Why "Incorrigible" ?
Because if I have to sum up my entire existence in a single word... that's the word.
I wish I could remember when I first heard the word "incorrigible" as well as I remember the first time I heard the word "ostentatious."
My first grade teacher - the aptly named "Miss Payne” at the Forrestdale School in Rumson, New Jersey, taught me that one. She thought I was a showoff, and figured it was her sworn duty as a newly-accredited elementary school teacher to nip that in the bud by shaming me with big words. So she called me 'ostentatious.' I don't think she was just encouraging me to improve my vocabulary.
What I do remember is that I added the word 'incorrigible" to my personal vernacular sometime in the 1980s, when I owned and operated a yacht charter business out of Lahaina, Maui.1
After moving to Maui in the fall of 1980, I acquired an existing business. I had to stick with the name of the boat, which was something of an established brand in the Hawaii tourist industry. The boat was called Scotch Mist. This also marked the time in my life when I became a Scotch drinker, but that's a different story. Two years later we added a second, larger boat, dubbed the Scotch Mist II.
Since I was in the 'yachting' business, I started reading up on the America’s Cup – the World Series and Super Bowl of yacht racing2. I learned that the victorious yachts in that quadrennial regatta had names like "Intrepid" and "Courageous." That's when I started to think that if I ever had a boat that I could put a name on, I would call it "Incorrigible." Take that, Ted Turner!
The word "Incorrigible" is most often used disparagingly, but like Agnes in The Gilded Age, I have always found it rather appealing.
I started to adopt that word as a personal 'mantra' after my divorce in 2019 (another story I'll save for another time). The day after my ex-wife moved out of our house, I drove a Mustang convertible into the garage. A few weeks later I got a personalized license plate: NCORGBL. It's not exactly a yacht but it's a damn fun car!
For better or worse, ‘incorrigible” has become my beacon in the years since. The more I have steered toward it the more I think I have become my authentic self.
Expectations -v- Reality
We live in a culture that defines our value not by what we are (i.e. humans being) but rather by what we do (which would make us human doings). He’s a doctor. He’s a lawyer. He’s a baker. He’s a candlestick maker.
I am none of those respectable things.
Oh, I've given some of them a try over the course of my seven-plus decades, but, well, let's just say... none of them ever stuck.
I have been and done many things over the course of my life, some very successful and some not so much. And, somehow, I have done a pretty good job of steering clear of all the labels and pigeon holes that define a conventional existence.
When we wuz kids, we played a board game called "Careers." Even then, I found the concept rather puzzling. I recognize it now as a subliminal exercise in molding, conditioning and conformity.
The culture has expressions for people who don't fit the mold. None of them are particularly flattering so I won't repeat them here.
"Incorrigible" works just fine for me.
Defining “Success”
Here’s one thing I have come to know about myself:
I'm smart. But I am not academic.
The difference has caused me a world of grief that I’m just now sorting out.
I only did well in school when I liked the subject. That was math for a time, science, history, English at other times (but never gym!). As long as they held my attention I got the grades my elders expected. When it didn't... well, there was that one night in my junior year of high school that I spent at a fleabag hotel in Greenwich Village because I was afraid to bring my report card home.
There was a time in sixth grade when I thought about becoming a cardiac surgeon. I built a plastic model of the human heart and wrote a book report about heart attacks. Then I discovered two things: I recoiled at the sight of blood and... being a doctor meant spending a decade in school.
I could. not. wait. to get out of school.
I also built a working model of a V8 engine. When I got to senior high, I wanted to take a class in real auto mechanics, but was informed that was for kids on the other side of the tracks. I was supposed to be on the 'college' track.
Maybe that's why I still have a recurring dream about high school graduation: In the dreams, the school has posted the names of all the students who will be graduating. I still can’t find my name on that list.
And I might not have gone to college if it weren't for Vietnam and that draft thing in the 60s.
Honestly, coming on the heels of a relatively mediocre secondary school experience, the imperative to immediately matriculate into an institution of higher education was completely wasted on me. I spent one month in classes at George Washington University in the fall of 1969 and then... well, then the drugs kicked in. During my one semester at GWU I mostly majored in joint rolling. At least I acquired a useful skill.
I finally found a school – a branch of Antioch College – that let me do pretty much whatever I wanted, which at the time (1970-73) was running around the Baltimore-Washington corridor with a portable video recorder. When it was time to graduate, I got together with a faculty advisor and we made up a slew of courses to submit for the required credits. Antioch gave me a B.A. in 'Community Media' – a 'major' that I also made up – in the spring of 1973.
That summer, I went out to Los Angeles to 'seek my fortune' in the TeeVee business. Long story short, I didn't really find much of a fortune until 25+ years later, and then it was via the Internet – a video-based medium, but hardly network television.
