Ethical Adulthood: A Detroit Soundtrack | Home at Last by Steely Dan

In this episode, I reflect on Steely Dan’s “Home at Last” through The Odyssey, Odysseus, the Sirens, and the strange human problem of remaining tied to the mast after the danger has passed.

What if the crisis is over, but the nervous system is still braced for more?

What if home is not one more project, reinvention, improvement, or dramatic chapter away?

This episode explores Steely Dan’s brilliant, slippery world; the seduction of drama; the project mind; survival structures that once protected us; and the possibility that ordinary life may not be a waiting room after all.

Sometimes maturity is not a climb, a quest, or a journey.

Sometimes maturity is staying where we are long enough to realize:

This is my life.
The danger is past.
The mast can loosen.
Home at last.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Oh, welcome back into Ethical Adulthood, a Detroit soundtrack. Today we're talking about Home at Last by Steely Dan. And let me say first off, if we're gonna talk about Steely Dan, we might as well admit the obvious. This is not simple music. Steely Dan is not the Beach Boys singing about good vibrations. And they're not Martha and the Vandelas inviting us to dance in the streets. They are not giving us uncomplicated adoration, uncomplicated joy, uncomplicated anything. Listening to a Steely Dan song can feel like opening a nine hundred page book in the middle. Someone is already in trouble. Someone has already made a poor decision. Someone is already too clever, too lonely, too high, too rich, too ashamed, too proud, or too far from home. And we don't know what the heck is going on at first. And the music is gorgeous. This isn't Van Halen or Rush or Lud Zeppelin. This is expensive scotch in an expensive Porsche. Three young women in a mansion on the sea music. Don't call it yacht rock or Fagin will excoriate you. It's not smooth jazz. It's elevated rock for inebriated intellectuals with money, fame, and lots of opinions. The lyrics are often morally slippery, but the arrangements are immaculate. The musicianship is ridiculous. The intelligence is everywhere. You could write a book just about the music, and another book just about the lyrics. To understand what's happening at both levels requires more than most people were up for, to be honest. I mean, we all liked Steely Dan, but we sung along to the words not knowing what we were singing about. So, of course, for ethical adulthood, I had to bring them in because ethical adulthood is not only about kind, grounded, emotionally healthy people making good choices in natural fibers. Sometimes ethical adulthood is about studying the brilliant mess. The glamorous mess. The literate mess. The perfectly arranged mess. And home at last, it's about a person who knows how to be a hero, but he doesn't know how to come home. So here's the smart take. Home at last is connected to the Odyssey, the ancient story of Odysseus or Ulysses, trying to get home after the Trojan War. Now, I'll tell you right now, I did not spend my whole life knowing this. For years, I just heard the song as a tired person's inquiry. I heard it as I have been through enough, I have been on the long journey, I've survived the rocks, I have heard the seductive songs, I have been clever, strategic, restless, dramatic, impressive, and traumatized. And now I'm asking, could it be that I'm allowed to come home at last? Could this now ordinary life be home? Could the quiet right now be it? Not because nothing else will ever happen, not because life is over, not because my curiosity is dead, but because maybe the endless search for the next thing is not freedom. Maybe maybe that's forced labor. We can make our lives akin to becoming slaves to the altar of endless self-improvement. In the Odyssey, Odysse is trying to get back to Ithaca, to his wife Penelope, to his son, to his actual life. But the trip home, it takes years. There are monsters, storms, gods, shipwrecks, seductions, bad decisions, and of course the sirens. Now the sirens sing so beautifully that sailors steer toward them and die on the rocks. Odesus wants to hear the song, but he does not want to be destroyed by it. So he has his men plug their ears and tie him to the mast of the ship. Which is a very good solution, actually. I want the dangerous experience. Or maybe my life simply is a dangerous experience. I want the knowledge to be bestowed. I want to survive the trauma that is life and remain whole. But it seems like once the danger is over, still I remain tied to the mast. Could it be that I have found my home at last? And this being Steely Dan, the question does not resolve in the song. Steely Dan would not commit. So yeah, this is part of our conditioning. Once the drama is over, I'm still braced for more drama. I mean the crisis is past, but I have not come down from the position I took in order to survive it. And this is not some abstract mythological problem. This is my typical frazzled nervous system after work at seven o'clock. We survive something by creating a structure. I will be vigilant. I will not trust too easily. I will stay busy. I will keep moving. I will keep planning. I will not relax. I will not be fooled. I will not need too much. I will not get too comfortable. I will not calm down. And at the time, that structure may save us. It may be intelligent. It may be necessary. It may be exactly how we get through. But later, when the danger is past, that same structure can become a prison. The thing that protected us can start preventing us from coming home. That's what I hear in home at last. Not only could it be that I have found my home, but also could it be that I've found my home and I still do not know how to live there. Home is not only a place. Home is a state of unbracing. And sometimes we arrive physically before we arrive psychologically. We are in the house. We're safe. The crisis is over. The divorce is over. The illness has stabilized. The kids are grown. The job is done. The danger on the rocks is past. And still we remain tied to the mast. Still alert, still scanning, still planning, still asking, what now? Still mistaking tension for purpose. I'm still afraid that if we untie ourselves, we'll fall apart. Or get bored or get fooled, lose meaning, or have to actually feel the exhaustion underneath the adventure. And I know this one personally. I can wake up in the morning and immediately begin designing the next chapter of my life. What's next? What am I doing? What project should I start? Should I write another book? Should