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What, exactly, defines a good person?

This is the question that’s been on my mind recently. A question probably sparked last week after watching coverage of the Haiti crisis. The remarkable thing about the natural disaster was how many American lives were thrown into chaos so far from home. Last Friday I posted a link on my Facebook to a page displaying information on how and where people could donate to relief efforts. The further that information spreads, the better. In our advanced society we have the ability to support charities that save lives with a few key presses. I donated $10 via text to the Red Cross in less than a minute. No paperwork. No credit card authorization. It’s just added to my phone bill at the end of the month. I also gave $10 through Paypal to the Save the Children fund.

I have an old high school friend who keeps a blog that I would guess he would argue frequently discusses Christianity. I beg to differ. I think the majority of what he writes about is acceptance. Acceptance through forgiveness. Acceptance through love. Acceptance through open-mindedness. I think he might argue that these are all aspects of Christianity. I would argue that Christianity is an aspect of them. I enjoy arguing with this friend. In the end I think we usually come to the same or similar conclusions. I believe what defines a good person is continued faith that things will work out. I’ve come to learn that accepting the hand we’re dealt is also an important factor. That’s not to say we can’t change or learn from the hand we’re dealt. Quite the opposite.

A long time ago I was a very forgiving person. I was the guy everyone came to with their problems. Today that’s not quite as much the case. When I flunked out of high school there was a period of time before snapping back into reality and getting my life back on track where I was a huge dick. I didn’t see it then but I’ve since come to realize that I was in a pretty fucked up state of mind. No drugs. No alcohol. Just a really pathetic depression. I tricked and lied to my family and closest friends. I didn’t go out much. I stopped playing music. I stopped playing music with some of the best guys I know. I told everyone I knew I was fine. Fooled people I shared a roof with. After years of solidifying relationships I spent two years, starting early my senior year of high school, knocking down the walls. I did it without thinking. I did it subconsciously.

I did not mean to do it. I would not have let myself continue what I was doing had I known it was happening at the time.

I’ve only started apologizing recently, the situation becoming clearer as I distance myself from it through time. Discussing it with family and approaching my friends and explaining it to them individually. It’s a really weird experience to hear their thoughts on it. I realized that I needed to talk to my friends about where I had been mentally after bringing it up to one of them casually one day. After I finished explaining he told me me that our group of friends had literally had points in time where they said things like “I wish Luke was here.” It’s both incredibly uplifting and horribly heartbreaking to hear those words from a friend. I didn’t think I had low self-esteem, but knowing that I had left people hanging so much that they came to that kind of conclusion really put things in perspective for me.

And then, a few weeks after that encounter, I told one of my best friends and he told me he had realized something was up but never really brought it up. He seemed pretty upset about it and I understood his position because I’ve been there before. And no matter how much you tell that person they couldn’t have changed anything and that you’d have just gamed them like everyone else, they still think they should have done something more. But it’s not anyone’s fault. It played out like it did. We have to accept the hand that was dealt. We have to have faith that things will stay better.

Around four years later I am a different person than I was then. I’m rebuilding the bonds I busted. I’m in a much better mindset. I’m the dependable person I was before everything turned to shit and I’m working to show that to those around me without throwing it in their faces.

And I am writing again. I used to think people could be my muse. Then I thought it was conflict. But that’s all bullshit. Life is my muse and too much of any one thing can throw it horribly off balance and make for a terrible script. It takes equal parts faith in the future and accepting the present. Otherwise you’re just an asshole, a joker, a fool, or a crybaby.

This weekend, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, some friends and I are going hit up Motion City Soundtrack’s show at First-Avenue  in Minneapolis. Somehow I tend to get put in charge of organizing and orchestrating these trips, but that’s okay by me. It’s easier for me to shoulder the responsibility. Right now I’m just hoping that the weather doesn’t destroy it, because I could use a get away.

And hey, if you think I should have talked to you about this one-on-one, approach me about it. It’s impacted friendships with pretty much anyone I knew at the time and I don’t mind talking it through. And I apologize ahead of time.

It doesn’t take more than a couple glances at a post or two here to see how much music plays a part in my every day life. What’s kind of funny is how my subconscious attributes different soundtracks to different parts of my life. Sometimes they’re very obvious picks, like listening to Angels & Airwaves on the entire trip to one of their shows or rocking Motion City Soundtrack on the way to Minnesota to see them on Warped. Sometimes there a little more random. The Ataris’ Blue Skies, Broken Hearts… Next 12 Exits album is tied very closely to memories of my high school band trip. More specifically, every song on that album reminds me of two things from that trip. The first was walking into a local music store in Milwaukee and picking up their So Long Astoria album. The other was a card game in the hotel hallway. Nothing else significantly sticks out. I have faint memories of a symphonic workshop and hackey sack at either the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee or outside a museum. Maybe both.

