First Thoughts

If we don't bleed, it don't feel like a song

Album cover art courtesy of 4AD Records

The other day on the drive to school, Frankie asked if she could pick the music. Sure, I said. She put on Olivia Rodrigo’s “brutal” and “good 4 u” and “jealousy, jealousy." We bopped, rolled the windows down, did the springtime thing.

“Whew,” I said. “Her songs are intense.”

“What do you mean?” Frankie said.

“She’s singing about jealousy and not liking herself.”

“Well, she probably just wants people to like her songs.”

“So, in order for people to like them, they have to be intense?”

“She probably wants to, like, get peoples’ attention. If I wanted to write songs, I would probably want people to pay attention. And that’s maybe the best way to get people to pay attention.”

“So….if you’re going to write songs, might as well be intense?”

We rolled into the pickup lane, and ever-so-confidently, she said, “Yeah.” Then she opened the door and said, “Bye!”

I mull this over throughout the day, surveying her media intake and mine. Guts, I Survived the Attacks of September 11, 2001, World Without Fish. It seems my offspring is communicating something important: hey, we’re alike, you bozo. And I’m like: Oh, shit.

Last October, I saw John Moreland and Will Johnson perform with some friends at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. The show was evocative and captivating, even as both played solo sets—they’re normally accompanied by full bands on their albums. John Moreland’s songs are twangy and sometimes rocky and heavy-hearted, deeply personal and, well, intense. Amanda Petrusich says, “he imbues them [his melodies] with moments of deep compunction. The dissonance in Moreland’s songs lies not in their structure—there are no hard angles or jagged bits—but in the ruefulness in his voice and the stories he tells.” One of my favorite songs of Moreland’s is “Old Wounds,” a goodbye to an ex-lover that features a jarring opening line about suicidal thoughts (“I wanna fall asleep forever”), followed by a confession that he mines their breakup for creative material, and as much as it may hurt, dammit if it won’t make some good art. The chorus goes like this:

So don't forget to love me in damnation
For the living I have earned on love gone wrong
And we'll open up old wounds in celebration
If we don't bleed, it don't feel like a song

We’ve been talking with Frankie lately about discipline. Reading, practicing guitar, staying on top of homework, keeping her room tidy. We’re learning to be more consistent. And crazy enough: she seems happier.

Growing up we had no chores or house rules (except for lawn-mowing), just punishment when things went too far, and “too far” was to be tacitly understood. “You should’ve known,” etc. Naturally, this resulted in emotional eruptions, groundings, secrets, resentments, lies. I vacuumed my room and folded my laundry because I liked things tidy, but that wasn’t real discipline.

As a result, I flailed in college, doing just enough to get good enough grades, changed my major from English to Undeclared to Music to Music Business and, after Music Theory got too hard and Business classes were a snore, switched back to English. (I don’t blame my parents for my flailing, for the record. These failures were my own. I lacked the awareness to understand that I just needed to put my head down and grind.) When I finally figured out what I wanted (MFA), I worked hard to get my GPA up. Thus, the revelation: this winter was difficult. My writing was all over the place, as was my mind. Watching stupid zombie shows just to feel my feelings. Ugly habits have a way of rearing their heads: I work hard only when I want something bad enough, and even then my commitment ebbs and flows based on my moods.

One thing running has taught me—and continues to teach me—is that the cold hard grip of discipline isn’t so cold after all. In fact, it allows my mind to focus on other things. Do you like running in -3 temps? No. Do you always want to do a track workout the morning after staying out late at a concert? No. But dammit, the fitness will wane if you don’t, and you’ll be thinking about how you didn’t get the run in all day, but how you might sneak one in after lunch or before it gets dark, and you’ll be that much further away from whatever goal lies ahead—and down on yourself and wasting a lot of mental energy in the process. (Not that you have to run in the morning—just using one approach as an example.) As Boston Marathon champion Des Linden says, “Keep showing up.”

Can we get obsessive? Can that lead to burnout? Yes, but mostly it’s the showing up that matters, balancing self-compassion with self-discipline. (Please call me if you know how to do that.) I could stand to loosen up in my running and tighten up in my writing and in my meditation practice (or lately, lack thereof). But hopefully they speak to one other.

What does this have to do with intensity? Well, without discipline, maybe everything has to be intense? Maybe you would need to need intensity to pull yourself out of yourself? (This is not a criticism of my offspring. Ultimately, we like what we like.) If we just did what we felt like doing all the time, we’d run the risk of becoming Navel Gazing Buzzkills. We’d run the risk of: gosh, I don’t feel like reading about Sudan or the WGA strike or Jordan Neely, the world outside my own skull, because that would take discipline and, well, getting outside of my own skull, which might then prompt me to action, and action is hard. I don’t feel like participating in Earth Day clean-ups because that would encroach on my Precious Me Time. That would mean I have to let go of how I’m feeling. And isn’t that the beginning of compassion—discipline? Could be. This is our American Middle-Class Privilege—that we get to decide when and how to engage with the world outside of ourselves. Maybe I’m just extraordinarily selfish and require way too much self-care. Hard to say. Either way, here’s to embracing it all — discipline, intensity, and, hopefully, ultimately, looking outward.

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On a closing note, First Thoughts will be changing soon— whole new title, whole new intention, more people involved. I’m so grateful for this year of experimentation. Thanks for humoring me through it all. I’ve forged some deeper connections because of it. Thank you for reading. More soon.