Hey all…
I wanted to give you an update on the granuloma just above my vocal cord. I had surgery this afternoon to remove it and am now on complete vocal rest for a month or more. It’s been a very long process in waiting to see if time was an alternative to surgery, but even given two weeks’…
I wanted to share with you a memory of my friend Steve Jobs, a memory that in the days since his passing has come to represent how great of a guy he was, and how good he was to me.
I first met Steve in 2003, over the phone, when I cold-called him to tell him I was a devout fan of all things Apple…
A crowded Harvard Bar. Will and our gang walk by a line of
several Harvard students, waiting to be carded.
CHUCKIE
All right, are we gonna have a
problem?
CLARK
There's no problem. I was just hoping
you could give me some insight into
the evolution of the market economy
in the early colonies. My contention
is that prior to the Revolutionary
War the economic modalities especially
of the southern colonies could most
aptly be characterized as agrarian
precapitalist and...
Will, who at this point has migrated to Chuckie's side and
is completely fed-up, includes himself in the conversation.
WILL
Of course that's your contention.
You're a first year grad student.
You just finished some Marxian
historian, Pete Garrison prob'ly,
and so naturally that's what you
believe until next month when you
get to James Lemon and get convinced
that Virginia and Pennsylvania were
strongly entrepreneurial and
capitalist back in 1740. That'll
last until sometime in your second
year, then you'll be in here
regurgitating Gordon Wood about the
Pre-revolutionary utopia and the
capital-forming effects of military
mobilization.
CLARK
(taken aback)
Well, as a matter of fact, I won't,
because Wood drastically
underestimates the impact of--
WILL
"Wood drastically underestimates the
impact of social distinctions
predicated upon wealth, especially
inherited wealth..." You got that
from "Work in Essex County," Page
98, right? Do you have any thoughts
of your own on the subject or were
you just gonna plagiarize the whole
book for me?
Clark is stunned.
WILL
Look, don't try to pass yourself off
as some kind of an intellect to impress
these girls and embarrass my friend.
Clark is lost now, searching for a graceful exit, any exit.
WILL
The sad thing is, in about 50 years
you might start doin' some thinkin'
on your own and by then you'll realize
there are only two certainties in
life.
CLARK
Yeah? What're those?
WILL
One, don't do that. Two -- you
dropped a hundred and fifty grand on
an education you coulda' picked up
for a dollar fifty in late charges
at the Public Library.
Will catches Skylar's eye.
CLARK
But I will have a degree, and you'll
be serving my kids fries at a drive
through on our way to a skiing trip.
WILL
(smiles)
Maybe. But at least I'll be original. I appreciate your appreciation.
Hey Brittany! Of course I remember you silly! Thank you so much, for all of the above. You’re awesome. Miss ya!
First off, THANK YOU. Hearing and reading things like this fuel me to keep doing what I’m doing. Writers are thinkers. And we have this internal subconscious need to get what’s in our minds and hearts out there, hoping someone else will catch onto it, thus relating and identifying themselves with what we feel, too. And that is the everlasting, timeless beauty of art.
Sure! I hang out with artists that I consider myself a fan of all the time. Just because you consider yourself a fan of my music, doesn’t mean I have an ego and think of myself as too good to associate with a “fan” persay!
Sitting on my ass all day, really. But if you meant career-wise, I’d be in school somewhere working towards an English degree so I could be a teacher.
“Amazing” and “perfect” are really subjective words. Although I truly appreciate the sentiment and you’re much loved for being, well, so loving towards me, I like to think that I have the same ability to be an important contributor to society as anyone else. I’m glad you think I’m nice, and I’m glad we’ve met!
September 3rd. I’m weird with dates. My mind definitely works on some kind of internal calendar system. I can feel the season’s change in my skin, my bones, my heart. I think I’ll always remember September 3rd. And with good reason. A year ago today was an extremely pivotal day for me. It was a day that sparked and perpetuated a period of necessary self-discovery.
