- What has been a personal career struggle that you have battled with the most and how has it helped mold your character for the better good presently?
As tempting as it is to point at some external obstacle and blame it for whatever difficulties I’ve encountered in my path I have come to realize that attitude is not productive. It’s like when you meet someone and all they ever talk about is being a victim, or how everyone else is so stupid and they’re the only sane, intelligent person on earth. That shit gets old real fast and frankly: constantly self identifying as a victim (even when you ARE victimized) usually does more harm than good. Save that victim’s act for the courtroom.
So the honest answer to your question is this: like all full time creative professionals my biggest obstacle is – and has always been – (drumroll….) MYSELF!
Usually it’s overthinking, irrational aversions, or assuming I ‘know all about’ something when actually I was just scratching the surface. Time and again I’ll have some HUGE breakthrough and then find myself in this bittersweet moment of realization that there was absolutely nothing stopping me from having the breakthrough years ago except for the fact that I couldn’t quite grasp the concept yet. These moments of realization are why I started teaching my weekly class at TheWeeklyDownload.com. It’s download 300 this week too! So much to celebrate…
Right!
So for those of you readers out there I will say this:
Don’t believe everything you think. You are not your brain. You are not your thoughts.
Don’t feel like your value as a human being depends on being ‘the best’ at anything or being ‘right’ all the time. It doesn’t. Anyone who judges your worth based on how good you are at music, or how hot you are or how much money you have is not making valid judgements and is probably a garbage person themselves with a big ol’ bag of dog shit where their heart is supposed to be. IF (and this is a BIG ‘if’) you’re going to judge anyone it should be on how they treat those from which they have nothing to gain. If you’re a kind person and you’re not just trying to use other people to get ‘on top’ all day then guess what: you have intrinsic value that nobody can ever take away from you. When you realize the truth of that statement you’ll be able to offer yourself that same compassion and your ego can allow yourself to be wrong sometimes. When you’re not resisting being wrong all the time (and lying to yourself about it) you can realize when you’re wrong about something, change your mind, and then grow as person. It’s ok to be wrong sometimes!
It’s ok to be bad at stuff while you’re learning. I’d rather hang out with a kind, loving idiot than a genius asshole any day of the week.
- What is your biggest inspiration to this day that has helped shape your style of music and why?
This one’s a bit easier for me to answer, but my answer will probably not what you’re expecting and it might take a bit to unpack.
My biggest inspiration is (and will likely always be) my own inevitable death.
While that might sound dark or messed up at first it’s only because our current society is really weird when it comes to death and has all kinds of hangups about it. Other societies recognize that death is just the flip side of life and they don’t shut it out like we do. Asian style honoring of family ancestors or the Mexican Day Of The Dead are much healthier ways to approach it in my opinion. The Judeo- Christian/Euro-American approach to death is to either plug the ears and go ‘la la la la la! I can’t heeeeear you!’ or else shiver in existential terror of the fire and brimstone that most likely awaits you in the afterlife because of that one time you ate shrimp curry at a Thai restaurant (it’s in the Bible. You get in big trouble for eating shellfish. I’m not joking). It’s like: CHILL! Death is gonna happen no matter what! Don’t let it freak you out so bad!
I figure we might as well develop a healthy, productive relationship with death while we’re alive, right? OK, so here we go:
Have you ever heard of a concept called ‘The Protestant Work Ethic’? The Protestant Church (popularized by King Henry VIII so he could get divorced) has this idea that you should suffer your whole life because there’s a big payday coming when you die and go to Heaven(tm). It’s in a lot of Christian sects but especially the Protestants. So the Puritans were a sect within the Protestant Church that got WAY too into this idea for the other Europeans – who presumably just wanted to fuck all day and eat fancy cheese – so they decided to leave Europe and come murder all the Native people in America and take their shit instead. Apparently that’s how you prove your moral superiority and get into Heaven(tm)?
Anyway, this ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ idea turned out to be real effective for getting the Commoners to suck it up and work extra hard so that rich people could (you guessed it…) fuck all day and eat fancy cheese! This meant that the Protestant Work Ethic stuck around in North American culture until this day and (if you come from a Christian family like I do) you probably heard alllll about it from your older relatives. Usually it goes something like this:
“You might be having fun now, but life isn’t about having fun all the time. When are you going to grow up? God put you here to be fruitful and multiply, not dye your hair ungodly colors and listen to stupid beep boop noises all night! Get serious! Cut your hair! Join the Military! Get a good paying job! Start a family! We won’t be proud of you until you cross all of these things off of this list!”
Does any of that sound familiar? So when I was growing up I kind of instinctively knew that whether God was real or not the idea of intentionally living a miserable life was toxic but I hadn’t really broken free from it quite yet. I’d been passionately pursuing my music but had always dismissed it as a side hustle because it wasn’t a ‘real job’, ie. a job that would be considered acceptable to ‘society’. I knew I had to do something creative so I was studying graphic design at the time and got this horrible internship at a wedding magazine because my design school teachers wanted to crush my non-conformity so I could be a happy little cog in the machine of industrial capitalism. I was miserable.
At the same time my ‘hobby’ had led to me getting signed to a record label and releasing a few singles on actual vinyl! I was so stoked to hold them in my hands…it was a trip! I’d just gotten back from my first tour to support these releases and I had just played my first ever set at Shambhala, which was a life changing experience. Back in Toronto it was hot as hell in my low rent high rise apartment and I’d been at my computer all day so I just needed to go outside and think for a bit. The park near my house was always full of junkies fencing stolen bikes or doing that weird chicken walk people do when they have JUST smoked meth (you know the one), so I was like: ‘where can I go that’s quiet, grassy, and chill?’
I decided to walk a couple blocks to the Toronto Necropolis (which is a huge ancient cemetery where all these famous old people are buried) and as soon as I made that decision it triggered a strange new feeling, but didn’t know what it was yet… I just felt somehow different. When I got there I realized that the cemetery was the perfect place for what I needed. It was huge, spooky, beautiful, and – most importantly – I was utterly alone. I walked and walked until I got to a real old part of the cemetery which felt like time had forgotten it. All the tombstones were half broken and the letters had worn off from the rain and snow, so I thought ‘this is perfect’ and I sat down to meditate.
I meditated using reflected sunlight twinkling off this little puddle of water in a crack on the side of a fallen tombstone and I contemplated my life.
“Some day that will be me.” I thought, “Even the best efforts to preserve my grave will eventually come to ruin. The letters will wear off my tombstone. It too will break and fall over as it slowly turns back into sand… What would they even write on it that was so important? “Dylan was a good boy, he followed all the rules and did what he was told.”? Like… what does any of that shit really matter? Is anyone really keeping score? What if I live my whole life trying to appease this idea of ‘society’ that turns out to be wrong? What even is ‘society’? Aren’t I a part of ‘society’? Don’t my values matter to my own life?”
That was the moment it all changed. That was the moment I realized that the only ‘society’ whose values mattered to me in my real life was the society I chose for myself.
…aaaaaaand that’s the story of how I joined the Headbang Society!
Ba-dum tssssss!
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