Micah Redding: Adventurer

I wrote this on October 8, 2008, 10:51pm. It has been here waiting ever since. It has been long enough. -micah

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Today I set out to understand myself. My peculiar mix of emotions and thoughts and attitudes – where does it come from? Whatever I am, it must be rooted in how I was when I was young.

So I thought back to what it was like to be 5 years old – running around like I was superman, in a world of simplicity and brightness. But even there, I recognized a theme. I distinctly remember feeling a sadness, an empathy for others, and for what I would now call the injury of innocence.

I had dreams when I was 5. In one of them, my mom had a flower in a clay pot, and she loved that flower dearly. My dad decided to do something nice for her, and sent it away to a place where they turned it into a mush, a kind of potpourri. He was trying to do something nice, but it broke her heart. She cried and cried.

I remember waking up and feeling so sad. I didn’t know whether it was real, but I was afraid of my dad. Not because of anything he had done, but because he caused such sadness.

Later on I would have dreams during which a young girl would get her hopes up that I would do something nice or fun for her, and she would be so thrilled. Then, when I wasn’t able to do what she was anticipation, she would cry. I would wake up sad.

In an earlier dream, I had a pet duck. And this duck had an outfit that matched mine. And when I was younger (so I dreamed), we had gone to church together in our matching outfits. We had been together since we were young. This duck had a nice environment to live in, but we would occasionally take him out of his cage, and let him walk outside. And in my dream, he flew away.

I was 5 years old. I cried for 5 days afterwards.

Where, I wondered, did this come from? My intense empathy, my bitter-sweet sense of other’s longings, my sadness at other’s innocent expectations disappointed?

I thought farther back. Several incidents occurred to me. My dad and I had been walking on the beach in Oregon one day (I would have been 3), and found a unique rock, full of holes. The holes went all the way through it, like a network of tunnels. In a special indentation, like a puzzle, a shell was fitted. I loved that rock. It was mine and dad’s, from a time I knew about, but couldn’t even remember.

One day, my brother climbed through my window, and knocked it to the ground, smashing it to pieces. I was heart-broken. I wanted to pick up the pieces and put it together again. I sketched a picture, trying to figure out how to get it back together.

Even earlier, I remember two incidences that were strangely similar. In one, my grandparents were visiting me in Oregon, and we were at a stream or river, playing in the water. Something floated by that caught my attention, and my grandparents told me to swim to get it. I tried, but the more I swam, the farther away it got. Finally, it drifted around the bend, and was gone.

I’m sure the sadness of a three-year-old boy paddling madly after something that is constantly slipping farther away is hard to grasp. Perhaps it will help to explain that somehow I perceived that object as special and beautiful just because my grandparents had sent me to get it.

The other event was at the ocean. Dad and I were walking along the beach, and throwing things into the waves. We saw a unique board floating in the water – and in some way it was special. Dad told me to swim after it, so I did. But the harder I swam, the farther away the board got, being carried over the crest of each wave farther out to sea. I wanted it, I longed for it, but my fear and powerlessness towards the ocean held me back. And so I swam, watching it drift farther from me, until it finally vanished.

Somehow, that memory has stuck with me, and the feeling of it has permeated me from top to bottom, coloring everything else I’ve ever done. When I look at the world, I see it through the shades of that longing. Every relationship is tinged with the sadness of my heavy touch on their light innocence.

Somehow, I think I will aways be that boy paddling desperately into the waves, watching as the thing he longs for slips farther and farther away.

There is a lot of confusion about what exactly Jesus teaches us to be. Many people on TV would suggest that Jesus came to teach us how to be happy. There is a lot of validity to that thought, but somehow it seems a little shallow.

Other people suggest Jesus came to teach us how to be rich. Like Job’s friends, they suggest that your riches (or lack thereof) are a measure of your spiritual success. Some people would frame Jesus as offering us an “out” from this life, with the promise of something much better after we die. Still others would say Jesus teaches us to suffer.

To me, all of these ring hollow, or come off a bit masochistic. I would like to suggest another way of framing what Jesus teaches.

History consists of kings and heroes. The kings amass power, conquer enemies, build kingdoms, and enslave their rivals. They usually die at the hands of their power-hungry family members, or manage to survive into old age by killing off those who are perceived as threats. Heroes, on the other hand, usually revel in life. They hold onto things lightly, and pass freely between the comforts of luxury and the open fields. They make tough decisions, they sacrifice, they suffer excruciating pain so that the life of their family, their people, or their world will be changed. Heroes change, and they change the world around them. Heroes usually die in rescuing others, or live to old age, surrounded by the people they sacrificed for.

Conventional thinking attributes the greatness of society and civilization to the acts of kings. But when we look a little deeper, almost every great change in history has come from lone figures, moving against the grain of their society, changing the world around them as they went. Kings rewrite history to take the credit, but they never originate change. Change is the poison of kings.

