Releasing the Notes

The most recent concert I attended (at least by a touring band, I’ve been to a few local shows since) was for the Foo Fighters. A couple of summers ago I went with my brother-in-law and a friend and we enjoyed Dave Grohl in all his majesty. The show had all the trappings of a rock show, the guys behind us were smoking weed at a furious rate, we watched a guy grab beer at the beer cart at least five times before the Foo Fighters even made the stage, and there was the tangible spirit of anticipation for the headlining band to play.

I love that atmosphere. While I don’t partake in the substances, I do enjoy the atmosphere of rock shows. There is just something electric about it, watching people who lived out a dream of theirs and make music for a living.

My favorite song of the night was when they sang Best Of You.

I know that is one of their singles, and is kind of cliche to be a favorite song of theirs, but I love it so much.

I knew another friend from my neighborhood was at the show, so while I was waiting in my car to get out of the nightmare that is event parking, I started texting him about the show. He is a Foo Fighters super-fan of sorts, and has gone to a ton of their shows, and he said something I thought was funny – “I can tell they are getting older and I kinda feel guilty they have to scream their voices away for my entertainment.”

I hadn’t thought of that, I had just thought about how high energy their show was, and how I had that post-concert euphoria (probably not a contact-high from all the weed at the show). But it made me think, does the band get tired of playing shows? Do they hate that they have to come out and be at the top of their game consistently for months on end?

It has to be exhausting, right?

There is a story about Dave Grohl, the front man for the band. He was playing one night in Sweden back in 2015, and during the show he was being his high-energy self and ended up falling off the front of the stage and breaking his leg. He was only 2 songs into his 26 song set, and much of the show was still ahead of him. It would have been understandable for him to call it a night and go to the hospital, but that was not what happened. Grohl was pulled into the back, where he met with a doctor while the rest of the band kept playing some music. The doctor told him that he had a dislocated ankle and a broken leg, and that he needed to reset the ankle right away.

They shoved a handful of gauze in his mouth and he screamed through the reset, and then immediately asked, “Can I go back out now?”

The doctor told him that he had to secure the ankle, so Dave went to the obvious choice- the doc would be onstage with the rest of the band. He played the rest of the set sitting down with the doctor holding his ankle in place.

After the surgery and a short break, he played the rest of the tour from a “throne” he had made so he could keep the weight off his leg post-surgery.

I think that is a good example of how much he loves his job. And that is just one of the awesome examples of how much he loves his job. He wrote an autobiography where he tells of his experiences as a musician, including drumming for Nirvana to fronting Foo Fighters and other bands he played with for a while.

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This was one of my all-time favorite reads, and definitely my favorite autobiography. The best story comes close to the end of the book where he comes to a crossroads between a tour he is playing and a promise he had made to his daughters. He finds that the day he had promised to take his daughters to a school dance has him scheduled to play in Australia. He knows how important this promise is, and is determined to find a way to keep his word.

Working with his booking agent and the rest of the band, they figure out a master plan – a plan that has him playing a show, driving straight to the airport after the show, and arriving at home around the time the dance is to start. After the school dance he is rushed back to the airport, boards the plane, and lands in Australia with a little time to spare before his next show.

Flights to Australia are roughly 20 hours long. That means that he spent 40+ hours on a plane so that he could take his daughters to a school dance. He spent less than 4 hours stateside, but that night was important to him as a father. His daughters now know exactly how important they are to him. That moment in the book hit me right in the chest. What am I willing to do to keep my promises?

I don’t think I will ever face that situation, I won’t be asked to fly home from abroad to spend a couple hours with my kids before flying back. But do I need to do that for them to know how important to me they are?

Are they getting the best of me?

Yes, I know that is not what that song is actually about. The Foo Fighters wrote Best of You after making some appearances on John Kerry’s presidential campaign tour, and when he was interviewed about the song he called it a “song of resistance. It’s about the refusal to be taken advantage of by something that is bigger than you, or someone you’re in love with. It’s the fight in the face of adversity.”

That is a lot of what has been driving me lately, a refusal to be taken advantage of by something larger than me.

When talking to some old co-workers about leaving the profession, I was asked why. I gave a handful of responses generally meaning the same thing, but I phrased it once in a way that stuck with me afterward.

“I’m tired of having to fight for just a seat at the table, so I have decided to say ‘screw it’ and go build my own table somewhere else.”

I know I am not going to be able to completely divorce myself from the different systems in our world. My kids will still go to school, we are still very active and involved in our church, and I still pay my taxes, regardless of how reluctantly I do so. So what do I mean?

I’m choosing not to give them the power I have up to this point. I have decided that in the place that I live, in the time that I live, and in the political systems that I am subject to, I will not be able to completely remove myself from it. What I can do, however, is choose how much power I give them in my life.

