R.E.M & a Mirror's Reflection on the Wall: Show me the frequency of life, a repeating cycle or not?

Some refer to time as an arc or relate linear time to a curvature with periodicity, a repetitive cyclical frequency. In physics, periodic motion is used to describe waves and vibration, the time in which a signal repeats itself. Babylonian astronomy first correlated the concept of degrees to minutes and seconds, relating the measure of both angles and time, where the sun’s motion and 360 degree travel was used to divide the time of one full day. Each degree was subdivided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds, giving one Babylonian degree to equal four minutes. From there, relationships between arc and time and distance have been used widely in astronomy, cartography and navigation. Distance and time are quantifiable in many ways along with time and arc. Time has an arc and also a period. The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, while the frequency is the number of cycles per unit time. Any motion that repeats itself regularly is called periodic motion, and life has a natural periodic motion, think of the beating of a heart, the rising and falling of the sun, the rotation of the earth around the sun and the moon around the earth. One complete repetition of the motion is called a cycle. The duration of each cycle is the period. In nature all things have a frequency, referring to how often something happens or repeats a pattern. Perhaps life is no different than nature, just a part of nature and therefore has a repeating pattern or cycle of life, or periods that make up a life.

We hope the image we see in the mirror is a clear representation of reality. Sometimes life seems like more of a carnival mirror and things become so distorted, other times you can’t tell what is reality and what is just a funhouse. Curved, convex and concave, clear or distorted - moments in life can be thought of in the same way. The first known literary example of a house of mirrors was in Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera in 1911, where the mirrors were used as a trap to protect from enemies. In other cases, the mirrors create suspense and confusion, like in the Batman comic: The Dark Knight Returns. In that case the Joker could not determine what was real and what was just an image, where reality was indistinguishable from images created by the amusement park hall of mirrors. Numerous movies also have depicted mirrors as an element of deception, confrontation, darkness and suspense – as in The Circus (1928), countless murder mysteries, horrors and thrillers. When I see a mirror I never think of a funhouse, I tend towards the latter thoughts of horror and death, despair, darkness. But I also know that mirrors can be powerful, channeling light to create great energy and fuel.

A mirror provides a reflection, a clear picture of reality with the nearest objects reflecting the present state and time, yet you can also see what is in the background. Sometimes what you see in the mirror is clearer than reality. Often, the mirror more clearly shows the past and the future, the present quite absent from the reflection. As you gaze deeper into the mirror you see further into the background as if you were looking years back into history. And you wonder if that history will also represent your future, if things will repeat or if there is a new path ahead. I think of my life in two segments leading up to the current day. 42 years I have on the timeline of my life – two 21 year phases of repeating events, two different chapters or stories. Like a repeating physical and time-bound cycle of the same amplitude and frequency. Bound to repeat, over and over again with certainty. The parallels are scary to me, they frighten me, but I commit to myself that the next phase will take a different path and not repeat the story of the first two. When I came into the world, surprise and joy were an understatement. Nobody knew I was even coming to the party. When I was engaged to my wife at 21, similar surprise and joy surrounded us. And there was a party, celebration of a life full of joy and love in front of us. I see my life as two books of 21 chapters thus far and the story is scarily repeated in theme and rising action, just different names and places, events of eerily similarity in both. But the third book, or if the first two were just chapters, this third chapter will be a different story. It must be.

