Hi. I’m Hal. I’m glad you’re here. Wishing a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dear sister Caroline. Please click the PLAY button above to hear the recommended PODCAST version of this episode. (15 min) Enjoy. ❤️ H
Bad Words and a Broken Moral Compass
Somewhere along the line, my moral compass got broke. And I'm gonna let you in on a little bit of that today. But first, I want to talk about the subheading for last week's post, there was a bad word in it, and when I came up with that phrase—it's the F word, by the way, I'm not going to say it now—but when I came up with the phrase, that word fit so perfectly, it was so beautiful. I felt like it came spontaneously. And I knew when I said it, it was the right word.
But then later on that day, or maybe the next day, before sending the post out, I was at one of my 12 Step meetings, and a woman was sharing. She said, “You know, back in the days when we were drinking and smoking and sexing and eating and swearing”...such and such and so and so. And it occurred to me that I am still swearing. I've let go of the drinking and the smoking and most of the other things that I used to do, but I'm still swearing and I thought, You know, maybe I should change this. Maybe I should take that word out of the subheading.
What kind of words do I want to be putting out into the world?
What kind of man do I want to be?
And I battled it. I battled it for a little while because it felt so good to use that word. But I realized not everyone receiving the Substack wants to see that word in a subheading. So I went around to some friends and I got several different opinions. One said “You could probably remove it from the subheading, at least keep it in the body”.
Several people said, “Hal, it sounds raw, it sounds like you. I think it fits.”
And after doing a change away from it to shucks or darn or dang, I went back. I re-recorded it back with the original F word. And I put it out in the world. And there you have it. So just know that I gave it some thought. I'm making progress.
I want to tell you a little story about the F word. I in my career became a master assembly giver. I gave assemblies that were so well-crafted, for 45 to 50 minutes I would have a whole school eating out of the palm of my hand, managing the whole school, managing the whole gymnasium with my calm presence. Over and over again, teachers were amazed at how calm I was and how I kept the attention. I kept the students engaged. I miss it so much. I loved that work. I loved walking into a gymnasium, setting up my sound system, and when those kids arrived, I had no fear. I was so relaxed, I knew exactly what was going to happen. And every time I performed an assembly I learned something and added it to the next one. So the next one was even better. And I got really good at it. I did a couple of “Hal Walker, Musical Explorer and Music That Fits in Your Pocket”. It was just magic. It was magic.
Anyway, many years ago, before I got so good, I did an assembly at Stanton Middle School. This was one of my first all-school assemblies. My residency was called “The Art of Play”. I was an artist of play and I was combining the art of the game of Go with harmonica and banakula and table tennis and stick dancing. Oh, and frisbee! Yes, the assembly was a collage of my different skills in each one of these playful disciplines.
And at some point, I lost the kids. Like, this was a whole gym full of eighth graders. And I lost them. They took over, and I was struggling for my life up there. At the time, I was hosting this open space night down at the Open Space gallery. Every Friday night, a big group of seventh and eighth graders would come and hang out at the Open Space and we'd play ping pong and basketball and Go and those guys from the Friday night gathering loved this song called “Don't Say the F-Word to Your Mother.” (To tell you the truth, I don't remember the actual title.) It was an old folk song that actually had kind of a funny message.
I decided to break out that song. I didn't even know the song. I read it off of a lyric sheet in front of this huge gymnasium full of eighth graders. And, apparently, it was a disaster. The assembly ended and the superintendent had witnessed this. And the superintendent came right up to me and afterwards said, “Please, please don't say that. Don't sing that song in your next assembly.”
I was so embarrassed. I went home and raked the leaves that night. And the whole night I was just so humiliated and embarrassed that the assembly had gone so badly and the superintendent had to come up to me and scold me.
The next day I returned and I wrote a mass apology to all the teachers. I went into the office and I put an apology letter into every teacher's box. This was the beginning of my residency called “The Art of Play”. It wasn't a good start to the residency but it ended up going well and we played ping pong and played frisbee and played Go and played harmonica.
But what I want to talk about briefly, before we close, is how somewhere along the line my moral compass got broken. You know, we didn't swear in the house. I grew up in a house that did not swear. In fact, I took it very seriously not to say God's name in vain. One of my sisters might say G-O-D, or Oh my G-O-D or G-O-D dammit. And I always took that very personally. I knew my dad hated that. And I think to protect my dad, I really stood up for my dad that there would be no taking God's name in vain. And every once in a while you might hear my mom or dad say the S-word but for the most part, we lived in a house that didn't do a lot of swearing.
But somewhere along the line, I picked up swearing. It was probably about the same time I picked up alcohol and marijuana. It might have been the same time I picked up stealing from grocery stores, that is stealing candy from the store. It might have been the same time I picked up cheating on tests. Cheating on my French test and my physics test.
It might have been the same time I got my driver's license. You know we'd be down in Birmingham, Alabama. The whole family would be gathered at my grandparents beautiful home up on Lenox road on top of Red Mountain. And when I got my driver's license, I would borrow the car and drive down into Birmingham. Drive down into the seediest neighborhood of Birmingham, 16 or 18 years old, and find the triple-X-rated movie theater parking in a little seedy parking lot behind this gross theater and hoping that nothing happened to the car so I wouldn't have to call my parents, and then coming back and being the charmed golden child of my grandmother. After a night on the town, coming back and being perfect in every way.
So if this was the beginning of my life, a double life. On one side, I wouldn't swear in the house, and I stood up for my dad for no swearing. And on the other side, I discovered the joy of swearing, the joy of doing what I wanted to do to make me feel good. So it reminds me of going away to college. And I stayed in the humanities college, Chapin Hall. And this was a hall of highly intelligent people who were history majors, philosophy majors, English majors. I was just a frisbee player from Ohio and I felt quite insecure among all these intelligent people from New York City and from Long Island and from New Orleans and New Mexico and Minneapolis.
And I remember meeting a woman who had never smoked and never drank, and had never smoked pot. And she didn't swear. Not only that she was the valedictorian of her class. And I just couldn't believe that that kind of person existed. Because in the last few years, I had ventured into the dark side, all those vices.
Having let go of most of my vices in 12 Step recovery, I'm finding out the kind of person I want to be. You know, I wish I would have found this person a long time ago. But I want to be a man of honor. I want to be a man of his word. I want to live a life of integrity. You know, I want to live a life free of the drug and free of seeking that self-centered pleasure, a man who's willing to look at his swearing and call it into question.
You know, I want to live a life of equanimity and contentment with the small things. I've been hanging out with this Quaker friend named Annette. And I'm just so drawn to the simple life of sitting quietly and listening for the light within me and looking for the light within you, and seeking God's purpose.
So anyway, that all comes out of using a bad word last week in my Substack. I hope no one was offended. If you were, I'm sorry, but you got the real me. And I'm so grateful for you listening.
I'm so grateful for the little community of people that is growing up here on Living in a Body. The people that share, that comment regularly, I thank you. Even the people that don't comment but are listening. Thank you so much. It's been a really meaningful venture for me. It's been such a joy, telling my story.
By the way, it's been a week since I had a crash. It's been a solid week since I had one of those terrible seizures that sweeps through my body. Full disclosure, I took an Ativan this morning. You can hear it in my voice, I'm imagining. I'm upbeat and getting a little bit of relief today.
I wish you the best. Enjoy this day and enjoy living in that body of yours. It’s not going to be around forever. Take advantage of it today and I'll do the same.
And hopefully we'll be back next week. Bye bye.
Bad Words and a Broken Moral Compass