Episode 027 - The People Are Right In Front of You

I spoke to Andrea Rudnick, one of the founding members of Team Brownsville via Zoom in July. They are a group of Brownsville citizens who are doing necessary work in even more difficult circumstances now under the challenges of COVID-19 than they were facing over the last two years. If you are moved to support them, please do. They spend close to $100,000 per month in feeding, clothing, and sheltering a couple thousand people in a camp in Matamoros who are waiting their chance to request asylum and enter the United States legally. You can read more here about the cynically named Migrant Protection Protocols, and the other new U.S. policies designed to essentially eliminate asylum seeking. The U.S. signed the 1967 Protocol, agreeing to provide asylum to refugees, and has stayed in compliance with it for half a century. Since then, a process has been in place to verify refugee status for asylum seekers. Recently, that process has been cynically manipulated to eliminate it in fact if not in law.

Andrea references the Department of Homeland Security page about Migrant Protection Protocols, here.

Our theme song is Our theme song is “Start Again” by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. All other music was made by me on Ableton Live, except for the outro music, which I made on Soundation.

Here’s the transcript:

Andrea: Transformation. Transformation comes slowly. You can't really seek transformation. It comes to you. It comes to you because of what you do, because of the ways that you put yourself out there. I could say that all of us that have started with Team Brownsville, that we've all been transformed in ways that we never would've expected, that our eyes have been opened to things that we just never knew about. I don’t know. Your priorities change, I think, when that transformation happens.

We started in July of 2018, and we've gone through a lot of changes, certainly more changes than we ever would have known about. We continued just by trying to meet whatever the needs are that day. Because if we had known what we were going to be doing for two years, we might've said, nah, we can't really do that. That's just too much. But this way, just, just one day at a time, let's see what today brings. OK. What are the needs today? What needs can we meet? That's really how we continue, just every single day.

You would think it would give people more compassion, more understanding of that situation, that the crisis was here. It wasn’t somewhere else, and so it was a lot harder to throw up your hands and say, well, I can’t do anything, because yeah, the people are right in front of you. There are people here that ignore that and go on with their business as though there are no people sitting in an encampment in Matamoros. I guess my biggest surprise has been that aside from Team Brownsville and a few more people, there’s a lot of people that kind of choose to ignore the whole thing.

I think each of us has slightly different creation stories of how Team Brownsville was formed, and the truth is that we came to the same work in different ways. We came in just as teachers and administrators from the school district here in Brownsville. The skills that we bring in, our skills that we've had from being teachers and administrators and working with kids with special needs, working in a community that's a high poverty community, the community where you do have a lot of kids that are undocumented, kids that are families that struggle a great deal. We came in with that more than anything, just that background of, these are our people. They're not different from the people that we'd been working with all along. For me, what inspired me was going to the big march, the March Against Family Separation and just, I knew about it. I knew what was happening. And then I went to that march and it was a really big march for Brownsville.

So I would say that was just a catalyst. And then the next thing that happened for me personally is one of the organizers, one of the people that works for the ACLU, his name is Mike Seifert, he sent out a message saying please do what you can, because we have people that are sitting on the bridge with nothing. The truth is if you feel called to this work, and you see people sitting on a bridge with nothing, with no shelter, with no water, with no food, you have to do something. You can't just ignore it. Or at least I can't. And I think that the people who eventually came to be Team Brownsville, couldn't ignore it either.

We started with five or six people and pretty quickly we got up to maybe 10 or so. We kind of had to come up with how are we going to do that work? And we did have good models to go by because there are other organizations that have been doing the work, especially in the bus stations. Like there's an organization in San Antonio and I'm sure there's one in Austin as well that meet and greet people at the bus stations. So this would be the starting place because we have three detention centers in the area of Brownsville. They would bring people that were released from the detention center to our bus station. I mean, we were getting people from here to wherever and we just had this network of people that would meet and greet at bus stations all over the country. The numbers have gone up and down. Right now because of COVID, I think that they're releasing more people because they have had many COVID cases in the detention centers. And so there's been a big outcry to release people.

And we talk to a lot of people and horrific stories and the stories affect you. You realize that there's so much you can't do. And I don't know, for me, that's just, my drive is just to keep doing what I can do. But just knowing that I can't do everything and I can't meet every need and I can't, there's many things that go on, in the encampment that we have no control over. There’s cartel activity everywhere in Mexico, and that doesn't exclude the encampment. Those are all things that we don't have control over.

I really don't know how these families got here, but they're getting here at a really bad time. But it was really metering that set these people on the bridge, because that stopped them from crossing into the United States to request asylum.

Rod: The population that you’re serving isn’t illegal anyway, right? They’re following the legal procedure for seeking asylum, right?

Andrea: They are, and a lot of people don’t understand that. But that’s also the rhetoric that comes through from the current administration, that these are illegals, they’re coming for the wrong reasons. It presents these people in the worst possible light. Hence the Migrant Protection Protocol. It's not protecting the migrants at all. It's protecting the American people against the migrants. Look it up. I think it's on The Department of Homeland Security webpage is where they have like a write up about what MPP is and you'll see, you'll be shocked. I was.

Because the rules say that if you're on US territory, you can request asylum. But if you put the checkpoint right at the midpoint, kind of straddling the line, and you don't allow these people to cross the line, well, then I guess it's fair game. It was making sure that asylum seekers did not get through to request asylum. As long as they keep them back in Mexico, you know, they haven't, they haven't requested asylum yet. So we never had people sitting on the bridge like that waiting to, to request asylum. They were, they had always been able to cross freely.

And so it was kind of like go back and take a number and then very, very slow crossing of people to request asylum. Where before, they would arrive, and they would cross, now they would arrive, and there might be 50 people ahead of them. And they were crossing people, they might cross two men one day, then they might wait a few days and then they might cross a family. And then a couple of more days would pass and then they'd cross a few more, you know, it was never very many. And so just had this effect of more and more people arriving and not being able to get across, and so just kind of building up and building up the encampment.

And it's frustrating and infuriating to think about, you know, you're serving these people that have been through so much, and our own government refuses to let them in. And we have people now that have been there a full year because MPP started near the end of July in Matamoros. That's when they started the policy, and we had our first family cross and come back to Matamoros. We almost didn't believe it when we heard it, almost thought, no, it just can't be. But when we got the first families back, everybody was devastated. All the people that were waiting were devastated because of course they had kind of heard about MPP and the possibility, and they knew that it might mean that they weren't going to their family in the States, that whoever was waiting for them in the US wasn't going to receive them because they weren't coming. And so now we have people that have been there a full year. It's heart wrenching to see people go through so many different things. And COVID is just another thing thrown on top of everything that was already really terrible there, just makes everything that much worse.

But how are we going to meet the needs of these people? Because at that point, which was the fall, it was growing and growing and growing and growing. So we went from about 150 people prior to MPP to by, let's say October, November, there were probably 6 or 700 and it was just growing by hundreds every month. So now, there have been up to 2000 in the encampment, and then there's been another 2 or 3000 they say in the city of Matamoros, there's a lot of people under MPP.

I think if we get a new president, I'm pretty sure that things will change. I think that MPP will end quickly because it's such a horror. I just cannot imagine that it won't change, be one of the first things that does change. I just, and if that happens, then the encampment will empty out. There won't be an encampment anymore, which is great. I mean, I'm actually looking forward to the day when I don't have to cross into Mexico multiple times a week with, and I don't have to receive numerous calls because this one needs that and that one needs this. These people have suffered tremendously and deserve a chance to come into the United States. These are not bad people. These are people that have suffered and have gone through terrible traumas, many of them, and they just deserve a chance to live.

Because right now the numbers say less than 1% are actually going to get asylum as it is. And then if they, and if they pass that new round of rules that they're trying to pass, it's going to be a tinier fraction of 1% that are actually going to get asylum, which means that the majority of the people in the encampment will never get to come into the United States and they've waited for a year for nothing, suffered for nothing, gone through traumas in the encampment, as well as back in their home countries, and now it's not going to come to fruition, and they've done it the legal way. That's the thing that gets to me. These people have actually done it the legal way. They've followed the process. They've followed the rules. They haven't crossed the river, like so many other people have.

Rod: Do most of the people who come, come knowing that the rules have changed and that their chances are extremely slim, or are they still operating under the belief that things are the way they were before Trump?

Andrea: You know, it's interesting. I see most people, and you cannot convince them that they're not going to get asylum. They just kind of hang on to that. You know, God's gonna let me, and I have suffered a lot in my own country, and God's gonna be with me and lead me to the promised land. And even if you put it down to statistics, you'll still hear people say, well, then I will be in that less than 1%. That will be me. And I guess when you've gone through as much as they have, that's all that you have left, is that hope.

Rod: How many, you, I saw on the website, you have a dinner program, a breakfast program, the bus stop program and a school program. How many meals do you think you, I, I don't, I'm sure everything has changed with Corona, but how many, how many meals do you serve in a day?

Andrea: So the breakfast meal is about 6 or 700. Not everybody gets up. Dinner meal is about 1200, but we also are providing food staples because a lot of people prefer to cook for themselves. And so they've made clay stoves in the encampment, out of the dirt that's there. It's full of clay and they mix it with water and they know how to do it. And they make stoves, incredible stoves that you cannot believe that somebody could just take a shovel and mix it with water and make a stove like that. But they do it. At this time we’re purchasing kindling, what you would think of kindling wood. That's what it looks like to me. And we pay someone to do that. And so they bring three loads of that wood a week and distribute it to everyone who has a wood stove so that they can cook.

Our funding goes in a lot of areas, and a lot of areas that people wouldn't even know about because you see, OK, they're funding food, clothing, shelter, all that kind of thing, but you don't see the other funding that we do, which is transportation costs to asylum seekers that come to the bus station and don't have a ticket. Buying phones, we've bought many phones, because when people get out of detention, and they have no way of communicating with their families, and they're crossing the country, sometimes we just feel like we need to do that, but that's an expense that most people wouldn't know about. We also help funding the shelters in Matamoros that take in asylum seekers, because there are people that definitely don't need to live in the encampment, that shouldn't live in the encampment, people that have chronic illnesses, people that have newborn babies, there's all kinds of reasons. And so there's two shelters in Matamoros that will take asylum seekers in, but limited numbers. Right now they're full, and they're not taking anybody, again because of COVID. They're scared, don’t want to take new people in.

When we could go into Matamoros, I was going into Matamoros three or four times a week, and each time I would go, I would be there for hours of the day. Now we're not, we can't really go into Matamoros like we did. We've been delivering supplies and leaving them, having some of the asylum seekers come down out of the encampment with their wagons and pick up supplies and delivering things that way. But we have chosen to stay out of the encampment really since this all broke, because we don't want to be the ones that take the virus in.

So it's hard, it's hard in the encampment. It's hard to get them to wear masks until there actually was the first diagnosed case in the encampment. I think they've been hand-washing, and well, social distancing is another thing. When the tents are wall-to-wall tents, it's kind of hard to say that you're socially distancing, but they're trying to keep people apart in lines, like lines for dinner, for breakfast and things like that. But we know that people get together. They just do.

So I actually retired from the school district three years ago. So, but I retired to help my daughter take care of her young son, who's now, he just finished kindergarten. We ended up homeschooling him from March on because there was no classes. So I didn't cross at all during that period of time. And my daughter is a nurse, and she's very opposed to me crossing, because she knows how the asylum seekers live close together and things like that. And so she's... 

I mean, I don't like just putting responsibilities on other people and not doing it myself. I don't feel right about that. But yet at the same time, I also have to live in the reality of, There is no winning. There's no… Either way. If I say, OK, well, you know, I need to do this. I'm going to do this. Then she says, OK, well then I guess you won't get to take care of him because you're going across. So that's kind of a big threat, isn't it? You're going to get your one grandchild that you have in Brownville, you're going to get cut off from him.

So, yeah, it's a stressor. I mean, it stinks. But as far as other things pre-COVID, it definitely affects you. And I'm the volunteer coordinator. And up to the point that COVID stopped people from coming, I was receiving probably 10 to 20 calls or emails or texts a day about people wanting to come and volunteer. And so that was in a way taking up every bit of my time that I wasn't across, that I wasn't in the encampment, or I wasn't at the bus station. That was taking up a lot of time, and I didn't really know how to stop it. I couldn't really come up with a way of both addressing people's desire to come and volunteer and my own need to actually have some time where I could think about something else other than this work.

Well, as it happened, COVID kind of cut all that off because we can't accept volunteers right now. So, I'm sorry the volunteers can't come, but in a way it was like a relief for me because I didn't have to deal with all those calls and letters. Looking at the positive here, I would say that because we have to rely on the Team Brownsville people that actually live here to do anything, we have become closer and perhaps more organized because we're the people that we have to rely on.

Rod: Do you think you were in danger of getting burned out before COVID kind of put the brakes on some stuff?

Andrea: Not, not burned out from the work. Where I was feeling burned out was from that job of volunteer coordinator, because it just, I had no way of reining it in. I didn't, maybe I needed some professional person that says, hey, I have a degree in nonprofit management or something. I know how to do this. Let's come up with a better system. And so it was always, you know, contact Andrea, contact Andrea, contact Andrea. And I certainly didn't mind talking to people or telling them about the work that we do and all that. I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying. It was really more of the unending quality of it. There were like six different ways to contact me. And sometimes people would contact me like in three or four different ways. And they would get irate and like, well, I called you and you didn't respond, or I sent you a text and you...  and I just, I did my best is all I can say.

Everybody always thinks of retirement as, Oh, OK, well now you'll be able to do all... now you'll be able to travel, and now you'll be able to do all the things you wanted to do. And now you’ll be able to relax, and you'll be able to do nothing, and any number of responses. But that's not been retirement for me at all. I think I'm actually working harder now than I did when I was working a paid job. It's just constantly thinking about what is the next thing? What is the next thing I need to do? What have I forgotten?

In January, so we had been doing it for, already for a year and a half. I had been talking to World Central Kitchen about coming because I said, what's happening is that we're getting a lot of volunteers, but nobody knows how to cook for a thousand people. Nobody has experience doing that. And so when I say, well, what we need volunteers for is to prepare a meal for a thousand people, people would often say, we can help in whatever way possible, but I don't know how to do that.

And we, because it's an all volunteer organization, we didn't have a person that was assigned, that was hired to, OK, you're going to be the head chef, and you're gonna lead all these volunteers to make the meals. We didn't have that. So we had to kind of work around ourselves and trying to find someone in each group that maybe had a little more experience with cooking and just giving people menu ideas and talking about budgets and how much. And the thing is, so we expected them to, if they were going to come with a group, we expected them to come up with a meal plan if they were cooking, one night, two nights, OK, you gotta come up with a meal plan. You're preparing a meal for a thousand people. How are you going to do that? And we would give them some resources, other people that had come and cooked.

 And it worked very well for some, pretty well for some, and not so well for some, but everybody managed to get a meal across anyway. I mean, even if it was hot dogs and store bought cookies. Occasionally people did that, they said, OK, well, we'll just make hot dogs and buy carrot sticks or something like that. OK. All right, let's go with it. Or sandwiches. Sandwiches was another thing that a couple of groups made.

But so finally, World Central Kitchen came, and they have their whole setup. They have, I mean, they cook for 10,000 and 100,000 people. They know what they're doing. So they came in January of 2020, they started. And so they set up in the parish hall of a church, and it was great. We had to kind of let them tell the volunteers what they needed to do and how to help. It was tricky, and we were just really getting used to it when COVID stopped everything, and they had to leave. And so they really only cooked for two months, and then they had to leave because we couldn't cross the food anymore.

So right now we are paying a restaurant. So this restaurant is now cooking both meals with a little assistance on a few days from a church that cooks some meals. But right now we are not cooking and crossing because we can't. And so we are totally relying on this little restaurant, and we have brought them a lot of PPE. We have supported them in whatever way we can to try to just let them do the work, and of course they've had to hire more people, just from going from a little mom and pop restaurant, which would maybe have, I don't know, at the most 10 people in it at any one time to now having to cook daily meals for over a thousand people.

Rod: How do you think you personally have changed over the last two years? How has this affected you?

Andrea: Well, As a person of faith, and that's challenging in this environment, I think that I’ve seen how other people's faith has carried them along through this process, and I feel like that has, well, it's made my own faith grow in a lot of ways. I am a seminarian at this point. I am an Episcopal seminarian in the Diocese of West Texas, and so as one of the other things that I do, I have to go to classes and study and do papers and all that kind of stuff. And so I am now in my, going into my third year. So it happened to be, and I never, ever would have planned it this way, it happened to be that I started seminary, and I started working with Team Brownsville, almost at the same time.

And I have been told that maybe I shouldn't be doing this because it's taking too much time away from my studies and the work that I, the seminary work that I have to do. And I have just said, look, this work drives the seminary. If I don't have this work or some work, some meaningful work, some work where I can actually see the whole point of the Bible and the gospel and all those things, if there's not something tangible for me to look at and say, this drives me to that there, this is the meaning of that, then I might as well not go. I'm not going to say, oh, I'm going to not do, I'm not going to be part of Team Brownsville, I'm not going to do the work because I need to study some or other theologian’s book.

I mean, I get the work done. It may be at midnight and it may be last minute, but I always get things in. I mean, I'm very driven in that way. I do the reading. I watch the lectures, I do the papers. I attend the classes. I do what I need to do, I guess is how I see it.

I think my call is to work in this ministry, work in migration ministry and to work with families in a colonia here. I don't see myself being placed in some church that they might want to place me in, because I already know what those churches are... They’re churches that are, well, I don't know if you know much about the Episcopal Church, but we have a long history of being a mostly white church, and not just white, but also the people that had money. I don't want that to be my church. And so I have presented and am going to continue to present the argument that my call is to migration ministry. And I live on the border. And even if the encampment closes, that's not the end of migration ministry. Migration ministry has been, there've been people migrating for forever, and they will continue to migrate. And there will be people in my community that are undocumented, people that are struggling, people that need to hear that  there actually are people that care about them and are concerned for their well being. And that's really what I want.

Rod: Well, I did want to ask you, what do you need, what do you want from people?

Andrea: The needs we're facing are we spend close to $100,000 a month on food, clothing, shelter, all the different things, wood, water, paying the people that bring that stuff in. I mean, there's so many different facets, all the bus station stuff. We just have a high outflow of money, and now because of the new people that are coming that don't have a place to go, we need to try to address that. How are we going to come up with a place? Do we have to buy, build, rent a building, make a shelter of some kind? I mean, how are we going to meet their needs? And so every one of those things costs.

Luckily before COVID started, we had gotten some fairly large size donations, and that's carrying us because we've been able to do the things, like kind of make the transformation from carrying the food across to having to buy all the supplies for the encampment. Right now, Team Brownsville is buying everything, every bit of everything that is supplied to the encampment. All food, all clothing, all is either donated, I mean, we take across things, donate directly like through Amazon, and we use the money to pay for all the things that we're buying. But the Mexican government does not buy anything. They're there. The immigration people are there. They’re more like a police force in a way you could say for the migrants. But they don't buy anything, and we sometimes say, what would happen if we weren't here? What would these people be doing? What would they really let them starve?