When I was 7, I was kicked out on the street, but was soon welcomed with love into a new home. Around our 7th anniversary I was welcomed back into the home my wife and I owned, a return filled with a similar love, support and hope. But from the time I was 7 to 10, I was alone inside and didn’t let anyone know my troubles and feelings, which manifested into something very destructive. The same thing happened in our 7-10th years together, I was sick and growing sicker by the day, never speaking up or out about what I was feeling and what I was doing to destroy myself inside. When I was 11, I was nearly paralyzed, taking a dive into the shallow end of a pool in Pennsylvania, not paying attention and living without caution or regard for danger. In our 11th year together, history nearly repeated itself as I still disregarded or misunderstood risk and again nearly died at my own hand. When I was a teenager 12-16 years old, I found dark addictions, compulsion and my life was overtaken by something inside my head, something I had no control over but at the same time was not visible to anyone. At 16, I was in a car accident of my own fault, due to my lack of attention and distractions that nearly killed me again. I still don’t understand how I survived, with an airbag that didn’t deploy and a collision that surely would kill, yet I only had a slight headache. I didn’t realize the dire situation I was entering in those years and ignored all the signs. When we had our 12th anniversary, my story was more of the same, I was an addict with secrets inside that I hid from everyone including myself and proceeded to feed that beast for years. A darkness and disorder, internal entropic force that was not visible to anyone. In both cases, as a 16-year-old boy and a 16 year old boy in the second phase of my life, it all nearly ended and I was destroying myself day by day, losing energy and leaking hope, but somehow I continued on and forward.

When I was 18 years old, I found myself in a very fortunate place in an environment surrounded by so many positive influences that surely could lift me out of my internal struggles. But in less than a year, my mind was unclear, enraged with anger and rejection, I completely misread everything around me and so I ran away from that opportunity and chance for change. I ran straight back to what I thought would save me, but what I ran to was just a familiar place and it nearly killed me again. At our 18th anniversary I had another opportunity to run to a better future and escape my demons, but again I made the mistake to run the opposite way and it nearly killed me just the same, again. In my first phase of life, there were many lessons, signals and times when I could have taken another path to escape. In my current phase of life, I had those same opportunities but always looked and ran the other way. When I was 20 I thought of ending my life again, but that time I thought I learned, had understood the lesson and made a change. I was at an inflection point I told myself, made a proposal to another and a promise to myself that I would change. At 21 I thought I had come of age and put things behind me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Here I am at 42 thinking the same and I must proceed with caution. Time and time again my history has repeated itself. Here I was at our 21st anniversary of that proposal and commitment to change and overcome my internal struggles and again I nearly ended my life on multiple occasions. I will never understand the force that pulled me back just a few months ago and I hope for the last time. For so long I lived with a sense that I was hopelessly cursed and could never escape what was inside me. But here I am at another birth, everything from those first two lives got me to this moment. I have arrived to the third phase of my life praying every moment that this next act will tell a different story. Unfortunately, the protagonist of the third act is the same actor as the past two, so many days I am not cautiously optimistic of what lies ahead in the next page or paragraph. But from the history I have read and lived through, I cannot rely on hope, it will take work every day to write a different chapter and ending than the first two.

I look at my life in this same way, for right or wrong. The day I made a commitment to my better half and took a lifelong vow, was like being born again. Line up the years of my singular life with that of my life after becoming ‘an adult’ and taking a vow to live for more than myself, and I see many time points and events that repeat one another. It shocks and scares me. Coming into the world was a moment of awakening, only to be sleepwalking for many years. The moment our lives came together was another hopeful moment of awakening to a new birth of life together. However, I was just a child again, reliving the same mistakes and failures internally and in the dark, asleep or wide-awake fighting nightmares day and night. Two chapters or phases complete now, the amplitude and cycles repeating in exactly the same periodicity.

And is this my last chance and chapter, or is there more beyond this current moment and phase – perhaps I am just getting started and all of this was the first volume of a much larger story? That is a question I have to answer and ask myself over and over. The first volume, an encyclopedia of lessons and messages that I now must re-read and truly process to write a different future. And I need others to teach me new lessons, supplement what I have experienced and learned, seen, and heard. I need to hear things again and again to drive a different thought process, different actions and energy.

