Choosing Art Over The Artist

Class reunions, Xanax McDoubles, and creativity outside of the creator

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: believing in the good of art, and people.

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Ingredient List

🎧 : A random assortment of songs I’ve been listening to this fall, some new and some old.

📖 : “She Was a Child Instagram Influencer. Her Followers Were Grown Men,” by The New York Times (gift link) // I can’t describe the rage I feel in relation to this girl (now woman’s) parents, but you’ll probably understand when you read it. It’s a follow-up story as part of the investigation that The Times has been doing into underage girl influencers and their pimp parents, this investigative article from earlier this year is one of the most shocking things I’ve read in recent memory.

“Chronic Brain Trauma is Extensive in Navy’s Elite Speedboat Crews,” by The New York Times // This is some incredible reporting on the extensive brain trauma that’s showing up in the Navy SEAL Speedboat crews as a result of years in boats that fly across the ocean up to 60 mph, repeatedly slamming into waves with the force of a car crash. Literally destroying some of the most elite boys and men from the inside out. You’d be surprised to know that the government is trying to keep it under wraps and brush their disabilities under the rug.

Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: White Chocolate

Last night, I went with my wife to her 25th class reunion. For a graduating class of 300, only about 30 people showed up at an Elks Lodge outside of Annapolis, Maryland. 

She’s graduated a year ahead of me, so my class reunion for the same anniversary hasn’t happened yet, but I already know mine will look a lot different. As with the city we currently live in, my wife’s high school was majority Black. I went to high school outside Hershey, Pennsylvania; my class was 95% white. At my wife’s reunion, I was the only white male in attendance, outside of the middle-aged bartender. 

This was fine, of course. It was great seeing everyone reconnect and try to figure out who they were looking at, because Father Time remains undefeated (something we also saw on Friday night during the depressingly sad Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson spectacle).

But more than one person checked to ensure I was having a good time, or asked if this was a much different experience from my own high school class. It was certainly a much different demographic from where I grew up, but in all honesty, it looked a lot like the city where I now live. It felt totally normal to me, though I’ll admit when I was 18 it probably wouldn’t have. I think in large part, that change comes from living in Baltimore for the last third of my life. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we stayed in the city of Baltimore while most of our friends moved out– I want my kids to have a more culturally and demographically diverse experience than where I grew up. 

And I did have a great time. I didn’t check my phone at all and had some engaging conversations throughout the night. It was great to hear my wife share memories and catch up on who was doing what and where they were in life. I love that she had such a different high school experience than me, during those four years that define you and catapult you into the whole rest of your life.

That, despite the differences, we both ended up together just a few years after she said goodbye to the same people in that room, and that we both got to say hello again, together, a quarter century later.

And for that, I am grateful.

Course 2

Appetizer: Xanax McDouble

Just yesterday, I was running through Patterson Park here in Baltimore, heading up a hill since I have a hilly Turkey Trot 5K coming up that I should probably prepare for. Kate Bush would’ve been proud. As I started up the hill, I noticed a guy in a wheelchair ahead of me, slowly working his way up.

Now, I never know how to respond in this situation. I don’t want to be ableist, but at the same time, if I had one leg and were rolling over some busted up pavement, I would honestly not mind a push. So I asked him if he wanted some help getting up the hill. 

He kindly responded he was good, and then told me to check out his arms to prove the point. He was not wrong, his arms were jacked. 

Most normal people would leave it at that and go on their way. I, however, dove into a conversation by asking him where he was going, which– a half mile and a half hour later– I would officially regret. 

It started off with how his girlfriend (with whom he has a 10-month-old child), is now pregnant with triplets, and how she kicked him out, and how she’s with another dude, and how her sister just died of an overdose and… you get the idea. He also mentioned that she lived on a street in my neighborhood, at which point I realized they both lived at a known problem house a few blocks away where CPS has been called multiple times, kids have been taken and returned, and where the 14-year-old who lives there has been roaming the neighborhood and the surrounding areas with his group of friends for the past few weeks, leaving a trail of destruction everywhere they go. 

