“Yell. Jump. Play. Out-run those sons-of-bitches. They’ll never live the way you live. Go do it.” - Ray Bradbury (1994)
In January 2017, I bought a remarkable collection of essays by the legendary writer Ray Bradbury at The American Book Center in Amsterdam. It was titled Zen in the Art of Writing (1994). The quote above comes from the preface. Bradbury tells of how in October 1929, when he was in the fourth grade, he was teased by some of his classmates for liking the comic books of Buck Rogers. Peer pressured and wanting to fit in, he tore his comics apart, tears streaming down his face. A month later he realized his mistake. It wasn’t his comics he should’ve torn up, it was friendships that didn’t value him or his enthusiasms. He went back to his comics. Later Bradbury writes: “Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven’t friends. Go find some.” Thank god the young Bradbury found that courage to believe in himself. If not, we wouldn’t have had Fahrenheit 451 (1953), The Illustrated Man (1951), and other classics of American fiction.
When I read Zen in the Art of Writing, I thought a lot about my good friend Mike McCoy. He and Bradbury had the same curiosity, courage, and fighting spirit, not just in themselves but in others. It’s the Ides of March, and Mike would be 34 years old today. I think everyone if they’re lucky in life has a friend like Mike and is a friend to themselves like Bradbury was to himself. Mike was one of the most curious, kind, witty, morally courageous, and intellectually hardworking people I have ever met. It was Mike who encouraged my enthusiasms and said it was okay to try to be the best version of myself; who said it was perfectly fine to talk about Nas and William Wordsworth in the same sentence; to enjoy music, sports, movies, and poetry as much as science, business, politics, and history; to see connections between all where many saw none. So I look forward to his birthday. To toast and celebrate him with beer and barbecue and to remind myself to live with his Bradbarian inspiration: To yell, jump, play, and out-run those sons-of-bitches.