Red Light Run

I was blowing through downtown Pittsburgh the other day, hurrying to pick up Camille after work. It was one of those late afternoons when the sun is so bright that the cityscape looks like a photo with way too much contrast -- all flashlight golds and chasm shadow blacks, and little in between.

The sunlight flared around the traffic light ahead and all but eclipsed it. I missed it altogether, focused on the next light further ahead. I was in the center lane, and just as I noticed a cop cruiser behind me in the curb lane, I saw that I was passing under a red light into the intersection.

My eyes frantically darted in every direction, then back to the cop in the rear view, even as I crossed the intersection, shook my head at my mistake and gestured one palm up in the air -- where the cop could surely see it -- as if to say, "What the hell did I just do?"

And in the rear view I saw that the cruiser, too, had crossed the scrimage line into the intersection.

Then the light turned and the cop pulled close behind me. We made eye contact in my rear-view, and I pointed to my head then thumbed toward the curb. "Should I pull over?" He didn't respond, but turned the cruiser to the curb and eased to a stop. So I followed suit and waited just ahead of him.

As he strolled up to my passenger window, I pushed the button and it whirred down, letting out the precious air conditioning.

"Man," I said. "I didn't even see that light!"

"I know," he said. "I ran it, too." He let out a little cough of a laugh and shrugged. "Don't worry about it. No harm, no foul."

"Thanks."

"What're all those?"

He was leaning on the passenger door now, nodding down at the box full of my new CDs in the seat.

"Those're my new CDs."

"How come they're all the same?"

"No, I mean: they're CDs I just made of my own music?"

"You jaggin' me?"

"Nope."

"So, 'zat you there on the cover?"

"Yeah."

"So, what are you, a musician or somethin'?"

"Well. You know: I try to be."

"Cool beans. What kind of stuff you play?"

"Oh, I don't know. Lots of different styles. This 'un's mostly like folky stuff. Blues, some folky, country-type..."

"I always wished I could play an instrument and sing."

"Mm hmm."

"Think I could?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I mean, do you think it's too late to start? Can anyone just do it, you know, any time in their life if they really put their mind to it."

He had me there. It's a question I hate to even pretend to answer. Sometimes I think, yes, anybody could do it. Then the IFs start seeping into the equation: IF they temper their thinking and emotions in the right direction. IF they're willing to unlearn a relatively great amount of false ideas. IF they're disciplined. IF so many other, deeper, necessary things are focused on and steered toward.

Which then often leads me to think, then, NO, anybody can't do it.

Then there are all those people who've told me that they really tried to become a musician, or a songwriter, and that they wanted nothing more than to be creative, and to be able to share something they'd made with the rest of the world, only to discover they just didn't have it in them.

This all passed through my mind, a stale rerun of contemplations past, in a nanosecond. NO, I thought. I'm sorry, but, I don't think anybody can. Not anybody at just any point in their lives. NO.

But looking into his hopeful face -- the puppy eyed face of this samaritan who had just absolved me the sin of running a red light, (lest ye forget) -- I tried very hard to find a more ambiguous answer. Who the hell am I to trample on hope. Maybe he would be one of those who, however late they came to the flame, would be surprised to find that their aptitude equalled their desire.

"I think everybody has it in them to create..."

"Because, I have this idea for a song. Been runnin' through my head, lately, based on a sermon my preacher gave last Sunday. It's about how -- I mean, I don't know if you believe in God, or you're a Christian or anything; and I don't mean to... Well, anyway, it's about how if you believe in Jesus, you don't have to stress, you know, sweat the small stuff, try to figure everything out. Because Jesus already knows everything."

"Really?"

I was suddenly impatient. My mother would believe this was the devil nudging me in the ribs to "persecute" one of the faithful. But it wasn't that. It was that I had just tried to pound my somewhat painful thoughts into an answer he could live with, out of plain human empathy, and after I had tortured my sense of integrity for his sake, he had just cut me off and switched gears to religion with more than a smidge of presumption as to the universality of biblical truth.

"Yeah. Why? You don't believe in the Bible?"

"I believe it exists. But, let me ask you something: You say Jesus knows everything, right?"

He nodded.

"Well, then. How come he never mentioned Polar Bears or Armadillos?"

"Why would he?"

"I'm sayin', Look at the, in the parables, look at all the examples Jesus uses of different kinds of animals, plants, professions, and they're all related to the time and place where he lived. He never mentions any type of creature that didn't exist or wasn't already known to the people he was talking to."

"Maybe he did and it was left out. He knew about stuff that hadn't happened yet, like the temple being torn down. That didn't happen till like thirty years or more later."

"Yeah, but that particular gospel wasn't even written until the temple had already been destroyed. So it was easy for the writer to put the prophecy into Jesus' mouth of something that had already taken place by the time he wrote it."

He stepped back from the door and reached behind him.

"What're you doing?"

He pulled a ticket book from his back pocket and a pen from his shirt.

He said, "You ran a red light."

"Wait, wait, wait. Ho. So did you."

"Not all the way."

"Okay, whatever. Do what you gotta do, officer. But look, take that song idea you've got and sing it into a tape recorder, shape it up a little, then memorize it."

"Why?"

"Because I'm playing this Saturday night at MOJOES Coffee House in Mt. Lebanon, and if you show up, I'll accompany you on guitar while you sing your song, and..."

"Accompany me where?"

"I'll play the chords and you can sing it. I'll give you a nice introduction, and I promise it'll be a real warm, welcoming audience."

He thought about it.

"You wouldn't be tryin' to bribe me?"

"Hey, I ran a red light. Whatever. But I feel bad, I don't know... I try to imagine what I'd need to hear if I just now got a dream to be a singer, you know? And so that's my answer. It may not be the greatest, but it's the best I can offer. Unrelated to the ticket, to Jesus, etc."

"Okay, where is this place?"

I told him. "You show up, we'll try your song."

He wrote down the info on the back of the ticket book, then flipped it over and scribbled me a warning. I was getting very late to pick up Camille.

"Don't count on it," he said. "But maybe I'll show."

"Hope you do."

"Watch the traffic lights, sir. And remember, Jesus loves you."

"He has my sympathy."