My high school choir trip to Memphis, Tennessee is similar. My 30GB iPod was full but Cartel’s Chroma was pretty much the only thing I listened to the entire time. It was more or less exclusively on repeat the whole trip. I remember much more of the trip, but that album pretty much brings to mind the bus. Memphis is a trip I wish I could get a do-over on. It was way more interesting than my band trip and more my kind of thing, but I remember being in the worst mood ever the entire trip. Someday I’ll go back for a Memphis/Nashville double header. Chroma is still one of my favorite albums of all time, but sometimes it feels corrupted. That feeling sucks.

Then there’s the seasonal albums. The Format and Limbeck will always mark Spring and early summer on my audio calendar. Without fail. blink-182 is always going to be the hot, dirty part of mid-to-late summer. Fall is any indie and/or acoustic track I can find. Phoenix and Blind Pilot seem to be taking over this season. Fall is also when my pen hits the paper a lot more.

There are soundtracks for people, places, and feelings. Times and experiences. Rain or shine. There are tracks that will instantly put me in a good mood, regardless of who I’m with or what surrounds me. There are tracks that I can’t listen to anymore. There are albums that make me sick. There are songs that I’ve put in the back of mind. They are songs I cannot forget but need to find a mental cure for before I can listen to them again. These are the notes, the chords, the tempos, & the phrases that make us who we are. How could someone not be into music?

Dear Santa,

I want iTunes giftcards.

Sincerely,
Luke

I love the holidays.

I tried very hard to avoid this. I really tried. I didn’t want to write about this because it should be easier to just write it off as something very unfortunate. It sucks, but it happens. It always seemed very odd to consider a pet part of your family, but sometimes they just are.

Last night my step dad, Lyle, told me my dog wasn’t coming in. This is pretty normal. Both of our indoor dogs are very protective of the property and will chase off critters and not always come home immediately when called. I shrugged it off and waited twenty minutes to try him again. Nothing. Still not that strange — they’ve both spent the entire night outside before and usually come in in the morning when Lyle leaves for work. Something seemed off, but it wasn’t a big deal.

I didn’t sleep last night at all, despite my frustrated attempts. I was still up when Lyle left for work around 5:30 this morning and my dog still hadn’t shown up. When it finally got bright enough out, I could see Pip on the shoulder of the road down from house. My only thought process was a very literal, very blunt “Well that fucking sucks.”

And the day continued. I got asked several times if I was okay all day and yet no emotional flip switched. Nothing. I was bummed, but I wasn’t hit as hard as I thought I’d be. I went to class. I came home. I think the fact that my dog was gone was so surreal I didn’t understand it.

Tonight my step dad walked into the house. I met him at the door to let our other dog outside and he said he was sorry.  We both summed up the day as shitty. And he was trying very hard to keep a stable face. It didn’t work. And then my switch got flipped. Lyle frequently wanted to get rid of that dog. For a dozen reasons that were all pretty sound. Then late last month Pip bit someone who was jogging by our house and we panicked. We thought we were going to have to put him down for sure. The deputy sheriff called and requested a fax to make sure Pip had all his shots, which he did. After reimbursing the person for their torn pants, we thought the whole thing was behind us. The deputy said this is a pretty common issue and to not get too worried about it. All that fucking drama — and today Pip gets hit by a car? Such a damn waste of time and worry. Such a stupid thing to stress about.

So today my step dad buried my dog in the rain because I didn’t think I could. Today my step dad shed some tears over a “pet”, who was more or less a nuisance for him. And so did I. Today was a shitty day.

It would seem as if the greater majority of my friends grew up with the book Where the Wild Things Are. Considering the expansive, varied imaginations of my crazy friends, this isn’t an overly surprising piece of news. What is surprising is that of the majority that had the book in their lives growing up, many don’t remember how much story was told in so very few words. Around 300 words. Ten sentences to be exact. Much of the plot comes from the illustrations in the book.

This is probably why the film adaptation is most interesting to me. Spike Jonze managed to fill almost two hours of major theatrical screen time with a story for adults that will take them back to the point in time where their imaginations ran, for lack of a better word, wild. Beautifully crafted puppets brought to life with CGI emotions painted on their faces bridged the gap between pages and motion pictures in a way that’s never really been attempted for a children’s story before. With an amazing voice cast (Forest Whitaker, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’hara, and Chris Cooper) behind the puppeteers and a light indie-pop music score — it’s pretty hard not to love this movie.

I haven’t made a post on here in a while and two weeks ago a friend had bugged me about it, so now that I’ve finished gushing over a movie, I guess I’ll throw out an update about my summer, fall, and thoughts on the future.