Rod: I've heard when people really want to donate after a weather disaster or something like that, that relief organizations would rather have money donations than material donations, because it creates a problem of sorting and storing and distributing. Is that true for you? Do you accept material donations?

Andrea: It has been true, and not so much now. We cannot accept any more used clothing. They're not allowing us to cross used clothing into Mexico, and we can't take it. And we got some good donations, don't get me wrong. We also got a lot of really junky stuff that we had to just literally throw away or get in there with gloves, because you never knew what you were going to find, clothing that was just so dirty and stained and ratty that were you really gonna give it to someone in the encampment? No. But so in a way it was kind of a relief when the Mexican customs people said, well, you can't cross used clothing anymore. You have to bring receipts. You have to have tags on the clothes.

So now pretty much what people send is stuff from our Amazon wishlist, which is stuff that we use and we need, or they send money, or we've gotten donations from CWS which is Christian World Services, which is kind of a ecumenical organization of a lot of different denominations. And they provide blankets, and they also provide some other things, some other like disaster relief kits and things like that. And we've gotten other donations from other organizations in the United States. There’s one that's called Baby to Baby that would send us just a lot of nice things, diapers, wipes, bags with baby clothes, things like that. This one group raised money for lanterns, for solar lanterns, and came down, and we got to distribute those with them. Then another time they raised money for Crocs, Croc-type shoes, cause people were saying they needed things that weren't flip-flops, things that had toes because of the mud and everything.

So people have done that. People have, yeah, lots of different kinds of donations, so we're grateful for that. We're grateful for people making donations, continuing to actually think about these people right now in this COVID time, because it's hard to think about anything but yourself. What am I doing now, or am I just staying in my house all day long and can't go anywhere? 

We have had very strong outreach from Austin to Team Brownsville, and there's a large group of Episcopalians. I guess I attract Episcopalians. But no, we've had really a lot of denominations like that, but this group just happens to be from a number of different Episcopal churches in Austin and they've come down. They actually started coming every month, and they would come and they would bring donations and they would work at our escuelita, which is, was, on Sunday morning. And they would cook, and it was great. It was great. We're sad to not have them coming right now.

Well, I could talk about Christianity and things that were meaningful to me as far as the teachings of Jesus and what all that is about, but doing this work has made it much more concrete, has made it much more tangible in a way. So when people talk about things about, well, what are the teachings of Jesus? Or what did he say about this? Or what did he say about that? For some reason, migration ministry always seems to fit right in. There's never a moment when I can't in my mind think about, well, he said this, and it relates to that. And I actually have to kind of hold myself back on more than a few occasions, especially when I'm around church people, because I know that you can bore people, and you can piss people off, and you can make people think that you have dementia because all you can talk about is asylum seekers. The eye-opening aspects of doing migration ministry have also opened my eyes to the fact that so many people that go to my church have zero interest in this. And actually they don't want to have anything to do with it.

Well, the other thing I discovered is that probably the majority of my church are Trump supporters, which also floors me. I guess I never would have, I mean, this is Texas, this is Bush country. And not a big fan of Bush either, but now he kind of seems like a saint, unfortunately. If there's anything positive that I could say about the Trump presidency, it's that it has brought enlightenment to a lot of people, their eyes have opened to, oh my gosh, what is he saying? This can't be. No, this is all kinds of wrong. He's driving people that are not supporters of him to action. He's driving people to reach out to others in a way that we haven't done in a long time. I mean, really since the Civil Rights Movement. That’s really the only positive thing I can see about the Trump presidency, really. I want to believe that, I want to believe that five years from now, we will look back and say it was a transformational moment, and not just another moment.

They keep trying to call me. I’ve had like 3 or 4 calls from the encampment just in our little talk here. I don’t know what they want, but anyway...

Episode 025 - Everybody Is Invited to Play

I hope everybody out there is taking good care of themselves and each other through these strange days. This is our first episode since the COVID-19 madness sent us home, but I’m glad I had a chance to talk to Jonny Reynolds from inside Forbidden Fruit after hours before social distancing was a phrase I’d ever heard. Thank you so much, Jonny for your time, and I’m looking forward to when this is all over so we can all get out to a Bat City Bombshells show again.

There is adult language and adult themes throughout this episode, including human sexuality.

Thank you always to Flora Folgar for her editing skills and her voice talents in the intro/outro. And for always making me laugh.

Our theme song is “Start Again” by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. Other music in this episode:

“Downtown” by bensound.com

“Bossa Antigua” by Kevin MacLeod

“HIPHOPHOUSE” by B Side

“Dances and Dames” by Kevin MacLeod

“Man Outta Town” by FORGET THE WHALE

“Funky Junky” by Jason Shaw on Audionautix

“Cabaret” by Kai Engel

“Kitchen Suite” by Spiedkiks

“Funky Hunky” by FunkyFlo

“Summer Time | Boom Bap | Old School” by PRIDEOUT

Here’s the transcript:

Born and raised in Vegas. We all did theater and dance and all that stuff, We all had to learn an instrument. So I play the piano. I also play the flute. I say that I play the flute. I have not picked up a flute in like 15 years, but I was taught the flute. So yeah, no, it's I've always been a performer. I like being the center of attention. That's one of the things that I always used to say, it was, I love me. I'm awesome. 

I was extremely lucky to have the family that I do. My parents are even more crazy liberal than I am. I never really had to come out ‘cause I was never really in. I never did that whole, like I have a fake girlfriend or anything like that. It's like, Hmm. No. I had a boyfriend through high school. I was pretty much always out. I had a very supportive, loving family. My grandmother actually introduced me to my first boyfriend. So yeah. Multigenerational. We're all a bunch of just, yeah, everybody's free to do their own thing.

In my family, we never did that whole your pee pee and your hoo hoo, no, that's your penis, that's your vagina. If anybody touches it, punch him in the face. If anyone touches it without your consent. So we never had any of that kind of body shaming growing up. It was just, no, that's your body. You should probably know how it works. Try to love it as best as you can. And everybody has their own and you know, respect everybody else's.

But yeah, no, my ideas behind body positivity and sex positivity and just being open and friendly and let's talk about all this stuff really does go back to when I was a kid like this, there was never anything that was taboo.

Ms. Calizoria is a character that I developed years ago. I actually started drag at a really young age. I started drag when I was 14. So... And this was in Vegas, so a whole different world. And so basically my aunt was doing something. My aunt is a choreographer in Vegas and she was doing something and she got me, she was like, well, do you want to do it? And I was like, all right, fine. And after that it just kinda took on a life of its own. But yeah, I started drag at 14, and I really didn't have a character. I've done singing and dancing and art and theater pretty much my entire life, and when I first started with drag, it was basically like, I followed folks like Marilyn Monroe and Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and so I liked that old Hollywood, those kind of ladies and performers.

And then I finally developed the character of Calizoria in high school when we moved to Texas, and the character came out of the fact that being young, black and gay in Texas, I just needed something to do. And somebody asked me, what was my name? And I was just like, Jonathan? No, what's your, who are you? And I was like, Oh yeah, I probably should come up with that.

So Calizoria was born out of moving to Texas and having to come up with a stage name. I was like Calizoria. It's Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, and Queen Victoria put together. Calizoria. It also sounds like a ghetto black name.

For me, I am a man. I like being a man. It's fun to dress up as a woman, but I've never had like body dysphoria or thought about what it would be like, well, I've thought about what it would be like to be a woman just in the grander sense of the world. But for me personally I like being a guy. I do identify as cisgendered male. I use he/him pronouns. I answer to pretty much anything, but for me personally, I call myself a guy. So I've never struggled with it, myself. Now obviously being gay in Texas was an interesting experience. Dealing with other people's masculinity. High school was a bit of a nightmare.

So I've never had, I've never struggled with my own personal identity as a guy. Navigating some of the traditionally male spheres has always been interesting because I am a bit more colorful and flamboyant than most guys. But my usual approach to that one is, that's just me. If you don't like it, don't talk to me. That's just who I am. I'm comfortable in my own skin. I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself to be terribly masculine, but I like being male. I like having a penis. Life is good.

The only thing is that you just have to, every once in a while, you have to deal with somebody else's masculinity, and that's fine. I have more than enough ammo. Back in the drag scene, I used to be known, I'm very quick with hecklers. I can pick the biggest redneck in the room and talk his ass straight out the door. I'm not worried. I had a, actually at the Opulence Ball a couple of weeks ago, I had, I was wearing this gorgeous red fringe gown, and we were all just like standing out in the back alley, and somebody came by and screamed something or other. And my general response was like, what motherfucker? You want to go? Don't let this dress and these heels fool you, motherfucker. I can turn it on when I have to. So yeah, my usual issues with masculinity is dealing with other people's masculinity. I'm happy with mine.

I am the last founding member of the Bat City Bombshells. There's a couple of other girls that are about a couple of years behind me. But I, I'm, I'm the last founding member. We've been around 12 years. It's kinda scary to think about that. And when we first started, we were all just kind of flying by the seat of our pantyhose. But nowadays I'm one of the people that I actually own the company. We are incorporated. We are a business.

So, when we moved to Texas and I was still doing drag, this is in the early 2000s. So anyone listening to this, this isn't about the Austin drag scene now, but almost 20 years ago, back in those days the Austin drag scene was cutthroat. It was, the way I usually describe it is, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Showgirls? Well, there's a scene in there where one of the dancers takes a handful of beads and throws them out on the stage, and so the lead dancer slips and breaks her hip or something. And so then she becomes the new lead dancer and that's basically what the Austin drag scene was like. Like everybody was out for themselves. There was no community. Nobody supported each other. It was very cutthroat. And that was very different from Vegas where everybody got along and everybody was friends and blah, blah, blah.

And so for a couple years I just stopped performing. And then one day I was, this was when I was working at Lucy in Disguise, it was the end of the Halloween season. We're all fucking exhausted, and this gorgeous woman comes in to buy pasties. My friend next to me, Riley DoRight. She was calling people for their late costume returns and this woman comes in to buy pasties, and I'm showing her pasties, and Riley was like, are you a performer? She was like, no, these are just for my husband. And Riley was like, you should be a performer. It’s like, okay. And then Riley started talking to her about… ‘Cause she was putting together a burlesque troupe, ‘cause Riley had moved here from Amarillo. She didn't want to be a solo performer, but all the troupes back in those days, once again, this is about over a decade ago. This is a different scene than it is now, but back in those days, the Austin burlesque troupes weren't too nice either. So when Riley tried to join a troupe, they basically told her to grow her hair out, shave her pits, and cover up her tattoos, and lose 15 pounds. And she was like, fuck you, I'll do it myself.

And so Riley was like, I'm starting a troupe. And I'm like, you go girl. And then Tracy came in to buy pasties, Riley was there, I was there. And we were just like, I'm starting a troupe. Do you need an emcee? I'm a great host. Yeah, you can come in, and you should be a performer. And we just collected friends and misfits and whatnot. And that's how the Bat City Bombshells were born. Basically everybody that told us that we shouldn't be on stage, like screw you guys, I’ll do it myself.

The Austin community has been, I won't say hard fought, not amongst ourselves. We've had to fight a lot of venues and a lot of managers and quote/unquote producers. But no, the Austin, there actually is an Austin Burlesque Alliance. We all work together. We have worked very hard to build the community that we have. Right now there are about 8 different troupes and over 50 independent performers in the Austin community. And we do look at it as a community and we try to, we all try to support each other. We try to go to each other's shows.

I used to say that the Austin burlesque community is unionized. There's a minimum amount that you get paid. There is a minimum amount that we charge for shows. There are some venues that have free burlesque shows, but we make sure that those free shows still pay the performers because they used to try to pay with exposure. Any artist or performer or band has always heard that, Oh, yeah, no, you, you do a free set, but you know, there'll be a crowd of 500 people. So, you know, you'll get more fans that way. You play for exposure. No, we don't do that. If you perform, you get paid. One of my number one things with the Bat City Bombshells is that if your foot touches that stage, you get paid. Sometimes a performer might have to drop out of a particular show, but if you were there for rehearsals, if you help somebody with their number, if you helped with costuming, if you did something to support the show, you get paid. Nobody, none of us have the time or the luxury to do this for free. Everybody needs to be supported.

Rod: Is that sense of community and family, is that part of the history and culture of burlesque generally? Or did you fight for it to make it true here or is it part of the culture?

Jonny: It is a part of the culture, but it is also something that you have to strive for. But yeah, you create your own community. And I think the Austin community, we built it. And part of that is just the kind of Austin friendliness of, hi, we're all friends. Let's all work together. Let's cut the bullshit. Most of the bullshitters are gone. Thank the gods.

Rod: Did you ever perform as a burlesque dancer yourself or do you just, you just emcee these shows?

Jonny: Oh yeah, I did burlesque probably about five years. I started out in drag and I did drag for a long ass time. I did drag for about a decade. So then I was about 24 when I stopped performing and then a couple of years... And then after that when we started the troupe I used to do a few numbers and basically, you know, I'm just going to be honest with you, I just dusted off some of my old drag numbers and took my clothes off. I was like, I already know the choreography. I’m not coming up with a whole new number. I got costumes and music and cues I got. Nah. So I did burlesque for a whole minute, but I'm more funny than I am sexy. Most of my numbers were either over the top and campy or just weird and goofy. So nah, I like to, I like the stand up drag queen aspects of burlesque, of it more than the actual, like take off my top. So I did burlesque for a whole minute.

Burlesque has a long history. I mean, about a hundred years or so. Which is why for the Texas Burlesque Festival, we always bring in a legend. And I'm one of the producers for the Texas Burlesque Festival, so we bring in somebody that was doing it back in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s. Our headliner this year is Judith Stein. Oh, what is it? The Greatest Beaver in Canada or something like that is her tagline.

Rod: That's a good line.

Jonny: She started back in '72. So we’re bringing her out. We've had so many legends have come out and I've met so many famous people several of whom are no longer with us unfortunately. But I love the fact that I at least have the opportunity to meet them. ‘Cause when you start talking to the legends, you have the women that mainly did, they were like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston. Like that was their scene. And then you have the women, that toured all over the country, they're doing shows in fricking Tupelo, Mississippi ‘cause they were willing to pay. And so you have the folks that went that route. And so everybody has a story, and we all have a great deal of respect for those that came before and those that are still out there now.

Rod: You do like national tours and different venues or do you go do like is there like a festival circuit that you do?

Jonny: There's the festival circuit and then there’s two big burlesque events every year. There is BurlyCon, which is a big burlesque convention up in Seattle. That is huge. And then there is BHoF, the Burlesque Hall of Fame. BurlyCon is about education and learning and, and again, meeting people from all over the country. And then so that one's more about like taking workshops and like improving your craft and you know, learning from these other people. And then BHoF is when everybody just comes together, gets dressed up and you just watch like the Hall, it's the Hall of Fame. It's like the best of the best performers. And so that's always a fun one. BHoF is in Las Vegas, so for me it's just going home.

Rod: I was curious how gender and race lay over this. Like for gender, it seemed like most of the performers were women, but I did see a couple of shows where there was a man, but he seemed to be a featured performer, not like a regular part of the troupe. And I was curious how, how gender plays into it.

Jonny: Male burlesque or boylesque or manlesque or whatever the term is this week, it is a novelty because it's different. It's not thunder from down under. It's not necessarily puppetry of the penis. It is still held to the same standards of burlesque. It is expected to be performed and danced, and there's a story to be told, and there's usually... and just like in a traditional female burlesque, there's also a wider acceptance of body types these days. Back in the day it was like, you either look like Chris Hemsworth or not. That's how it worked. Now there are very thin guys. There are some wonderful male performers that are a bit heavier, that are a bit huskier that are rocking the dad bod, if you will.

One of the newest members of our troupe, his name is Rock God. But yeah, he's a bit on the heavier side, but his number fricking killed it at our Anti-Valentine's Day show. And so gender is becoming more fluid because there are also now trans performers, trans men and trans women that have gotten into burlesque. And so, and I'm not going to say this is true everywhere, but I will say here in Austin, it is everybody is invited to play. Some of the best performers in town are transgender. And we, it's one of those, you know, what are your preferred pronouns? And that's how we go with it. 

I will say as far as race goes, we're doing some work on that. It is not uncommon to have maybe one person of color in a show or in a troupe. We have several in our troupe, but again, we're weird. If you talk to Toni Elling who came down, I want to say Toni was here 2013, 2014, for the Texas Burlesque Festival. But Toni Elling tells a story how she would get booked, but it wasn't, it basically wasn't until she became a star and a headliner that she would get booked in some of the bigger theaters and some of the bigger clubs. So she literally had to like work her way up from the bars. Whereas certain performers, literally they went from the chorus line straight to the main stage, and she didn't have that opportunity, so I would say that a lot of people of color probably don't get their just due as performers. Now, there are some amazing performers. Ray Gunn, Nina Josephine... I'm not even gonna try to start naming people ‘cause I have a terrible memory, but there are some amazing performers. 

Like I said, here in Austin, we have gotten rid of a lot of toxic producers. So it was just like, hey, don't do this show, don't work with these people. I won't name a specific festival, but there was a whole big blow up over one of the festivals in the South that in that particular city, just in that city, they had a huge black burlesque performer base. And that particular festival did not book a single black person. Like no black people. Like basically no people of color whatsoever. It was all thin, young white women. That was their entire three day festival of nothing but thin, young white women. And there was a huge outcry about that. And then one of their producers came out and said, sorry, didn't notice. And the other one came out and was like, it's our festival. Get over it. As far as I know, those people are no longer producing because basically across the country and across the spectrum, everybody was like, and I'm done with you. Not performing with you anymore. You're not invited to our festival. Get over it.

But yeah, so that's one of the things in like... Oh, just recently there was a troupe that came through Austin that was out of New York, and I can't remember what their name was. But basically it was like this entire troupe of these gorgeous black people. And there it was just like so much gorgeous brown skin and all y'all, and we just saw the show, or we saw the ad for the show, and we were like, who are they? What the hell? There's an entire black burlesque troupe in Austin, and I don't know about it? And then when we looked it up, turned out they were like touring from New York and we were like, Oh, okay. Well that's amazing cause yeah, if there was an all black burlesque troupe here in Austin, I need to know about that. Austin needs to know about that.

But yeah, so there's Fat Bottom Cabaret, which is all curvy women of color. They have a pretty wide spectrum from Latinx, I think is what we're supposed to say now. I say Latina still. I mean, one of their members, I love her. Her name is Chola Magnolia. I love people. Come on now, if you're gonna, you don't necessarily have to be racist about it, but embrace your culture. Come on now.

Rod: Where do you, where do performers generally come from? Like are they people that have done it their whole lives or the sense I got is that some people come to it later in life. And I always thought like people, and maybe especially women, and maybe not especially women, get to a certain age where they're just, they're ready to just say fuck all the bullshit of people pleasing and, and it's about me now. And there's such a sense of like confidence and body positivity and just that feel to burlesque. I just wondered if these, if a lot of the performers came to it later in life.

Jonny: It's kind of a mix. I will say that there are, I'd say probably about 50/50. There are some folks who have long backgrounds in theater and dance and whatnot, and then there are some people that are literally like, they came to a show and they were like, I want to do that. And either they reach out to a troupe or there's the Austin Academy of Burlesque. So we actually, there actually is a place to learn burlesque here in Austin. You can either learn to become a performer, or it's kind of like that pole dancing for exercise, just because you go to a pole dancing class doesn't mean you're going to go down to Yellow Rose and apply for a job. Same thing with burlesque. Just because you take a couple of burlesque dance classes, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're ready to hit the stage.