Multiple armed robberies, carjackings, business thefts, vandalism and break-ins and general mayhem. Dozens of charges. Arrested multiple times, released to non-existent guardians the same evening. Just last week, they ditched a stolen Hyundai behind our house as my kids were playing twenty feet away in the parking lot below. It’s the same story, day after day, and they won’t stop until someone is dead because they have nothing to live for. Essentially homeless and reckless and abandoned by the city and state. It’s altogether tragic and depressing.

Sorry for the side tangent, that’s just a frustration of living in Baltimore that I have to get out, and it’s not even a Baltimore problem, it’s solely the responsibility of the governor and his appointment to the Department of Juvenile Services. 

Anyway.

In talking to Mateo (the man in the wheelchair) over the course of thirty minutes, I found myself conflicted with the person in front of me– a human being just like me– and the person who was obviously beset from a lifetime of trauma and substance abuse. 

I knew once he really got going that he was high on something (which he eventually confirmed), as it brought back memories of my brother at his peak levels of drug abuse. Trust me, you do not want to get in a conversation with them when they’re feeling real good, because, like a kid without an off switch describing the Pokémon universe, there is no exit in sight. There is nothing more annoying than someone high on heroin or Xanax walking you through every detail of a trip to Walmart and correcting themselves on whether it was 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. or 9 a.m. when they left the house and whether or not they went to Ollie’s before or after they went to McDonald’s. It was ten times more tiring than the run I was on.

So yes, I eventually heard an entire recap of the past three years of his life. How the neighbors (who we know personally) called CPS for no reason (there were plenty of reasons). How it’s all his girlfriend’s fault and that he’s doing his best to be a good boyfriend (I also know he pushed her off their front porch just last week). How much he loves her and is trying his best to care for her and the kids and so on (he also met her when she was 17 and he’s well into his twenties). Translation: it’s impossible to parse through the bullshit in these types of conversations.

But in between all that, I did hear how at one point he reached the end of his rope and was going to commit suicide but how she saved him and convinced him stay alive. How he knows he needs to get clean and that he’s going to rehab on Monday (probably 1% true), because his 19-year-old pregnant girlfriend is always taking their 10-month-old and 2-year-old out with her until 4 in the morning, hanging outside and drinking in the cold, all with strange men (100% true because neighbors have seen this). He wanted to get clean and straight so he could make sure they’re safe.

I want to believe that is true, that his intentions are honest, though I have no way of knowing if it is. I see the deception, this weird fantasy story they always tell themselves and others, but I also see something underneath. And from having a brother who drowned in the pull of oxy then heroin then fentanyl for an entire decade, I know the complexity of it all.

I’ve seen that visceral tug-of-war between the person who is good, who has good intentions, but whose persona is awful and evil and selfish and everything I hate in the world when covered in the cloak of addiction. It’s so hard to separate the two, because you know that somewhere beneath the ash and crust and grime, that a person exists with great potential to serve themselves and others. This is why it’s so hard for parents to cut their kids off, because nobody knows that more deeply than the mother or father who played catch in the backyard, or pushed them on a playground swing, or held them in bed during a bad thunderstorm. Somewhere in all of the mess there remains a child, pure and good and wanting to live, before all the blackness crept in.

I knew that in talking to Mateo, he was most likely full of shit, the same way my brother was for almost ten years of his life. I probably know it more than he knows it himself. There’s an almost zero chance he gets clean in the next month and even less of a chance that he’s clean a year from now and an even lesser chance he doesn’t die from an overdose in the next five years. He will probably lose his kids or they’ll end up in foster care or end up like his girlfriend’s younger brother, aimless and angry and destroying everything in sight.

But I want to believe. So I chose to, because why not? I told him that I wish him the best and that he’s still alive for a reason and that I’ll be praying for him. He didn’t ask me for money, and I didn’t ask how he lost his leg or how he got into this whole mess to begin with (by this point I was freezing cold and needed to get running again). It doesn’t matter how he got here, just that he gets out of here, because the streets of Baltimore are no place to raise yourself or your child.