I spent most of the 1980s sailing and snorkeling in Hawaii. After I sold that business, I spent a couple of years back in Los Angeles at music schools, learning all the argumentative and demolished chords.
In 1994 I came to Nashville to see what I could do in the music business. That turned out to be starting songs.com - an ahead-of-its-time Internet music business that I sold for seven figures just before the bubble burst in 1999.3 That 'liquidity event' put me on the desultory path between ‘art’ and ‘enterprise’ that I've been on ever since.
But, dammit, this life suits me.
And, honestly, in the five years since that divorce, I think I've become the best version of myself I've ever been.
What Niche??
I have interests almost too numerous to enumerate.
The ‘experts’ have been saying for decades now that 'success' in the atomized digital universe requires focusing on a 'niche.'
I am niche-adverse. If anything, I am 'multi-niche' – which is a bit of an oxymoron.
However, I already feel my cognitive function improving since I pulled the plug on all the brain-numbing Meta platforms earlier this month. We'll see if this continues. Continuity (discipline?) has never been my strong suit – except for a couple of things that have managed to persist though my adult life. I'll get to those eventually.
Last week I 'restacked' a post about defining a 'right life.' I am linking that 'restack' here again for the benefit of those who will be getting this post via email.
This is one of the passages from Michael Rance's essay that resonated with me:
Success is such a tricky, impossible word. All of the measures that we have of it seem to be external, and quantifiable: wealth, viewership, followings, square footage of the places we rent or buy. It is all the buzzwords: America, Capitalism, but it’s probably simpler than that.… I’m immune to many of these quantifiable things generally, but it gets harder to ignore the yearning for success when it dovetails with the things that I truly love.
He then ponders the idea of 'The Right Life' – taking his cue from Hirayama, the protagonist in a Japanese film called Perfect Days:
...when I’m closer to my right life, there isn’t any room for wishing for success: I’m too busy working, and living, and enjoying not only the reading and the writing but the good life outside of it. All I can do is try to make good, steady work that some people might enjoy, but even then I have to work with the expectation that all of the letters and life’s work will end up in a box, like Hirayama’s pictures.
This All Feels ‘Right’ To Me
Here, I will pause and take a fuller account of my place on this road less traveled.
I suspect I’ve lost track of the tone of this post, that maybe it sounds a tad arrogant (hey, we all have to have our special skills, right?) or… worse… ungrateful.
Because the hell of it is, I’ve had a pretty damn good life for more than 704 years now. Sure, there were setbacks both major and minor (a dead parent, a divorce, a dead brother, another divorce… the usual stuff) but by and large I’ve managed to pull off my ‘right life’ without even realizing that’s what I was doing.
Now I seem to have reached a stage where I don’t owe anybody anything. My obligations are only those I choose, and I’ve managed my affairs well enough that my days are my own.
Near as I can tell, I’m ‘crazy healthy.’5 I have a circle of friends that I truly cherish. I live in a cozy little house6 with a wood-burning fireplace on the outskirts of a city that has everything. My red convertible and my old red truck are my Ruby Slippers. I have a cat that likes to lie on my chest and purr. And lately I have enjoyed the frequent company of a smart, beautiful and passionate woman (who gave me the Ruby Slippers analogy, thank you Lucie).
What more can anybody ask for?!?!?
(Maybe y’all don’t answer that question…)
Now that cognitive function is restored (by getting the fuck off of Facebook etal), perhaps I can build a ‘boat’ from the multitude of planks in my life, float down the river, and see where I wind up.
Seeing the name "Incorrigible" on the stern seems like the 'right life' for me.
_________
Damn! If you’ve made it this far then… it must be love! In that case, if you’ll
…then I’ll take you for a ride in the convertible! Offer good in Nashville, TN or proximity between the months of April and October, and only ‘weather permitting.’
Yes, that's the same Lahaina that burned to the ground in August 2023. My boat was still in the harbor then, 35 years after I'd sold it to another operator and moved back to 'the mainland.' The boat did not survive the inferno.
Yacht racing: "Taking the slowest form of transportation known to man and racing it." Also, "Standing in a cold shower and tearing up thousand dollars bills."
…which was split with two partners and the investment banker who set up the acquisition. And then there was a big chunk of capital gains taxes, since the basis for gain was approximately zero.
At 74, that’s 37 years more than my father got, and so far a dozen years more than my older brother got. A lot of other people my age are dead, too.
TMI Alert: The link here is to a thing I wrote about my last colonoscopy in 2015. I’m due for another sometime this year. Stay tuned!
I have never been a particularly ‘goal oriented’ person. I think that’s what happens when your father dies at age 37 and you figure you’re gonna be dead by 40, too. The one goal I ever felt strongly about was owning a ‘paid for house.’ That box got checked with that ‘liquidity event’ back in 1999.
Excellent essay.