Latest / Wanzology / So, What's Your Story?
Transcript
- So What’s Your Story What's up? What's up? What's up? Hi, how's it going? Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY, I am your host, The Wanz, and, uh, I'm kinda blown away. I went to see Ed Sheeran last night. Man, talk about sensory overload. There was a lot going on, and it was on a massive scale, but take everything away and leave the man with just a guitar and he will blow your mind. He is so, so good. I was reminded as I was waiting for all the things to start, 'cause I got there really early, and I, uh, got to my seat and I sat and watching people come in, and you know how they pack everybody in like sardines. Pretty soon, the row behind me has got people in it, and the row in front of me has got people in it, but there's really not anybody next to me, and I struck up a conversation with a woman behind me, and she was asking how many times I'd seen him and what I thought about his music and so on and so forth. And I divulged that once upon a time, I met him. Kept in touch with him for a little while. She didn't believe me, and I found the photo and proved as evidence. And then she said, "So how did that come about?" "Well," I said, and then I told her the whole story about how I'd been singing forever, and then I got the break of a lifetime, and how we're looking at this big, huge stage and I used to be on one of those things for a couple of years. "Really?" She says. And I said, "Yeah, really." And then I looked at her and I go, "So what's your story?" "Oh, I don't really have one." What do you mean you don't have one? No, I, I really don't have a story per se. And I said, "Look around." You know, the venue's filling up with all these people, all these humans who look somewhat the same yet completely different, all of them coming from different places at different times in their lives, all converging in one place on the Earth, one place, and there was all sorts of stuff that happened before they got here. And I asked her, "So what makes you think your story isn't as important as anybody else's?" She said she didn't know. And I said, "Everybody has a story. Look at all these people. Look around. Look at all these people." Every single person you run into has a story, but very, very few tell their story. And when I say tell your story, I mean very, very few people share where they came from, what happened, what got them to where they are right before you're standing in front of them. Everybody has a story. There's a certain level of presumption, yes. You presume if someone looks around your age, you presume they may or may not have gone to public school like you. You presume they had a family structure like yours. You presume they may or may not have brothers and sisters of a certain age, and how you grew up together and how you took what you learned at home to school with you and injected it into your friend group, and everything evolved from there. So if you can look at someone and just by their appearance gather a certain amount of information, what's wrong with verifying that information? What's wrong if you're being asked about your information, what's wrong with telling a complete and total stranger the general overview of your life? Do you think that everyone you talk to is going to dig into your digital past and try to find all these skeletons that you have in the closet? Like how many times you lied to your parents so that you could go out and drink with your friends, or how many guys you've slept with, how many girls you've slept with? Nobody really cares. Really, they don't. If you think that people really care about how you have conducted your life, on a certain level, you're quite mistaken. People are so busy living their own life, they really don't have time to try and live yours. What they will do is compare what you've told them to what they've done. Then it becomes all about the similarities. Just as I was explaining to many people last night, look around. I mean, this is a concert that's going to have at least thirty thousand people at it, and every single one of them is a Homosapien. The work staff is Homosapien. The crew that runs all the board and gear, they're all Homo sapiens. I mean, which would not be amazing if it weren't for the fact that there is only one species of Homosapien on the planet. One. Hundreds of thousands of birds, millions of species of bugs, but Homosapiens, one. Just one. Only one. When you start looking at people and how they're dressed, how they, uh, carry themselves, how their hair looks, what style are their glasses frames, what other colors are they wearing? You start taking all these general things, “Wow, look at that person. Just like me, they have a nose in the middle, two eyes just above the nose, and two handles on the side that we call ears. Below that nose thing is a orifice called a mouth. Very characteristic of a Homosapien.” Everything else becomes this slice and dice diversion. What sex are they? What color is their hair? What color are their eyes? What's their bone structure like? Are they thin, heavyset? How did puberty treat them, horribly? Not at all? Or just right? For every individual, that's different I still maintain every single person that you will run into in your life has a story, just like you have a story I often say everything comes from something, and that's because I'm a music guy and sure enough, you think about whatever music it is that you listen to in this day and age, it all has its roots in the '90s, the '70s, the '50s, the '30s, all of it. If you don't think so, find a musicologist or do the research yourself. Me, I go from what I learned in college. I learned that American music pretty much started in the fields where slaves were picking crops, and w- what happened was the slave owners thought that these people were unsophisticated, so they taught them religion. Part of the religion that they taught had songs, otherwise known as hymns. Hymns, when sung by people who not have the European background that the slave owners did, may sound different, and they did. African culture combined with white man slave hymnal, and what do you get? You get gospel. Gospel came from the blues. You get country, and from country it splits into country music and blues. Country and blues are kind of joined at the hip, but that's where they split, like your legs split at the hip. One goes one way and one goes the other way. You know, Elvis, right? Elvis stole so much from Black culture, most people don't believe that he