I told him to take care and do his best and that I’ll see him around.

Maybe I will, but hopefully I won’t. 

Course 3

The Main: Chickenfry

Last week, another scandal involving another man being another piece of shit came to light, when Brianna Chickenfry disclosed on Barstool Sports’ BFF podcast how her now ex-boyfriend, country star Zach Bryan, asked her to sign a $12 million non-disclosure agreement to block her from revealing any aspects of their relationship in public, something she turned down to preserve her own dignity.

First, I would like to say she’s a better woman than me. I would’ve shut up and taken that money and loaded up a Dave and Busters’ power card for life, right after buying a bass boat and a fully loaded Tacoma to pull it. The house with a third bedroom can wait. 

While I won’t go into the details of the scandal (just google it and read any of the stories), it boils down to this: he was allegedly verbally abusive, possessive/controlling, and lost his mind when he once heard her singing a Morgan Wallen song, which may be the height of tiny man/tiny ego syndrome. 

The funniest part about it, is that he and Morgan Wallen should be best friends. Wallen, of course, was canceled for all of 30 seconds when he was caught on camera saying the n-word after a late night of drunken revelry. Just this past year, he threw a barstool from a rooftop on Broadway in Nashville; I’ve been to a wedding on one of those rooftops, and I can tell you that if a barstool hits someone down on the sidewalk, they’re not walking away from it. He was arrested on felony charges, but of course nothing came of it. 

The fact that Wallen and Bryan, these two peas in a pod of assholery, are both country artists who were brought down by two different barstools, will never not be funny to me.

And yet.

If you drop me anywhere south of Charlotte with a warm day and the windows down while driving through a stretch of Georgia pines or a tunnel of Spanish moss– there is no chance you won’t find me dialing the volume up on “More Than My Hometown” or “Sand in My Boots” by Mr. Wallen. Put me in a kayak with a fishing rod in my hands and a cold can in the cup holder and I won’t change the song when Bryan’s “Something in the Orange” comes on. (Though truth be told, I think Bryan is the weaker songwriter of the two.)

The same goes for any of my playlists featuring Kanye West, Ryan Adams, Brand New, Arcade Fire, and the occasional Motley Crüe. And nothing, I mean nothing, gives me greater joy than watching my best friend Brian perform R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” at karaoke. 

Some years ago, I came to my own personal decision that I will appreciate art completely outside the artist. If I like a song, I like it, and will always separate the individual actions in the personal life of the creator from their creative output. This rule has to apply cart blanche across all offenses, otherwise it becomes a slippery slope and fails. Which can be difficult, especially when your own morals or beliefs are diametrically opposed to the actions or convictions of a particular artists.

The interesting thing about all of this is that I think, for me, the act of separating the art from the artists started when I was a youth group kid in the nineties. At the time– and nothing much has changed since then– contemporary Christian music sucked. It was so bad, just bottom-of-the-barrel cringe. At the time, there was a healthy side Christian scene by way of Tooth and Nail Records that was underground and alternative, but even then, the local Christian music store would always have a “sounds like” poster on full display, to guide you from a secular taste to its Christian counterpart (i.e. if you like Green Day then you’ll like MxPx, if you like Nirvana then you’ll like DC Talk, which is honestly just reverse blasphemy).

To get good art, you absolutely had to listen to music with lyrics that almost certainly were at odds with your worldview. 

Examples:

“Emptiness is loneliness / and loneliness is cleanliness / and cleanliness is godliness / and God is empty just like me” - Smashing Pumpkins, Zero

“As high as Wu-Tang get / Allah allow us pop this shit / Just like black shoe fit / if you can't wear it, well don't fuck with it” - Wu-Tang Clan, As High as Wu-Tang Get

“Drivers are rude / such attitudes / But when I show my piece / complaints cease / Something’s odd / I feel like God / You stupid dumbshit goddamn motherfucker!” - The Offspring, Bad Habit

I’ll allow the prosecution to present evidence that The Offspring isn’t “good art,” but you get the point.