I start a dance club? Should I invite people over to read one poem a week? Should I start a book club? Should I change how I teach? Should I reorganize the website? Should I learn how to code? I bet ChatGPT could explain calculus to me. And none of this is bad. Creative energy is beautiful. Curiosity is beautiful. Making things is beautiful. Having ideas is beautiful. But there is a moment, and we know this moment if we're honest, when creativity stops being creativity and starts becoming a no to reality again. The mind is fifteen minutes in the future all day long, calling that aliveness. But if our head is always fifteen minutes in the future, that's not home. That's a fantasy. There's no home in the mind. There is thought. Thoughts are not a home. And listen, I love a good fantasy. I love a thinking person's rabbit hole as much as the next woman. I'm not here to shame the project mind. The project mind has gotten a lot done. The project mind has built civilizations, written books, planned dinners, organized closets, taught classes, started podcasts, and occasionally saved us from complete collapse. But the project mind can also keep us from noticing that we're already here. Already in a life. Already in a body. Already in a home. Already in the ordinary day we thought we were trying to reach. This is the strange part of survival. When life has been intense for a long time, peace can feel suspicious. Ordinary life can feel too quiet. A calm morning can feel like a setup. A settled season can feel like boredom. Then the nervous system starts looking around for a new siren. Not always an obvious one, not always danger. Sometimes the siren is just the next project. The next reinvention. The next plan. The next improvement. The next version of ourselves that will finally feel settled. Optimized. Better. More worthy and therefore more valuable. But the question underneath all of that is can I just be here without immediately turning this into a launch pad for somewhere else? That's one way we stay ethical. Not because we stop growing, not because we stop creating. Not because we stop dreaming. But because we begin to notice the difference between movement that comes from life and movement that comes from not being able to stay. Oh so far away from Carol King comes to mind. Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? Anyway, there's a difference between creativity and flight. There's a difference between a genuine next step and the old survival pattern wearing a different outfit. And Steely Dan, in their weird, brilliant, elegant way, gives us this weary narrator who's made it through the rocks and is still tied up, still restrained, still in the posture of survival, still not quite trusting the homecoming. That's the part I want to stay with. Because maybe home is not where nothing happens. Maybe home is where we stop needing drama to feel real. Maybe home is where the nervous system slowly learns that intensity is not the same as meaning. Maybe home is where we stop performing our cleverness long enough to make toast. It sounds easy, but it is not. Because for many of us, the mast worked. The mast was the schedule, the vigilance, the intelligence, the analysis, the humor, the competence, the ability to read the room, the ability to stay one step ahead, the ability to make a plan when everybody else was falling apart. So when someone says, just relax, it can feel insulting. Relax. This whole ship is still floating because I did not relax. That is true. And also the danger may be past. Both things can be true. And the structure may have saved us, and the structure may now be too tight. The intelligence may have protected us, and the intelligence may now be keeping us from resting. The planning may have built the life. And the planning may now be preventing us from living in it. So the question isn't how do we become less intelligent, less creative, less alert, less capable? No. The question is, can we untie ourselves a little? Maybe not all at once. Not with reckless abandon. Not as some grand spiritual performance where we throw away the mast and declare ourselves healed. Please. We're adults. We know better. But maybe maybe one not? Maybe one small place where the old emergency system is still running even though the emergency is over. Maybe one morning where we don't immediately ask what's next. Maybe one afternoon where we let the house be the house. The body be the body. The meal be the meal. The relationship be the relationship. The weather be the weather. Maybe one moment when we notice the urge to leave, improve, fix, upgrade, rename, reframe, redesign, or create a new container for life. Because life itself feels too bare without a project wrapped around it. Maybe we notice that urge and say, oh. That is the siren. It's not an itch I must scratch. I'm not falling for shameless seduction. I've been down that path and I recall the feelings. This is a familiar move. And maybe I don't have to steer my ship toward that today. Maybe I can stay right here. Maybe I can be home at last. This connects directly to where we were in episode two with Closer to the Ground. That episode said, Come down, come back into the body, come back into ordinary life, come back into the kitchen, the onions, the weather, the dirt, the feet, the water, the actual world. This episode asks the next question. Can we stay here? Here is home, where we learn not to make every feeling into a crisis and every boredom into a reinvention. It's where we find out whether we can be kind when no one is applauding. It's where we find out whether we can stay when there's nothing dramatic to narrate. This ordinary life that keeps waiting for us to stop treating it like a waiting room. So maybe the practice this week is simple. Notice where we are still tied to the mast. Notice where we are still in the posture of survival, even though the danger has passed. Notice the next siren, the next idea upgrade, the next urgent plan to become someone else. And before we follow it, pause. Ask, is this life moving me? Or am I trying to leave? Is this creativity or is this flight? Is this the next true thing? Or is this my nervous system refusing to come home? No judgment. No drama. Just noticing. Sometimes maturity isn't a climb. It's not a quest. It's not even a journey. Sometimes maturity is staying where we are long enough to realize, oh wow, this is my life. This is the shore. The danger is past. The mast can loosen. The ordinary day can hold me. Maybe I do not need to keep leaving home in order to find home. Maybe I can be whole here. Home at last.