I can choose to not do things that don’t serve me just because they are expected of me.

I can choose to not get emotionally involved in things I don’t have control over.

I can choose to do the things that make me happy regardless of how socially acceptable they are.

One of the phrases of the song that really sticks out to me is –

“You gave me something that I didn’t have/
But had no use”

Often the things we are given in life from outside sources have little or no use. I think of the large amount of medals and trophies I have thrown away over the years, the certificates of achievement or awards of merit sent to recycling bins.

I think of how many classes I took in high school and college because they were required, but the information was so outdated or opinion based that I really had no use for it. Or how many professional development classes I was required to attend led by people who had been out of the classroom so long that they had no idea what was actually going on anymore.

All of those things were supposed to be meaningful, but I personally had no use for them. They were meaningful to someone at some point, but by the time I had gotten to them they had lost their meaning.

A prime example is being an Eagle Scout.

Scouting was really important in my family. My dad was a life-long scouter, and I can’t think of a time he wasn’t actively involved in scouting. It was really important to him growing up, and it had been a really good experience for him. I, on the other hand, didn’t care much for scouting. The camps were fun, and I had fun doing the service projects. I just didn’t have the desire to go through all the steps to be an eagle.

I had confided that to a mentor of mine, Hamblin, and he voiced exactly what I had been feeling when he said, “It used to mean something, but now they give it away to anyone and it doesn’t mean as much.”

It’s like an associates degree. It used to mean that you had attended college and gotten a degree, which was a big deal, but now everyone has an associates degree, so it is useless. You can’t get anything above an entry-level job with just an associates.

So I didn’t do any of the work on my eagle for a long time. I started doing things that I wanted to do and were meaningful to me. I played a lot of music and went to a lot of concerts. I did a lot of art. I dated.

Then, as I was nearing 18 and the chance to earn my eagle scout was coming to an end, my father decided to put his foot down. I wasn’t going to be able to attend any more concerts until I was an eagle scout.

This was important to me because one of my favorite bands, The Early November, was breaking up and playing their last shows and my brother had gotten us tickets. So, for the sake of that show, I pushed through getting my eagle scout. I chose a service project that was entirely based on how quickly I could finish it, and finished off all the requirements as fast as possible.

And I went to the show.

When it came time to award me the Eagle Scout, I said no thanks. I said just hand me the paper and be done with it. My father told me we had to do the whole court of honor and ceremony, that we needed all the pomp and circumstance that goes with such a major accomplishment. When he wouldn’t agree to just do it without me, I tried to make it as difficult as possible (I was still an angsty teen and upset about having to do it in the first place), so I said I would only attend if there was an actual eagle at the court of honor.

My dad pulled through, tracking down a local who had a bird of prey that was close enough to count, and put on a ceremony for me.

I don’t have any of the paperwork to prove myself as an eagle scout anymore. I threw it all away.

I’ve gone to a couple of other eagle scout ceremonies since then, and there is a moment when everyone who has earned their eagle is asked to sit in a spot to form the Eagle’s Nest, and I join in, out of uniform, and unable to recite the oath or promise. I was once asked if I was really an eagle or if I had just done it to be a part of everything, and it took some convincing to prove I was really an eagle scout.

To my father, scouting was a defining moment for him. And I am glad it was, he was a good man for the things he learned in the scouting program. It gave him support and direction.

To expect that it would do the same for me is understandable. But I had clearly said “no thanks” and even explained why I thought it was a bogus award to him (can you really call it a service project if you are doing it for the purpose of receiving an award?), and it was clearly not doing for me what it had done for him. I remember at the time thinking that he was doing it just so I wouldn’t embarrass him, but I have grown enough now to know that it was him trying to give me the experiences and growing opportunities he had with the program.

It did give me a great lesson, though. What was a good experience for me may not be a good experience for someone else. I would love my kids to enjoy music as much as I do, but if they choose another interest, I need to let them have it. The lessons I learned in music can be taught other places as well, just as the lessons of scouting, or sports, or art, or rodeo, or any other hobby.

So I am removing myself from the table of tradition. Just because it has been done like that before, doesn’t mean I need to do it like that now. Times change, needs change, and experiences change. I don’t work 9-5 anymore, because the 8-hour work day doesn’t mean what it did when it was enacted. I am not looking to earn enough to buy a bigger house, in fact, we are looking to build a smaller house right now. I’m not looking to be rich and famous, I am just looking to support my family and find peace.

I feel like this week was a bit rambly, and I meandered a lot through my thoughts and ideas, but I hope you found something to connect with, something that is useful for you in some way.

And I hope that the only thing that is getting the ‘best of you’ is what is important to you.

The thing that deserves the best of you, is you.