The words “maybe we just need a break” never roll off the tongue smoothly, and never come with any great ease. And I think back to how I felt then. How I tried to register and process this feeling of heartbreak for the very first time at 19-years-old. Confusion, hurt, self-pity, self-loathing, anxiety, depression - I experienced all of those and then some. Looking back, though, I’ve identified one tidbit that I don’t think I ever took into account, amidst my crumbling state, was how incredibly difficult this must have been for her, too. I was so entirely self-absorbed in my own little world with all of the above said “side-effects” of heartache, if you will, that I never let myself view things from the other side of the track.
September 3rd. A time period I would never wish for my greatest enemy to ever have to endure a second of. Now, you may be feeling at this point that I am overdramatizing and saying, “Oh, it’s just a teenage break up, it happens…” and so on and so forth. But you weren’t there and you’re not me. If you have ever experienced anything vaguely familiar to my situation, you know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t, you will. Trust me.
I became a different person after September 3rd. I was turning to friends and family for solace and advice for the first time, whereas I had always been there as the voice of reason for them. That was one of the first lessons I learned. The tables can turn at any instant and you will find yourself in an opposite state than what you are accustomed to.
The days went by slowly. I don’t think I left my couch for three weeks. Just waiting by the phone, hoping any second it would ring and it would be her with tears in her voice saying, “This is stupid, I miss you. Come back.” That’s when I learned that watching romantic comedies during a break-up period is never in your best interest. Life will never play out quite perfectly as a movie script does.
I can honestly say there were days where I would wake up and not know if or how I was going to make it through the day. I just didn’t see any breach of this thing. I had so many people trying to help me out, too. But I shut them all out. Which isn’t rude or selfish - it’s fine. Mental pain and severe heartache are far more excruciating than any physical pain you can imagine. But heartbreak must heal, like anything, on its own and with time. It is definitely unbearable to watch someone you care about suffer, and taken my state, I can only look back and be thankful for those who were there for me then. In essence, I was a wreck. My family, my friends, her family, her friends - they could all attest to that. And that was the next lesson I learned. No matter how you’ve chosen to shut them out and not heed their advice, there are and will always be people who care about you. This is something I have only begun to realize recently.
But you’re not going to want to heed their advice anyway. And you’re not going to want to have to accept the words “move on” until you’re actually ready to. All of which are completely and totally fine. You’re meant to be a miserable, cranky a**hole. Embrace it. I call this the “‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card” period. You don’t think anyone could ever understand this exact type of pain you’re enduring. I couldn’t believe others and I would get almost offended when they would lay on thick layers of advice. How could they EVER understand what I am going through!? And the answer is they do. They’ve been there. And, now, so have I. I know this now because in the period between these two September 3rd’s, I have had to be the one to console a friend or two in their battle. To be a crutch, but hold back just enough and let them heal on their own.
One thing you have to know is that you can’t run from your feelings. You need to accept them for what they are. If you’re hurt, you’re hurt. There’s no debating that. The only thing that got me off that couch was the fact I had to go back on tour for two more weeks. Being away from home and out of your element when all you want to do is curl up in a ball and watch re-runs of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is a total reality check. I began to see the business side of music better then. Work was work. Whether I was in an office cubicle, waiting tables or on the road. Physicality and distance plays no part in healing quicker. It followed me to California. I spent a good deal of the month of Novemeber in Los Angeles, and then a little time in San Diego. Didn’t change anything. It will follow you everywhere. Anyway you think you are going to expedite the process of healing won’t work, I promise. It is and always will be just time.
I am writing this from a place of healing, maturation and growth. I used to wonder where I would be a year from that day. Now I know. Still standing. Well, sitting. And on the same couch that I had trouble getting off of for those three weeks. I used to be so angry. Angry at her, angry at myself, the world - you name it, I was angry at it. I’m not angry anymore. In all honesty, meeting and dating her was one of the best things to ever happen to me. No one will ever be able to take those happy times away from us. And make no mistake, no one is going to be able to take away the difficult times either. That’s all part of the enduring that no one can scathe by.
