[436] Beacon of Dope

Take an immediately hyperbolic sentiment like, “I don’t believe in free speech.”

I’ve been feeling my gut want to flirt with expressing and justifying this sentiment for the past couple days. I’m provoked by statements that I think I can show to be threatening, deadly. I have a waning conception of “freedom.” I’m so steeped in how “I” can “break down” or “justify” what the statement means to me. I feel a crippling sense of irony seeping into every new line.

Again, I’m falling over the edge of thoughts provoked by the world of music. Watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony specifically. Whether the artist being celebrated is alive or dead, it feels like a eulogy to me. Nothing is genuinely bad at ceremonies like that. The tears are real. They flow from the kind of emotion that springs from a place so much bigger than you or your song. Somehow you and everyone you’ve touched are sharing the same moment.

And that’s the dreamy way to state it. Is it somehow more or less real than other things I could say? Timeless classics I’ve never heard of don’t bring me to tears. I can understand the marketing behind including artists that span generations and styles. I’ve looked up the biggest names and attempted to listen deeply and hop into the boat of emotionality and passion that you can feel from each person expressing themselves about their respective hero. I’m, often, just not that into them.

There’s so much to be said about the personal nature of experience. To my mind, it’s the difference between creating for personal reasons and the infinitely different ways your creation can be experienced. I think you approach a danger zone that pits “popularity” against “truth” and can only mangle what either could mean.

There can be no doubt as to your reaction. You felt the tears fall, the chills on the back of your neck, the unstoppable butterflies and urge to dance. In the moment, it doesn’t have to mean anything “more.” I imagine it’s the same sort of rush from winning a championship or nailing a job interview. You don’t want to hear about the handicaps working against the other team or that the person they were really after couldn’t make it. Aspects that are just as true, just as immediate and relevant independent of your awareness of them.

I think this is why you can experience, though I haven’t lately, people who are scarily passionate about a band. It doesn’t matter to them how many came before, nothing has moved them “like this” before or since. How could you not understand!? Then be prepared to tread lightly in how you talk about their gem. Objectivity needs to be left outside. Just feel it. But I also think this is the difference between the litany of videos of crying little girls at a Taylor Swift concert compared to the zero crying older women videos after seeing Paul McCartney for the 40th time.

Here I begin again thinking about “truth.” Perhaps that woman was a shrieking crying girl back in The Beatles’ heyday. Perhaps the power of their music then is felt just as deeply as it is today, but her sway and lighter mean as much or more than the tears back then. Perhaps there’s an extremely detailed handbook for making superstars willing to put in the time with a dedicated industry geared towards hijacking the naive, fallible, and inattentive brain. Perhaps that doesn’t matter.

For all my “cynicism,” a word I still use under protest, I’m no less compelled by musical heroes. That is, I can listen to Ringo Starr sing in an annoying “old guy voice” wrapping up the celebration of Rock and Roll’s latest wave of paid respects and think “eh I’m really not into this performance or song...holy shit is it cool to see THE BEATLES and GREEN DAY playing together!” Look at all those legends trading solos and singing about how they get by with a little help from their friends too!

I want to maybe shift down a gear and hit a new tone. I’ve been thinking a lot about the last book I read on empathy. At the same time I’ve been listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts. At the heart of the messages I’ve received is to work harder on putting yourself into the other person’s shoes. Before you bang the drum of patriotism or rush to signify someone as “evil,” genuinely ask yourself how you’d behave, what you’re government would do, and what’s really at stake.

Here I see the power of music. It’s an open invitation to jump into someone else’s world, cynically contrived or not. Empathy splashed around to be basked in at your leisure or desperation. Justification rendered impotent and insulting. You could no more question divine love for orphans when you absolutely should.

I think transformative artists and compelling work needs to be respected, protected, and inducted. I like feeling a fire or comfort from the right song at the right time. I remain “stuck” more concerned with the truth about Imagine not dictating our foreign policy. I get by knowing most of my friends are stressed, broke, and more lonely than they’d let on. I can actually play American Idiot, and no matter how angrily I sing or loud I crank the amp, we’re still pretty fucking idiotic.

I come back to my truth. I don’t seek to disrespect or degrade the work that has moved me too. It’s just work in a very specific self-indulgent direction. Self-indulgent doesn’t have to mean “bad” or “selfish.” It just needs a more dramatic fissure than a liberal artist getting pissed off at a crazy person co-opting their message and sound.

I pick up on habits of self-justification. How you feel being all that matters. The difference between how an artist speaks to you about war and your appreciation for the reasons we engage in and perpetuate wars cannot be understated. It’s bathing in a pool of empathic feelings not tied to the deeper reality, deeper consequence. I can’t call you “wrong” about what U2 means to you, but I can know how fucked Live Aid left Africa. No one was really trying to walk around in Africa’s shoes, even if they really felt like they were doing something good.

There’s a kind of happiness and motivation that is unmatched when you’re working in service to the bigger picture. I hit large periods of not playing music because I feel too dishonest. I’m not expressing as much as copying or drilling. I’m not telling a story as much as I’m trying to distract myself. I don’t want to see an old nuclear silo, poorly maintained and understaffed in nowhere Ohio, “accidentally” turn the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame into a wasteland. The situation not made better by my favorite bands in hazmat suits standing atop the rubble vigorously belting out a protest song.

The equivocation remains at the level of feeling and awareness. I’m not telling bands to fix war. I’m telling you to not allow yourself the feeling that they might. Your brain doesn’t split hairs about what you feel or can be made to believe. Certain truths need a louder volume. They need to beat harder than your heart and your fist. They need to ring with the many voices of adopted and respected realities you’re not habituated in seeking or figuring out. We sing alone and will die together.