did, but that's exactly what he did. If you get a chance sometime, look up the story behind the first gospel record Elvis wanted to do. He wanted it to sound more like traditional gospel, meaning African influenced hymnals. His record company said, "Not a chance. We can't use those, quote-unquote, inferior people's creation." So he adapted it and taught it to other people of his ilk, for lack of a better word, and it became one of his biggest-selling records, "How Great Thou Art." I digress. The same theory to explain music's history also can explain a person's history. There is a presumption that people who look like you, sort of kind of same age, right, they went through kindergarten, first grade through 12, and then may or may not have gone on to college, but they still went to a place where they learned. They went to a school. In school, they learned how to socialize, and that's the underpinnings of what we see in adults today. It all spawned off of what we learned when we got out of one classroom with one teacher and then went to multiple teachers in multiple rooms and more often than not, different students. That's where it all comes from. Each person's experience is different. My experience going to Mann Junior High School in Lakewood, Washington, is different from a friend of mine who went to a rival junior high, Hutloff Junior High School. We're good friends because we met in high school. We're still friends, but in that first beginning, he was at one school, I was at another, and he never knew me, and I didn't know him. So now let's say you graduate from high school and you go to a college. Well, then it becomes the same exercise that you started in junior high, only on steroids. Now you're in a different locale with people of your age who come from pretty much the same background, everybody came from high school, but they had different experiences in high school, which they took into their college experience, and you socialized with them. And when you got out of college, you now had more of a story. God help you if you got a job just right out of college and were able to work at that job for 10 years. Well, then you got another job, and you worked at it for 10 years snd then you got another job, and you worked at it for, hmm, I don't know, five, maybe 10 years. And then you go to a concert, and you run into somebody, and that person asks you, "So what's your story?" Well, you've got thirty years of history, baby. And if you're me in the mid of the sixties, you've got forty, fifty years of history, stories. Your memories are your story. So when I say everyone has a story and you say, "No, I really don't." Yeah, you really do! You didn't get to where you are right now by accident, you went through things. You lived before. You didn't just pop up where you are right now, all fully grown and whatnot, you grew into it. You matured. You took the lessons of the past and applied them to the present in order to create the future that you had, which is now the present. So why won't you share that story with someone else? Well, why would I? Simple. I can almost guarantee that you at some point in your life had doubts about who you were, what you were doing, and how you were gonna get from this point to whatever the next point is. Every single human being goes through a test of self-doubt, every single one of them. Yours may resemble millions of people, but it is always going to be unique to you because you yourself are unique, yet you're still part of the class Homosapien. You get it? Next time you look at somebody in the car next to you or sitting across the aisle on the bus from you or walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street from you, yeah, they have a story just like you. And why aren't you telling your story again? “Oh, I don't want people to know.” Know what? How do you know that an event that happened to you ten years ago might help someone in the same position today? How do you know that what you learned in a class in the seventh grade would help this person who just got out of college and didn't learn it the same way you did? We all have a story, and that's a story that deserves to be told because we didn't get to where we are in life by accident. We had to do some things, fail at some things, so that we could succeed at other things. That progression of failure, then success is the story of every human being's life. I've said it before and I'll say it again. We, Homo sapiens, we don't learn how to walk, we just learn how not to fall down as much anymore. If you want proof of that, find a toddler. Find some human that's a year to sixteen months old. Watch how they learn how to walk. Then they learn how to run. They learned how to crawl before they learned how to walk, just like every other human being on the planet. We all have a story. You will not know what your story will do for someone else. You don't know that your tenacity, your perseverance, your effort could inspire someone else. They'll never find it if you never share it. So make sure that wherever you are, whomever you're around, ask 'em some questions like, "Well, where'd you grow up? And then what? And then what? Really? Me too." Find these similarities. With only one species of human being on the planet, I am a firm believer that we have more in common than we do that separates us. But somewhere along the way, we are taught not to share anything, not to trust anyone. I think that's completely wrong. There's safety in numbers, is how the old saying goes. Well, if you're just with two people, if you both shared your story with each other and then one other person, that's another person. If that other person had five people in their circle, now you're eight. Okay, so you have eight people that have a similar story. They become your clique, and Lord knows this is what happens. This is what happens in college. You find people that you have stuff in common with, and over the years you keep contacting them, you keep reaching out to them. Why? Because you have stuff in common, so you're interested in what their life is like as they are interested in what yours is like. Everybody has a story, so what's yours? Tell your story often. Tell your story to almost anyone, because they may need to hear the things that you did to get you through. You got through it before. You'll get through it again. It doesn't matter what it is. Yo, thanks. Thanks a lot for paying attention. Go out and tell your story to every man, woman, and child you possibly can. I will see you next week. Later.