So some folks go through the academies, some people just they've decided that, yeah, no, fuck the bullshit. This is how I want to feel. And one of the things that I've heard from, her name is Cruel Valentine. She's a performer. But she’s a bigger girl. She wears it well. She has no problem with it. And one of the things she says is, one of the best feelings you'll ever get is when your big ass is naked on stage and 500 people are cheering for you. And I would have to agree, like hell yeah. So yeah, it depends on the person, but I think, I think it's about 50/50. A lot of people come from an actual dance background and then a lot of people are just like, you know what? Fuck it. I can do it. Step back and watch.

And that's actually one of the great things about the Bombshells is that we actually, we teach, we coach, we help. Not everybody in our troupe is a trained dancer. Not everybody in our troupe wants to be a trained dancer. And some people I think are better because they are not in their head trying to go five, six, seven, eight. Nah. Hit the stage, go with what feels right. And you know, you do have to have a sense of musicality and rhythm. But other than that, no. You don't need to know how to do like a full on Bob Fosse number to hit the stage. If you can dance around topless in your kitchen while making macaroni and cheese, come on down.

But I think burlesque is kind of in a transition right now where a lot of people are trying to find their own voice instead of trying to fit into a mold, ‘cause there’s classic burlesque and then there's neo burlesque and then there's like different ways that you can do it. And so a lot of the classic performers are what are now, are the folks who are now becoming the legends of our generation. But the fact is that a lot of the folks that are coming up now are looking at those classic numbers and those classic performers and thinking to themselves, well, they're already doing the glove peel and the boa dance and everything else. What the hell can I do? And I think that actually sparks a lot of creativity in the sense of, yeah, what the hell can you do? You can get up there and do a walk step, you know, take off a glove. Sure. Or you can get up there in spandex and dance to frickin’ ‘80s hair metal. As long as you can make it work, cool. If you have, you know, some deep emotional stuff that you're trying to work through and you get up there and do a somber, slow strip to frickin’ Evanescence, cool. What can you do? Get creative. You can't just do a, well, you can just do the walk and peel, but we've all seen that. What else you got?

Rod: Well, we're sitting inside Forbidden Fruit. Are you an employee, or are you part owner? Do you have a stake in this place or…?

Jonny: I'm the general manager and the quote/unquote heir apparent. In a couple of years when the sisters retire, I'm going to be buying the store from them. Let’s see, we've been around since 1981, so right now the tentative plan is 2021. So Lynn, who was one of the people who started the store, so that'll give her a solid 40 years of doing this. And then yeah, I'm going to be taking over the store and I'm very much looking forward to it.

22-time winner of Best Adult Business in Austin, Austin Chronicle Reader's Poll. We've, but we don't take it for granted though. We actually feel very appreciative every time we do win ‘cause yeah, the Austin, I think there's like seven different sex stores in Austin. So the fact that folks keep coming back here makes me happy.

Rod: How did you come to it?

Jonny: When I was in college and doing the drag circuit and whatnot around town, Lynn and I used to do shows together. It was me, Lynn, Coco Lectric, a few other people, Goldie Candela. This was, they weren't quite burlesque shows back in those days. It was called the Saturday Night Sex Party. It was up North. It was just this weird just naughtiness that we were doing. And so that's how I got to meet Lynn. So I knew Lynn before I started working here. I knew Lynn from shows and then one day, it was after Extravagasm, we were both frickin’ tired. We were standing in the box office counting out money. And at the time I had quit my job at Lucy in Disguise, and I was just living on my savings, and I literally just looked over at her and I was like, are you hiring? She was like, actually yeah, our manager is about to leave to start his own store. And so I came in, I interviewed, and yeah, and that's how I started working here.

We try to be the not creepy sex store. So the store is very open. You can see from one side to the other, there are no racks where someone might be hiding and doing something untoward. We also, we curate our products. We don't carry everything. We do have people who come in and they'll look at our dildos for example, and they're like, wow, these are kind of expensive. Yeah, they're also dual density silicone from some of the best manufacturers in the business. If you're looking for like a $20 jelly thing to like, you know, use as a gag gift, sorry, we don't have that. We do have some less expensive, I usually tell folks I can get you anything from $10 to $200. Just depends on what you're looking for. And so if you're looking for a little vibe, yeah, I can get you a little vibe for like 15 bucks. It's still going to be a nice little vibe. It's going to last you. It's not going to be a cheap, breaks in three days type of deal. So that's another one of the things that distinguishes us is that we curate and make sure that we carry the best that we can get within any given price range. But then also we do custom orders. So for those people that you know, can't quite find what they're looking for or they really like this one, they just wish it was in purple. Okay. I can get you one in purple. Probably take about three or four days.

Rod: The vibe that I got when I was here as a customer was that it was just very relaxed, very open, very honest, very direct. There was no sense of titillation. There was no sense of embarrassment or anything. Do you think that's a fair assessment? Like is that a goal of the business?

Jonny: Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's the, that's the whole point of it. It's like this isn't, I mean, you can try to go for the titillation factor if you want to, but no, these are products, this is human sexuality on display. This is what, I'll have, you know, someone coming in to buy her first vibrator and you know, might be a little underwhelmed. I usually ask the same three questions, large, small, internal, external, and what kind of power are we talking? And go from there. Like, we don't need to get this, what do you want it to be? Flesh tone. Do you want it to feel real? No, it's a toy. Calm down.

So that's our, that's our general approach is treat everybody like people. Come on in, and no question is weird. We don't do any of that what’s referred to as kink shaming. We don't do any of that. So I've had folks come in and they'll come up and they're like very quietly whisper and it's like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm I'm looking for a glass toy. Oh yeah, come on down. My glass stuff is back here. It's like, you don't need to whisper. What of my number one things I always say, I tell folks is this ain’t Target. Spit it out. If you can't say it here, if you can't say it, you can't buy it. Them’s the rules.

Rod: How did you get into teaching classes? Did you do that from the very beginning, or did you work your way up to that?

Jonny: Ah, I worked my way up to it in the sense that I was told, you should be teaching classes. And so that was I already worked here for probably about three or four years. And at that point I was facilitating the workshops. So I helped run the store while the workshops were going on, but somebody else was actually teaching. It's actually one of my favorite workshops to teach is my fellatio workshop. And that was literally, that workshop literally came out of a friend of mine who... this was back in college. She swore that she would never suck dick. It's like the most disgusting thing in the world. Why would anybody put a penis in their mouth? That's so gross. She would never do it. Fast forward to her studying abroad in Scotland, and I get an email, “Hey Johnny, how do you, how do you do that?” So I created a PowerPoint for her.

And this wonderful woman who has since retired, her name is Charla Hathaway. She was a sex educator. She was actually one of the first people that started teaching here back in the ‘90s. So Charla taught here for a while. Charla used to teach our Fellatio 101 class, and I would facilitate, and Charla would ask me questions, and she would always start it the same way she would go, Jonny as a penis haver and a penis lover, what do you think?

And then one day after the class you know, I was writing her the check, getting her paid and giving her the evaluations and whatnot. And she was like, you know, you know enough about this stuff, why don't you teach this class? Like I'm not a teacher. She was like, yes, you are. Okay. Maybe I can teach this class. And so I kind of did a bit more research and kind of looked up if I were to teach this class, what would I talk about? And kind of went from there.

And so most of my teaching experience just comes from working here at the store and just answering a million questions a day. So it's like, yeah, I do know all of this stuff. Spread the knowledge. So that's how I got into teaching was basically somebody told me that I should teach. She didn't just tell me, she basically kind of made it sound like I didn't have a choice. You're going to teach this class. And I was like, okay. So that's how I first got into teaching, and then I just more and more stuff that interested me and I found out more about it and I was like, people should know about that. Let’s teach a class.

So the same thing with my anal workshop, which was one of my, that actually my anal workshop was actually my favorite workshop to teach. Cause that's where I’m like, everybody's got one. You can play with it, go for it. But then I have people who come in and they're like, what if it hurts? Well, it's not supposed to hurt. Well, what if it does hurt? Then stop doing it. Assess, try more lube, try a different position. There's different things that you can do. But it's not supposed to hurt. That's one of the things like, cause we sell a lot of kink, bondage, and BDSM gear, and one of the rules of the store is that we do not sell anything that harms the human body. We do sell things that hurt the human body, but we don't sell anything that harms the human body. We don't sell spermicide. We don't sell condoms with spermicide. We don't sell any oil-based lubes cause oil-based lubes break down latex barriers. We don't sell jelly toys and things like that because a lot of the, if you open a toy and it's like sticking to the plastic or like has a funny smell, don't put that in your body. Yeah, there's a reason why you got a 10-inch dildo for 20 bucks. Don't put that in your body. It's just weird.

A lot of folks ask why we're still around. Like how, you know, the internet's a thing. Why would anybody go to a sex store? You can buy everything online and it’s like, you can. Not quite sure what the hell you're going to get. And I've actually said that to people who come in, they're like, I can find this on Amazon for $30. No, you can't. I guarantee you you can't. You can find something on Amazon for $30. It's not going to be that product. And if it is that product, I guarantee you it doesn't come from the manufacturer, and it doesn't come with a warranty. So yeah, best of luck.

We're a small store. We try to make sure that we have the best of the best and if you can find it cheaper online, if you want to risk it, go for it. But there is still some value to coming into a store and being like, nope, that's the exact one that I want. I'm going to take it now. I don't have to pay shipping, and I know it is what it actually says on the box, and no one has used it before. So that's my number one thing is, if you're going to buy online, be very careful. Otherwise, you know, go into a store, talk to somebody. It's okay. We generally try to be friendly unless it's first thing on a Sunday and I'm slightly hung over. I think that's about it.

Rod: Anything you wanted to plug? Like any upcoming show, like it usually takes me a while to do this. So you got to show next weekend it's going to be too late, but...

Jonny: I would say Texas Burlesque Festival at the Long Center. That'll be April 24th and 25th. Tickets are on sale now. We're going to have some amazing performers coming in literally from all over the world. So yeah, if you can't go see a show in Tokyo, maybe come down to the Long Center in April and you can see some performers.

Rod: Wow. That's a nice venue.

Jonny: Yeah.

Rod: That's cool. All right. Thanks Johnny. I really appreciate it.

Jonny: No problem.

Episode 024 - Pants and Kilts and Dresses

Amy Haden-Knost talks about her military service during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, online dating, same sex marriage before Obergefell v. Hodges, and becoming a grandparent. My thanks to Amy for sharing her time with me, especially since I don’t think talking is her favorite pastime. This was the first interview I’ve done long distance, so it was fun figuring out a recording solution, and a backup solution for when that fails, which it did! But I still got the audio. I’m always grateful for learning opportunities.

Amy and her wife Renee (who is also my sister) rescue, transport, foster, and adopt Rottweilers throughout the southeast. It’s a cause that’s very dear to their hearts and to the hearts of the houseful of dogs (and cats), so if you’d like to support that work, please check out Florida Rottweiler Rescue Ranch and Sanctuary, in Dover, Florida, and consider supporting their mission.

And as always, thank you to Flora Folgar for her love, support, and voiceover talents.

Our opening theme is “Start Again” by Monk Turner and Fascinoma. Other music that appears in this episode:

8:09: “Higher Up” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

11:50: “The Rise Of Heroes” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

15:05: “Acoustic Guitar 1” Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com

18:22: “Black Knight  by Rafael Krux” - https://filmmusic.io/song/5617-black-knight-

22:03: “Can You Feel” by Nordgroove</a> from Fugue

26:17: “Alone Lonely (Instrumental”)  by Michael McQuaid from Fugue

29:23: “Call to Adventure” by Kevin MacLeod

33:41: “Blue (Instrumental)” by Rojj from Fugue

37:27: “Danse Macabre” by Kevin MacLeod

43:53: “Blue Ska” by Kevin MacLeod

Here’s the transcript:

In theory, everybody thinks that I’m the one that quote/unquote “wears the pants in the family” and all that other fun jazz because, well, I may look pretty good in a suit and tie or a shirt and tie. But that doesn’t mean I’m more manly, and honestly, in our type of relationship, that’s the whole idea is that there isn’t that male person in the relationship.

I mean honestly, she’s the one that says walking down the street, people are like, oh yeah, you’re gay. And they look at me. You’re gay. But she has to come out every single time. She passes. She passes as a straight woman. I mean, it’s one of those, she’ll even say it. She’s like, yeah, you totally pass as gay. That’s not a problem. People look at you and go, yeah, ding, you’re done. She’s like, where people look at me and go, so who’s your husband? And she’s like, actually, that’s my wife.

Renee’s telling me to go upstairs, so… See? I told you I don’t wear the pants in the family.

Well, actually, in this family, we’re pants and kilts, but then again, some of the big, burly, hairy dudes that we hang out with wear kilts as well, so that’s an OK thing. What’s more dainty and feminine than doing bench presses and back squats and deadlifts? And in all actuality, every woman should be doing that anyway, because it’s good for their muscular structure as well as their bone growth. Being sedentary is not good, ever. I mean, I hate that I have to work behind a desk and work with a computer all day. But that’s only 8 hours out of my day. After that, I usually leave, and we go to the gym, and we work out for at least an hour or so.

We do Weight Over Bar, Weight for Distance, well, Heavy Weight and Light Weight for Distance, Sheaf, Stone, whether it’s Open or Braemar, Hammer Throw, and then Caber. Caber is the small tree.

We’ve done the whole Ancestry DNA thing, and I’m like 93% British Isles, which covers England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, in which I think 55 or 60% of it is Scottish and Irish. So yeah. I’m kind of heavy on that ethnicity. But yeah, we got into it because we decided, hey, there was a Celtic festival over in Gulfport, Mississippi, and we went, “Let’s go see what’s going on over there!” So we went, and we went and wandered around the festival, ate the foods, and had a couple beers, and we started watching some of the Highland Games, and I’m like was watching them do Weight Over Bar. And I was watching this, and I’m like, this is like a kettlebell snatch, but you let it go. I said, “I think I could do that.” And Renee’s like, “OK, then let’s get information and find out where the next one is.” And so the next one, because that was like in November, and the next one was in March in Dothan, Alabama. And so I was like, “OK, then we’re going to practice with whatever we can practice with.” And so we started, I took a couple kettlebells home, and I took just a sledgehammer to use as a hammer and went out to a baseball field and started throwing stuff and started figuring it out.

And then I competed that, in Dothan, and then afterwards, Renee’s like, “I want to do it too.” I went, “OK, then let’s both do it. It’s not a big deal.” And so the next competition was in April in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, so we drove up there, and we both competed up there. And we’ve been just doing it since.

It’s fun. I mean, it really is fun, and it’s such a small group that are very supportive of one another, and around here, when we go to the games in the different areas, we see the same folks. And so it’s kind of like friends getting together. We’d all go out to dinner the night before, and then we meet on the field for competition the next day, and then have cold beer that night, the night afterwards.

We train together, so now, after doing this for about a year or so, we’ve actually gotten to the point where it’s like, OK, she’s trying to do Weight Over Bar, or I’m trying to do Weight Over Bar, and we don’t hit it, but the other person’s watching, go, “OK, it peaked at this point, so you need to take a step either forwards or backwards.” And so it’s like, “Oh, OK, cool.” And so we make the adjustment, take a big swing, and it makes it. And it’s like, “OK, there you go.”

I don’t really think about gender identity necessarily. It’s like, you have the 1950s stereotypes of what a mom’s supposed to be and what a dad’s supposed to be, but things progressed over the ages and the years, and I don’t think that is something that is a common thought now necessarily with gender roles. I mean, friends of mine at work, we were talking that being in a same sex relationship is common practice. You wouldn’t think this back in 1950 or 1960, but you see that every day now. You see Target commercials. You see airline commercials. So it’s not really a thing anymore. It’s one of those, you can be whatever you want to be, however you want to be it. You don’t have to be limited by what gender you were born.

I’ve got pictures of the whole class pictures of going through middle school and high school, and it’s like, no. No. I just… I mean, you can see picture after picture I am just who I am. I’ve heard about people, “I had a horrible childhood” or “I had a horrible time when I was in high school.” Yeah. I can’t relate, because I didn’t. And I know, most people would be like, “How is that possible?” It’s 100% possible, because I just didn’t have that situation.

I mean, I grew up right outside of D.C., and so it’s one of those, it was I would say fairly open, even my middle sister, which is 4 years older than me, her best friends were a whole bunch of gay guys. OK? She’d go clubbing with them and had a blast, and that was back in the ‘80s, which was way before anything blew up and exploded in reference to the same sex culture. I grew up there, and then I moved out to Colorado for 12 years. There wasn’t anything that somebody went, “Oh, by the way, you can’t be this way.” Or “you can’t be that way” or “you have to do this” or “you can’t do that.”

I pretty much wore whatever clothes I wanted to, except there were a couple occasions where my father was very, very stern with, “OK, this is a big event. You have to wear a dress,” and I went, “No, no! No, don’t make me! Don’t make me!” of course, because me and dresses were not a thing. And then I came home from school after getting class pictures in my dress and put on my jeans and t-shirt and my boots and went out and rode my motorcycle. So it all worked out. No harm, no foul. It was just the way it was. It was just me.

It didn’t matter who you were. Everybody played pickle with a baseball and hopefully you didn’t hit the window or hit each other. You played kickball in the park down the street. There was no, “Oh, well, girls get picked last” or “boys get picked first.” No. It’s everybody plays.I grew up in a really weird society, or maybe that was just my fog of consciousness of it. Maybe I just lived in that little bubble world or a cloudy day, the cloud over my head, and I just didn’t notice. It’s like, “OK, people are people. OK. We grow up, so that means we have to buy bigger clothes and bigger shoes. OK.”

I was actually stationed at the Air Force Academy. That was my first duty station, and then after being there for about 4 years, I got sent down to Peterson Air Force Base, which is on the south side of town. I was a contracting officer. So I got to buy supplies and services and did construction there. I bought their space simulation chamber for their physics department. And then I bought their lasers. It was a laser machine that actually helped the physics students learn about wavelengths. And then of course, I had stairs built on the terrazzo between the dining hall and the terrazzo with heating elements in them because they’re granite, and you can’t shovel granite. So they had to have heating elements underneath so when the snow and ice would come on, it would flip a switch, the heating elements would heat up the stone and remove the snow and ice.Those were like cool little moments at the Academy. But I mean, it was a lot of fun. I mean, I had a lot of fun doing my job, working and contracting, and then I went down to Peterson and did more advanced stuff. And then I also was one of the procurement agents for the Cheyenne Mountain facility as well, because that’s, Peterson kind of covered that too.

I was in the Air Force active duty for almost 10, and then I’ve been in the Reserves for just over 3. Air transportation. That’s like the official title. Pretty much anything that has to do with getting things on and off of airplanes, that’s what we do. Whether it’s people, cargo, special stuff, rolling stock, like if they had tanks or any type of vehicles that needed to get to a destination, we would load them up, and then the plane would take off. I drive a forklift. I can drive all the forklifts. I can drive Halvorsens, which are 25K loaders. Yeah, all that cool, fun stuff. 