Solomon can teach you to be a king, but he can’t teach you to be a hero. And while the rest of the world might envy being Solomon, Jesus told his followers that someone even greater than Solomon was among them. Someone who could enact real change in the world, someone who reveled in life, who could make the difficult decisions and sacrifices necessary to reshape the world.

He was a hero, and he taught them to be heroes.

Every moment is valuable all by itself. But sometimes other moments help us see that.

At one point in my life I was extremely distressed. I walked out into the darkness, and eventually laid down behind an old log. And I wailed.

I couldn’t fathom why life was so terrible.

Years later, I wrote songs about that night. Those emotions were available to me, allowing me to create things that were new and amazing.

The funny thing about a song is that (if it’s a good one) there is nothing you would trade it for. Once that song exists, you would never want to go back and undo the experiences that lead up to it. No matter how bad those experiences were.

I feel the same way about that night. There is something there that I wouldn’t give up. Not because it turned into something positive – though that helps us see its value – but because in that moment itself, there was something worth its existence.

I think there’s a deeper beauty underneath the pain we encounter. I think it permeates our lives. And I think we can always see it if we look. Positive things may happen, but those things really only highlight what was there to begin with: the deep, underlying beauty in even our most painful moments.

Ever since I was 15, I’ve identified myself primarily as a songwriter. It is what I do, and who I am.

And ever since I began performing, I’ve begun segmenting myself. There is the side of me that performs and travels, and does ridiculous things in random midwestern states. There is the side of me that is introspective, that writes about the things I see, and tries to see the world differently. And there is the side of me that is all logic and precision and theology and politics and economics all blended together.

And it’s always a difficult thing to decide how much of each one I should share with the world.

As a musician, I’m expected to do things. Play big concerts, tour around the world, meet famous people, and maybe even cause a few international incidents along the way. Since I’m also a musician who writes songs, I’m perhaps expected to see things a little differently. But I don’t really think there’s any true cultural precedent for a musician who thinks critically about things.

This makes sense. We don’t turn to Bill O’Reilly to find music that stirs our souls, and we don’t turn to Fergie to learn about international politics. By and large, we want our public figures segmented into careful categories.

But I don’t think I’m really able to segment myself like that anymore. For me, thinking bold and interesting new thoughts, analyzing the political and religious and cultural messages I hear, having new insights about the world, writing music, and performing for others, all came meshed together. There is some kind of organic symbiotic relationship between all these aspects of my life. And every time I’ve tried to carefully box each segment up, they begin bleeding together, overrunning their barriers, and meeting in a confusing mess on the floor.

My main resolution this year is to do nothing I’m not passionate about. I think that means taking down some of the walls I’ve built. I think it means letting things converge.

I believe in convergence. Progress in technology is almost always about the convergence of previously unrelated things; lately, many people’s phones have become their computers. Blending styles has always been the way music has progressed; despite radio’s failures, we are the heirs of a broad and rich spectrum of musical influences, stretching back through centuries. The convergence of different ethnicities helped to make America great, and the convergence of science, art, philosophy, and religion sparked what came to be known as the Renaissance.

Convergence isn’t just a way to kick off new creative movements. It’s also the reality of humankind. We live in a rapidly converging world, where the actions of tribal people in remote parts of the earth deeply impact the lives of urban citizens in first-world countries. In the past, many would disregard the needs of strangers, expecting never to see those people again. Now, it is increasingly likely that the people who are strangers today will encounter you again and again, as neighbors, coworkers, or people you meet online. For humanity, all of our individual paths are converging.

There is something deep about reality, I think, that works to take all of its far-flung pieces, and bring them back together. Even as we diverge and diversify, our worlds collide. Even as the universe spreads outward, it becomes more interconnected.

So I am going to try to stop fighting. I’m going to try to let go of my struggle against gravity, and let all the pieces of my life turn and plummet back together. And we’ll see what happens.

Yesterday, it occurred to me how much of our human relationships are characterized by guilt or judgment. Guilt and being judgmental are two sides of the same blade, and that blade separates people into their own little self-focused domains.

For a moment I felt like I saw what it would be like to be free of these barriers. If you could really communicate fully with another human being – if you had no hesitation or self-consciousness in your interactions – wouldn’t it be like having the same mind?

We know that the human brain can function as different entities, if barriers are introduced. TV shows love to dwell on the weirdness of multiple personality disorders, or the functioning of split-brain patients. When communication between the two halves of someone’s brain is cut off, those two halves begin to function like different people. One hand may even fight the other hand for dominance.

If we can see a mind break into two different minds, doesn’t it stand to reason that two minds might, for just a moment, act as one? This synchronicity would probably only last briefly, a tenuously balanced moment in which time freezes and we step outside the barriers in which we’ve lived our entire lives.