These are all songs I loved as a teenager (which my mom is probably just finding out now), at a time when I was going to church at least twice a week, not even swearing myself, reading my Bible, staying out of trouble and by all means, being a model Christian youth. However, more often than not, the music I listened to was anti-God, anti-religion, anti pretty much everything I believed in. To enjoy it, I had to separate it from my own personal beliefs. This was a necessity, because when I put the cassette tape into my Aiwa stereo or the CD into my Discman and pressed play, it took me to a different place. At the time, I saw all music as the beauty and creation of God evidenced in the arrangement of sounds and lyrics, even though my favorite artist may have been atheistic or agnostic.

It didn’t matter to me, because the sounds I heard in my headphones and the expression that came through a direct wire from an artist in Southern California to some kid living in rural Pennsylvania– it triggered something deep in my soul. It wasn’t the lived actions of the artists that did that, it was the art they produced that could transcend a belief system. That’s how art works and inspires and touches us all, even across cultures and classes and political spectrums. In a way, it’s a true miracle. A religious experience, even.

Attending a liberal arts college fostered this appreciation even more, and gave me a scaffolding of critical thinking skills that would serve me well over the last couple decades. Having a framework for how I appreciate art has allowed me to stay a straight course through the shifting sands of culture and trends and personal belief systems of both artists and myself. 

In the same way that a pair of jeans is both constrictive (you’re bound to their confines) but freeing (allowing you to explore places that you otherwise wouldn’t), a good framework for appreciating art allows you to go outside of your own bubble and take some big bites of the ripest fruit on the branch of that season in life.

While my views have shifted in so many ways over year years, I’ve always done my best to appreciate the art outside of the artist. Having that as a rule has allowed me to love and appreciate art of all kinds, which fosters an appreciation for the diverse array of human experiences we all have.

And I love that on any given day I can listen to what moves me. Some days that’s Kanye West or Perfume Genius or Morgan Wallen or Lana Del Rey, others it’s The Beatles or Turnstile or Jordan Davis or Chappell Roan or Pink Floyd, and maybe while I’m writing it’s M83 or Hans Zimmer. Whatever stirs my soul, I take and enjoy.

Sometimes, that means recognizing the weaknesses in the artists but appreciating that somewhere inside of them is an incredible goodness that comes out in their art. Humans, and artists especially, are complicated and difficult and often don’t fit into neat little boxes of how we want the world to be. Quite often, the greatest artists have minds that work differently than ours. They are groundbreaking entities that push the envelope, sometimes too far. I personally don’t want the Kanye Wests of the world to be accountants. 

Now, that’s not to absolve them of personal responsibility. If their actions cause them repercussions, either in financial or criminal or reputational terms, that’s on them and it’s fully deserved. I don’t care either way, and how it plays out within the legal system or the favor in the public forum is fair game.

As we move to a more polarizing world, it’s important for us to find where we stand in all matters, but especially in what we appreciate as art. Maybe your view is different mine, and that’s fine. I totally understand.

But consider appreciating the creation outside of the creator and keeping that as your compass, whether that’s a cocksure country singer, a narcissistic hip-hop artist, or even God himself.

Course 4

Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week

Pretty chill week overall, got in some good running in this nice fall weather. Have been riding my bike to work trying to get those legs back under me. Altogether just a pretty chill week. Of course, this upcoming week will be complete insanity as the Believe in the Run team heads to The Running Event in Austin, Texas. An run industry trade show, it’s a full two days of nonstop interviews, shoe overviews, after parties and catching up with friends. No joke, the most tiring two and a half days of the year.

If you haven’t yet, please listen to this past week’s episode of The Drop, where I interview country artist Charles Wesley Godwin. It was honestly one of my most favorite conversations with a guest ranging from running to baseball to parenting and West Virginia. Such a good dude.

Other things I’ve written this past week:

• Salomon Spectur 2 (shoe review)

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. You can listen to this past week’s episode here, where we talk about everything from chicken soup for the soul to kratom.

END OF MENU

Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

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