And then I got out of the military in 2001. That was 15, almost 16 years. That was to raise my kids. And that was I was supposed to go on a 15-month “short tour” is what they refer to it as. A long tour would be a full PCS with family and everything. Short tours, in the active duty world, at least back then, I don’t know if they still do them, were just like little 12 or 15 month stints at an alternate location, kind of like a TDY, but it was a little more permanent. TDY is “temporary duty station,” so… And PCS is “permanent change of station.” So I was scheduled to go somewhere for about 15 months, and I went, “Eh, my kids are 2 and 4, and I really don’t trust their dad to actually raise them correctly.” And so I went, “OK. What are my options if I don’t go?” And they went, “Well, then you’ll need to get out.” And so I went, “OK, for my kids’ sake, I’ll get out.” So I did.

We were not married. We lived under the same roof, and we had kids together. One’s 20, and one’s 22. That was a long time ago. And now she’s a mom of her own, too. We are officially grandparents now. That’s crazy. And I actually held him the other day, and I went, “Oh my God, he’s so teeny tiny. What the hell?” I’m like, “How can a little human be so tiny?” And he, I mean honestly, at birth, he was as big as my first one. Same size exactly. I’m like, I’m holding him like, “Oh my gosh.” And I’m like, “Ooh, little tiny toes.” 

I’m like, I don’t… It’s a word, but it’s kind of weird, and I probably won’t feel that way until he says whatever. Because everybody’s like, “Oh, what are you going to be called?” I’m like, “I have no idea.” Well, that’s what Renee’s like, “Um, I’m just going to be Renee.” And I’m like, “You know what? He’s going to call you something, and you’re going to figure it out, and that’s going to be your name.”

You know, Nana is a banana. A Nana is what a small child calls a banana, and I do not want to be called a banana. So I’m like, you know what? If he utters the phrase ‘whatever’, I grew up with a Red Grandma and a White Grandma, because Red Grandma of course dyed her hair, so she had red hair, and the other one had white hair. It made total sense. So, again, it will be whatever is uttered out of his mouth. If he decides to just call me Amy, that’s fine.

Zero involvement, and Renee yells at me all the time. She’s like, “Oh my God.” But I know she was heavily involved in the whole AIDS thing in San Francisco, and she has people that were dying of it, and have died of it. That affected her a lot. It didn’t affect me at all. She goes, “You just turned a blind eye to everything. I just cannot believe you didn’t… like, you weren’t a part of any of that, and you didn’t know about any of that.” I’m like, “Nope. Sorry.” I mean, I didn’t know of anyone I grew up with or in the area or that I was friends with that had it, or have it now.

In high school, Renee of course, Renee and I have totally different views when it comes to high school and even middle school and growing up. She was “Errrr!” I mean, you know. Where I was just kind of like, OK, I was in band, and I played sports, and I had good grades, so yeah. And I hung out with the jocks. I hung out with the theater nerds, you know, the drama kids, the chorus kids, the band kids, even the rednecks. I was friends with everybody. It just didn’t matter. It’s like, if you were good people, I hung out with you. If you were bad people, I was going to tell you you were a bad person, and you need to shape up.

Before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was slammed down and said, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do. This is a hardcore policy,” it really wasn’t an issue. Nobody cared, and it wasn’t in the forefront of anyone’s mind. But as soon as that came to headlines that Clinton’s going to be, “Oh, no, we don’t have to ask this anymore. We’re not going to ask it; you don’t have to tell us. You just behave and watch your Ps and Qs.” Well, for the most part, we were all like, “OK, well if you’re not going to ask, and I’m not going to tell you, then I can kind of live my life as long as it doesn’t affect my job.” Where in all actuality, from being there in uniform at the time, it became a witch hunt. I mean, it was one of those, people were seeking out people doing wrong so they could go, “Oh no, no, no. He came out of his room!” or “She came out of her room!” It was more of that rather than, “Well, we’re not going to ask, so it doesn’t really matter.” And don’t even give them even an inkling of an idea that something may be happening, because someone’s going to go to OSI and go, “Hey, I saw Jane come out of Suzy’s room at 6 o’clock in the morning.” OK. And of course, now we’re wasting OSI money and time by investigating something that, “Oh, they were just studying together. Who cares?”

I mean, truthfully, yes, I was personally investigated, but it got tossed out. And I mean, they asked my roommate, because I had a female roommate. They even asked… They brought her in and asked her questions, and then I had several of my friends go up,  volunteering to say, “Hey, I want to put in a statement.” And so, it’s like, pretty much at that point it got tossed out, because I had probably at least a half a dozen people go up and go, “Hey, I want to voluntarily put in a statement for this person.” And once they see all that come through, they’re like, “Yeah, no, we’re barking up the wrong tree here.”

I was very happy when that ended, though. It’s like, “OK. So you’re gay. So? And? Do you do a good job? OK. That’s all that matters.”

We’re almost 14 years later, so… But yeah, we actually met online way before all the cool dating sites like match.com and eHarmony. There was a wonderful little site that apparently I joined, and I was fairly new. It was actually specifically… It’s called ButchFemmeMatchmaker.com. As funny as that is, it was an actual real website way in the early 2000s before all of this other stuff has come out. And it matched more masculine and more feminine people together, if you… And you can pick and choose, say you were quote-unquote butch, which is the more of masculine visual. If you like other butches, you could say, “That’s what I’m interested in.” Or if you were more feminine, and you liked more feminine, then you could say, “I was interested in more feminine.” I mean, it just kind of curtailed you in your… You could refine your filters, quote-unquote.

And well, she messed up, because she was searching for new individuals that had joined the site to see if anybody intrigued her, and she forgot to put in a zip code. So she pulled up all of the new people on this website rather than just new people within a certain proximity of her. And of course, I popped up, and she just looked at my picture. I can even show you the picture. It cracks me up. She’s like, “That’s the one that got me.” I’m like, “OK, whatever. It doesn’t make any damn sense to me, but OK.”

And then she clicked on my image and went through the profile, and she went, “Dammit. Why you gotta be so far away?” And then she went back, and she revamped her search, and she did her own searches, but then she actually clicked on my link two more times. So she actually viewed my profile three times in the same night. I got home from work, and the cool part about this website was that if somebody had viewed your profile, you could see who had viewed your profile, even if they didn’t give you a comment or leave you a message. You could see who it was, and so you’re like, “OK, well who’s been checking me out?” I mean, it’s common sense. I look up, and I’m like, “Wow. Who are you?” So I clicked on her profile, and I read her profile. It was very, very honest, as was mine. And I was like, “You know? She seems like a really cool person. Hmm.” So I sent her a message, and I went, “Hey, I viewed your profile. You seem like a really neat person. I would love to chat with you more.” That’s it. Knowing she is 2600 miles away. It’s never going to happen, or at least the chances are like so far and few, I just, she seems like a cool person to chat with.

OK. And then all of a sudden, whoop! She sends me a message back, and I’m like, “Oh shit! She’s online! Oh damn, that was fast.” And we started chatting.

We chatted for probably 5 or 6 hours that night, just chatting on the web, just typing up words. That’s all it was. We were both very, very truthful, but I had not said my name, nor had I given her my phone number, and so, at the end of the conversation, I was like, “Well, I’d like to call you sometime.” And she goes, “OK,” and she gives me all of her phone numbers, so I picked up my cell phone and called her. 

She came across the country alone with the boys and the 3 cats.

My family’s kind of different. I’ve introduced her to my mom, and my mom’s actually come here to visit. But yeah, my parents are southern Baptists, and they don’t view this as a good thing. They hope that the good Lord will cure me of this.

Well, and the thing is, I was raised in a Catholic family. Even growing up Catholic, it was no big deal. It was just do what you do as long as you’re a good person. It didn’t matter. You know, be kind, be good. And then once my parents changed their faith and converted over to southern Baptist, they’ve been quite interesting folks, shall I say. There’s lots has gone on, so I don’t know if changing their faith pattern has modified their perceptions and their, the way they do things. I think it does. But as long as they’re not harmful to each other, I really don’t care.

But yeah, I remember when Renee introduced me to you all when I drove up with her and the boys, and apparently the first night there was that huge gathering, and it was, the chairs were set up in like a round circle she told me. And she’s like, it was so weird, because we all sat around in a round circle and talked. I was like, “OK.” And she says, “And I really wanted you to be there, but I really didn’t want this to be focused on Renee Day and oh my God, what crazy crap is Renee bringing into the family?” And I was like, “You know what? I’m fine. I’ll just hang out at the hotel and just chill. If I go swimming, I’ll go swimming. Don’t… It doesn’t matter. It’s fine. Whatever. You know, I’m not going to push this.” And then apparently she finally got your dad aside and went, “I brought a friend.” And he went, “OK, who is it?” And so they had a chat and talked about it, and that’s when I met you guys at the Pancake House. And then I remember being grilled by Meg and Kathleen. They were sitting across the table from me, and it was like the fire, question, question, question, question, question, and I’m like, “Oh, crap! I didn’t know I’d have a kevlar vest for this shit!” Oh yeah, it was one of those… It kind of… Afterwards, it’s like, Renee’s like, “Are you OK?” And I’m like, “I think so. I’m still in one piece. I think I’m OK.”

We had decided we really wanted to get married after being together for a year, but we couldn’t because there were only like two states, I think at that time, that legalized it. And we’re like, “You know, we really want to get married at home. We really want to get married where our friends and family, blah blah blah blah blah.” Normal normal. Normal stuff. And 5 years later, I went, “To hell with this.” And she went, “What?” I said, “Let’s go get married.” And she went, “What?” I went, “Let’s just do this. If we’re going to do it, let’s just do it.”

I had proposed after a year. So it was a very, like 5 year engagement later. I mean I was just, you know, because we had talked about it, we had talked about it. I was like, “I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of waiting for Florida to get off their ass and do what they should do. Let’s just go get married, and then when Florida recognizes it, then Florida recognizes it.” And she went, “OK.” And so I went through every single state, because there were 6 or 7 states that allowed it. And I went to every single state and looked at their requirements, because D.C. actually allowed it, and we were thinking about going to D.C. to do it, but D.C., the problem was is time, being that our kids were all still young, we couldn’t leave them for like a week and a half. And with D.C., say, you went in and put in, requested your marriage license on Monday, there was a 3-day waiting period, so you had to wait 3 full days after that. So that meant you could pick up your marriage license on Friday and go get married, but you had to have that waiting period.

So, I mean, I went through each state that it was possible in, and I found Connecticut, believe it or not, there was no waiting period, there was no required blood test, and you did not have to have witnesses. So that means we didn’t have to bring anybody. The only thing you had to have was an officiant, and so I found a nice little lady up in Connecticut, and she was an officiant, but more so, just our photographer. She took some pretty darn good pictures afterwards. And we went to a little town in Darien, Connecticut. We show up, and I’m in a suit and tie, and Renee’s in her dress that she’s made, and we go to the Clerk of the Court, and the lady turns around and goes, “Oh, are you two getting married?” And what does my smart ass say? “Oh no, we dress like this all the time. We’re just here for like trash schedules.” And she looked at me and went… And of course Renee, at that point, elbow went right in the arm. I was like, “Ow! I’m sorry.” It was hard to resist.

So we got… I mean, we paid quote-unquote half down for our marriage license. You have to pay them like 20 bucks. And then when you bring it back after you get married, and you know, to get it actually officially certified and stamped and all that, then you pay them the rest of the fee. So it’s kind of like you have to pay a down payment on it, and then you pay it off when you get back. So we grabbed the marriage license, went down to a wonderful little park that we had explored the day before that our officiant suggested, and we found a cute little probably hundreds year old bridge in the backwoods area, and we went, “This is perfect.” And so that’s where we got married. And we went back, she took the marriage certificate back and signed it officially in front of them so they could witness it, and they stamped it and approved it and said, “There you go.” Done. And then we flew home a couple days later.

Yep, it was just me, Renee, and Mary. That’s it.Yeah. I mean, it was super easy, super fast. It’s one of those, Renee will gig me about the saying of the vows every time, because we originally had said we want the shortest possible, don’t make me talk a lot. OK. So I find the shortest possible. “Do you take… to be your lawfully wedded wife?” “Yes, I do.” “Do you…?” You know, very, very simple. We’ve already said that, and I’m like, “OK, we’re in like Flynn. Cool. We’re good to go.” And she went, “OK, Amy, repeat after me.” Renee stops, and she looks at me, and she went… she just started laughing, because I looked at Mary, and my eyes got like the deer in the headlight, and I went, “You mean I have to say more?” And she went, “Yeah, officially you do.” And I went, “Oh, damn. This is going to get rough. I thought I was in. I was done.” And she went, “Nope. You got more to say.” And I went, “Oh, crap.”

Actually, we didn’t have a lot of issues. I mean, even, you know, we’re down here in the Redneck Riviera, southern Alabama, whatever you want to call it. We’ve had two occasions that I kind of remember that I kind of laugh at and go, “OK.” There was one, we were going into Wal-Mart years and years and years ago when we actually shopped there on a regular basis. And there was an older white gentleman pushing a cart, and his wife was walking next to him holding her purse, and they were walking down the aisle, and Renee and I walk in. Of course, we’re a couple. We’re holding hands. It was no big deal. And we thought his head was about to pop off in like a total Exorcist moment, like totally cranking all the way around. And his wife turned around and took her purse and slapped him upside the head and went, “You need to look forward, sir!” I was like, “Oh, damn!” I mean, because it was very, very apparent what was happening.

And then, the second thing, oddly enough, we were in Mobile, because we hadn’t ever really gone to Mobile, so we drove over for a day just to kind of walk around downtown Mobile to see the sights and grab something to eat, just kind of relax and kind of be a tourist. We weren’t even holding hands. We were probably walking about two feet apart, just walking down the sidewalk, just chatting, talking. And this older black man, he was probably in his 60s, maybe early 70s, walking the opposite way. So he’s walking towards us. He just gets past us and goes, “All these goddamn gay people!” We both just kind of… Because we were just talking, and we weren’t holding hands. There was nothing that he would’ve seen. Just stopped and turned around, and he’s just shaking his head as he walked down the street. And we’re like, “I have no idea what the hell that was all about.” But that was actually really funny.

That’s really it. I mean, over 14 years, that’s like, OK. Everybody just kind of live and let live, and just don’t worry about it. But then again, we’re not the militant type. We’re not the ones that are jumping up and down on statues and flag waving and armband wearing and all the other stuff that you see on TV or you’ve seen on TV in the past. That’s not us. We just live our lives.

Episode 023 - Let Loose the Bird

Today we have Clay Boykin, a Marine, a retired business executive, and a New Compassionate Male. He was called to servant leadership in his professional life and in retirement has made connecting and helping others connect on a heart level his mission. My favorite quote of his from this interview is, “And this whole idea that once one is committed to one’s path, and they’re in line, and they’re on purpose, that providence moves, the divine will of God moves… Well, let me tell you, that’s not a metaphor. I’m learning that every day. The next thing happens, the next thing happens, the next thing happens. And I’ve got more uncertainty financially now than I’ve ever had, and I’m more at peace than I’ve ever been because I’m on purpose.”

The word “heart” appears 17 times in the transcript below, and Clay is definitely living his life completely in touch with his heart. My sincere thanks to Clay for all the time he spent with me on this project, literally hours before boarding a plane to Kenya. He is something to behold.

Our opening theme is “Start Again” by Monk Turner and Fascinoma. Other music that appears in this episode:

“Redwood Trail” Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com at 7:26

“Tiny People” by Alexei De Bronhe at 11:27

“Rastafarian” Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com at 13:46

"Almost New" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License at 17:16

“Marathon Man” Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com at 21:08

“Living in Hope” from Purple Planet at 25:24

"Laid Back Guitars" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License at 28:01

“Haunted” from Purple Planet at 31:21

“A View From Earth” Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com at 33:05

“2 Above Zero” Creative Commons Music by Jason Shaw on Audionautix.com at 39:23

"Carpe Diem" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License at 44:25

Here’s the transcript:

I went to Texas A&M, and I got a Marine Corps scholarship there and took a Marine Corps commission, and that was in ‘76. When we were freshmen, they marched us over to the Memorial Student Center, and they said, “You memorize these lines.” It was an inscription. It was a Bible inscription. It was John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” And that’s the heartbeat of A&M. And so I went into the Marine Corps. I served 4 years there, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. If a person is looking for an example of leadership, and leadership from the heart, it’s there in the Marine Corps.

In the Marine Corps, they teach us about servant leadership, and that really was ingrained, although they never used that term. So leadership begins there. Old gunnery sergeant back in the Corps, when I first checked in as a second lieutenant, and I said, “Look, Gunny, What can I do to help clear things out in front of you, from in front of you, so that you can do your job?” He’d pull me over to the side sometimes when I was heading off in a direction, and he’d say, “Lieutenant, don’t do that.” And he’d kind of keep me on the straight and narrow, and I’d support him.

When I got out, and I got into the corporate world, that spilled over. And I brought that into Motorola. I’d have supervisors and lead production operators, and I didn’t know about semiconductors. I didn’t know about test floor or anything like that, so I really had to rely on them. And so it was the same principle. What can I do to help you do your job and clear the stuff out of in front of you so that you can come through and be successful. Today I would say that I brought heart and spirit into the organization, but back then, we called it leadership, and I thought about it as servant leadership.

Motorola had gone through a quarter where it had lost money, the whole corporation, because of the downturn in DRAM prices. Well, it was a $250 or 260 million organization. I got there mid-year, and we ended up at $300 million. And so it’s time for forecast. I’m the marketing director. And I said, “Well, I’ve done an analysis, and based on this chart and numbers here, I just want to grow the business wisely, just add $100 million a year to it, and that’ll be good. But you know, I’ve done a little bit more study, and I think we could really do $460, so let’s forecast $460, but let’s budget on $400.”

They said, “Well, that’s fine. What are these numbers.” I said, “Well, it’s funny you should ask. I was looking at the Austin American-Statesman this last weekend, and there was a chart in there, and I found a correlation between that chart and the trends in that chart and our business, and so I’m using that as a guide.” “Well, what was that chart?” “Well, it turns out it was the history of rainfall for Austin, Texas, by month, for the last 10 years.”

Well, you could hear a pin drop. “What?” You know, “what?” And this really happened. The point being is, nobody can forecast, and you can’t forecast DRAMs. Sales guys were like, “Did you hear what Boykin did, forecasting on rainfall?” During the year, the sector president would come poke his head in the door and say, “How’s the rainfall forecast doing?”

Now, here we are in the semiconductor industry. High tech. And it was fun. There’s so much stress. And we had this crazy vision that we were going to forecast our business based on rainfall. It was crazy. But it was something to rally around.

Well, we missed the forecast. We did $461 million. We beat it by $1 million. Now think about that. A volatile market goes up and down, and bingo. You hit the number. Now how do you do that? It’s not by analyzing things. It’s by people putting their heart into something. People seeing something greater than themselves, being part of a bigger picture and getting some good energy out of it.

People noticed that. People engaged with that. People felt connected. And to notice that, and to bring that out within a group of people, within an organization, is to connect on a deeper level and aim at something greater than yourself. That’s the formula of success from my standpoint. About 3 years later, the organization was about $750 million.