I think this happens rarely, in fleeting moments, sometimes in young children, sometimes when someone looks face-on into another human being’s suffering, sometimes in music, when the musician for a moment feels connected to the floor and the audience and the sky itself. In that moment, judgment ceases, and the individual flexes and stretches out into a much bigger world.

Just a short list of things that have inspired me to really feel life, even if only briefly.

A New Earth
…made me look at leaves differently, made me feel alive
http://eckharttolle.com/a_new_earth

The Inescapable Love of God
…begins theologically in depth, but ended making me feel the purpose of everything I experience
http://www.thomastalbott.com/the_inescapable_love_of_god.html

A video about deciding Who You Are
A PG-rated talk about focusing on your creative work, and not getting distracted by people selling stuff
http://www.43folders.com/2009/10/22/who-you-are

The last one is by no means as deep as the other stuff. But it is a video you can watch right this moment, and it inspired me to start writing a song tonight.

-micah

I am a grand schemer; I devise plans not just for me, but for the world. And a small part of those ideas get put into practice, and change things. But most of it goes undone.

During the weekend in Atlanta, I attended the APCA conference, lived through a tornado, and set my mind on fire with ideas. Ideas that need DONE.

And so in determining to DO things, I’ve decided that I need to go public with my intentions. I need ideas and help from others, and the ability to bounce my ideas off the world.

My aim is to do more with my band than just deliver a concert. I want to create an experience, and transcend what bands are “supposed” to do. I want to empower people to turn around and create their own world, rather than being content to consume the one created by what’s left of MTV.

I’m taking baby-steps in that direction already. We’re working on partnering with some organizations that are doing important things. We’ve worked with charities (like the Heifer Project) that we felt were doing something unique and creative in the world. We’re moving into concerts that are more meaningful, and are more than just a show.

I want to make our concerts places where people build spontaneous community, not just an event people watch together. I want our concerts to empower and inspire people to go home and change their life. And I don’t mean that in a touchy-feely way.

Some concerts leave you feeling like you want to quit your job and burn down your house. Not because they make you feel destructive, but because they inspire you with the vision of something bigger and much more amazing that YOU are capable of.

I want to do that. I want to be that band. I want to inspire the next renaissance.

There’s my soul. I want your feedback.

-micah

Scientists have discovered that babies see colors differently than adults. Where babies see things are they “are”, adults process colors through the filter of their language. Apparently, people who speak Russian see blue differently than people who speak English.

Babies See Pure Color

This makes sense to me. After all, why does “pink” exist? We call light blue “blue”, but we call light red “pink”. Why is that?! Our language has made a different color where one never existed before.

Most of the time, when we look at a person or a thing or a color, we don’t see it for what it is. Instead, we mentally label it with some tag, like “pink”. That tag might have all kinds of thoughts and emotions attached to it. But that tag is not the real thing.

Sometimes, if you look hard enough, you can see things as they really are. It might just last a second, but during that second, the world is so amazing.

One night this past Fall, it was a bit warm in my bedroom. Outside, though, the temperature was just perfect. So I pushed open the window and lay in bed with the perfectly tuned breeze wafting through the room, carrying scent-notes of late Summer and outdoor plant life. The sounds were relaxing and rhythmic. Everything was ideal. To me, lying in bed with that breeze and those sounds was the perfect experience. Maybe it reminded me of Summer growing up, I don’t know.

At one point, I began to think about shutting the window, so I wouldn’t have to get up and do it later. I can experience this tomorrow night, I thought.

But another part of me clung to the experience, thought better of it, and let the window stay open. That night turned out to be the one and only night like that this past year.

When it occured to me to write this down, I thought of waiting until tomorrow. Then I thought again.

The moment is what we have. Experience it fully.

Every day I teach, I take a 20-minute drive from Nashville to Murfreesboro. This drive is nothing at all compared to the pain of the morning commute into Nashville everyday.

In fact, the drive just flies by. I listen to the radio, engage myself in my own thoughts, or eat McDonald’s as I drive.

But today I woke up. I didn’t eat McDonald’s, didn’t listen to the radio, and didn’t think. And I realized a strange and wonderful truth.

Between me and Murfreesboro stretches a vast wilderness I must cross. The drive there is not so much a morning commute as it is an excursion between two remote outposts of civilization; outposts on the cusp of a vast expanse.

The road itself, the buildings dotting that road, and my own thoughts had hidden this from me.

But just looking at the reality as it flashed by convinced me that if I were to rise up a few hundred feet, the truth would be seen: this was nothing more than a flimsy covering laid on top of the wilderness underneath. The flimsy covering couldn’t begin to actually contain the reality that stretched out away from it and beneath it for hundreds of miles.

Odd things happen when you stop and observe.