I don’t look in mirrors alone anymore, I need someone by my side to ensure I see something different this time. Even the smallest reflection in a glass and I look away when I am alone, because I can’t face things by myself. At least I have learned that, with some sense of hope. I have also opened myself up, so we can all see inside and dissect the past and the characteristics that have led to history repeating itself over and over again, waves pounding the bow unrelenting. Perhaps we can extract the ego, manage the current and prevailing winds, outsmart, and sink those forces. I will seek others to chart my course, hoping to live this chapter of life with promise, not broken promises and lies as the past chapters. Others can help me to stay on course, see what is approaching as my lookout. For the rocky shore and reefs are all around, the seas can become rough in an instant, storms all along the horizon. I don’t want to be swept away again. I have nearly drowned far too many times, and no matter how strong of a swimmer I think I am, I often need a lifeline to have any chance of survival. That realization is not weakness, but courage and the will to forge onward and not alone. Any port in a storm, anyone who will welcome me and provide refuge when the seas in my mind are raging.

Thus far my life has a period of 21 years, and I am two cycles in, hoping my life frequency is far greater than 2. My first two frequencies barely remained stable, the waves coming very close to breaking their amplitude and causing great disorder, the hertz nearly crippling.

Some refer to time as an arc or relate linear time to a curvature with periodicity, a repetitive cyclical frequency. In physics, periodic motion is used to describe waves and vibration, the time in which a signal repeats itself. Babylonian astronomy first correlated the concept of degrees to minutes and seconds, relating the measure of both angles and time, where the sun’s motion and 360 degree travel was used to divide the time of one full day. Each degree was subdivided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds, giving one Babylonian degree to equal four minutes. From there, relationships between arc and time and distance have been used widely in astronomy, cartography and navigation. Distance and time are quantifiable in many ways along with time and arc. Time has an arc and also a period. The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, while the frequency is the number of cycles per unit time. Any motion that repeats itself regularly is called periodic motion, and life has a natural periodic motion, think of the beating of a heart, the rising and falling of the sun, the rotation of the earth around the sun and the moon around the earth. One complete repetition of the motion is called a cycle. The duration of each cycle is the period. In nature all things have a frequency, referring to how often something happens or repeats a pattern. Perhaps life is no different than nature, just a part of nature and therefore has a repeating pattern or cycle of life, or periods that make up a life.

And that is the second cycle of the first paragraph of the story. Frequency of 2.

What's the Frequency Kenneth? is your Benzedrine, uh-huh

I was brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed

I thought I'd pegged you an idiot's dream

Tunnel vision from the outsider's screen

Lyrics from the song 'What's the Frequency Kenneth?' by R.E.M. 1994 on their album Monster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWkMhCLkVOg

The story behind the song lyrics revolve around an attack on CBS news anchor man Dan Rather, where a mentally-ill man and an accomplice attacked Rather one evening in New York City as Rather returned home from a dinner party. Initially the thought was Rather was misidentified, not understanding why the attackers repeated 'What's the frequency Kenneth?' as they beat him. In actuality, the main attacker, William Tager, was mentally ill and thought media companies were coming after him and beaming messages into his brain, hence the reason he asked Dan Rather, kenneth what's the frequency? Tager, obviously not well, thought that if he found the frequency it would stop the companies from sending him messages.

Benzedrine - that is the brand name for an amphetamine sulfate, a part of American culture from the 1930s to 1950s as a drug of choice for giving a boost to creative energies due to the stimulant drug's pleasant and energizing effect. Commonly called 'bennies' they were used by many scientists, mathematicians, poets and novelists to give them that little extra inspiration. An interesting quote by one mathematician, who defined bennies as 'a device for turning coffee into theorems.' Commonly used as an upper in the morning, bennies, were then followed by barbiturates and alcohol in the evening to wind down. This was the 'chemical life' back then.

See mental health and substance abuse issues are all around us, in music and inexplainable, remarkable circular arcs and stories. I remember being hooked on this R.E.M. song and being high so many times as a teen in my 12-16 years, repeating the lyrics with friends as we escaped reality time and time again, never understanding the frequency, period or cycle we were in. I also hear Bennie and the Jets in my head by Elton John.

https://gnrcentral.com/2020/09/16/the-creepy-story-behind-r-e-m-s-hit-song-whats-the-frequency-kenneth/