Ode to Joy

Beethoven's immortal "Choral"—his Ninth Symphony, completed 201 years ago—provides some necessary cheer on difficult mornings. When it's not even 9 AM and, from two doors up the walk, someone's thumping Master P on their boombox for the whole wing to "appreciate," I need all the help I can get. Closing my door muffles the thumping, and Ludwig Van obscures it the rest of the way.

The recording I have is of a performance by the North German Symphony Orchestra. It's not a jaw-dropper, but it's more than good enough for another year-end in prison. Even after years of practice, thinking of reasons to be cheerful in this place sometimes takes the help of Beethoven's Ninth.

Other mood boosters: instant Folgers, steaming in a plastic mug; new socks bought from the canteen; powdered milk and bran flakes; those rare days when a headcount clears on schedule; feedback from a viewer who watched one of my Real Talk episodes; post-workout shakiness; saying goodbye to someone I helped in the Reentry Center, the day before they go home; winning a root beer on game night; predawn silence, predawn darkness; noticing thoughts and feelings pass while I count breaths in corpse pose.... I could go on.

The other day I read, If you don't feel gratitude, you're taking it for granted. I used to think of "cultivate gratitude" as another of those schmaltzy, faux-philosophical slogans you see on embroidery and kitchen plaques—right next to the one that reads "live, laugh, love." But mindfully working to develop gratitude offers genuine rewards. It delivers palpable, sometimes life-changing results—that is to say, an ability to feel joy.

As with four-leaf clovers and Waldo, the more you look for joy, the easier it gets to find. I started simply, years ago, by looking to scrape even a scintilla of pleasure from a day in prison. What I learned is that, unlike in a scavenger hunt, joy offers durable value in the form of heightened resilience.

The Ninth is a delightful work you probably know, even if you're not a fan of classical music. Pieces of it feature in the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. The film's delinquent protagonist, Alex, is subjected to a torturous aversion therapy meant to burn away his criminal inclinations. In a scene now cinematically infamous, Alex is forced to watch hours of horrendous, violent film clips, scored with the music of his cherished musical hero, Ludwig van Beethoven, including the symphony's fourth movement, the instantly recognizable (in this case ironic) "Ode to Joy." The effect is that Alex can no longer hear Beethoven without becoming extremely nauseated, and we viewers can't unsee the terror he endured while being reprogrammed.

Alex and I both changed dramatically during our time in prison. He was locked up a criminal; I was locked up despite not being one. His change was forced; mine was organic and gradual. He came to loathe Beethoven; I came to love all of Beethoven's symphonies and listen to them often. I haven't watched or read A Clockwork Orange in decades. I wonder what other antitheses I'd spot.

These days, I find joy whenever I step outside and smell fresh air. Turning on a faucet, I experience joy at having access to clean, running water. When my eyes refocus after meditation, I often take a deep, relaxed breath and smile. I look for opportunities everywhere. There are hard days, as well as challenging weeks, but it's amazing how often I find those moments of joy.

Missouri Prison Tech

Prison's a backwater, for sure, but developments and inroads by rights organizations and for-profit corporations have changed a few things for those of us on the inside. Our access to technology has made especially impressive strides. Here in Missouri, the introduction of tablets marked an apparent turning point in how the Department of Corrections meets the present.

Following a clunky start, prisoners in Missouri are able to do quite a bit on those tablets. We can now make phone calls, listen to FM radio, access public domain books, rent movies and TV shows, send and receive e-mail, research law, buy mobile games, listen to podcasts, subscribe to a news feed, and purchase music. A lot of the features cost money that many prisoners don't have, but having the free features beats having nothing at all.

Because the tablets don't offer even the most basic, firewalled internet access, quite a few people are enthusiastic about a newer app, Edovo, which appeared in the beginning of 2025. Edovo offers video, audio, and text on myriad topics curated for incarcerated users. There are MasterClass courses, guided meditations, LinkedIn Learning classes, Grow with Google videos, Veritasium content, <<link to OpenStax textbooks, prep courses for Modern States Education Alliance's CLEP exam, reentry resources, digital magazines, works of classic literature, WikiHow articles, and a lot more. In some ways, Edovo is YouTube (plus e-books) for prison, serving educational, self-improvement, and spiritual interests—and no cat videos.

The Reentry Center, where I work, has virtual reality goggles for Transfr career simulations. Anyone interested in exploring different fields of employment can make an appointment to test them out. The sims include: installing rooftop solar panels, plating a signature dish at a restaurant, demolishing a bridge, assisting with knee surgery, and numerous points in between. I've read about other states using VR to give prisoners pre-release virtual tours of transitional housing and simulations of activities that might induce anxiety, such as going to a laundromat or using self-checkout at a store.

The most recent addition to prison's tech landscape that I've learned about is a service called Beyond Bars AI. It's pretty much what you'd expect from the name. Artificial intelligence is everywhere else, so why not in prison? Paid subscribers get to e-mail prompts to an AI that responds directly to them via our tablets. Not everyone in prison can ask an outside friend or relative to play proxy for ChatGPT, so this service presumably saves people time and effort, and empowers the incarcerated person to do their own research.

Just last week, I learned that Beyond Bars AI introduced a voice feature, a concept that sounded a little gimmicky to me. By calling a phone number and saying your DOC number, state, and name, you get ten minutes with Nova, an AI ready to converse about... whatever, I guess. The call is charged to your account at the usual rate of 5¢ per minute, but the voice AI service is free until the end of the year.

