Today is Sunday, November 25, 2018, which is about one year, eleven months, and fourteen days since the last time I posted on Dizzy Development. I started this blog a little more than a year before my last post as a way to tell my story post-mission, and I don’t think I’ve abandoned doing that. Rather, I think I’ve simply found that my preferred outlet for publicly telling my story is Instagram. Instagram allows me to post photos with short, sweet captions that are filled with meaning. It also lets me tell my story in shorter segments by posting what I’m listening to on Spotify, posting pictures of things like my beard growth, and reposting things from accounts that are, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, "doing it for me."
But, Instagram has not (yet) mastered a way for people to tell their stories through longer pieces of writing, and, for that reason, I’m reverting back to my blog. For a moment, at least.
Today’s topic: music.
I post about music constantly, and I’ve definitely written on music before. I’m deeply inspired by live music and things like this: a thousand musicians in Italy playing “Learn to Fly” by Foo Fighters as a way to ask Dave Grohl to play a show there. I believe in the power of music and in its ability to speak to people, unite people, and create shared experiences. I am writing today on something a little more personal, though: music’s ability to narrate our lives and serve as a backdrop to our growth and experiences-- mine, in particular.
Music, more so than books, movies, and television shows, has a way of transporting me back to moments. The beginning lines to “Little Saint Nick” by the Beach Boys takes me back to decorating the Christmas tree with Mom, Blake, Kiley, and Biz. Our copy of the Beach Boys’ Christmas Album sits in storage most of the year with the rest of our Christmas decorations, but as soon as we start decorating, we throw it on repeat for the rest of December.
The first couple Lower Lights albums take me back to my mission days in Newcastle, South Africa with Elder Marumo. The days I remember most vividly are Sundays-- the car rides during the cold mornings on the way to church and the car rides that would follow on the way to some of our favorite members and investigators, backdropped by A Hymn Revival, Volumes I & II.
The Lower Lights Christmas albums, on the other hand, take me back to Umlazi with Elder Okeng. The two of us had fun. It would be sweltering outside and investigators would bunk the actual hell out of our appointments all day long, but we’d make the most of it, usually by gauging how high people on the streets were, or fighting over who would get to marry the girl singing on “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” and “The Holly and the Ivy.”
311’s Stereolithic album takes me back to the mission days as well. It was released while I was serving in Newcastle, I believe, and I may or may not have had it loaded on an iPod I kept in my pillowcase. Stereolithic and Jack Johnson’s From Here to Now to You album gave me some much-needed musical release during particularly rough days.
Some albums take me back to places deeper than moments, though. I was biking home from work a few weeks ago, blasting the Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways album for the who-knows-how-many-th time, and I started thinking back on the last year or so of my life and the albums that have served as its backdrops.
Summer 2017 was the Hamilton soundtrack. I was living in Washington, DC at the time, interning in the United States Senate. A large part of our jobs as interns was to give Capitol tours to constituents. So, to be the best tour guide I could possibly be, I took a swan dive into American history. The stories behind the Hamilton songs, in particular. I listened to the soundtrack on the commute to work, at work, and on the way home from work. I used my free time to read about things like the Compromise of 1790 and Alexander Hamilton’s other legislative victories. Lin-Manuel Miranda paints Hamilton as an impassioned character with ambitious idealism in his relationships and in his hope of creating something that would outlive him, and that resonated with me. That summer was filled with new friends and new experiences, and it was capped with a trip to New York see the musical at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. I laughed, I cried, I waited five hours in the cancellation line to get tickets, and I had the time of my life.
Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 were both backdropped by Nahko’s My Name Is Bear album. By this point, Nahko had become one of my favorite musicians and penned lyrics that had deeply impacted me. Some of my favorite words he’s written are these, from “Manifesto”:
Don’t waste your hate
Rather, gather and create
Be of service
Be a sensible person
Use your words and don’t be nervous
You can do this
You’ve got purpose
Find your medicine and use it
Some words that have carried me through tough times are these, from “Wash It Away”:
We danced a ghost dance in two separate countries
To this old song
So familiar to memory
The road will teach you how to love and let go
It can be lonely but it’s the only thing that we’ve ever known
It can be lonely but it’s the only thing that we’ve ever known
Our mamas told us, “Let go of jealousy”
But for vagabonds and vagrants that won’t come so easy
We’ve come from nothing, nothing
We have come from nothing, nothing
Teach me to love you in a different way
Same cuts, same guts, same crazy
Same cuts, same guts, same crazy
I traveled halfway across the country and back only to find love undefined
And I’m ok with that
Because I’m gonna be a guardian
Be a man among men
Be a guardian
Be a man among men
Or be a woman among women
Be a guardian
Be my friend
Nahko has a special reverence for life and the meaning we ascribe to it that is missing from a lot of music these days. His words, his voice, and his music are beautiful.
My Name Is Bear was released that September and is a collection of songs Nahko wrote about a decade earlier when he was in his late teens/early twenties. Between relationships, road trips to Alaska, mushroom trips, the passing of his adopted father, and his dreams, Nahko writes about some deeply personal experiences. These stories of self-discovery are something I connected with, especially after reading his accompanying biography with more detailed stories. For two solid semesters, My Name Is Bear became the soundtrack to my life.