So fast forward. I left Motorola after 22 years and went with a couple of startup companies. I ran one here in Austin for about 3 years, and then I was with one that was based in New York City.

I was running pretty fast and hard. I was pretty worn out. In ‘07, we took some vacation with Laurie’s family to Jamaica, and while I was there… You know, I like to get off into the woods by myself and just enjoy the peace that’s there, and I had my little Swiss army knife, and I would make things, just using whatever’s out there. And I started to realize that I was really not feeling well, that I was having symptoms that I thought were heart attack symptoms. But they would come and go. As long as I was calm, I was fine, but if I exerted myself, I would start feeling really bad. And I thought about going to the doctor, but then I thought, mmm, we’re in Jamaica. I don’t know that I really want to do that.

So I just stayed calm, and I also contemplated that really this is, these are heart attack symptoms, and this really could be it. And then I continued to work on my crafts. I don’t know what it was, but I went into an incredible peace during that time. It was leaning against the veil, as they say. Part of it was, gee, there’s a lot I don’t have to worry about anymore. But the other was just, I don’t know, it’s hard to put words to it. And there was almost a mystical experience, the things that happened there before we came home.

Well, sure enough, 24 hours after we got back to Austin, I had a quintuple bypass. I had 3 months of convalescing, and so I had a lot of time out on the patio reflecting on that and asking the questions. Who am I? Why am I here? And where am I going? And really thought hard about that and had a lot of confusion about that point.

Because you know, we guys, that’s what we’re taught to do. We’re taught to go to school, get out, climb the corporate ladder, so that someday you can retire and do what you wanted to do in the first place. Well, that sets up a real anxiety. I’m always looking over my shoulder as I’m climbing the corporate ladder, and that’s a way to trip up. And so I was reflecting on all that.

Well, I went home. The market was crashing. A few days after I got home, I got laid off. First time since I was 16 that I wasn’t earning a paycheck in some way, shape, or form, and I panicked. I really did, and began working desperately to get work. I barely got an interview for 2 years, and it took me down, hard. And I was just questioning my worth in the world, and goodness, I was deep depression, extended, eventually hospitalized.

So coming out of the hospital, I thought, “OK, maybe it’s time to go get back into church or something like that.” And so I would go down to church downtown on Sunday for 8 o’clock service, and I’d run up to the Unity Church for 9:30 service, then I’d head across town to the Austin Recovery Center for an Episcopal service over there, and I called that churfing. And I remember specifically, it was about 9:20 in the morning, January 3, 2010, I walked into the Unity Church for the first time, and if you’ve ever talked to anybody that goes to the Unity Church, and they’re talking about their congregation, they say when we walk in, we feel total love, total embrace, no judgment. And for me, I felt like the prodigal son. And it really, really touched me.

I remember early on, I’d sit in the pew talking about making notes and mind mapping everything, and I’d cry. There’d be tears. Something Reverend Steve said that really struck deep, but you know, one day he was talking, and I don’t remember the overall talk, but at one point he said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I don’t have to build a condo there.” And I slapped my forehead. I thought, “Oh! I have choice! I can choose to move away from this victim mode. I can choose to do something different, take a different path. It’s well within my power to do it.” I was 54 learning that lesson.

After I’d been there for about a year, Reverend Donna came up to me, and she said, “You know, I think you’d make a good prayer chaplain.” And I got this big old lump in my throat, and I said, “Well, that scares the heck out of me, and so I guess I’m supposed to say yes.” And I did.

I became a prayer chaplain there, and I’d make hospital visits periodically, which I never was comfortable with earlier. What do you say to the person? What is there to say? Well, I’ll tell you what you say: nothing. You just show up, and the right thing will come, and it will come from the heart. But more than anything, it’s just the presence, sincere presence, to stand there and basically, “I see you.” To be their witness that they are going through something. At a certain level, that’s healing in itself. Those are the experiences that, and the opportunities to really connect on a heart level that I found over at the Unity Church and being a prayer chaplain.

A couple of guys, there were only like 3 or 4 of us out of 30 prayer chaplains, you know, 3 or 4 guys, and we started getting together to say, “OK, well what does holding space really mean? What is prayer really about? How do we show up? How do we make hospital visits?” And so, we decided to meet every week and talk about it. And it was a very formative time for me because I grew up not trusting men, and so I was beginning to step into being, it’s OK to be vulnerable. It’s OK to speak.

And I look around the foyer after service, and all these men are out there, and they’re not talking to anybody. And I said, well, if I have this feeling and this drive and this curiosity, and I’m afraid to talk to another man, I bet you there’s another guy out there that’s like that, or maybe there’s a few of them.

So in one sense, it was self-serving. I said, “I’m starting a men’s circle. I’m going to do it once a week, because that’s what I need. I don’t care if anybody shows up. I’m putting the word out, and I’m going to be there and set a drum beat. I’m going to show up.” And I did, and we had 12 guys show up.

So we started there, and we’ve been gathering every week for 7 years. And we may take off a week or 2 during the year, but that drum beat is there. And we’ve got a different mix of guys every Monday night. We’ll have 18 to 20. We had 37 one time this last year. And it’s so fascinating how we figured out how to set a container that’s safe, where people can, men can step away from everything that’s going on out there, and they can sit with other men.

And that’s really the essence, and I’m not teaching anything. I’m facilitating. And it’s interesting to watch the dynamic, especially when trust is built that a man can speak his heart, and nobody’s going to try and judge him. Nobody’s going to try and fix him. But he’s going to be heard by other men and accepted for where he is in life. Where can you go and do that? This is the one place for me where I can safely do that.

And that’s another thing. At the very beginning, I would say, “I want to make sure everybody has an opportunity to speak.” So I’d go around and make sure everybody had spoken, and then I pulled away from that because there are guys that are coming in there, and they’re wounded, and it’s enough for them to be in a circle of men. That’s a big step, and then just to listen and hear the experiences of other men. And they will assimilate themselves, and at some point they’ll say something. So that’s sacred time, and I can almost see the wheels turning when somebody is silent in there. And to hold space for somebody because they’re on their path, and there’ll be a time when they’ll share. More times than not, somebody that’s been silent for a long time, I mean weeks and weeks, first time they share is incredibly profound, and we all come out better for that.

Here’s an interesting fact: last year, 49.4% of the people who went to that website were women. And I was talking out in Bastrop, Texas, around the table at a luncheon that I was at, and I pointed that out, and they said, “Well, why is that?” And I said, “Well, the most obvious is that they’re women looking for a resource for their man.” A woman sitting next to me, very seriously looked at me, and she said, “Clay, I’ve been following your website for a long time now, and let me tell you why. I’m a man in a woman’s body. Where do I go? Where do I go to figure this out?”

You know, I knew intellectually, but to look into her eyes and see the pain, and to hear those words was very sobering to me and reminded me that we have no idea of how far our ripples go. And if we’re putting good energy out there, you have no idea of all the good we’re doing in the world. It’s still men, OK; on the website I also point out that it’s anybody who gender identifies as male.

And that’s the other thing is, I don’t ask anybody to commit. Guys will come up to me and say, “You know, I’ve been going and stuff, but a few months ago, I kind of got sidetracked, and business, and life and stuff, and I really need to commit to come back.” And I said, “No no no no no no. Don’t set yourself up for failure. You’ve got enough commitments in your life. You don’t need another thing that you’re going to beat yourself up for when you don’t show up. Set an intention. Set an intention. My intention is to be there. And I’ll be there, it turns out, when the time is right.” That’s how it plays out. It gives much more latitude because there’s so much going on in life. This is a place to relax and go within. It’s a contemplative circle. We can be pretty shallow at times. We pride ourselves on being shallow at times. But we can go really deep as well.

Back to the job side of things, I had resumes everywhere, and I got this phone call, and it was a young fellow at Office Max. And he said, “Clay, you’ve got a resume as long as my arm. What are you doing applying for a $9 job part time at Office Max?” And I said, “I just got to reconnect. I just got to reconnect with people.” And this was right after I’d started going to the Unity Church. And he said, “Come talk to me.” So I did, and he said, “You’re not going to be here long, are you?” And I said, “No, but I’m going to be your best employee that you ever had. You see, I’ve got to reconnect with people. I have to have that energy, that interaction.” And so he hired me.

So I went from the top of the Empire State Building, at the top metaphorically, and my next job was $9/hour part time. But that $9/hour job was so enjoyable, to observe myself learning again and observe myself connecting again, and just the energy made a huge difference. And then about 6 weeks later, an old Marine Corps buddy heard of my circumstance, and he called me up and said, “Let’s have coffee.” So we did, and he described what the position was, and I said, “I’ll take it.”

So I eventually became general manager of that company, then moved on, did some business development work, and then this past October, I decided that, you know, reflecting back on Jamaica, sitting in the woods, at the end of my life, doing my arts and crafts, doing something creative and being at total peace, that’s what I was doing at the end of my life. Well, what’s to say that today’s not the end of my life? And am I doing what’s mine to do? Am I on purpose? And it was at that point, I got home, and I said to Laurie, I says, “You know, I’ve been doing this for 42 years. I’m tired. It’s time to change. If I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it?” And so, the 1st of October, just a few months after my book came out, I left the business world.

When I was a kid, that I would catch birds with a box and a stick and a string. I caught one one time, and I had it in my hands, clasped down, and I could feel its wings fluttering in my hands. And my Mother said, “What do you got there?” And Dad’s like, “Let it loose.” And I was a little kid, and I ran off with it. Well, in the process of running off with it, I didn’t realize that I was squeezing down on that bird, and I killed it. And that fluttering that was in my hands, that I could feel, translated up into my gut. That twinge, that anxiety, I felt like it had been transferred into me, and I was filled with guilt and shame. And metaphorically, I grasped that anxiety, that flutter, with my hands, my one hand was guilt and the other was shame. And I held it tight.

And that flutter is the divine energy. And guilt and shame is what I’m holding it in. And you know something? It’s stronger than we are, and it’s going to come out one way or the other. So when I can turn loose, open my hands up, turn loose of that guilt and shame, that divine energy, that light can integrate with us.

So yeah, October 1, I said OK. You know, I said it in my book, I’m committing the next 20 years of my life to men’s work, and I mean it. I put it in print. I guess I need to do it. Well, a couple weeks after that, mid-October, a woman called me up and said, “Let’s have coffee.” And so we did. Turns out that she was the local director for Charter for Compassion, Karen Armstrong’s organization. And she and I talked, and she said, “You know, Clay, you really ought to go up to the Parliament of the World’s Religions. It’s in Toronto, the last week of this month. And if you decide to go, would you represent me up there?” I said, “Well, yeah, is there any budget?” And she said, “No.” So I thought, “Well, OK, this is another one of those things where this door is opening, and I need to walk through it.” And I did.

Well, Karen Armstrong had an influence on me in my book. Just look up Charter for Compassion, and one, sign the charter saying, “I as an individual believe in these principles that are about the charter.” IPeople think about compassion as being the soft side of things. Some people say, well, that’s the bleeding hearts club. It’s anything but that. I say compassion is not for sissies. Sometimes you have to do hard things. And the president of the Charter says that a compassionate city is an uncomfortable city because they are leaning into the norms to affect change, and that’s uncomfortable at times.

So I set my intention to meet Karen Armstrong and give her a book. And there she is, and to get my picture with her holding my book. It’s pretty cool. But I also had looked, and I said, “I want to meet the board chair for the Charter.” And I kind of ferreted out where he was, and I went and talked to him, and I shared with him what we were doing with our men’s circle. And I pointed out to him and said, “You know, I’m just looking around here at the Parliament, like 10,000 people, 80 religious traditions, countless sessions going on. Do you realize that there’s not one session on men?” He said, “My goodness, isn’t that something.” I said, “Yeah, and furthermore, the Charter for Compassion has got 12, they call them sectors, their initiatives. And the last one, they’re in alphabetical order, the last one I saw on the website was Women and Girls. Where’s the Men and Boys?” I said, “My vision for the Charter is that there be a Men and Boy....” Well, I said just men. And he said, “Well, if you add boys to that, why don’t you write it?”

And I said, OK. Another door opening. No, I’m not going to sit down and write it. But I’m going to create the conversation. He said to me, “OK, why don’t you introduce yourself to the woman who leads the Women and Girls sector? and you’ll see what she’s got going on, and learn from that.” That’s what we’ve been doing. And the truth of the matter is that in a way, the Women and Girls sector are giving birth to the Men and Boys sector. I’m translating what I’m learning. It’s not going to be the same. We have different things going on with us. We have different issues and stuff.

So I’m still up there at the Parliament, and I run into an organization called Gender Equity and Reconciliation, International. In a nutshell, they are about deep healing between men and women. And it’s recognizing that both men and women are wounded by the patriarchy and creating a space for women and men to come together and do that deep work. And I spoke with them for just a few minutes, But he said, “Why don’t you come out? We’ve got a facilitators workshop. I said, “Well you got any budget?” He said, “No.” I said OK. So after the Parliament, I flew home, changed clothes, and flew to Seattle, and I spent a week out there. And it was a transformative week for me.

And for men and women to come in together, a group of 20 or 30, and to go to that level, and to hear each other’s wound, to connect on that level, there’s an alchemy that happens. And it’s eye-opening. It’s one thing to generally know, but when a person really gets down to it, and they’re sharing that most intimate fear, that wound, you can’t walk away and be the same person. It changes you.

But this is what is so exciting to me about the Gender Equity and Reconciliation. We’re doing our work. We men have got to up our game. We’ve got to come up here and meet women where they are, and that work is work that men have got to do with men. We’ve got to get over this “I don’t want to be vulnerable” business. You know, there’s half a dozen different models for men’s work, and there are hybrids and stuff, but you’ve got the Jungian model, you know, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. You’ve got Robert Bly, which is mythopoetic. You’ve got Mass Movement. You’ve got neopagan, drum beating in the woods. You’ve got the traditional, you know, Knights of Columbus. And then you’ve got this integrative reflective.

All those models are kind of an outside-in approach except for the integrative reflective. These are “break the man down, get him to his heart, and then grow him from there so that he can connect head and heart.” What the Circles of Men Project recognizes is that there’s a whole population of men out there that are already in their heart, and they’ve gotten there because something is broken. They’ve been broken open. They don’t need somebody to break them open; they’ve already been broken open, and they’re in shame, or they’re in fear, or they’re in guilt, and they don’t know where to go because they’ve gone through their recovery program, and they’re looking for something a little bit higher level, maybe something a little more positive. And I can speak with my wife deeply, but there’s still a level underneath that that she just doesn’t have a frame of reference to connect. So I need to go to another man, but we’re raised, “Don’t trust other men. Don’t show your underbelly.” So where do I go?

So if we can create a circle of men where we can begin to open those hands up, connect with one another, then we can do our work. That will enable us to then be ready to move into something like Gender Equity and Reconciliation.

Now, that’s not to say I don’t agree with those other models. I do. Matter of fact, I’m in conversation with the board chair for the Mankind Project. Mankind Project is a big one, and it’s about rites of passage, and it’s about breaking, I want to say it’s productively, but it’s opening the man to examine himself. But it’s coming in from a different frame of reference. Absolutely valuable, and the Mankind Project is also connected to Gender Equity and Reconciliation.

And it turns out that one of the women who is a trainer for the Gender Equity and Reconciliation organization is from Kenya. And when I was out there, she said, “Why don’t you fly down to Kenya and do some work here. Do a men’s retreat here.” And I was going to do that, but a rocket attack on a hotel in Nairobi kind of shut things down. The State Department said no go. But tomorrow, I’ll be on my way to Kenya. I’ll be running a young men’s retreat. It’ll be a 3 day retreat. The first evening at least is going to be one question: what is it to be a man in Kenya? Who am I, this western white male, to come over there and think I’ve got the answer? You guys gotta teach me first. Help me. Assimilate me in, so then I can take my wisdom and share it. Not teach it, but share it, after we’ve built trust, after you’ve heard my story, after you’ve seen me open and share, stand in my truth with an open heart. It’ll be 30 or 40 young folks, and I’ve got 2 gentlemen that are there from Kenya who are my co-facilitators. I’m just thrilled with the opportunity.

So things like that are unfolding and unfolding and unfolding. Every day something’s unfolding. And this whole idea that once one is committed to one’s path, and they’re in line, and they’re on purpose, that providence moves. The divine will of God moves. Well, let me tell you, that’s not a metaphor. I’m learning that every day. The next thing happens, the next thing happens, the next thing happens. And I’ve got more uncertainty financially now than I’ve ever had, and I’m more at peace than I’ve ever been because I’m on purpose.

So in years past, I’d be a bucket of nerves right now. I’ve got to get my PowerPoint slides. I’ve got to get this thing all nailed down before I go, and I’ve got to go blah blah blah. Well, no. I’ll show up. And it’s how I show up and recognize that so much of life cannot be scripted. It’s all about showing up.

So I’m thrilled to be doing that. After that… Let’s see. I come back, and a few days later, I go up to Baldwin City, Kansas, and there’s a men’s retreat there that I’ll participate in. And then I come back from there. I go to Houston, and the Unity of Houston has invited me down to work with their team to give them a workshop on doing a men’s circle. And they had some budget to spend on that.

Rod: Somebody finally said, “Yes, there’s a budget.”

Clay: Yeah, all of this has been out of my own pocket! Yeah, but so I do that, and I get back from that, the first couple of days of October I fly to Atlanta. I get picked up there to go to North Carolina to do another Unity retreat. And I come back from there, have a little bit of a break, and then October 16th is an alchemy event in Seattle, where the woman who heads up the Women and Girls sector and me and a group of people are coming together to put on a day-long event, and there’ll be men coming and using circle principles to get a sense of what it feels like to speak on a heart level with other men. Women running circles, doing the same work, and then in the afternoon we’ll come together and have a mini-taster they call it. They’ll get a taste of what the Gender Equity and Reconciliation work is all about. There will be, we’re anticipating about 300 people to be at that. So it’s blossoming.

In May, I was invited to join the Gender Equity and Reconciliation team at the United Nations. And we put on a workshop for the Committee on Spirituality, Values, and Global Concerns. The first step into the United Nations. And what an incredible experience that was, to be part of that, women, men and women from all over the world. And the common theme is the patriarchy system around the whole world, and it’s wounded the whole world. And to be in that, immersed in that, with the United Nations of all places, again, I would’ve never dreamed that. And to make that, just those few days, it moved the needle just a little bit.

I go back to servant leadership. To create an inspired vision, to model the way, to enable others to act, to encourage the heart. That’s… To set a vision for something greater than yourself. It’s connecting at the heart level with another person, connecting on a level of compassion, bringing that good energy into the environment. And that’s not la la land, that’s the real deal.

Why not connect at a deeper level? I spent my career chasing a paycheck and had my chest cracked open and was reminded that there’s a little bit more to life. And look at the stark difference that I’m witnessing within myself since the first of October. I am connected to something greater than myself, and I’ve got a passion for it. And it’s helping me heal along my path. And I’m trusting that to make it sustainable, that the funding will be there, the part-time consulting work will happen. But I’m not focusing on getting this job or getting that job. I’m aiming at something higher.

