Divided We Conquer? A Meditation on Society in the Over-Share Age

Originally, this week off was to be solely designated for finishing my second novel. Then, of course, I became hugely distracted by my Strat and just kind of went with it. Playing guitar is probably the best way that I've found to relieve stress and find my sense of self. Kind of a mental health sort of thing, you know? It's good to have a stay-cation every now and again to remind you about what's important.

Writing and music are both important parts of my life, there is no doubt, but I just need to let things unfold naturally, and just focus more on writing how I write and playing guitar how I play guitar, producing the works that I produce. I have actually started to feel pretty comfortable doing these things how I do them, so I am just going to go with it, for better or worse. Naturally, my job is also important to me. Not just as a means to make ends meet, though, because I feel like I have finally found a company that will give me a chance to prove myself. When it all comes down to it, the thing that is most important to me is my life with my wife, our starting a family, or rather, starting a new branch of this large extended network of family I was both born into and have built up over the years, and the prospect of that, as much as we both want it, is also very nerve-racking with what is going on in the world today, and especially in our own country.

We, the individual parts of society, just don't see ourselves enough as one collective entity. We become too localized into our own lives, and our grievances--some real, some imaged--that we forget that, like any body, if any one part of us is weak or suffering, then we all are weak and suffering. We are supposed to all be branches from the same tree, but we have lost insight into what makes us us.We really just need to sit down and decide what it means to have the trait that we conveniently named after ourselves and then gave a meaning to that we have no hope of attaining if we expect too much from nature and each other and expect too little from ourselves.

We need to try harder to respect each other. After all, if we can't at least agree to do that, then why do we think we can accomplish anything else meaningful? If no one else's input is valuable, except those whose agree with our own opinion, then how do we expect to learn anything from someone who's had different experiences with life, having developed different ways of thinking about things, and can maybe even provide some perspective on our own lives---helping us find the things that we all share?

Those are the things that make it worthwhile to agree to disagree, at times, while also expecting more of ourselves, and holding each other to the same standards that we hold ourselves. If we let our standards be too low, then it is our own fault that we end up a certain way. There are some things that are worth hoping for, and that does include peace, but peace doesn't come without mutual respect.

I always wished that my kids would grow up in a world that was better than the way that I found it, but the prospect of that, right now, seems pretty dim. Hope isn't entirely lost, but we take it for granted that much more each day, and each day, that much more of it is lost. How long will it be until we have none?

Let's not find out, let's aim higher. In order to hit our mark, we all have to be trying equally as hard, and helping those who need the help, when they need it, and not ask why, but ask, instead, how are you? That's the kind of world where I want my kids to live, and while I am sure it is idealistic, there is nothing wrong with having ideals. What else should we be aiming for?

September 24, 1991

Two albums that have been pivotal to my life came out on the very same day, my ninth birthday, 25 years ago today. While it's true that I would not discover them for maybe a few more years, they eventually became pivotal in my life, both as an appreciator of music and a wannabe musician/songwriter. Probably even as a writer, too.

I was always kind of into music anyways, because I was always sort of just surrounded by it, and I loved Disney and Don Bluth movies. When dad wasn't home, I would sometimes run around the house and sing the songs from the movies, sometimes at the top of my lungs, to the detriment of my siblings and my mom. However, both of my parents and my older brother all listened to music a lot, too. While we also watched plenty of TV, the stereo, on average, was on way more often.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Nirvana's Nevermind, as it was to many, was a revelation. For one thing, I was a geeky, overly sensitive kid, and, finally, after years of taking shit from assholes, I had found an outlet for my angst. There was also this sudden injection of testosterone and whatever other hormones that probably also made it necessary, and this album, and soon this genre of music, seemed to fulfill my need on a level that I had not previously experienced with any other music, or anything else, to that point in my life.

It may not have been the first album or the first band that drew my attention, but when it hit me, when I really listened to it the first time, it became one of the most important in life. Soon, others would join it.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

I was older yet when I discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magic. I had heard songs from it many times as my brother listened to it and the radio played "Give It Away" and "Under the Bridge" on heavy rotation, but it was another one that suddenly just made sense to me one day, and in a language I was just beginning to understand: as a bass guitarist.

At the age of 13, with money saved from my allowance from recycling pop and beer cans, I bought a 3/4 scale Kramer bass guitar from my brother. He had bought it and owned it for a while but never really played it, and decided to sell it, and I was the only one willing to pay what he was asking for it. It was cherry red all over, including the neck and the head stock, shiny, and cheaply-yet-sturdily made, and not until I had the vocabulary from playing it did the Red Hot Chili Peppers make sense to me.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

As far as I was concerned, Flea was just the greatest musician on the planet. It would take a few years before I was able to play anything remotely resembling anything by him, but I eventually taught myself how to play "Give It Away" pretty adequately.

Now, however many years later, when I listen to these two albums, although I don't get the same rush that I once did, I still sort of experience the memory of the rush. I can only image what it must have been like for those people in those bands, and how great it must have felt when they were making that music at that time, and I wonder if maybe they had gone through similar sorts of things to create these sounds, songs, albums that I have so identified with over my life.

Created by Gabe Gott.

As an artist, I appreciate the difficulty, and really, luck, that it sometimes takes to find the thing that others identify with about you. It is something that I have sought through my writing for years. and I finally feel like I might be getting close, but only time will tell. That's probably why I listen to music by bands like Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers when I write, because it helps me find and convert, then focus that energy in a way that makes my writing more powerful.

Maybe, if I am lucky, I can help even just one other person go through a difficult period in his/her life the way those bands and those albums did for me. That's why I do this, and why I will continue to do this. That, and my ego, of course.