I had fifty cents to lose, so I gave it a shot over the weekend. I have several people in my circle who say they're only too happy to relay my prompts to AI, but there was something undeniably appealing about using such a tool on my own. (Autonomy is a powerful thing.) The ten minutes flew by as I asked Nova questions and got not only the information I wanted but additional ideas I wouldn't have considered on my own. This might be my new Saturday thing—at least until free usage ends in 2026.

Nova got me thinking about possibilities. A large percentage of people in prison have undiagnosed mental illness, and there's virtually no way for them to get therapy to help overcome underlying issues that brought them here. Someone with an inclination and good funding could set up a valuable (not to say profitable) system to provide the incarcerated population with AI therapy sessions at no cost to them. The hardened convict, unwilling to risk vulnerability by exploring his feelings with another human, might open up to a nonjudgmental AI. I expect that a DOC implementing such a system would see its recidivism rate decrease. Violence and other antisocial behaviors in its facilities would likely go down, too.

This might be an audacious idea; I'm guilty of having those, from time to time. But what a fantastic benefit it could have for people inside and outside alike!

Technology is only as good as the intentions we wield it with. Tech advancements that have made it through the once impenetrable razor-wire barrier are significant. But much is yet to be desired. The pricing structures of a lot of these services isn't great. In many cases it's exploitative. Moving forward, we'll need to remedy that. A lot of the software is junk, too, so more quality control is called for. These are solvable problems.

Putting more automated processes in place could cut down on issues caused by chronic corrections staff shortages. Integrating systems to better manage administrative tasks—health services requests, case manager correspondence, and such—could ease staff members' workload. Adding access to tools that enhance prisoners' sense of autonomy would surely make prison safer and more beneficial for its residents, its employees, and society.

It's Life; Don't Make It Weird

In spite of prison etiquette's prohibition against asking about other people's time, a lot of guys either ignore or don't know the the rule. When they ask me, I get cagey. I don't like telling people about my sentence, especially short-timers.

What I'm about to say might seem strange to you, but having life without parole (LWOP, for short) used to not be a big deal. Yes, it's the stuff of nightmares and waking existential horror; I just mean that LWOP used to be more commonplace. Everyone I met, my first week in prison, had at least a forty-year sentence. I was just one more kid coming down with a lifetime on his back.

Here in Missouri, the Department of Corrections assigns each prisoner a custody score between one and five, which determines the security level of the facility they're housed. The state's level-five institutions are Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center (where I'm currently confined); South Central Correctional Center; Southeastern Correctional Center; Potosi Correctional Center; Jefferson City Correctional Center; and Crossroads Correctional Center. Being confined to any of these used to mean you were surrounded by level-five inmates—"the worst of the worst," as some say.

However, sometime in the 2010s, probably as a cost-cutting maneuver, the state changed its classification system by doing away with custody level four. Call it "creative placement." The DOC reclassified every level-four inmate and transfered more than a few. Most former level-fours were bussed to maximum-security prisons, to serve time alongside lifers and death-row residents. Those of us who'd been in the system for a while felt the sea change.

Fights and other violent incidents spiked. Drug use worsened. Gang activity increased. Administrative segregation (aka, "the Hole") filled up to the point of needing expansion. The great irony of these circumstances was that it wasn't longtime level-fives causing the ruckus. The former level-fours, mostly younger people, with their comparatively minor offenses and shorter sentences, ran wild while the elder convicts shook their grizzled heads in bewilderment. Codes of conduct went out the window. Over the next ten years, Missouri prisons became the Wild West.

I work with guys who are on the verge of release. Most are within a year of the door. If they found themselves in my shoes, some prisoners say they'd have a hard time dealing with people who are preparing leave. I don't. As I blogged about before (in a post entitled "The Staggering Heartache (or Not) of Coaching Returning Citizens"), helping them actually makes me feel good.

There are awkward moments, though. For instance, during a momentary lull in our Career Exploration class last week, Adam, a quiet, easygoing guy in his mid-twenties, spoke up to ask, "Hey, Byron, how much longer before you get out?"

Our lesson was about the importance of professional networking, so his question might've come from a desire to practice shop talk. Realizing that Adam is only a few months from his release date, I wondered how to tell him without making him feel guilty for broaching a potentially touchy subject.

My reply ended up being a sly demurral, followed by a speedy return to the curriculum: "Okay, we were talking about mentors. What are some ways that we can reach out to people who can help us in our careers?"

At the end of class, everyone gathered their folders and journals and made for the door. Adam hung back. He approached me with a look of nervous contrition. "I shouldn't have asked that," he said. "Brett elbowed me in the side and whispered what was up. I'm really sorry."

So Adam's classmate answered the question for me—kind of a thoughtless move. If I wanted the length of my sentence to be a secret, someone spilling the beans could've caused serious offense. Fortunately for Brett, it's not for my own benefit that I keep my time on the down-low.

Poor Adam couldn't have predicted that he wouldn't want to know the answer. Now the disparity of our sentences loomed over our conversation. He felt bad for bringing it up. This is why I prefer that people not ask.

As much as anyone can be, I'm at peace with the truth of LWOP. What never gets easier to handle are people's startled reactions. The phrase "life without the possibility of parole" inspires pity. (The same response probably greets the phrases "stage four cancer" or "aspiring novelist.") People who hear it act differently.

If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's to check your assumptions. Even in an echo chamber, no two people are identical. Perspectives differ across infinitely variable personal dimensions. My experience is not your experience; my time is not your time.