Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Intermission 1 - Sometimes we all need a little Stairway

(I'm using intermission posts to discuss things that I don't want to wait to post and that don't necessarily fit in my current series of posts.)

I started this post several months ago and I’m finishing it now because I feel that it’s time. I’ve been going through my old music on my computer, playing song after song, trying to rid old demons from my bones, and I’m left awestruck at all the memories that come flooding back.

I used to live in Chatham-Kent, which is only about an hour and a half from Detroit. As a result, I was able to get some of the best radio stations you could ask for, and with my little trusty alarm clock (which I still have ... thing must be like 22 years old) I would often stay up quite late on non-school nights and just listen to whatever I could pick up. Mainly it was classic rock but I also tried to incorporate a little oldies, with splashes of motown. It was amazing. It was just me and an endless stream of some of the greatest songs of all time.

See, for me, music has always been a powerful force in my life. Growing up, I spent good chunks of time by myself, and music was something I gravitated too with natural ease. Beyond simply being a form of entertainment, it became an outlet for my feelings, blending in seamlessly with the events of my life. It was a sage teacher, offering advice and providing words to the feelings I had but could not communicate. Furthermore, it never failed to elicit some of the strongest emotional reactions from me that I’ve ever really felt. Whether some of those now are simply nostalgic remnants of the past, I’m not sure. But here’s a little trip down memory lane.

- Whenever I hear More Than a Feeling by Boston, I still think of a girl who I had the biggest crush on back in early high school.
- I used lyrics from NIB by Black Sabbath in a letter to another girl who I liked for several years
- Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent was a staple song before every swim race
- God Only Knows by The Beach Boys, Doctor My Eyes by Jackson Browne and Learning to Fly still make my eyes water because they are such beautiful songs
- Eruption by Van Halen and Riff Raff by AC/DC still sends shivers up and down my body
- Baba O’Riley by The Who being called Teenage Wasteland still pisses me off and The Seekerby The Who still amazes me at not being a more popular song
- Anything by The Stooges or The Velvet Underground still reminds me of being in high school, dreaming of getting out someday and moving on to greater things
- Anything by Led Zeppelin still makes me feel happy, while Achilles Last Stand reminds me of a girlfriend in undergrad

When I initially started this post, I’d spent the night catching up with my friend Ali, who was in Ottawa visiting. We’d parted ways for the night and I was waiting to catch the bus. Now, if you know anything about me, you’ll know that I detest waiting for the bus, preferring to walk when it’s convenient. I reached into my pocket and found my 80GB iPod, fully charged before I left. So I did what seemed the best thing to do ... I started walking, under a bright moon, along an open canal. As I walked, I drifted between Jimi Hendrix to Alice Cooper, from Alice Cooper to KISS, and settling from KISS on Led Zeppelin. And I found my way to a live version of Stairway to Heaven. And I listened. And I felt good. See, it had been a rough few months, and for some reason, the Stairway made me feel better. It reminded me of my past. It reminded me of better times and the fact that good times would be coming again. It reminded me that, wherever I go and whatever I face, I’ll always have the music as a constant in my life. And I walked on, thinking of all the people getting out of clubs, where they’d spent hours listening to incomprehensible remixs of old classics and the latest pop tunes. Music that lacked the soul and passion and feeling of the old stuff. And I felt all the better, like I’d rediscovered a great treasure that I had lost, and that it was all mine for as long as I wanted. And the demons of that time were bested and quieted. And I was reminded that sometimes we all need a little Stairway, if for no other reason then to help us keep on keepin’ on.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Part 2 - But that's the way it's always been done!

The dehumidifier created a new world. Or, more accurately, it allowed me to see a new world. It broke the traditional world that I had always lived in and showed me a world of unlimited potential. And that’s the enemy isn’t it? Tradition.

See, here’s the problem. You start life out, and if you have decent at all parents, they’ll probably tell you that you can do anything and that the sky’s the limit, and so on. And that’s half true. The sky is the limit and the world presents a nearly unlimited potential to do things, given certain circumstances. Now, I understand that not everyone can do everything and that people are limited by various factors but I appreciate the enthusiasm and optimism. I just wish that people actually believed it and that it just wasn’t some clichéd bullshit that parents feel they need to feed their children. Because a lot of parents are dishonest about it. They usually have an ideal of what they want their kids to achieve and how they’ll measure the success of their children. For example, if your big goal in life is to work at a 7-11 or become a manager at McDonald’s, most parents won’t be super supportive of that. Hell, most of society won’t be super supportive of that. Because that’s not the proper goal is it? That is not the norm of what people want, so to want it draws scorn from those around you. I have experienced this, and I know lots of friends who have as well. You’re living your life, and you go visit the folks, and at some point they casually bring up something in your life that needs changing. “How’s that girlfriend of yours? Gonna get married soon?”, “How’s that job of yours? You know, you should go back to school and get a business degree.”,” How’s school going? When are you going to get out there and get real job?”

And it’s not just the parents. It’s a lot of people. Huge swaths of our society cling to these ancient traditions of what a life is meant to be and how it should be done. Beliefs are passed on from one generation to the next and they’re taken without any question. I’ll cover a few examples that have really impacted me in future posts. While I understand that these beliefs make life a bit easier and provide a template for living, I see that they can also make life so much duller and tedious, at least, if you don’t think about them. Traditions are a fine thing, and traditional views are cool, if you really think about them and decide that they are what you want. But to wander along without ever questioning what’s possible and the potential for what life could be is to doom yourself to a lesser existence that you can’t really say you chose. Or maybe you did and the lack of choice is a choice. But what do I know? All I can really say is that, at the end of the day, I feel it’s better to have done it my way and attempted to recognize and achieve my full potential, then to be a cog in a machine, punching my card and waiting to die. And I don’t want that last bit to be seen as some type of jab at time card/ blue collar jobs because it shouldn’t be. Those jobs are necessary and totally cool. Being a CEO of a multimillion dollar company when you hate it and would rather be swinging a hammer is a let down in my opinion. But that’s just me. And as always, what do I know?