Music Ruined My Life - Labels

The other day I was listening to Marc Maron's WTF podcast and he was talking with Mary Lynn Rajskub, who most of you know from Mr. Show or 24. She was talking about how the first six months or so after the birth of her child which were a god awful. The way she described it was perfect, the period strips away your identity, or at least the things you thought comprised your identity and replaces all the bullshit with a new mission of keeping this little creature now living in your house alive and making sure they don't grow up to be assholes. She said when she came through the other side of the rabbit hole she was actually in a better place because you are free from all of the labels and limitations that make up ones self identity.

At least that is what I took away from it.

Probably because that was my experience as well. I always promised myself that I wouldn't talk about my kid on this site because I know nobody wants to hear about someone's kid who they don't know, and this isn't actually about children. It is about the stupidity of self-limitation that we saddle ourselves with all throughout our lives by tying ourselves to scenes, groups and ideals. I have done this throughout my entire life, and I guess in a way it helped me become a more evolved individual, but the can also be a trap that leaves one stuck in the mire and unable to move forward with one's journey.

When I look back on my life I see a trail of debris from decisions made while keeping it real to whatever the Fuck I was into at the time. Whether it was the relationships that didn't happen because I was into metal and didn't date preps, the missed opportunities to share in the joy of friends and family during important moments in their lives because I would rather waste my time dabbling in the studio (read: smoking weed and talking about rap music) or the times when I was lost and spent a year drinking to much and ruining everything in my life because the identity I built for myself through music crumbled and I had nothing left to ground myself. I have spent a lot of time worrying about being this, or being down with that, instead of working towards being an evolving individual. It was a series of dead ends leading nowhere and leaving me lost having to back track and find the center again.

I understand that this is a natural progression and that is how you learn to become a better and more interesting person. However, I see so many people from my generation stuck in these bullshit identities that they created for themselves. It might be because of the circles I have traveled in, but I still see so many people I their late 30s/early 40s holding on to the virtues of scenes and movements that were created by teenagers some twenty years ago. Look back on your teenage self, is their anything that little fucker could tell you that would hold water? Exactly.

So why are we still allowing these ideals to keep us from evolving and experiencing life to the fullest? The same thing can be said for political, religious, socioeconomic, sexual, racial, and whatever affiliations or labels. Instead of defining ourselves as something, we should be striving to always move forward and grow. No destination because when we stop we die. Something better than we are today, something wiser, more grounded and more evolved.

Becoming a father didn't give me a new identity, but it did help me shed the bullshit and understand labels and identifiers do more to limit our experience than enhance them.