I make no promises about the future. For you or for me. Oh, you’re going to have your September 3rd one day. Maybe it’ll be October 12th or March 21st. And, yeah, it’s going to hurt. More than you can imagine, too. “Quick and painless” do not exist in the realm of a break-up, for either side. You’re not going to wake up one day and it’ll suddenly all be over. 4 weeks, 6 months, 8 months, a year. You’ll heal on your own time.
I’m sorry I don’t have the storybook ending for this one. And I don’t know much more further than this about the future. All I could ever want her to know is that she is still an amazing person and I am better for having known her. I know we’ll both be alright.
I am not the person I was a year ago. Nor was I meant to be.
- Corey
“Y'know, it’s hard to talk about songs without talking about relationships. And that’s what people like to talk about. And I sing about relationships, so I have to talk about them - especially if this is called "Storytellers”. So, I hope you’re O.K. with that. I loved a girl a lot and I think I had an experience that a lot of guys have had. Loved a girl a lot, but she couldn’t trust men. And if you trace it back as to “Why?”, the first man in her life she couldn’t trust. And I know this song called “Daughters” sounds a lot like I’m just sittin’ around the house, spitballin’, coming up with some really nice, lofty things to sing about. But, it really is the result of having traced it backwards, trying to figure out how I could possibly love this person. And the answer is you can’t, because someone else didn’t before you. And I know this song, y'know, like - “What does he know? What does this 24-year-old kid know about having kids?” And I don’t, but I would have liked to have in that situation and I couldn’t really get it through. Like, “Im not gonna hurt ya.. I’m gonna do the opposite!” But it’s this culture, y'know? You watch “The Real World” and you see girls getting dragged out of bars, completely drunk, self-diagnosing themselves. Like, I’m diagnosing you as “drunk”. You can’t get pulled out of a bar drunk and talk about how you have “abandonment issues”. You have drinking issues. You have red blood cell issues, right now. Self-diagnosing on “The Real World”. And then Chris Rock had this joke about “keeping your daughter off the pole”. And I think I was in Australia flying to New Zealand and I had heard Chris Rock doing something about “keep you daughter off the pole and keep the clear heels out of her closet.” And I sort of put those two things together and thought about my situation. And I’m really singing to a girl, “Fathers, be good to your daughters” because I can’t love this girl. And I think a lot of guys have had that situation. And if I meet one more beautiful woman, with Daddy issues, I swear to God, I’m just gonna go insane. Beat the crap out of my daughters someday. That’s probably how the vicious cycle started, come to think about it. That’s how it all started. Wow. These songs can actually be very enlightening. And by “enlightening”, I mean ruining your career.“
- John Mayer. VH1 "Storytellers”, November 2009.
Wow, there are so many. “Wheel” by John Mayer is my favorite song of all time. I can identify so many parts of my past with that tune. “Superman” by Joe Brooks is also great. “Caves” and “Swim” by Jack’s Mannequin, too. All powerful, great songs. I’m sure there are many others.
Of course!
Ren & Stimpy, definitely.
Invisibility. All day, everyday!
YES I DO. I got to see him in NYC in May. “5:19” is one of my favorite songs ever. And I love his new record, “Weights and Wings”, too. He is over-all exceptional!
I’ve thought for a few minutes on how to answer this question properly. I could’ve been incredibly impulsive, but truth is I’m just indecisive. “September” was one of the first songs I’ve ever written. And probably the oldest song that I still play, or at least haven’t retired yet. Do I think it’s my best song? No. But it’s still got its special place in my heart.
There’s currently an untitled song for the new record that I’ve been testing the waters with in the live setting - acoustically and full band. I really like it because I think the song itself shows a step forward in a direction that I never ventured into before, nor intended on going in. But I love it all the same. More than a few people have approached me after some of the more recent shows and pointed out that they specifically liked this song, too. I wish I could be less nondescript. But you’ll hear it when it releases.