As April rolled around, a new album caught my attention. Green Day’s American Idiot is the album that got me into music when I was in fifth grade. I remember watching the music videos for “American Idiot,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on the computers at Bolton Elementary before class and falling in love with rock ‘n’ roll. I kept up with Green Day over the years, and Billie Joe Armstrong has consistently been one of my favorite musicians. His passion and energy on stage are inspiring.
In April 2018, Billie Joe started posting on Instagram about a side project he was working on with a couple members of Prima Donna called The Longshot. Once the lead single, “Love is for Losers,” was released, I knew this was going to be something good. The entire album, Love is for Losers, was some of the most raw, exciting material Billie Joe had written in years. It was thrown together quickly and without the constraints of a major label. It was pure, unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll. And the best part? The Longshot were heading on a small venue tour that summer, with one of their first shows to be in Washington, DC a couple weeks after I would be moving there.
I had seen Green Day in stadiums from nosebleed seats before, and those shows were incredible. But being second row at their show at the Black Cat in DC, right in front of the tiny stage they played on? Unreal. I was dancing two feet away from the man that introduced me to music. To borrow some lyrics from the man himself, I “had the time of my life.’
I listened to Love is for Losers more than perhaps any other album the rest of the summer. It was, simply, fun. Billie Joe’s posts about how fun it was to play the Longshot shows reminded me why I love rock ‘n’ roll. It’s raw. It’s energizing. It makes me want to grab life by the balls and live it to its fullest.
I still listen to Love is for Losers pretty regularly (I actually just finished it again writing this post), but another album soon took over as my backdrop: Sonic Highways by Foo Fighters.
I am convinced that Dave Grohl, founding member and lead singer for the Foo Fighters, is God. Similar to Billie Joe, he loves rock ‘n’ roll, believes mightily in the power of music, and puts on an incredible live show. The Foo Fighters don’t stop playing for three hours straight at their concerts. Two to three songs in to the show, Dave owns the crowd. The entire Vivint Smart Home Arena would have done quite literally anything Dave asked us to do when I saw the Foo Fighters in Salt Lake last December. He’s good, he knows he’s good, and we all knew he’s good.
I had listened to 2014’s Sonic Highways album before this fall, obviously, but I hadn’t watched the Sonic Highways mini documentary series until then.
Sonic Highways is eight songs long, and each song was recorded in a different city: “Something from Nothing” in Chicago; “The Feast and The Famine” in Washington, DC; “Congregations” in Nashville; “What Did I Do?/God As My Witness” in Austin; “Outside” in Los Angeles; “In The Clear” in New Orleans; “Subterranean” in Seattle; and “I Am A River” in New York City. Dave and the band filmed hour-long episodes of the mini series in each city, documenting the history of their music scenes.
Once I started my new job at Namati and found that I had a lot more leisure time, and I used a lot of it to listen to music simply for the sake of listening to music. I dove deep into the Foo Fighters. I watched all of Sonic Highways. I watched a couple other documentaries about the band. I started listening to their other music. I started noticing guitar parts I hadn’t noticed before. I got a little restless just listening to their music, though, and wanted to play more of it (pun intended--Dave released a 20-minute solo rock performance called “Play” in September where he encourages young people to do just that-- pick up an instrument and play some damn music).
I started spending a lot of time at Guitar Center. I realized that with a salaried income, I might be able to afford one of those nicer electric guitars I could never justify buying in high school or college. Between playing Gibsons, Fenders, and Gretsches, I spent hours at the Guitar Center in Alexandria (pretty close to Arlandria-- a neighborhood between Arlington and Alexandria that Dave Grohl actually wrote a song about on Foo Fighters' Wasting Light album). I eventually caved and splurged on a Chris Shiflett Signature Fender Telecaster Deluxe.
For the last month or so, I’ve played my new toy almost everyday. I've played a lot of Foo Fighters songs, a lot of AC/DC, a lot of Zeppelin, some Hendrix, and some Stevie Ray Vaughan. I'm elated. I love listening to music, I love playing other people’s music, but I think my next beast to conquer is writing my own music. I’ve written a few riffs I like, but I’ve never actually completed a song. Maybe I should, though. Start ascribing meaning to my life through my own music rather than someone else's. Seems like an exciting new adventure, eh?
Anyway, all of this to say that my life is narrated by music. I connect moments to songs and periods of my life to albums. Lyrics impact me deeply and passion in musicians inspires me. Life is more meaningful with a soundtrack, and I am eternally grateful for all of the beautiful minds and musicians that have made my life a little more colorful and a little more exciting with their music.
Keep up with me on the ‘gram. I’ll certainly keep posting more there than I write here, but it’s nice to write some things out in long-form every once in a while.
In the words of Mr. Nahko Bear,
Our adventure's only begun
Our spirits are soaring
But mine, it's racing
Where will we go next?
