In Between the Heartbeats

The genesis of this song was a chance meeting with a gentleman who had once been a member of an outlaw biker gang.  As he explained, there are only two ways out of such gangs.  One is, to die.  The other is, as happened to him, "getting religion."  He became a born-again Christian, and promptly told the leadership of his gang that he could no longer participate.

Now, anyone else who said such a thing, announcing that they would no longer be a part of the gang and its activites, would find leaving very difficult.  In his case, he was shown the door.  It seems that, while not understanding the impulse to surrender oneself to ones creator, it is traditional to at least show said creator a certain level of respect.  In a nutshell, if that guy is now the property of God, and he's willing to risk his life to tell you so ... well, that's an owner they don't want as an enemy.

Being the inquisitive type, I asked about life in the biker gangs.  The gentleman told me about the breadth of influence these gangs hold over large segments of society.

"My God!" I said.  "You should write a book!  Expose them."

He just laughed.  It seems the books have already been written.  I'd even read a couple of them.  And, the gangs go on as if nobody knew a thing.  So, I asked him if he felt a responsibility to do anything about them.

Turns out, he does.  He goes back.  Not to join in on their crimes, or get hammered at their parties.  He goes to be available.  He does whatever he can to be allowed to hang around; cleans their bikes, get someone that's passed out to safety, treat injuries; he's cleaned up messes when somebody throws up, gives "guests" rides home, whatever he can.

If you've ever been to the Bike Week festivities at Weirs Beach, you've surely seen tables occupied by different chapters of some bike "clubs."  Members of the chapters sit out in the hot sun and promote the clubs more beneficent works.  This guy will bring them bottles of water, no charge.

His whole purpose for hanging around a group of people whose activities he has disavowed is; every now and then, somebody else gets the idea that they'd like to leave.  They'd like to put that life, and the things they've been doing, behind them and move on.  But so far as they know, there's only one way to do that.  He hangs around, to show them that there's another alternative.  Not that they have to respond as he is doing, but just so they can get out.

I have thought a lot about that conversation over the years since.  I've come to realize that this situation is not restricted to biker gangs.  We are surrounded by groups of people who have a unified identity and a singular vision.  A lot, if not most, (if not all) of these groups may present a public face that is benign, to show that their motives are pure and good and righteous.

The reality is that they exist only for their own benefit.  They are willing to go to varying degrees of effort to advance their agenda.  Often, a few at the top of the pecking order run things and the deception dribbles down through the ranks, until the operatives in the street believe the lies themselves.  If they challenge the holes in the logic they promote, they are silenced.  They may be directed into activities that keep them busy, or driven out, or even promoted.  It's a way of dealing with people who say things like; "If A is B, and B is C, isn't C really A?"

A lot of times, a person who has invested their efforts, time and treasure into something comes to a crisis point.  They wonder, what the hell am I doing this for?  I work and work, and we all do, and it all seems to be going nowhere.  Maybe they've even gotten a peek inside, and come to the realization that the people they've been following are not what they were thought to be.  Maybe what they're part of was founded on a lie.  Or maybe it was founded on a good idea, but that idea has become lost over time and succumbed to selfishness.  The thing they believed in has become a means of acquiring power that is now being misused.

The world, life, is a living thing.  It moves in a rhythm.  All things are like music, moving together from one moment to the next, the rhythms bouncing off each other, the notes struggling to harmonize.  Our brains are wired to try and make sense of it all, to catch the melody line, to move in harmony and rhythm with it.

We know that we cannot hold all of this within our minds, hear it all, dance to it all, so we try and hold onto the parts of it that make the most sense to us and hope that we are a "good" part of the music.  Or, it's all so confusing we decide we just don't care, and sing our own song.

And every now and then, in the little spaces between the notes and the beats, we get little glimpses of something.  In between the protons and electrons and neutrons of every atom, there are vast reaches of space, unoccupied areas that dwarf the physical particles that orbit one another.