Rod: Well, it’s good to know that you’ve really slowed down for retirement, have a nice relaxing time sitting on a beach. You’re a busy man, and I really appreciate that you committed the team to me and my little project.

Clay: Well, I appreciate the opportunity. I really do. And I want to thank you too. Well good. Are we complete?

Episode 020 - We're All Real Nice, and We're All Assholes

A very Merry Christmas Eve to you all! Here is our last episode of the season, an interview with Curtis Myers, longtime Austin sound engineer and shredder. He’s the perfect person to represent goodwill toward men this holiday! I had a great time talking to him, and I’m grateful to get to work with him day in and day out. All of our best to you and to yours, from me, Flora, and all of ours. See you next year!

Our opening theme is “Start Again” by Monk Turner and Fascinoma. Except for “Pick Up On My Mojo” by Johnny Winter and “DOA” by Blood Rock, all music for this episode comes from 1 by Cave Pool, which you can find here:

https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/cavepool

Here’s the transcript:

Curtis: That’s when I started recording, when I was 10. And I just had like a two-track machine that I could do ping ponging. You record on one track, and then you take that track, and play along with it, and then record onto the other track. So now you have two things on the one track, and then you play that one back and record on it, while you’re erasing the… And you just keep… And then you have three things on that track. And then… And as you go, you sort of lose stuff in the quality.

That’s pretty much how I started in recording and figuring out how to lay down recordings and make sounds and stuff. The guitar just became natural to me. I just sort of understood it, you know. I could look at how other guys were playing, and I said, “Oh, I can do that.” And so I understood that, and then I just was into the guitar like crazy. Then I heard Johnny Winter. Then I heard Jimi Hendrix. The day I bought my first Jimi Hendrix album, the guy at the record store, he said, “Oh, that guy just died today.” And I was pissed at the guy for telling me that. I just was like, “What’d you tell me that for? You just ruined it. He’s my favorite guitar player.”

And then that was in the Philippines, so I bought it at the PX, on base. I was just a military brat. 14. 9th grade. And I was really into Hendrix, and Johnny Winter. I thought everybody else sucked. I kind of liked Clapton a little bit. Thought he was OK, but…I just was into the faster guitar players. Shredders. They didn’t call them shredders back then; they just, guitar players. I don’t know. But I liked Roy Clark, because he was fast. And I liked Glen Campbell, I thought he was pretty good, too. If they played fast, I liked them. I probably didn’t even know who Chet Atkins was at that point.

Rod: So how did you turn it into a professional gig?

Well, I first went to the Teen Club on base, and I played with my band. At first we were called the Thunderbirds, and then we found out there was another band called Thunderbirds. Of course, there’s been probably a lot of Thunderbirds. And then one guy said Blueberry Doorknobs. So that was our name for awhile.

Rod: Must’ve been the ‘60s.

Curtis: Yeah, well, that was about turning into the ‘70s, yeah, about that point. And all I had was, I had a some kind of weird turntable that I’d turned into an amplifier, and it had a 10” speaker that I would set out, and that was my amp. And we just played the shit out of it, you know. We only knew probably four or five songs, and none of us would sing because, you know. But I mean, we’d make a little bit of money. They’d give us french fries, and they’d give us Cokes for playing and stuff.

So then I moved back to the states, here to Austin, and the first band, I mean, within two months, I was playing in a band. I loved playing guitar. I just, I would skip school and go play guitar. And I went to this place, and I met this drummer, and I liked the drummer.  He was 14; I was 16. And he was huge. He was like 6’, and he swole up like, he just started, I don’t know if he was taking steroids or what, but he got real musclebound. And his brother was a guitar player, but I didn’t like him because he was shitty. I thought he was shitty. And then we found this bass player, and he was great, and he was like sasquatch. And I was just a little bitty guy.

And so I played with these guys. I didn’t like standing up when I played, and I didn’t like, and I was writing music, but I didn’t like vocals. I really didn’t like listening to vocals. I’d rather just hear the guitar. So all the music I wrote was all instrumental. And I found out that after I learned a song by Hendrix or Johnny Winter, I didn’t like it anymore when I’d listen to it. So I quit learning other people’s songs because I figured if I learned it, then I wouldn’t like listening to it anymore because it would just kind of, I don’t know. It just did something to me if I learned the song, then it wasn’t any fun playing it or listening to it anymore. It was kind of weird. Now it’s different. Now there’s certain things I like learning, as I’m older now. I’ve learned to appreciate learning other people’s songs, but back then, it was kind of like, “Eh.” It takes the, I don’t know, the fun out of it, once you learn it.

So I basically went playing and playing with these guys, and we got some gigs. We got a Battle of the Bands at the Sacred Heart Church over there on the northeast side of Austin. And we ended up winning it, and I didn’t, we just packed our shit up and left after we played. And then everybody came back to the drummer’s house and says, “You guys won! You guys won!” And said, “Won what?” We didn’t really think of it as… We were just wanting to play. Anywhere we could play, we’d play parties and stuff. And we just had a blast.

And by the time I think we were, the summer was over, the band sort of fell apart because the parents were getting tired of the, the bass player’s parents were telling him, “You’re going to college. You ain’t doing this shit.”  We were all dedicated musicians for about a whole summer. It was hard finding musicians that I was happy with. I had, ended up hanging out with this one bass player for the next two summers, and during school. And we formed a band. We found four guitar players. I was teaching them all the parts. So I was trying to do like orchestrations of my music, and the only thing we had to record was an 8-track. Not an 8-track like in a professional studio, an 8-track tape, you know, and I’d buy blank 8-tracks and record on that, and we had two microphones, we’d stick them in there. And it sounded like shit. It was god-awful. And I took that down to Armadillo World Headquarters, and a matter of fact, Carol was the lady that took my tape. And she listened to it, and she said, “Eh, you guys need a little work.” And so we never did get to play there, but I kept at it.

Then I got to work for, I was, Johnny Winter was coming to town. It was about ‘75, I think. And he was playing with Floyd Radford, another badass guitar player, and it was probably my favorite lineup with Johnny Winter, just because it was a really rockin’ outfit. And I got there at like 9 in the morning, and it was nobody there except the roadies. And I was there, and one of the roadies came up to me, and he goes, “What are you doing here?” I says, “I’m here to see Johnny Winter.” He said, “Well, you’re a little early, aren’t you?” And I said, “Well, I wanted to make sure I got good seats. I’m here to see him.” He says, “You want a job?” And I says, “Sure!” So he just put me to work. He said first thing, he says, “OK, see this thing? Write on this piece of paper ‘Winterbago.’ OK? Just make it big letters. ‘Winterbago.’ One piece of paper.” And so I just took that pen, and I wrote “Winterbago,” and then I says, I started writing all this other stuff on it. “Cool man! Far out!” You know, stuff like that. And the guy comes back, says, “What the hell is this? I said just write ‘Winterbago’ on it.” He flipped it over. “Write ‘Winterbago’ and that’s it.” So I did that, and I said, “OK, I’m sorry man. I’m just excited.” And he says, “OK, what else you want to do?” He says, “How many tickets you need?”

And so I got tickets for all my brother and everybody. I called them up. So we had four seats right there in the front, man. And Point Blank opened up for him, and they kicked ass, and then Johnny Winter came out and just tore it up. And just smokin’. And I was like, “This is the coolest.” We were right up front, had the best seats. And then at the end of the show, the roadie that was put me to work and everything, he says, “Come up here. Come on up.” My little brother came up with me, and we looked kind of alike. And Johnny Winter’s cross-eyed, right, so I had noticed it, because that was the first time I’d seen him up close like that, and so I stuck my hand out to get my hand shaken with Johnny Winter, and my little brother, and Johnny Winter reaches over to my little brother and shakes his hand, and then walks off. And I’m like, “What the fuck?” That’s just the way it was. But it was cool. I still, I’ll never forget that. It was just the greatest day of my life, I thought.

I got more involved into different things, and playing music wasn’t really my big thing anymore. I was trying to support myself, looking for jobs and stuff, and I found out it was hard to find bands that would stay together and really work hard, find dedicated musicians. And so, it was kind of tough, and I ended up doing odd jobs and stuff. But later on, about as I hit about 19, 20, I started really working harder on the music thing. And we went into this one band, and we were called Tough Luck, and we started getting gigs where we were opening up. We opened up for Bloodrock. I don’t know if you remember them. They had the one song, “D.O.A.” “I remember we were flying along and hit something in the air,” and then it would go, “Doo doo doo doo...” They had this big hit. But they were sort of regional. They had a regional hit, you know. And then we opened up for, let’s see, Bloodrock, Bubble Puppy, Leslie West of Mountain. We opened up for them. And we got to play the Armadillo World Headquarters, and so we actually did some stuff, played around, and then our bass player got shot in a drug deal, and then we got all our equipment stolen, and sort of things just went to crap at that point. And that’s why were called Tough Luck. No, that wasn’t why, but we thought Tough Luck was actually a cool name, you know, when… But it wasn’t.

And we sort of had a pretty good following for a local band and stuff. And we did as good as we could, went as far as we could, but they, the paper wrote an article on, the Austin American-Statesman wrote an article, and it was called “Glitter Punk” is what they called us. Our vocals were just really weird, because I had a real low voice, and then the other guitar player had a real high voice, I mean higher than Geddy Lee. So when we sang together, it was kind of neat, but it was just, we just weren’t that great of singers, I think.

But after that, I went to a recording studio. Back then, there was like maybe 4 or 5 studios in town. One of them was Earth and Sky, and it was ran by a guy named Kerry Crafton. And he took me under his wing, started showing me how to record, and how to use the mixing board and stuff. And he used my house for a pre-production studio. He’d come over there, and he’d do his bands. He’d say, “Rehearse over here, then we’ll go over to the studio and lay down some tracks.” And so he started teaching me that, and from there, I got into, I was going to electronics school at the time, and I said, “Oh, I really like electronics, and I might as well get into it,” because I was figuring computers were just about to happen. This was about 1983, ‘84, and all this stuff was happening.

And so I just got into that, and I learned all about electronics, and I learned to record. And then I got an offer with Radio Shack to work on their computers, Tandy Computers, after I finished school, and I moved to Houston. And there I met a guy who had just retired. I got a gig playing this one homeless shelter, and his wife’s sister liked me, so she told him about me. He came and saw me, and I was trying to run live sound and play guitar at the same time, and he says, “Do you mind if I help you out? I can adjust this for you.” And I said, “Sure, go ahead. If you know what you’re doing, that would be great, because I’m having a hell of enough time just playing the damn guitar.” So he started twisting my knobs, and we just started sounding great. And I was going, “Damn, this guy knows what he’s doing.” So I said, “Where’d you learn to do that?” and he goes, “Van Halen.” I’m going, “What?” He says, “Yeah, I used to work for him, but I don’t do that anymore. I got out of the business.” And he sort of showed me a few things, a few tricks here and there, and I learned from that.

Then, after, oh, I guess about three years in Houston, I had had enough of working on computers for all the prisons. There was one day that I walked in, and one of the prisons, I was on death row, and I’m working on the computer, and one of the guys, one of the prisoners walks in, and he goes, “I like computers.” Two guards rushed in and grabbed him, and they came in and said, “Oh, Mr. Myers, we’re sorry about that.” And I said, “OK. That’s all right.” But after that, it was just, I just said, “You know what? I think I’m going to go back to Austin and get out of this business.” And then I moved back to Austin, and I started a little, I built a little recording studio, and from there, it just, I started getting gigs there. And then one day, a friend of mine says, “Hey, Curtis, can you come to the Back Room? Their sound man left.” So that’s how I started getting into live sound. I started working at the Back Room. And that, and the studio, and then I started getting gigs with Johnny Hernández, that’s Little Joe Y La Familia’s brother, and I just started getting all kinds of gigs, and people started hiring me here and there, and I just went crazy after that. I just started doing sound. But I still liked to play guitar.

Curtis: Well, I got to work for Jimi Hendrix once. But he was dead.

Rod: He was already dead!

Curtis: But it was, you know, it’s a pretty cool story. I entered this contest. It was the Jimi Hendrix Guitar Competition. You had to mail in a tape and everything, so I was like, “Cool.”

Rod: Did you mail in an 8-track?

Curtis: No, it was actually a cassette, and I thought it was a pretty good tape. And it said, just record a couple Hendrix songs and send it in, and I sent it in. And then, the sound company I was working for called me and says, “Hey, I got you a gig. You’re going to be doing sound for the Jimi Hendrix Guitar Competition.” And I said, “Shit! That means I’m disqualified. I can’t work...” So, but I had, that’s how I made my money. I had to do it. But I got to work it, and I’m sitting there, I ran the sound for everybody in the whole competition, and I was like, “Oh, man. I’m better than all these fuckers.” You know how guitar players are. We can all do that better. So I walk in, after it’s all over, I walk in the green room, and I’d met Jimi Hendrix’s dad. That was cool. I got to meet his dad, talk to him for awhile, and I met his sister. So I got to know them, and that was great. And then, so I walk in the green room, and they’re, all the judges and everybody’s in there,  I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know y’all was in here,” and one of the guys, one of the main judges, I think he was from Fender, he goes, “Wait a minute. What did you… Who did you think was the best?” And I said, “Ah, it was that Italian guy.” And so I walk out, and thinking nothing of it, and then the Italian guy wins.

Two months later, I’m getting ready, I got a gig, and I got my bass player and drummer, I’m calling… I call up my bass player, and I says, “Hey, you ready for the gig? Are you going to come pick me up, or how are we going to do this thing?” or whatever. And he goes, “Oh man, I was going to call you, but I just got this gig. I’m going over to Italy. This guy that won this Jimi Hendrix Guitar Competition just hired me to be a bass player.” And I said, “Son of a bitch!” And the guy that it was was the guy that I said, “It was the Italian guy.” So he ended up winning the whole thing worldwide.

Rod: Wow. All on your vote, huh?

Curtis: Yeah, and then, my bass player, I lost my bass player to that guy.

Rod: Casual word in the wrong ear, and all of a sudden you lost your bass player. You’re a dad, right?

Curtis: Yeah. Yeah, I have two wonderful kids. And I found out I have a third kid a couple years ago from when I was out on the road. And the lady finally got a hold of me and told me that we had a son together. He’s 38. He went to Rice University. He played football for Rice. He’s doing fine. He did fine without me, and she did probably a lot better without me than…

Rod: Did you get to meet him and everything?

Curtis: I haven’t met him yet. We… I’m waiting for the opportunity when it’s, when he wants to know about me and all that.

But yeah. And the best I think that I’ve learned as, because I set out to be a rock star, the best guitarist in the world, set all that in my head, but I feel like as I went, I think I learned that the best things in life are just the best things in life, just doing it. And there’s failures and there’s highs and lows, and I think I’ve had a good life at this point. I’m 62 now. I don’t regret a lot of it. There’s things I do regret, of course, but I don’t regret not being a rock star, because it probably would’ve killed me, and I don’t think I would’ve lived to be 62, because I was pretty wild. I had my wild streak. You know, I don’t want to use the names to protect the innocent. But I’m pretty mellow, I think, as far as it goes, and I think it kind of kept me on an even keel.

Rod: You got any other, any other stories? Ones where you don’t protect the innocent?

Curtis: I could say some things about, you know, but there would be times where I would meet musicians, and then they would be, just turn out to be complete assholes. But I think of it now, as I look back, and I think, “Well, they probably were having a bad day, and no telling what they were going through on the other side of it,” and what I could’ve done maybe to make them nicer. And I could mention names, but I don’t want to do that, because a lot of people will have, it could’ve been a bad day they had, and they’re probably really nice people, because we all are. We’re all real nice, and we’re all assholes at the same time, so I don’t want to say any of those bad stories. And I could say some good ones, too, but I think I’ll leave it with the Jimi Hendrix and the Johnny Winter, I think it’s better that way.

Episode 019 - Nothing Out Here Can Stop Me

Today we have a conversation with Brandon Foster, a coworker of mine. Brandon’s has a charisma and energy that I really like and admire. Despite everything he has been and continues to go through, he keeps a positive attitude and a focus on growth. As he says, he’s always grinding. Thanks for taking the time, Brandon.

As always, please rate and review us in iTunes, and if you have a story you’d like to share with us or you’d like to be interviewed about a transformative experience in you life, let us know! i’m at rod@rodhaden.com.

Our theme song is “Start Again” by Monk Turner + Fascinoma.

Other music used in this episode:

4:14: “Far From Home (and feeling bad)” by Squire Tuck

8:01: “Home at Last” by John Bartmann

17:47: “Get Out” by Jahzzar

24:55: “Get Out of Dodge” by Frenic

32:38: “Roaming the Streets at Night” by Daniel Birch

35:08: “Back Up The Truck Jam” by Podington Bear

39:45: “Homebound” by Audiobinger

Here’s the transcript:

Rod: So where did you come from? How did you get to Austin?

Brandon: I moved to Austin 6 years ago. Unfortunately, the police of Buffalo, New York killed my father, and my uncle came for the funeral of his brother’s death. We sat for the couple of days that he was there, and we vibed, and we had a chance to talk and everything, and he told me about opportunities out here. So, while I was back home in Buffalo, New York, surviving, I had a chance to get online and look for jobs out here. So the first job that offered me an opportunity to come out here, I explained to them that I had tattoos on my face; would that prevent me from getting a job? And they told me no, no problem, come on in. So I winded up calling my uncle, down, calling him, and let him know that I had got a job offer sooner than what we planned for. So he brought me down here. It was all because of my uncle. I stayed with my uncle for the first 6 months when I moved down here, and by me having the mentality that I have, I was already in the “grind and go get it” mode, be on my own, so within 6 months, I kind of was looking for a place, and he was helping me look for a place. So we found a place, and he helped me co-sign the first lease. He helped pay the rent for the first 2 months, so I was rent-free for the first 2 months. I had to get on my grind and do what I do to keep myself out here, unless I would’ve been back on a plane going home. So here I am. If it wasn’t for my father passing, would I be here? Would I not be here? You know, that’s the question I ask myself.

Rod: Do you want to talk about what happened to your dad?

Brandon: My father, the night before he was in jail, me and my father was together. And he wanted me to go out to the club with him and hang out. My dad was a bar owner. He owned a couple different bars, and that particular night, I didn’t want to hang out, so I winded up going back home. And the following morning, I get a phone call from my grandmother saying my father killed himself. My dad was tied up to a pole on his knees by his t-shirt. And Buffalo, New York, the Erie County facility, you have to do your rounds every 15 minutes to check on the inmates. And it took them 45 minutes to do CPR on my dad.

Rod: Were you living with him at the time?

Brandon: No, I wasn’t. I never lived with my dad. I was always with my mother. Him and my mother had always had their differences, so we’d always go to my dad’s house on the weekends.

Rod: How old were you?

Brandon: When he passed away? I was 23. So they did the 45 minutes CPR and brought him back to life, but he was basically like a vegetable. The hardest thing was sitting at the table with nothing but doctors, and my mother, and my uncle, and all eyes on me. They wanted… I’m the one that has to answer the question of pull the plug or not on my father. And it’s like, do I let him live? Look at him, like he is? Or just let him go? So at the age of 23, that was the most hardest thing for me.

