats.
As I approached the bottom of one hill, the song Acadia Driftwood by the Band
came on. I was obsessed with that song
while training for my first marathon in the UP.
That was also my first experience with hill repeats. I would go two streets over, start at the
bottom by Superior and run up High St listening to the Best of the Band. Sometimes I would see Big Mike up there, he
lived in that area. Walking, sometimes
smoking a cigar, either music or the Michigan State game playing through his
headphones.
One day Mike walked in and started to juggle stuff in my studio, he was good,
really good. I was shocked and the next
day he brought in three bags, almost like hacky-sacks, taught me the basics and
left them for me to practice. I never
quite got the hang of it, but Mike used to go to a local nursing home at lunch
and juggle and do magic tricks for the folks there. He would just chat, tell stories, listen and
spend time with them; the guy had a huge heart.
Van Morrison singing Caravan with The Band during the Last Waltz interrupted my
thoughts and labored breathing as I topped a hill. That was another album Big Mike had given me,
one of my top 5 favorite albums of all time.
I remembered Mike's Blues show he had on one of our stations. He called himself Zenith and the show as
called 'Zenith rides the bus'. After I
had moved to Mpls to work for the Wolves he would send me copies of the show
asking me what I thought and telling me if I liked any of the songs he could
send me the albums.
A few years ago Big Mike passed away, quite suddenly due to cancer. I was shocked. I heard from a friend of mine in Mqt that he
was in the hospital and it wasn't good and then he was gone.
But whenever I hear certain songs, or see the Michigan State logo he's right
there, that big smile on his face excited to introduce me to a new album.
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