Chapter 1

1.The Need for Holistic, Creative Thought

The future is coming, to a life near you.

My parents were a wonderful mix of left brain and right brain.

My father, Buck, was aninsurance-company executive whose parents divorced in the 1920s, long before divorce was normalized. He grew up as aDepression-era child doing odd jobs in Kentucky, Indiana, and Chicago to survive. When World War II hit, he had a friend memorize the eye chart so he could enlist, despite being blind in one eye. To him, it was logical: America was attacked, so he should defend it. Later, he was one of the few World War II veterans in our community to speak out against the Vietnam War. Again, the decision was a logical one. He hated war and didn’t believe, in that instance, we should be fighting. He always pushed me to consider problems logically, rather than simply conform to what others in my perceived “group” thought. To this day, I try to honor this way of thinking.

Conversely, my mother, Margaret, was a creative soul with a variety of eclectic pursuits. Fortwenty-three years, she sang with the Chicago Symphony Chorus under choir director Margaret Hillis and symphony director Georg Solti. At the end of her time, she was the longest serving member of the choir, every member of which had to audition annually to maintain their positions.

She also helped write a dictionary on Hittite (an ancient hieroglyphic language) at the University of Chicago and collected modern art, antiques, and gorgeous Oriental rugs. From classical music to painting, needlepoint, and playwriting, she enjoyed many different forms of art. One such passion was literature and in particular, for reasons I never quite understood, James Joyce.

Her fondness for Joyce went beyond merely reading his modernist,avant-garde novels. She worked with a rock composer named Sigmund Snopek III to create a musical performance based on the ten multilingual portmanteau words of Joyce’sFinnegans Wake.

She even collaborated with Joycean scholars Gareth and Janet Dunleavy at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. For decades, they, along with scholars internationally, had worked to understand the riddle buried in the strange structure of Joyce’s novelUlysses. If you’ve never read it,Ulysses is a novel of eighteen chapters, representing the hours from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m., and is loosely modeled after the Homeric epic poemThe Odyssey.

As it turned out, the academics’ inability to solve Joyce’s riddle had nothing to do with a lack of skill, intelligence, or ability. They just needed a holistic perspective on the problem.

I have to be honest. James Joyce is one of my least favorite authors. For me, reading him is a bit like watching paint dry. However, he is broadly credited as one of the most importantavant-garde writers of the early twentieth century. Joyce was a novelist and poet, and, coincidentally, a singer. In truth, if he hadn’t made it as a writer, he might have made a career in music.1 Apparently, he had a wonderful voice and, being Irish, music was a huge part of his cultural heritage.

Through his love of music, J