Since I’ve been here, I lost my father. I lost my brother. I lost my sister. I lost my niece. My niece hung herself 2 years ago. She was found in the closet by her mother. When I got that phone call, it was very crazy, very crazy phone call.

After my niece, I buried my other brother. So I lost about 6 people since I’ve been here, in the past 6 years. It’s hard being away because it’s like when you get certain phone calls, and people need help, and you can’t do nothing because you’re so many miles away, and it’s like, what do you do? What do you do? And you try to make phone calls to other people to see if they can get to the situation and handle it for you. I just really hate getting phone calls and not knowing if it’s good or bad or not. In the past 6 years, no matter, I tell myself now, no matter what phone call I get, early morning, I’m always going to think bad, always going to think it’s something bad happening because it’s been going on for the past 6 years, and that’s what haunts me. No matter what, 2 o’clock in the morning, 3 o’clock in the morning, if my phone is ringing, I’m always jumping up thinking something bad is happening back home. It’s crazy that I feel like that, but I do. So I don’t necessarily miss home. There’s nothing there. I miss my family, that’s it. If I could bring them all down, then I feel like I did my job. They still surviving. I’m living.

Rod: Are you the baby?

Brandon: No, I’m the middle child, so I have my oldest brother. He was 32. He passed away, he just turned 33. So he was back home at a club, and a fight led from inside the club, and it led to outside the club. A couple guys left; they came back, and they shot the bar up, and my brother winded up getting hit by a stray bullet in his head, and one in his neck. That was hard as well, getting that phone call at 3 in the morning.

So my sister, I say it’s my sister because my brother’s wife, so my sister-in-law if you want to technically say it like that. So she passed away first, and a couple years, two years later, he passed away. She died at the age of 29. She was fighting cancer all her life. She had her foot amputated at a young age, so all her life, she was going back and forth to the hospital, just treatments and treatments. And it was falling to a point where she knew that she was going to be taking her last breath in a couple months. So we just basically prepared ourselves for it, because she knew that, we knew that she was in those stages. So, you know, you got to prepare. You’re just hoping for the best, but you’re prepared for the worst. It was sad, but I was prepared for it. That’s all I can do.

My second oldest brother was 31, or 30, when he passed away. He was in jail for 25 years to life, and he did 15 before the cancer got the best of him. He was facing cancer for eight years and never told nobody until he was on his deathbed. That was an unexpected death, so that kind of hit hard.

Rod: Do you think him seeing her go through it was why he didn’t tell anybody? Like he didn’t want to put people through what…?

Brandon: Probably, but my brother always been a quiet person. He never really was into the social media kind of things, or he was never into the limelight, but at the same time, my brother spent most of his life in jail, in and out of jail, so he didn’t really have a chance to be on the streets of Buffalo, New York. Probably a year or two, he had a chance to be out, but my brother was in and out of jail his whole life at a young age, I mean literally. When he went to, when he was facing 25 years to life, he was young. He was about, I want to say almost 18, 19 himself. He died in the hospital of cancer, stage 4 cancer, some kind of skin cancer. It was hard. It was hard.

And my little brother is 28. He’s been incarcerated for the past 6 ½ years due to a robbery. He came home for 10 months, and he violated parole, so he’s back in jail now. Hopefully he’ll get a chance to come home, try to do something with his life.

I don’t talk about my problems, or anything like that, so I may tend to shed a tear or what not, but I’m OK. I can talk about it. I just don’t know who, you know, how people are going to take it. And it’s like the things that we talk about, it may be some things that people may not want to hear, or people may be scared, but I don’t want you to take that and make your perspective on that. Just look at me now. The things I’ve been through is what’s making me the man I am today. Every day, I’m trying to change, some way, somehow, shape or form. If that’s helping somebody else, then so be it. So I’m really open to whatever, it’s just how open are you to hear the things that you want to hear?

Rod: Do you ever get down, like “Why me? Why all of this in my family?” Do you get like, “That’s not fair?”

Brandon: I ask that every day. I’m not one of them guys that go to church every Sunday. I didn’t grow up in church. I believe in God, but I don’t believe you have to go to church to be surrounded by colorful windows and hear praises and everything to believe in the Man. So we have our talk. God gives his worst battles to his strongest soldiers. I’ve been through a lot in life, and I’m still going to go through things in life that’s going to be bad, worse, so I feel like if I can get through the things I’ve been through back home on the streets of Buffalo, New York, then nothing out here can stop me.

Rod: Is it strange to you, like getting older? Getting, like thinking about someday being older than they were? Like you’re the oldest now?

Brandon: Yeah, I’m the oldest now, living. So it’s just me and my little brother left. That’s why I work hard every day and try to better myself, so that way, I could try to get him down here with me.

Rod: That gives you a sort of sense of responsibility being the oldest one now?

Brandon: Yeah, definitely a responsibility. I was always the… not say always, but I was more of always the caretaker, like taking care of everybody back home when I was home. So now it’s like even more hard trying to take care of everybody being so far away. I just try to take it one day at a time and stay focused. I just grind hard every day, trying to come up with a master plan to figure out how can I make more money a positive way.

So it’s just a blessing to be here, having opportunities to sit right here with you and have this conversation, and people get a chance to see a different side of Brandon, not knowing the B Boy. That’s my nickname, B Boy. But I kind of stopped calling myself that because I don’t consider myself B Boy no more. B Boy was somebody who was in the streets heavy, who did a lot of activity that wasn’t right. As I get older, I’m just realizing that that’s not my name, and I don’t want to carry that on no more, so when people would call me that, I’d tell them, “Don’t call me that, because that’s not me.”

Everything happens for a reason, but it’s all about timing. Anything lost can be found again except for time wasted. So I try not to waste time on things that don’t benefit me or what I’m trying to do.

Rod: That’s why you left?

Brandon: I left because I just had a, you know, I had the opportunity to get a better chance at life and to just stop doing the things I was doing and living the lifestyle I was living. I didn’t have a pretty good childhood growing up. My father was around, but he didn’t teach me how to ride a bike. I didn’t learn how to play basketball. I didn’t learn how to do fatherly things with their son. Like when I went to my dad’s house on the weekends, I learned about different kinds of drugs and things that kids shouldn’t learn at a young age.

Rod: When your uncle talked about you coming here, were you already looking to get out, or that hadn’t even occurred to you, or…?

Brandon: Before my uncle talking to me, no, I wasn’t looking to get out. I was, I had a job. I was working for a private security company, and we traveled throughout the United States, so the job can last for a day, it can last for six months, it can last for a year. And we did things such as fire disasters, rural response, strike work, you know, things like that. So I was doing that on and off for like a year or two before I had the opportunity to come out here.

Rod: Wow. My brother worked, when he was in his early 20s, he did clean up after fires and all that kind of stuff. He said that was a horrible job.

Brandon: It was, but you get paid good money, though. I was loving it. I was young. I don’t have no kids now, I didn’t have no kids then. So it was an opportunity to see other things, even though I was stuck in the streets of Buffalo, New York. I had an opportunity to get out and see different things. I wasn’t really fully developed as far as trying to get out what I was in, but it did give me a chance to open my eyes up a little bit more. But at that time, I still wasn’t fully ready to just switch my whole life around.

I mean, I always had goals. I always wanted to be my own contractor, but I never really took the steps in going to that direction. But I’d love to remodel houses and do construction and landscaping and things like that. That was always my goal was to be my own contractor. I’m different in ways of not doing the things I used to do. I don’t hang around the same crowd of friends that I used to have. The friends I have now are amazing. They’re all doing something positive in their life.

My job gave me an opportunity to go on a business trip, and on that business trip, there was over 65 people in that conference, and there was only two black people. And I was the youngest one. And when I went there, I went there with the perception of, how was I going to be able to uphold conversation with some of these big people in high positions? I didn’t really have the qualifications, or it felt like I didn’t meet the criteria to be at this conference. So for the week that I was preparing myself, I was really trying to figure out, was I going to be able to handle it? And when that time came, all I can do is just be myself. So that’s what I did, and within those 72 hours, I took notes. I asked questions. I was being proactive. And a couple of different big people in high positions pulled me to the side, and they didn’t have to do that. So when they pulled me to the side, they’re talking to me about different things in life, and goals, where I want to be, where do I see myself. And it really dawned on me when I got back to my bed, and I asked myself, “Well, Brandon, what do you really want in life? Where do you see yourself?” And the only thing that’s really holding me back is myself, because I’m a young black man with a tattoo on my face. I have no felonies, by the grace of God, or anything like that, so really, it’s really me that’s holding me back. So I said, “You know what, Brandon? You’ve been here for six years. You’ve been closing chapters of your life since you’ve been here. You need to take this step and close this one.” So I just got online one day and looked up Eraser Clinic, and I gave them a call. And I’m taking my steps on getting my tattoo laser removed from my face. So going to that conference really gave me a different perspective on life. So I have 12 treatments altogether. They do my treatments every 6 to 8 weeks to give it time to heal. But hopefully by the end of next year, March, it’ll be completely gone. So it’ll be a whole new Brandon.

Rod: Were you afraid at that conference that that tattoo was shaping how people saw you? Do you think it did?

Brandon: Honestly, yes. I was afraid that people was going to judge me. You know, they say, “Never judge a book by its cover.” But there’s also a saying, “There’s no second chance at a first impression.” So I was going there being myself, but at the same time trying to be distanced because I didn’t want nobody to just stare and look and say, “What is that?” And you know, people asked me. They did. “What is that? What is that?” I tell them, “Everything is for a reason. Some things are just not meant to be talked about.” So I left it as that. And you know, people, at the end of the day, they loved me because I was being myself. I was being very talkative, and I was going around just being proactive and being in the mix of everybody and asking questions and talking and mingling and being very open with everyone. And so when I got back, and I called that tattoo laser removal, I just was ready. I was more eager then than I was last year or four months ago, prior to the conference. Before the conference, I wasn’t even ready to remove it. So within those three days of me being there, it just really gave me a whole outlook on life and said that there is more. You can do more. You can achieve more. The only thing holding you back is yourself, so I’m taking that next step, trying to close that chapter and elevate.

Rod: You having any feelings about it? Like you feel like you’re betraying who you used to be, or betraying people you used to know, or…?

Brandon: Not necessarily. Not at all. At the end of the day, it’s still with me. I know that. But I don’t have to show it, people don’t have to have a second judgement on me, or just figure out what does that mean? Because there’s been times I done walked into places and instead of getting a hello, I’m getting a what does that mean? What does that tattoo mean on your face? I mean literally, the first thing that’s coming out of people’s mouths, so I just don’t want that no more, for them or for myself. I was 17 when I got it. I wasn’t expecting to live, so I really didn’t care about it. I didn’t really care about the consequences. I didn’t care about what people say. I didn’t care about what people anything. I didn’t care about nothing. So now that I’ve had this opportunity to be out here, it’s all about growth. And that’s what I’m trying to do. Just grow day by day, some way, somehow, and I’m taking the steps with that.

Rod: What’s the chapter that you were closing? What does the tattoo represent to you? Like why did you get it?

Brandon: I was young when I got this tattoo. I was about 17. I wasn’t expecting to live past 21 the way I was going. I used to be in a gang. I used to sell drugs. I used to do the whole 9. That’s the way I was going, dead or in jail. I dropped out at 9th grade. I got my GED. And I wasn’t expecting to live past 21, so I didn’t care about nothing. I did some things in my life that I wasn’t, I’m not proud of, but when you come from where I come from, you have no choice but to do what you have to do to survive. So I managed to still get through it, and by the grace of God, I’m still here. Some people don’t get a chance to make it, to see 30. So I’ve done some things in my life that made me who I am now. I’m not the best, but I am a better man I am today than I was six years ago.

Rod: You talk about closing that chapter by having the tattoo removed. What are you taking with you from that chapter, from those days? What are the good things that came out of that that you still carry with you as part of yourself today?

Brandon: It just gives me a chance to look back and say, “Damn. If I can make it, and these young guys made it through the things that they’ve been through, then we all can make it. We all can make it. So just the fact that I can get on social media and look at some of the guys and see them doing positive things in the Air Force and meeting counselors and different lawyers and senates for the New York State, it just gave me a different outlook, like there’s more to it. So I say, “You know what, Brandon? You need to go ahead and close it.” I wasn’t ready then. I wasn’t ready.

Rod: What do you think are your strengths, like the characteristics that are part of who you are that are going to help carry you where you want to go in the world?

Brandon: I want to say everything I’ve been through is my strength. I still go through things to this day. For six years, I’ve been getting phone calls every morning, and it’s always been something bad. Someone has died. So I think that is what scars me, is going to scar me for the rest of my life, getting those early morning phone calls. But at the same time, it’s motivation, because it gets me up to knowing that I have to strive and grind every day to make it better for myself. Having my father in my ear and my brothers on my back. Knowing that I got nieces and nephews to take care of, and a mother to take care of. Knowing that I have a little brother that’s incarcerated that needs to come home one day. Hopefully I can get him a chance to come out here and make a better life for him as well.

I was always born to be a leader, so I kind of take that and try to mold it into my work ethic, and grind hard, and show them that just because I have this tattoo on my face, don’t judge me by that. Let my work ethic speak for itself. I love to work. I’ve always been a working man, no matter how much I was in the streets back home. I always kept a job for myself. It always just kept me going. I love to hustle. I love to work. I like to get my hands dirty. I don’t like just sitting around not doing nothing.

I’ve been through a lot. It makes me the man I am today. I come from a place where it’s a jealous city. It’s a bad place to grow up. There’s no good schooling for kids. There’s no opportunities for jobs out there. I mean, you can’t be doing good and let someone see you doing good, because instead of it being motivation for them, they want to go try to rob you, to take your stuff or what you have and what you’ve been working on. And it’s just sad. It really is sad.

Rod: You said you don’t have any kids, right?

Brandon: No, I just turned 30. No kids, no girlfriend, no wife. Nothing like that. I thought I would.

Rod: Is that important to you?

Brandon: It is important. I do want kids. I do want a wife. I want a family. I’ve been to more funerals than weddings. So I’m definitely not trying to go that route. I want to have kids. They can have different lives. They don’t have to go through the things I go through or deal with the things I deal with or seeing the things I’ve seen or anything like that. I want them to have normal lives, be a normal kid, do what kids do. Kid things. I want a son, so I can show him how to treat a lady by the way I treat his mother. I want a daughter, so I can know what she can look for in a man by the way I treat her mother. Until I have that, I’m just going to continue working and grinding hard and try to secure my bag, until that lady comes.

I don’t know. You know, when I was younger, I was always scared of rejection. I used to always thought I was the ugly fat kid, or being around my friends. So I would never talk to girls. I didn’t go to clubs when I was younger. I wasn’t doing the club scene. I wasn’t going to parties or different things like that, so I just really stayed to myself and my area.

Rod: You just talk to everybody. You’re not shy any more.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s why I am who I am now, because you just, you’re either going to get somewhere, or you’re not. You’re going to gain something, or you’re going to be back where you started. So that’s who I am now, very forward, just straight forward, just trying to get in and get somewhere. So I’m growing. That’s all I’m doing. Growing.

I like to get out and do different things, try different things. Being here in Austin, there’s all kind of things to do. You can do something every day. Where I come from, there was nothing to do. There’s nothing to think about but trying to live. But being out here, you can go… I go tubing. I go water rafting. I go jet skiing. I like to go to the mountains and go hiking. I want to go see the Inner Space caves out here, that they have out here. I like to do indoor skydiving. I’m down for adventures. I like being open to new things.

Rod: You seem like you’re good at making connections and making relationships. It’s always about who you know. It’s always about who you know, who you can help, who can help you, and I think you’ve got the skill.

Brandon: Yeah, you know, that’s crazy, because I was just telling somebody that last night. In this world nowadays, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. As long you know the right man or woman in the position, you can get the things that you need to get done. I want to start getting more involved in it. I don’t have to just be secluded in my area. I want to be able to mingle and talk to different people. I used to work at nights when I first started there. I used to work night shift, 10pm to 6:30am, and being on nights, you don’t see nobody in the day, so nobody knows you. By working nights, when you have meetings in the daytime, and you got to go to these meetings, and everybody’s talking to everybody, but you’re stuck at a table with your group of night crew, and nobody’s not mingling to you. So when I had the opportunity to come on days, I made sure that I was going around to different departments, showing my face, talking to them and being open and just showing them I’m here. I made it. Don’t nobody know, didn’t know me or know my story or anything like that. I was just trying to get more open within the company myself, because by me being myself and going around and being proactive.

Just trying to stay positive with the things I’m doing, trying to stay with positive people in my life. So I’m just glad to be here, having an opportunity to come to Austin, Texas and open my doors to people if I can and show them that there is a better way. You know, my dad always told me, “If it’s going to make me mad, don’t do it.” So I still think about that. If it’s going to make him mad, I don’t do it, even though he’s deceased. So I carry that with me throughout my day to day basics or what I do and how I go about it. I’m just trying to better myself at every aspect that I can. Hopefully this will reach out to somebody young, old, who knows? Just get them a different perspective on life as well. There’s more to life than just doing the same thing that you’re used to doing.

Episode 017 - The Comeback

At the age of 27, Travis Mann got a crash course in Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a neurological disorder that started as what he thought was just a lingering respiratory infection. Suddenly, he found himself in a Critical Care Unit too weak to function. This is his story of facing his fears, the long, slow recovery, and the depression that followed.

Our theme music is "Start Again" by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. Other music in this episode is:

5:33    "Out of Paradise" by Lobo Loco

11:32    "Anxiety" by Kai Engel

15:29    "Peace Within" by Peter Rudenko

19:03    "Somber Heart" by Lee Rosevere

22:37    "Marathon Man" by Jason Shaw

26:33    "Peace Flower" by Ketsa

32:49    "Travel Light" by Jason Shaw

Transcript:

Travis: My name is Travis Mann, and I’m a teacher. I teach Business and Technical Writing, which sounds boring, but I make it fun. At least I think I do. There’s no wood around here to knock, but… I do that. I also do contracting a lot right now to train some medical assistants to become medical assistants, and I’ve got three kids, one beautiful wife, a dog, and my two chickens, and a cat that’s driving me crazy, so…

Flora: Chickens!

Travis: Yeah.

Flora: And you’ve always lived over here? Or in Texas?

Travis: Pretty much in Texas. I grew up in the military. My dad was in the Army, and we traveled all over, from California to Georgia to South Carolina. And my parents divorced when I was 12, and we moved back to Weatherford, which is a little town outside of Fort Worth, and then I came down here to Austin after I fell in love with my wife.

Flora: How did you get into teaching?

Travis: I got into teaching not on a whim but just on a… I was in higher education fundraising for the longest time, where I raised money for colleges, and I was working at a medical school, and I have always wanted to try my hand at teaching something. So I knew one of the presidents of one of the community colleges there, and she sent me down to the English Chair. And I went and met with her, and we talked for about 20, 30 minutes, and there was only one class I could teach, which was a developmental class, Developmental English. And after 30 minutes, she pushed the books across the way to me and said, “Go get ‘em, tiger.” That’s all the training I had to be a teacher. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, I got this,” and… The first day I woke up, and I thought, “What the heck am I doing? I have no idea how to teach.” And by the third day, I walked out, and I found myself saying aloud, “This is what I want to do. I can’t believe they’re going to pay me for this.”

