When I was a child I was diagnosed with ADHD. That will come as a great shock to anyone who’s met me. (I kid.)

Chaos has been inside my brain for as long as I can remember. The stiller I try to be the more I notice the cacophony. I don’t know what it’s like to be inside anyone else’s brain and I never will. But I am an unceasing stream of thoughts and ideas and impressions. All the time, you guys. It never stops. They’re not all good thoughts or bad thoughts or any single kind of thing. They’re mixed, often mixed together at the same time. Bringing myself into order is a challenge for me.

I watched a Netflix special a few years ago with a couple of my favorite comedians, Martin Short and Steve Martin. They’re gems. I imagine it’s this way with my brother and me; they’re great alone and much more than twice as good together.

At one point in the special Steve Martin sits down with his banjo and plays a tune from The Long Awaited Album entitled “So Familiar”.

I was already watching a pair of great collaborative comedians working together and ultimately loving each other. So I was prepared for the feels to hit me. And when he played that tune they hit me like a ton of bricks.

I think listening to bluegrass music may be the closest I come to calming down. I will listen to that song in particular on repeat. It’s now very familiar.

I am not a bluegrass aficionado. It’s not even that it’s my favorite music, though I love it so. Don’t engage me in a tête a tête on bluegrass deep cuts, artists or albums. I will not know what you’re talking about. It’s more that the music makes me slow down and listen to my own heartbeat for a moment.

I have thought a lot about this, and I think it’s the banjo in particular that calms me. I can’t explain it except to observe that it is, from my perspective, a chaotic instrument. Part of what makes it work is that it’s so dissimilar from anything else. Half string and half percussive instrument, the banjo is often played with specialized picks that fit around the end of your fingers like little “claws”. These picks are made of brass or other metal, and help give the notes their distinctive twang. The banjo is not pretty. Not in comparison with a violin or a clarinet or even a guitar.

Steve Martin makes the joke, “The main difference between the banjo and a guitar, is that the banjo has only FIVE strings, and the guitar can get you laid”.

I own a banjo now, it sits there mostly, near my bed, bidding me pick it up and live. I have complied a little. I can forward roll. A little. My thoughts, my mind are a forward roll–a series of notes played in rapid succession. For me, harmony is attempting to play those notes in a concordant key. Can I make those notes sound nice together? I think the key to the key is allowing my values to inform me. To inform everything from the top down, instead of letting the chaos of unkempt tasks and time management rule the day from the bottom up.

I always seem to have a chaotic excuse for not picking up my instrument and digging deeper into what makes me calm. My apathy is idiotic I realize, as I type this and think it through.

My best buddy, a gifted musician, swears we’ll play together one day. I hope with my whole heart that he’s right. To make music would, I think, do a lot to calm my soul. Momma tried! We had not one but TWO pianos in our home growing up. She tried to get me to take lessons, to pick up a guitar, to learn to play the drums, but I wouldn’t listen. I should have listened. I thought it was performative. I thought it would only be for others. But I was wrong. It would be a lifeline to me now.

I have had a hard time deciding what to write about Inner harmony. To write with any wisp of authority in my fingertips would be disingenuous.

The word that sticks out to me on this card is harmony. That’s the bit that evades my capture. I have a deep, wide, rich inner life. It’s the harmony that is unfamiliar.

A harmony is a series of notes that are played all together to produce a chord. And a chord is a musical term for two or more notes played together to produce a pleasant sound.

Ironically the banjo is often not harmonious at all! Usually it’s singular notes played in succession. In a roll. A lot to unpack here. My brain is a roll. Forward, backward, it’s a million little plucks of strings and it sounds pretty bad some of the time.

I am reaching for inner harmony, for my dissonant notes to come together into a life-affirming, life-giving chord. But maybe I need to embrace the roll and make the music I can make with the tools I have.

Sometimes, (not always), my life is a beautiful music. It draws people in and soothes them.

And sometimes I do get glimpses of harmony. Sun drenched summer days, whistling tunes in peach orchards. Sitting around a fire that’s built well with friends who know how to love well.

Moments when I remember that it could all fall apart; everything I’ve become and built could be taken away and it would not affect the love my children, my wife, my closest friends have for me. These moments are like honey in my mouth.

My old friend and mentor, (the guy I stole $250 from), has identified that in times of my life when I’m sweet, there’s hardly anyone sweeter.

But my greatest asset is my greatest ass-ache. There are two sides to every coin, and so when I’m not sweet, when the chaos leaves my mind and enters my active behaviors and actions and words, I can be salty indeed. Too salty. So salty that nothing can grow in the soil where I’ve been. When violence rules my thought patterns. When I do not allow my values to inform my time management.

I long for inner harmony. Perhaps we can act our way into a new way of thinking. Perhaps consistent, disciplined, love and care for the other would yield the kind of kindness, the kind of sweetness I crave in my life.

We live once, friends! We don’t know what was before this or what will come after. I can only know for sure that I have today to share with you. I want my insides to be harmonious, I want my outsides to be harmonious.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nickfromoregon.substack.com