Secret Machines
I’ve tried to look kinda spiffy this week. But I’ll tell you a little secret…
I’ve been wearing the same jeans since Wednesday.
I know, I know. Gross. (And too much information.) But on the great To Do List that is my Q4 (little bit of corporate speak for you there), laundry is not a priority. So while my apartment is in good shape on the outside — no dishes in the sink, no clothes on the back of chairs — look beneath the surface and you’ll find absolute chaos. My bedroom closet, for example? Don’t even think about opening it. Inside my head? Don’t even think about listening to all the voices.
I got a massage after work on Wednesday. Under normal circumstances, I would consider this fairly extravagant. But these are not normal circumstances. I’m running 26.2 miles Sunday morning. There’s nothing normal about that. So, to try and relax these muscles of mine which have been significantly punished in the last three months (or ten years, depending on how you look at it), I got a massage.
I’d like to say that I lay there and simply zoned out, but the truth is, my mind was racing. I was thinking about “Heartland.” I was thinking about T-shirt designs, postcards, guerilla marketing, and the BENJAMIN WAGNER DOT COM Dry-Fit I’ll be wearing on Sunday. And I was thinking about work. And the run. And my family. And — OUCH! — how sore I am.
I always take a comp day on the Monday after the marathon. This year will find me getting another massage, and — most likely — heading into the studio to manage the final “Heartland” mixes. I’ll tell you another secret…
The new record is being released in exactly eleven days, but it’s not done. Mark and I didn’t think it sounded as good as it could. So I dropped another two grand on a complete remix. This is good new for you, Dear Reader (and presumably, Dear Listener), as the record’s gonna sound amazing. It’s bad news for me, as I’m out another 2k, and sweating it down to the wire. But at the end of the day, it’s gonna be a record I can live. It’s a record I can be proud of. It’s a record I’ll actually want to listen to. That’s worth all the dough, all the worry, and all the dirty underwear in the world.
I Dare You To Lift Yourself Up Off The Floor
It’s the same thing every Wednesday morning.
“You’re a big guy,” my trainer, Paul, says. “I mean, for a marathoner.”
This week, Paul kicked it up a notch.
“You’ve got a pretty thick neck. Did you ever play football in high school?”
This is, to me, somewhat hilarious. I’m staring at myself in the mirror doing some sort of core balance thing on one of the Swiss balls when he asks. I can see with my own eyes that I’m a big guy. I guess I have broad shoulders, and a pretty thick rib cage. I’m six feet even, and have a 34-inch waist. So, yunno, I’m no Lyla Alzado, but I’m no Hervé Villechaize either. But I’ve never, ever thought of myself as big. And I never, ever played football.
In fact, I stopped playing team sports in high school. I’m certain now — with five marathons, a dozen triathlons and countless other road races under my belt — that dropping out of sports had nothing to do with actual capabilities, and everything to do with my confidence (or lack thereof).
It’s no one’s fault, exactly, that I dropped out of sports in high school. My parents did everything they could to keep me involved with athletics up to that point. My father coached my little league team, the Braves (for whom I was MVP in 1980 — the trophy still sits on my bookshelf). He drove Chris and I to swim practice every morning. And when they divorced, my mother did her best to carry the ball. She got me onto a little league team, the Twins, in suburban Philly. But the disruption of my fifth grade year, and the leveling differences between Oak Park, IL, and Valley Forge, PA, left me a few steps behind all the other kids. I just didn’t have the skills. So they put me in right field. Academics were the same. When I started sixth grade in PA, I tested into a fourth grade math class. I was tutored throughout the year to catch up, and throughout junior high and high school to stay on pace.
In a way, tutoring is like coaching. And throughout high school and college, I lacked a coach, or a mentor. Sure, I had some great teachers and professors (Maureen Barry, Tobias Wolfe, and Bob Gates were standouts). But they were all in an area I gravitated to naturally: creative writing. When it came to the physical realm, no one ever pushed me, or schooled me.
On of the hard-learned lessons of adulthood, now, is that in order to grow, in order to become someone greater than who you already are, you need some coaching. You need mentorship. You need someone to say, “Thirty more seconds,” when you want to drop to your knees. You need someone to say, “You have to work on empathy,” when you want to give up. You need someone to say, “It’s not a tumor,” when you think your head is going to explode.
Finally, at 34-years-old, I think I may have learned that lesson. I do pretty well by my own devices. But I do even better when someone explains psychology, physiology, or biology to me. It’s humbling to acknowledging that I can’t do everything alone. It’s humbling to admit that I can’t do ten pull-ups. It’s humbling to concede that I don’t have all the answers in love or life.
But when the day begins, and the sun streams in over my shoulders, I can look in the mirror and know in my heart of hearts that I am a bigger man for asking for help.
Some Sort Of A Homecoming
I woke up this morning to the realization that my new CD, “Heartland,” will be released in exactly two weeks.
Instead of boring you with what isn’t done (bio, press, pre-order, plane tickets), let me share with you a little bit about what is done, and what it all means to me. (Meanwhile, you can click here to preview four songs from “Heartland” while you’re reading.)
Most of the twelve songs on the record were written in the dead of winter. They’re almost all breakup songs. More succinctly, they’re “What Next” songs. They’re all songs about or related to matters of the heart. Which I’d identified early on in the process, way back in February when I wrote “Heartland,” and started thinking of it as a title track. Now, this is months before I resolved to actually travel to America’s Heartland — Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas — to make this record with The Heartland’s Favorite Son’s, The Nadas.
The record has something of a lyrical story arch. In short, the record passes through the anger, sadness, loss, and renewal triggered by any sort of heartbreak: love or death. It starts in the external (“Deserted part of a desert town”), then goes inward (“She’s light on her feet, but it’s heavy in there”). There is a whiff of optimism in the air by the time “Do It Again” rolls around. After all, what’s more optimistic than starting over? (Click here for a more thorough analysis of all twelve “Heartland” tracks.)
Though I spent two weeks on stage, on the road, and in the studio with the band, it’s not a Nadas record, or even a full-on rock record. “Heartland” has a sonic story arch as well. It begins big and fully-produced, then gets quieter and more intimate, before finishing with some confidence.
In the end, of course, this whole process has brought me closer to home: where I’m from, and who I am. I lived in iowa City for the first three weeks of my life, and have barely been back since. Next month, I’ll perform on stage at Que Bar, and on air at WSUI. That’s some sort of a homecoming. More importantly, these songs nurtured me through some very dark days. They taught me lessons. They saved my life. And gave me the strength and the courage to do it again.
I hope it does the same for you.
