How am I doing on subject lines here? Do we feel like we’re in a children’s book with all the rhyming? Great. I’ll run with it.
There is a small update on my relationship with Dave from my workout class but you will have to dig. To spare you from that, nothing has changed. Each day we run and high-five. Each day is a miracle.
WHAT HITS
In today’s piece, I talk about a concert I went to but I don’t mention the opener. Purposefully, because I wanted to place them here. Check out The Slaps. I’ve been listening to their most recent album, This is My First Day at Drawing on loop. The first song, “Nothing About Immortality,” makes me put my hands on my knees and say, “oh, wow.” The drummer stood up and sang, “Being Around,” with the same energy as a kid participating in a spelling bee that they desperately want to win and it was the loveliest little moment in a show I’ve seen in a long time.
A DRIP the perk of loneliness
There are waves of recommendations in your twenties, gesturing towards solitude as risk. Have you tried eating at a restaurant alone? What about going to a bar? Taking a walk? Are you willing to show the public you don’t have anyone? Are you willing to happen despite nobody being there to reflect that you exist?
It snowed so much in 15 hours last week that branches started breaking off the whole. All the pines looked like fake Christmas trees that had their arms accidentally attached upside down. During the thick of the storm, I walked around and shook branches to relieve them. They sprung up like they’d missed their alarm and left me covered in white. Within a day, it all had melted. Many branches survived, many did not. Undoubtedly, every sermon or homily in Denver this past Sunday was about bending versus breaking. In my experience, both reactions serve the path fine.
My dad dropped me off at the concert. On the corner, I downloaded the app I needed to get my ticket. People flocked around me shouting, “You guys, BOGO beers across the street if we say PETEY!” I considered this but then asked myself the question about babysitters and decided against it. Doors opened at 7, I walked in at 7:35, and at 7:37 I found myself smack dab in the middle of the pit, mere feet from where Petey would sing. I like this guy. His music has a sense of humor while also speaking quite plainly to the piece of you that is both fed up and trying. Good art tends to be good regardless of tactic, but the through line of work I admire knows how to joke around and yell at the same time.
People tend to need to be permitted to move or emote, white people especially. There is a special sect of white people in Denver who twirl light-up sticks at outdoor events. If they have more than two bumper stickers on their car, they’ll even twirl their toys indoors at seemingly inappropriate times. These folks can find the rhythm in the music, or, more so, create a secondary rhythm all their own that is completely disjointed from the real one. The rest of the white midwesterners need a little social push. Some guys tried to mosh during the first two songs. I don’t know what these dudes are trying to prove when they pull this out at shows where it isn’t the genre of music that welcomes this dance. The undercurrent of the social-physical conversation that takes place is,
LET’S MOSH, EVERYONE
Oh, not for me! I don’t want to get hit
BACK UP IF YOU’RE NOT INTO IT
Got it! Got it. Very cool, if you’d excuse me-
MAKE ROOM FOR US, THE PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY CHOOSING TO LIVE.
Yeah, totally, I just don’t want to get- *person who came to an indie rock show gets punched*
After the mosh failure, my surrounding frontmen and I realized we’d have to successfully feel the beat and do something about it. We silently rallied and proceeded to jump or bop to each song. Petey was awesome. I was not. Hyper-self-conscious and keyed up, I worked quite hard to enjoy myself.
I didn’t drink in high school. This is not a brag, it just never happened. The beautiful part about growing up in a small community is that everyone knows you. Simultaneously, it’s the most challenging element. You are one way, and if you turn in a new direction it is suddenly something grandiose and declarative instead of a small, divergent attempt. This is my issue with the internet, too. And I don’t mean I have a problem with the internet. I mean, it’s my problem with the internet. The former is confident, the latter is defeat. The world is now a small community. I get entirely too messed up about trying something new on. I’m announcing I’m going back to school. I’m announcing I found a person who loves me. I’m announcing my show is sold out. These are fine things, good things. But the thick, wiry hold the web has on me is more prominent than ever as I hack away at a few medical bills in a bedroom upstairs from my parents. Sprinting in ZONE 4 night after night, on a treadmill next to Dave, in a class whose name I cannot decipher (It’s called GTX. Go To XRay? Gym Tan Xray? Good To Xylophones? Wouldn’t it be BGTX? Be Good To Xylophones? I’ll crack it, Dave help me), wondering if part of my resistance to change is the fact that, eventually, won’t I have to follow up with it online? Who am I without it? One of those estranged people that doesn’t have it? Even more isolated from friendships I fail to nurture from miles away? Out of step with the artists whose work I love to support? Closed off and shut down? The entire argument is boring, start to finish. But I’m a stone’s throw away from 31 and the last time I didn’t have some sort of profile online was at age 12. I’m not so mad as I am curious. Of course, I have to keep it. But what if I don’t? Does my existence disappear without a profile to reflect it? Or, can I eat pizza alone? I’ll never know. For if I leave it, I’ll return. So, I didn’t drink in high school. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I was known to not drink so I just kept at it to avoid having to explain myself.
Then, I drank a lot. It was okay for me. It’s not okay for everyone but nothing awful happened except the one time I fell asleep in a bush. And as the saying goes, “you have to wake up in a bush to know you’re capable of falling asleep in a bush.” This situation broke me. If I had bent, perhaps I would’ve simply rested my forehead on the bush and taken a power nap. As mentioned earlier, both would’ve served the path. In each iteration learning, “if it is in a fish bowl, do not drink it.”
I listened to the book, “When Things Fall Apart,” by Pema Chödrön a few months ago. In it, Chödrön talks about the concept of “babysitters.” These are drugs you use or practices you have that take care of you, babysit you, while you’re trying to get out of living in awareness. This framework has been a great tool. I like a drug. I like a practice. But now, I can ask before either, “Am I feeling chill and present and open to fun or are we looking for a babysitter?” How pure, how true, how good of me. Soon, I will soak into bark and become as whole as the pines that I saved. Every decision to come will sing sturdy and wise. Bending and breaking? Ha. Try never moving at all. I’ll memorize all of Chödrön’s teachings and root on a hill for the breaths that remain.
Maybe someday. But not yet. What I mean is I should’ve immediately crossed the street and participated in the BOGO beer offer. Have you ever gone to a concert alone, stood in the front row, and awakened to the fact that it was somewhat on you to set the movement tone for a crowd of 1,600? No? My advice - take a drug. Definitely take a drug. Drink two pints of pale ale, it’s ok. If I had been with my friends, we would’ve pounced on the BOGO beer offer. We love each other! The sun is setting! Life is good! Why not BOGO beer at a bar called GiddyUp? But I wasn’t with my friends, I was alone. If it was a sound it would be a crack.
Do we keep learning new lessons or graduated versions of lessons past? I don’t know yet. Surely, I wrote a heated journal entry at 21 after my first meal alone at a restaurant. Likely something like, “The pizza literally tasted different because I was thinking about self-love.” Ten years later, the same lesson yet aged. Oh, right. Oh, right. Befriend her, always. If it was a picture she’d be startled and covered in snow.
WHAT’S UP, RYAN?
I’ve known Ryan for ten years. I love this portion of HITMAN because I get to keep writing sentences like that. Follow Ryan’s work. His eye is stark and rare. He cares so deeply about his craft. He knows how to put his head down and work with patience and persistence and I’ve admired that for as long as I’ve known him. This dude listens hard. When I am discouraged he gently and urgently says, “It sounds like you should make something,” and he’s almost always right.
1. What is something strange, cool, or funny that happened to you recently?
2. What advice would you give yourself one year ago?
Too many lines I want to pull from that. Make an effort. See you soon.