The summer in general was pretty dull. Most of my time was spent with either friends or family because money was tight and I had major plans for late summer. Those major plans consisted of back-to-back blink 182 concerts on August 16TH and 18TH in Council Bluffs and the Twin Cities. The shows were awesome and I’m glad I got a chance to see them live, which just a year ago didn’t seem like it’d ever be a real possibility. Both shows were more or less sold out and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many kids gathered in an Iowa fairground out in the middle of nowhere. I got a limited edition concert tee which will never, ever be handled again until I’m dead. Overall, it was worth a summer of pretty much nothing for an August of amazing-ness.

Fall brought around school. Which I hate. Probably more than anything I’ve ever hated in my life. I’m really unhappy with what I’m doing right now and I feel extremely trapped. To get into a program that I really want I would have to probably go out of state which would be hard. I’ve basically received an invitation to stay at my uncle’s in Chicago if I decided to go through with that, but I can’t see leaving the family I have here. It’s a decision that’s on my mind constantly lately, which is only outweighed by how severely I fucked up in high school. But that’s a story that’s already been told and remedied. The remedy is just a slow fix that I’m still feeling the effects of. And with that, I’ve linked to the future. I have to finish this semester out. Then we’ll see where I proceed.

In the world of music, the blink 182 concerts have spurred a renewed urge with some friends to play blink 182 until our ears bleed, so hopefully we’ll begin that soon. I’ll be playing a Mark Hoppus signature bass for it, so that won’t be too shabby. It’ll get me through the winter, at the very least, along with some help from a new Motion City Soundtrack album. As for getting through the rest of this night? Halloween & Halloween 2. It’s that time of the year again.

Trick or treat friends.

My blog entries are usually labeled in one of two ways; either very bluntly titled according to the content’s topic or with a phrase from a song. The post on this very early Wednesday morning fits both. I am, more or less, always a mess. I am, more or less, always attempting to speak to everyone and no one. Sometimes there is a method to my madness.

I used to write much more frequently. When I was younger, prior to getting my thoughts out in blogs or other digital forms, I would write until my hand hurt. I would write until the pencil in my hand had a curve in it from the pressure I placed on it. I loved pencils. Yellow number 2 pencils. I even loved the way your writing changed as you progressed through the paper. It started thin and sharp and as you wore down the point it became rounder until every letter became a flat, thick mark. I liked my handwriting.

Anymore I get a lot of my internal dialogue out via typing, but there’s something synthetic in that transition of thought. That’s why anything of any personal importance gets placed in a notebook. Those notebooks get full and shoved onto a shelf in my closet. They’re not journals so much as random thoughts and recollections of memories that I jot down as they come. I sometimes take a notebook out with me if I’m going to be staying at a friends or anywhere far from home where I can’t get something down. I would imagine that some of my friends think I’m a little weird because they often see such notebooks by my side but rarely open.

Filling out notebooks is a habit that I’ve done less and less over the years, really since middle school. It was either the summer prior to or after my eighth grade year – I can’t remember which – that I got my first guitar. Well, that’s not technically true. I had an old acoustic guitar when I was very young that had been passed on to me. I carried it around everywhere and pretended to play it. Unfortunately, I was so young that I was also at an age prone to mistake-making and shut the neck of the guitar in a car door accidentally. I must have been five or six and I felt very, very bad. So years later, after having realized I had some musical capability and having had been in choir and other music programs as early as they were available at my school, I decided it was time to actually learn guitar.

After various discussions with both of my parents (and being told they would only support my new interest if I took lessons) I bought my second first guitar. For a whopping $175 I got a Cort Earth Series acoustic. I took lessons from an odd, older guy at West Music. He was classically trained and insisted on going by the book. I bought two of the first “instructor” booklets and set to work. I quit after three lessons.

My first intentions were to start lessons with my friend’s instructor. He was learning via guitar tablature and his instructor, a college kid, was letting him pick his own songs and learn them without any basics. Clearly he was the more fun choice, but I never started lessons back up.

Instead I set out to learn by myself. I went through those two books and learned most of the basics about guitars. From that, I learned some things by playing a long by ear and eventually found guitar tabs. Guitar tabs are a very cheap shortcut but are also an effective means of helping someone to learn. They are also easier methods of sharing how a guitar part is played. I even used the internet as a general learning tool for techniques and things I didn’t understand. Between those resources, playing with friends over the years, & things I learned in band & choir at my school, I’ve acquired a decent amount of skill.

My intentions for the summer have been to record an EP of sorts – four or five songs of music I’ve created. It’s more about whether I actually can do it than me having any specific goal for what happens after. So, other than a huge family gathering & taking advantage of summer break, that’s what my time has been going towards. More updates will come soon, about this project and life in general. I’ll try to remember to proof this tomorrow. It’s 3AM. Good night.