What would Keith Richards do_ - Jessica Pallington West [7]
There was a blind teenager from Toronto who continued to show up at Stones concerts, and Keith was the one who looked after her, who made sure that she was taken care of and driven home. After all, as Keith said, “God knows what could happen to a blind chick on the road.” During the trial, the girl went to the judge’s house, told him the simple story of this kindness, and kept Keith out of the slammer. He was ordered to perform a free concert for the blind. Keith described the outcome: “It had to be one of the most bizarre sentences of all time: ‘He was caught with an ounce of heroin and he got sentenced to do a concert for the blind.’ That one’s got to be in the annals of legal history somewhere, right?"
Through kindness comes love. Through kindness, mystical things happen.
It’s the closest we can get to God. Through kindness comes absolution.
Keith calls the Toronto teen his blind angel. We all have those angels out there. Who knows—there could be blind angels hiding in the shoe department at Macy’s or at a hot dog stand. They could come to your assistance when you least expect it. They may be blind, but they are rarely dumb, and you may need them when the long arm of the law reaches out and touches you in all the wrong places.
Be kind. It keeps you going.
And if you can, give anonymously. And forgive debts. (Two additional and not-so-widely-known but still very typical Keith maxims.)
14. APPRECIATE A NOMADIC LIFE—EVEN IF IT’S WITHIN THE CONFINES OF A SMALL TOWN.
“I like to see the ways the world’s going round.”
Move around. Change. See new things. Go where things are different, where there’s different music. Follow where the arrows point, or where the dogs can’t find you. Keep yourself open to transformation. There’s a lot of world out there. The more you see, the more places you go, the more you are. And there’s a bonus positive that comes from continuously moving: It keeps the cops at bay.
Observe your universe and the universes in your backyard.
As Descartes wrote, “Traveling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.” Keep moving, keep seeing “the ways the world’s going round”; all the while, though, keep one eye looking forward and one eye looking back (i.e., Commandment 15).
15. EMBRACE AND LIVE WITH BOTH THE PAST (THE GREATER HISTORY) AND THE FUTURE (POSSIBILITY).
Look at a photo of Keith’s face. The left eye looks out optimistically, with youthful energy, to the future. The right eye is a bit sunken, introspective.
The left corner of the lip sags somewhat downward; the right side is slightly uplifted.
There is a balance between the optimistic future and an introspective look toward the past.
The face tells us a tale, leads us through history, and reveals secrets. And in Keith’s face, it can be summed up as Here and There, at Once.
As Cicero wrote, “The face is the image of the soul.” And you can see in Keith’s face a certain philosophical viewpoint on time—a simultaneous view of the past, present, and future.
The necessity of being mindful of history is something we’ve been told over and again, as with the over-trod George Santayana quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
It’s also important not just to remember the past but to feel the past—as well as the present.
New Age philosophers stress the need to “be here now” and to feel the Power of Now. This is true and good, but being mindful of the full picture connects us with all of time—the present, the past, and the future that is to come—all of which is as much a reality as the moment we’re living in.
As far as your own personal, possibly dubious past is concerned (which is, as Keith says, a ball and chain that follows you around), remember that you are entitled to “retire from military service” and put that past in the past. The past has legs and can follow you. But as with anything that’s following you—an overzealous fan, the police, drug dealers who won’t quit, Mick’s groupies—you can put it in its place and look the