I wrote a song around a half year ago called “Along The Way”. If nothing else, I believe it is my most honest work to date. It’s about a break up I went through. And although the feel for it is not a sappy, sad break-up song, the lyrics have a lot of heart. It’s a very broken down song, too. It works with mainly just acoustic guitar. As much as I like to jam out with a bunch of other guys on stage to my songs, this song is entirely lyrically driven and needs those minimalist qualities to really set the tone of the story the listener will live in for at least those three minutes.
Ahh, a nicely posed question. I’m going to answer the second question first because of the timeline correlation. I grew up listening to bands like Blink 182, Nirvana and Rancid. I was really heavy into punk and grunge when I was 10 or so. And if I want to date myself even further, I remember rocking out to No Doubt’s “Tragic Kingdom” which was released in 1995. I came in and out of a couple of different musical phases then. I floated around for a while until my mother gave me a copy of John Mayer’s “Any Given Thursday” Live DVD for Christmas, subsequently the same year I began playing guitar. From that day forward John Mayer encompassed all and everything I wanted to be. Those previously mentioned bands were reasons for why I got into music, but John Mayer is definitely the reason I still PLAY music.
Have you ever found yourself driving with no destination? Talking and not reaching any point at all? Living one day after another with no purpose? There are times we fall asleep at the wheel, so to speak. Where are you going? Why? When? How? For who? They always say, “you’re missing the big…
There are definitely choices I’ve made in my life which I wound up being not so proud of. But none make me feel as empty and useless as burning through the days. I’m guilty of being a sloth, staying up all night and sleeping entire days away, relaxing a little too much and a little too long, hardly working when I know I should be working hard. There’s a lot you can do in 24 hours. And I think of how many days I can recall not accomplishing anything or taking the initiative and the necessary steps in a task in order to meet a goal. It’s selfish, really. And also very unfair to yourself. And that is the only way I can put it. A friend of mine lost her battle with cancer the day before her 20th birthday last month. I wonder what she would do with one more day here. I bet she wouldn’t spend it in bed.
How many people in this room are songwriters? Okay. So I’m gonna address us on a “songwriting” level for a moment. But before I do, I want to tell you the most important piece of information that applies, not only to your musical career, but your entire life. And I’ve seen it work and I’ve seen it not work. And it’s 100% true. The #1 thing you have to do before you set out on any other goal or any other course is to define your expectations. Number one thing. On the outset of any other project, record, tour - define your expectations.
Everyone in this room wants to “make it”. But I question how you would recognize “making it”. What is “making it”? Well, what do you want to be? Who in here wants a record deal? It would be nice to have a record deal, right? We want a record deal. Okay, well, what does a record deal look like? What does “making it” look like? Do you want to sell a million copies? Two million copies? Well, okay, let’s say - selling two million copies is like selling ten million copies 10 years ago. So let’s say you say to yourself, “My expectation is that I want to be an artist and I want to put records out and I want to sell millions of copies.” If that’s your expectation - GREAT. Then, you sort of skip straight to another questionnaire. If you answered “Yes” to “Do I want to be a Pop Star?” / “Do I want to make music for as many people as possible?” - now you have to, sort of, change your game to fit the expectation. You now have to wonder about “Is your song shorter than four minutes?”, “Do you get to your chorus fast enough?”. These are things you have to absolutely do. And you also have to compromise. And you also have to “play the game”, y'know?
Who in here thinks that the public is mostly dumb? Let me tell you something. The public is about 300 million times smarter than you. The pubic is not dumb. For those of you who said “Yes, I want to be a Pop Star” and “Yes, I would like to have a record deal” and “Yes, I’d like to make this happen”, the first thing you should know is that the public is always smarter than you. If you put a song out and you go *kisses fingers* “That’s it. That’s it! Watch it go! Light the fuse, stand back! Everybody stand back! It’s gonna be a hit! It’s gonna be a hit!” And it goes like this “FFFHHHHHHHMPP (fizzles out)” - Who is smarter than who? Your big, smart pop song went nowhere. The public just told you, “Ehhh..” They’re smarter than you on that one. ‘Cause you said you had it and they said “I don’t think so”. And you didn’t have it. So they’re smarter than you. That’s what you have to deal with. They’re smarter. And by defining your expectations, if you decide that you want to be a “Pop Star” - that’s not a dirty word. “Pop” just means “popular”. Frank Sinatra was a pop star. Jimi Hendrix was a pop star. Lot’s of people were pop stars. What kind of pop star? Lot’s of people are jazz musicians. What kind of jazz musician? You could define the genre anyway you want. So, if you said you wanted to be a pop star, you have to look at your songs.
