Releasing the Notes

I had a fun experience last night being the sound technician for a local concert my town puts on. My friend is usually the sound tech for these shows, but he was out of town, and as I have experience with running sound from my college days, he asked me to fill in for him.

The band was a local Utah band called The TRI Chevy’s. They weren’t really my style of music, but I still had a really enjoyable time at the show. They played mostly 50s and 60s rock and blues, and were well practiced and very well put together. But that was not what was fun about them.

I found myself watching the drummer through many of the songs. Many of the songs he was singing along with the music as he wailed on his drums, and you could tell he was having a good time. He just loved being there, loved playing the drums, and loved the songs the band played. The absolute joy on his face as he played an extended drum solo during Wipe Out, which is already a difficult song for many drummers.

They were good, but the part I enjoyed most was the love he had for playing.

It reminded me of an intern I worked with a few years ago. I would go chat with her after school once or twice a week just to make sure she still had her head above water, because the intern year of teaching is an absolute nightmare. One day while we were chatting, she mentioned a student who came up to talk to her during studio time every day. I immediately went in with some advice on how to deal with a student who won’t let you talk to any other students in the class, when she stopped me and told me it was a favorite part of her day.

That student was passionate about things, and my coworker just loved listening to her talk about something she was passionate about.

I don’t remember what it was, there are kids who talk nonstop about all sorts of topics, from cats to Minecraft to music. I once had a kid spend the entire class loudly sharing random (mostly true) facts about the Titanic.

And while this teacher wasn’t particularly interested in the topic the kid was talking about, she loved the passion the student had. She said she just loved to listen to someone talk about something that way.

Something I was always good at as a teacher was making connections. I genuinely enjoyed the students and talking about their lives, and I have always been good at filing away random information a student shared with me to bring back up later with them. However, I had usually struggled with listening to kids talk about the same thing day in and day out.

Like I am glad you like Pokemon, bud, and it has some cool art styles we can play with, but I don’t need to know the backstory of how you caught each individual Pokemon in your game.

After my coworker had pointed out the fun of listening to someone who is passionate about something, though, those conversations became more fun. I started to enjoy chatting about Five Nights and Freddy’s, or the latest Taylor Swift album, or anything at all. I found I didn’t need to have an interest in the topic to have an interest in the passion.

What I do have an interest in is seeing them come alive. To see that genuine smile hit their eyes, to see them being animated with their hands while they talk. To see the joy they have found.

So while I didn’t necessarily look forward to listening to a band play Secret Agent Man or Surfin USA, I did love watching them play. Their passion for playing was what I was there for.

After the show, I had to clean up and put all the chords away, and all the housekeeping parts of being a sound tech. While I was doing that, I was thinking about that passion, and what it is that I am really passionate about? What topic is it that gets me excited and worked into a frenzy when I am talking about it with someone else?

Here is the trick, though. As an ADHD adult, I tend to have little hyper fixations that I go through. I will spend a month reading and studying about how our eyes process color, and then spend the next month super interested in Northern Ireland. For a period of time I will be incredibly excited to talk about the changes in how nutrient dense apples today are compared to apples 60 years ago, then the passion kind of leaves. I still have the knowledge stashed away in my random facts box that is stored in my brain, but I am not as eager to pull that box out and share it as I used to be.

Right now my interests are in permaculture landscaping and chickens. I have spent hours designing the chicken coop I want to build when I can, and I have a whole list of plants that I want to look more into. I spent a day listening to 6 hours of an online class about growing elderberries a couple weeks ago, and I don’t even know if I will plant any. It was just fun to listen to.

And soil. Don’t get me started on soil. I have been obsessed lately.

So how do I sort through all of my hyper fixations to land on the things I am truly passionate about, and not just the thing I am curious about at this moment?

I’m still nailing it down. I have figured out a few things, I know God, family, and a groovy bass line are definitely in there. Mental health has been a huge thing for me the last 15 years. I know writing and creating art are constant. The rest will come.

That intern taught me a lot though.

Another thing that has really stuck out to me was just a passing phrase that took me completely off guard because she made a slight change to it.

I knew the day had been rough for her, so I grabbed a Dr Pepper from my stash and took it down to her room. She wasn’t there, so I just left it on her desk and started walking back to my room. As I walked past the faculty room, she was in there making copies or something so I poked my head in and said something like, “Heard it was a rough day, left you a Dr Pepper on your desk. You’re doing great.”

The response at first sounded like the typical “Thank you, I appreciate that.” I was halfway back to my room when I caught the small change. She hadn’t said I appreciate that, she said “I appreciate you.”

It was genuine and directed specifically at me as a person, and not at some act I had done. That really hit me right in the feels. Her genuine nature and personality had taken a basic platitude and turned it into a really meaningful compliment.

The power of words.

It is a beautiful thing.

At the end of the show last night, the drummer was playing another extended drum solo in their last song when he dropped his sticks and pulled out two massive drumsticks instead. They were a good 4 feet long and he couldn’t even wrap his hand all the way around them. He was laughing to himself as he smashed out the last of the song with these giant tools, and it was the perfect ending to the set.

He took as long as I did cleaning up. Drums are a lot more work to clean up than the rest of the setup, but what took him so long was how happy he was to talk to everyone who wanted to chat with him after the show. He took pictures with some of the younger kids at the show, complimented his granddaughter on her dancing, took the time to thank me for doing the sound, and was just a genuinely good person.

That was beautiful.

So, be genuine. Be passionate. Be genuinely passionate.

Because when you are, it is beautiful.

Here is a video of them playing a song I found on YouTube. It doesn’t show his passion, which I thought was a bummer, but it gives you an idea of the music.