There’s also people here who are a little dishonest about what they want to be. And, I think, if you want to be famous, if you want to make music for as many people as possible - just come out and say it. Don’t say, “Ahh, I wanna be indie. I’m just gonna be an independent artist,” and really secretly wish that you wanted to be a pop star. Because from the very beginning it’s disingenuous. There’s nothing wrong with saying “I want to play music for as many people as possible - without compromising the things that I have to be as an artist.” And that’s what I’ve done. Sony Music doesn’t come into the studio when I’m making a record, but I also know what’s gonna be a hit or what stands the chance of being a hit and what just doesn’t. And it’s a level of honesty with yourself that you have to have before you hand your music out to anybody else. So that’s sort of what I want to say about expectations.
If you only recognize success as a record deal and a big, fat “Publisher’s Clearing House”, over-sized Tiger Wood’s check, and a dinner and then going to the top of the roof and screaming, “I MADE IT!” - most of you will be stunning failures. I’ll tell you right now. I didn’t do it that way. But if you define success by putting out your first record and selling 5,000 copies and going to have sushi when you say, “Yeah, I got 5,000 copies” / “When I sell 5,000 copies, I’m gonna consider this a success.” That’s the difference between people who walk this earth happy and people who walk this earth constantly unfulfilled because they never defined the finish line.
– John Mayer, 2008 Berklee Songwriting Clinic
So, I’ve been doing some real soul searching lately. Looking back on where my life was and where it is now, for the last year and a half alone, really gives true meaning to “living and learning”. I’ve found that self-discoveries are not something that come like a light bulb suddenly illuminating above your head. In fact, they often come weeks or even months after something crucially considered occurs. For example, I never knew that I wanted to do music for the rest of my life the day I picked up a guitar. I didn’t know a year later, or even five. I think I began to “find myself” as a performer when I was 15 or 16, going out to weekly open mics at coffee houses and bar-restaurants around Long Island, signing up, and singing in front of perfect strangers. Things kind of snowballed from there. I was booking shows, pushing my own tickets, marketing myself, writing a record, tracking the record, putting out the record, marketing the record, playing bigger shows, playing out of state shows, playing sold out shows, opening for national touring acts locally, touring with national touring acts nationally - I could go on forever, but I was making pretty good time for an 18-year-old kid on the path to a career. And I was also having a great time doing it, and I still am - nearing 20.
But this isn’t about “my music career - (so far…)”. That is just an example of persistent change over an eighteen month period and where along the lines I learned a little something that pushed me to the next step. It’s funny how you can look backwards and only remember some of the cherished memories. It’s when I dissect who I was a year and a half ago that I realize all the lessons I had to learn along the way. All the people I’ve met. The floors I’ve walked across. The stages I’ve stood upon. The hands I’ve shaken. The pictures I’ve captured. The people I’ve accepted. The people I’ve rejected. The heart I broke. The heart of mine that was broken. The flights I’ve caught. The appointments I’ve made. The choice to leave some place. The choice to return to a place I once left. No matter who you are, you’re going to learn lessons along the line. Good or bad, they are all components that will make you who you are throughout and up to the very end of your life.
Self-discovery. It’s not really a question of “Who am I?” as much as “What makes me?” What have I discovered about myself? Well, we covered the music thing already. So, I’m an artist. A self-proclaimed one, but an artist at best. I’m a son. And a brother. I’m fairly independent. I’m definitely a romantic. And not the Hollywood-ized, “Prince-Charming-riding-in-on-a-white-horse, here-to-whisk-you-away-forever-and-ever” kind of romantic. More like a “It’s 3 AM, and you can’t stop crying because you don’t know why. ‘I’ll be right over.’” kind of romantic. Like the “Hey it’s Friday night and everybody’s out, but we’re in sweatpants on my couch having more fun than all of them combined” kind of romantic. Now, that kind of romanticism obviously needs to live in a world that exists between two people. Therefore, the relationship must have begun already. That is, if you’re open to it. Let’s rewind for a second. So, if I’m right (and I hope I am!), that means in order to get to that stage of comfort with someone, you would therefore have to get to know them on a more personal level. And under the surface we go!
So, what is it that you want? This varies from person to person, obviously. I’ve chalked it up, thus far, to “What do you search for?” vs. “Who do you search for?” Are you looking for a boy or a girl? Are they White? Black? Green? Are they plus-size, stick figure thin or do they fall somewhere in the middle? The interesting thing about all the above said qualities, is that they are all things neither us nor they can really control. I was born a white male. Something I had literally no control over. I was raised in a suburb on Long Island, a southeastern island of the state of New York which is just one of fifty states that make up the United States of America. Being raised here was not my choice. I was raised Catholic, though I am currently non-practicing. The country and area I live in is predominantly white-Christian. Once again, something I have no control over. I think you’re starting to get my point. I, and everyone else living on this Earth, are a result of circumstance for those things in which we cannot control. I am a result of the patterns of movement made by my ancestors that scale back centuries. And, ironically, these things that we have no control over are currently issues concerning some of the biggest social conflicts in the world.
Race. Creed. Sex. Locale. They make us different. They make us unique. Beautiful.
When the time comes for me to find a mate, ideally, I want her to be the farthest thing from me. I don’t want to marry someone who is so incredibly similar to me that we do everything alike. (Listen to the same music, like the same sports team, watch the same TV shows, eat the same foods) I want to gain from that person, appreciate their culture and learn from their livelihood. And I want to love them for who they are based on these components, not just love them for who they are. Are you following me? All I’m saying is if we are victims of our own circumstance, then we shouldn’t shut out people and opportunities based on “difference”.
Have you ever heard about some place you’ve never seen before? Some place you’ve never been? And you had this whole big picture in your head of exactly what it would be like, every little detail about it. Then you get there and it’s completely different, but not necessarily for the better or the worse. If you are one of those people who think you have it all figured out in your head and you’re gonna go to this school for so-many years and graduate with this degree and buy that house in this area and marry this “type of” girl/guy and have these many kids and that’s just how it will go, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. Life doesn’t work like that. Nor does it conform in order to satisfy your every wish, hope and dream.
Personally, I feel this “ideal life”, this target system people have, is ultimately limiting. It is, in essence, deciding and dividing what you “like” and “don’t like”. You are taking a stance and making a statement. You have made up your mind before you even hit a topic. This scenario can be extremely limiting when finding a mate. Almost similar to the high school football player who only goes for the hot, blonde cheerleader and mentally blocks out the geeky brunette with the glasses in the AV club who could potentially be everything he needs. Socially? The jock and cheerleader work. But what is social status anyway? Just another man-made system in order to divide and separate people based on “differences”.
My mom told me this once: “No matter what she looks like, or what you think of her at first, always give a girl AT LEAST that one chance to sweep you off your feet.” Too many people, and I include myself in this, just write people off and block them out as quick as a second’s glance. Someone you pass while out in public. Someone you know literally nothing about, not even their name. You write them off. You mentally tag them. “Fat.” “Jew.” “Drunkard.” “Slut.” “Illegal.” “Ignorant.” “Poor." You know nothing about them. Not one thing. And already you’re throwing up one hand, turning your head as you close your eyes, saying "Nope. Not interested."
We have so many opportunities in this world to say "no”. But an even and equal amount to say “yes”.
I dedicate this to my Grandmother, Sarah Crawford. Someone who I had no control over having in my life, but I am thankful everyday and am forever be blessed to have had. R.I.P. 3/1/20 - 12/1/10
Anything and everything that ever made an astronomical impact on the way this world turns was once an intangible, tiny idea inside someone’s head.