Flora: Wow. That’s awesome, to discover something accidentally.

Travis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially something I love to do. It’s not always perfect, but it’s so fascinating to me. So, and here I am.

Flora: And here you are. When I emailed you, and I asked you what transformation story would you like to tell, and you, I hope I’m going to pronounce this right. Guillain-Barré syndrome?

Travis: Exactly. Guillain-Barré is exactly what it was.

Flora: And you had that in your late 20s, and you said it was the worst thing and the best thing that ever happened to you, so please share.

Travis: Yeah. OK. So I was 27, and one Sunday I took a run, and I ran about six or eight miles, and had a fantastic run. Felt good, felt great, that kind of stuff. And within two weeks after that, I was in a cardiac care unit, a critical care unit, and I could barely move. And so, it was a weird juxtaposition in my head to see I was able to run here, and then all of a sudden, I’m in a critical care unit. After that Sunday run, a couple days later, I started feeling bad, got an upper respiratory infection, coughing, all that kind of stuff. But something was different about this, and I kept feeling weaker and weaker and weaker, and the doc just said, “We think you’re sick with a cold.” But then I got up one Friday morning, and you know, a gallon of milk, how you have to pop the top off? I couldn’t do it, and I thought to myself, “Something is really, really not right.” And so I called my best friend who was a doctor, he said, “Come to the hospital.” He was working in the E.R., so…

Flora: Were you living by yourself at that time?

Travis: No, I was married to my second wife, Malisa. And went down there, and they ran all these tests, and they brought in infectious disease people and all that kind of stuff. It was actually my best friend’s nurse who says, “I think you may have Guillain-Barré.” And then my friend the doctor said, “Wow, I never even considered that.” So what they do is they do a spinal tap, and they check out fluids in your spinal tap, and sure enough, that’s what it was.

Guillain-Barré’s a strange syndrome. It’s not something you can catch. It’s something where the body turns on itself, and the immune system starts attacking cells. And it’s the long nerves that run to your hands and fingers from your brain. They’re covered in a tissue that’s called myelin. And the, your white blood cells and all that kind of start eating away the myelin on the sheaths, and so you don’t conduct electricity down to your hands and your feet, and it goes from exterior extremity in.

Flora: At this point, did you know what that syndrome was?

Travis: I had heard of it, and we had looked it up online, but that’s about it.

Flora: How were you feeling at that time?

Travis: Scared. I was very afraid, mostly because out of ignorance. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what would happen, what could happen. Then of course, you know, when you hit that spot, you begin to look like at worst case scenarios. And worst case scenarios is in a wheelchair and all that stuff if you don’t recover well. I’m like, “Great!” Guillain-Barré made a big appearance in the United States. It’s typically, 90% of the time, it’s kicked off by an upper respiratory infection, but sometimes vaccines or shots can cause the body’s immune system to turn on itself.

Flora: What are some of the, I guess the first physical symptoms that you felt?

Travis: Weakness. You know, walking was difficult. Picking stuff up was difficult. As it progresses, you get weaker and weaker, and the one place you don’t want to go is when your diaphragm gets affected, and it becomes difficult to breathe. They put you on a ventilator. And if they put you on a ventilator, the outcomes are not as good as doing without a ventilator, and so I was just like determined not to go on a vent. I was in Critical Care Unit. I was there between, a little over, right under three weeks. What they do is, there’s two treatments for it. One is a steroid injection, series of steroids, or what they call plasmapheresis. Plasmapheresis, they use a dialysis machine. They pump your blood out, and they remove the plasma. And then they put all the cells with fresh plasma back in. Which sounds weird, but by the second time, I could tell it had arrested my fall, my slide down.

And nights in the Critical Care Unit were the hardest because I don’t sleep well. Never really have. But in a situation like that where they close your door a little bit, but they leave it open so they can check on you, and there’s always people moving and that kind of stuff. And it was middle of the night, so it’s like, “What happens if I don’t…” You know, it’s the what ifs that occur.

Flora: Like what if you stop breathing? Like that kind of fear?

Travis: No. What if I don’t recover? I wasn’t too concerned about myself in the moment, because I had read enough. By the first week, we had a really good idea what it was and had it arrested, and that kind of stuff. But some people don’t recover as well, and I was like, “What if I’m one of those people that doesn’t really recover from this?”

Flora: And who was your biggest support during that time?

Travis: It was my wife, Malisa. Very supportive. And the funny thing is, people would come in and see me, and because of how the disease process works, and it takes away the ability to conduct signals between your brain and parts of your body, my whole face was, I looked great, because there were no wrinkles, there were no nothing, because of the disease process. People would come in and go, “You look great!” And I’m like, “Ugh. Thank you. I appreciate you telling me I look great, but I don’t feel great.”

But it was about the second week in that I woke up from a dream, and I can’t remember the dream to this day. I just remember that it was something that was going to happen, and I really had this feeling of, I had a feeling of “It’s going to be OK. I don’t know why.” I’m not a religious guy. Fairly agnostic. But something beyond me let me know that it would be OK.

Flora: Oh, wow.

Travis: And in that moment, I thought, “Wow. This is absolutely horrible, and this is absolutely great.” Because it really taught me about myself, my world, and the world itself. Yeah, it was a transformative experience. It wasn’t all good, but life is never all good.

Flora: No, it isn’t.

Travis: You have to take the pieces as they come and decide how you’re going to look at yourself and look at these things that happened to you. So, yeah. And then they finally moved me out of Critical Care when I finished my plasmapheresis, there were five of them, and that was odd because it’s a strange feeling to watch your blood come out and circulate through here and then come back in through another tube, and it was kind of weird, and it was cold. Freezing cold. So after five treatments, they moved me out of Critical Care, and because I was an employee at the hospital, and fairly high up in the rankings, they gave me this big, beautiful room, right? The VIP room. And that was nice, but after a week, I’m like, “I gotta get out of here.” Because I just had to get home and get some sleep. You know, they come in at 2 in the morning and draw blood, all that kind of stuff, and you wake up, and just, I just wanted rest. So my wife picked me up. Everybody knew I was going home, so they were like, “All right, if something happens, you call us. We’ll come get you.” And I’m like, “Yep. That’s fine.”

So we went out to get Mexican food, because I had eaten hospital food for the longest time, and I could barely cut the stuff on my plate, but I was determined to eat. By the time I was done eating, I’d only been out of the hospital for 45 minutes, I was wiped out. Malisa had to help me up the stairs, we lived on the second floor in an apartment, and it was a realization that I’ve got a long way to go. I was so tired just from leaving the hospital, getting in the car, and walking in the restaurant. And that was a strange feeling. Again, I kept thinking, “Wow, six weeks ago, I was running six to eight miles and getting ready for a marathon. And now I can barely walk.”

We lived on the second floor, so I started taking the stairs down to the landing and going up. I’d have to go back to bed. It was, your muscles, it’s fascinating how much strength you lose by laying in bed doing nothing. I mean, it was just really hard, but Malisa would get up, and we’d walk down to the stop sign and then come back, and then walk down this road, and you know, I just kept doing it over and over and over.

And I wasn’t back at work yet. I guess it was about right at three months that I went back to work. And I didn’t want to go back. I just was like wanted to just hide. And little did I know, I was suffering from pretty severe depression at that point. Depression just because even though I knew, I felt myself getting better, it was a depression like, “Dang, why did this happen to me?” And even though I had that feeling that I’d be OK, it’s still a depression.

And there was one time that I realized I was, not contemplating suicide, but thinking about suicide, because there comes a point where sometimes you just want whatever you’re going through to end. And I was coming down a road, and I was coming over a hill, coming down the hill, and it was a four lane, and I was in the left lane, and this 18-wheeler was coming at me, and I thought, “Wow, it’d be so easy just to drift over in that lane.” And I had to pull over and say, “Wait a minute.” Because that was, that scared me. And so, got some help. Started taking medication. I’m a big one for therapy.

Flora: Oh yeah, me too.

Travis: Yeah, because it does wonders. They usually tell you what you already know, but you know how that works.

Flora: Yeah, so when you were in that moment, thinking about taking your life, what made you decide not to do that?

Travis: It scared me that that thought even came into my head. And it wasn’t a thought of, “I’m going to do it.” It was a what-if. “What if I did this?” And that frightened me just to be thinking that way. And I know throughout life, some of us do the same thing, you know, we think, “This is just not worth it.” That kind of stuff.

Flora: And this moment came after, how long has it been since you left the hospital and back at home?

Travis: I was about a month after I was back at work, I was still, I was trying to go to work full time, and I would make it until 11 or 12, and I just was wiped out. I had a boss who was, we got along pretty well, but every once in awhile, we’d tangle. And he kept telling me, “You just gotta come back to work. You just gotta come back to work.” And he wasn’t doing it for the job; he was doing it more from my perspective. And he was absolutely right. After awhile, I figured out, “Yeah, I gotta get back in this routine. I need to have that routine of coming to work.” And he was absolutely right.

Flora: Did you have physical therapy? What did you have to do?

Travis: Yeah, I had all kinds of physical therapy, and putting my fingers together, and that kind of stuff.

Flora: And then you also had therapy for your depression as well.

Travis: Yeah.

Flora: And did it help?

Travis: Yeah. It took about two years before I got off of meds, and that’s kind of classic for depression. But the nice thing that happened was almost a year from the day that I went in, I ran a marathon. And it wasn’t great time, but I completed the marathon. That’s what I’d wanted to do anyway. It was my first one. And it was a lot of fun. I felt closure at that point.

Flora: That’s awesome.

Travis: Still wasn’t back all the way. My feet still bother me, because the extremities, it’s neuropathy, there and in my hands sometimes too. So, but I’m, I would call myself completely healed.

Flora: Wow. And there is no cure for it, right?

Travis: No, there’s just treatment. And some people don’t do well, and for about seven years after that, every time somebody was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré of any form, there are different forms, I’d get the call. “Can you come down and talk to this person?” “Yep.” So…

Flora: And how long would you say it took you to fully recover?

Travis: Probably about three years. About three years from when it started.

Flora: And you ran the marathon how many years?

Travis: A year after.

Flora: Wow, you weren’t even fully healed, but you still did it. Wow.

Travis: I still did it. So I am happy, healthy. I feel great. It was a transformative experience. Sometimes I find myself forgetting about it, and that may be a weird way to say it, but I’ve been thinking about it since I knew I was coming to see you, and I look back and can’t remember the bad stuff as much as I can remember the good stuff. And that’s good for me, because I’m one of those, not really doom and gloom, but it’s like, “What if this goes bad, and this goes bad, and that goes…?” And I’m trying to teach myself not to think that way. I don’t think you can unthink something, but you can recognize when you’re doing something that’s detrimental to yourself.

Flora: Yes, for sure. Especially at our age.

Travis: Yeah, especially at our age.

Flora: Yes. So what are some of the good things that you thought of that came out of this?

Travis: My wife at the time was just fantastic. She was my best friend, and she was my wife, and she was really good to me. And I had so many people that came out of the woodwork to offer help. You know, everybody says, “Let me help. What can I do?” That kind of stuff. And nine times out of ten, there’s nothing anybody can do, but then there would be that one person that would come along, and they’d say that, and you’d say, “Yeah, this is what I need.” And man, they’d do it right then, which is cool. So, yeah.

Flora: Yeah. And what would you say is, obviously the worst part was thinking that you will, might not recover. But was there anything else?

Travis: I guess maybe most of it is mental at that point. That you’re thinking, you can “what if” yourself into a corner really quickly. And a couple of times in the middle of the night, I found myself painting myself in the corner, and I had to stop and visualize that this was going to be OK. And so, that taught me a little about myself in terms of recognizing to step back and look back at what I’m thinking, and why am I thinking that, and is it doing me any good. And if it’s not, I need to quit and do something different. Think something different.

I did tai chi after Guillain-Barré for about four years and loved it and would like to get back into it again, but it just takes a commitment. But there was one time that I was doing tai chi, and it’s just slow movements up and down and that kind of stuff, and I turned to do another movement, and inside my head, this big void opened up. And it was black and darkness and quiet, and not scary, but it was something that I still don’t understand. And it just stayed with me throughout the whole series of movement and then kind of receded. I still don’t know what it is. And I was asking the tai chi guy. I’m going, “Dude, this is what happened to me,” and this kind of stuff, and he goes, “Yep. Sounds like something happened.” And that’s all he said. So it was a strange, comforting, you know, it wasn’t scary. It was just there. A feeling of a void, of complete blackness, of emptiness. But again, not scary, and not a void that needed to be filled, just a presence of something.

Flora: What did you take away from that experience? I mean, what did you learn about yourself?

Travis: Probably the things I learned the most were that no matter what, it’s going to be OK. Had I ended up in a wheelchair, it would’ve been OK. That’s just the way life goes, and we’ve all been around the bend a couple times, and you learn to... Not giving up, but accepting how things are going and how things are. I also learned to depend on myself more, to trust myself. I trusted my reactions more. I also learned that people step out of regular life many times, meaning, you know, you go to work, you go to work, you have three weeks off a year, you go on vacation, whatever, and you come back and go to work. And here was a moment where I didn’t work. I didn’t work for almost three months, and it was a weird feeling. But it also was like, “What if I didn’t work? How would it be?” Well, wouldn’t have as much income, and that kind of stuff. But how… We get stuck on treadmills. So what would it be like not to have to work like that? And so I built that in, my wife and I have a plan for, we’re going to work for five more years, and then we’re going to look around and say, “What do we really want to do? Do we want to keep doing this for the sake of doing it, or do we want to do something different?” And so we’re both leaning toward doing something different, like moving to Mexico, buying a small place on a little island off of Cancun, staying there for six months and then going to Portugal for six months and living there. So I can still teach. I can teach online.

Flora: That’s true.

Travis: And if I taught two classes a semester, that’ll cover our living expenses. So I don’t know. We’re toying with these ideas and stuff.

Flora: And I love that, the way you can switch your perspective to something positive, or think that, like you said, acceptance, that “Yes, even if I am in a wheelchair, it’ll be OK.” Now, were you always like that, or is that from there on you became that way?

Travis: No. I think that was the turning point, when I was, this happened when I was 27. I look back, and 27 was one of my favorite ages. Everybody’s like, “Oh, I want to be ‘X’ again.” Never want to go back to high school; never want to go back to teenage stuff. But 27 was pretty cool, except for Guillain-Barré. But you know, it was pretty cool.

Flora: What advice do you have for the next generation about living their best life?

Travis: I’m a college professor, and what we are doing poorly as a society is, we’re demanding that 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds make a decision on what they want to do for the rest of their life. That is frickin’ wrong.

Flora: Yep. I agree.

Travis: That is just… Yeah, I mean, you see it. You know, we’re like, “OK, what are you going to do?” Like my oldest son, he graduates from UT next year with a Computer Science degree, and the first year he was at UT, he lived on campus. I’m the one that helped clean his dorm out, so it was just me and him, and we’re pretty close. And we were driving back home, and I said, “How was it?” And he goes, “It was OK.” And it was at that moment that I realized, he really, he can do this work, but it’s not going to really excite him. So I started asking him, I always ask people, if you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do? Anything in the world, what would you do? He goes, “I think I’d be a writer or a journalist.” And he’s a very good writer, and I teach writing, and you know, I always look through his papers, and his papers were well above what others were writing. And I said, “Well, do both. You can be a writer about or a journalist about technology and that kind of stuff.” So my advice is, if you want to do something, do it. I would also encourage everyone, especially young people, 16 to 25, whatever: travel. Go overseas, so how other people live. Come back, and you’ll appreciate things like our toilets, our dishwashers, that kind of stuff.

Flora: Central air.

Travis: Central air, yeah, no kidding. Oh my God. But I traveled when I was a teenager, because when my parents divorced, my dad moved overseas with the military, and so we’d go spend summers with him. So I went to Turkey and Germany and other places in Europe, and it was just eye-opening, even as a 14-year-old. The travel to learn different cultures and see different cultures and see how people live is imperative to our success as a nation at this point. I’m afraid, you know, this is not doom and gloom, this is real fear of our nation changing coming up. You know, I won’t get into political discussions, but it’s just frightening.

Flora: It is.

Travis: We’re an experiment. Democracy is an experiment, and in two years, we could be, it could be totally different.

Flora: I asked, this is something that I want to ask in all my interviews, my last question. What is your superpower?

Travis: I love that question. I use that same question in my class as well, too.

Flora: Oh, cool.

Travis: I think my superpower, and this is really weird. This is kind of the third time I’ve articulated it this way. I build doors and windows. When I teach, I build doors and windows. And my students, everybody’s like, “Wow, you’re a great teacher. You’ve taught me blah blah blah,” and I’m like, “You know, I didn’t do anything. I built some doors and windows, and you decided to look out, and you decided to go forward. And you…” I always say my students do it on their own, because they have to. I mean, we used to think of education as like empty brains, and you’re pouring something into the brains. That’s not how learning works, right? And so, I have come to the conclusion that that’s what I do. I’m a carpenter, and I build these things, and the students love to go through them sometimes. So my superpower is recognizing when students are ready for that light bulb to go off.

Flora: That’s great. That makes you a great teacher. I love that answer from a teacher. That’s great. Wow.

Travis: As I said, the third day I walked out of class, and I found myself saying aloud, “I can’t believe they’re going to pay me for this.” And I was like, right then I knew I’d become a teacher. And I did, and I’ve loved it ever since.

Episode 015 - Survival of the Collaborators

Will Taylor and Strings Attached shows have been a semi-regular part of my post-divorce life, and it was at one of their shows when Flora and I first held hands. We even had our first kiss that night. They are a wonderful part of the Austin live music world, and their skills with every instrument and every style of music, plus their improv and collaborative abilities, make them a joy to watch and to hear.

You can find info about their upcoming shows at StringsAttached.org, and you can find out more about their community service and outreach work at StringsAttachedCares.org. And if you're looking for a curated Spotify or Pandora playlist of local Austin music, and want to help these artists keep generating income from their work, go to WePlayAustinMusic.com.

Thank you so much to Will Taylor for sitting down with me. 

Our theme music is "Start Again" by Monk Turner + Fascinoma. I made our outro music on Soundation. All other music in this episode is from Will Taylor and Strings Attached:

2:06    "Brand New Me"

8:43    "Feel Again"

12:27    "My Name Is Truth"

20:24    "God Only Knows"

24:50    "Overjoyed"

28:38    "Secret of Life"

33:29    "Tigris"

Transcript:

If I think of my past as a child growing up, I enjoyed the process of play with music. Playing. That’s why we’re called players. Musicians are players. We play.

Yeah, I got into music through elementary school, it being presented as an option, and just fell in love with it. But so you’re spending time, like there’s a piano over here right now. I’m looking at that piano, and I remember as a kid, I would just disappear into that world of sounds and try to make things happen just because it was fun, because it was enjoyable, and that whole culture around creating something that didn’t exist before, in the air. So yeah, I started very early, and I can remember just disappearing in the activity so much. Even by myself.

You spend a lot of time by yourself if you’re doing traditional, like let’s say classical music or jazz. A lot of time alone, so you have to get used to being alone, solitary, you know? And then you get rewarded, because you can take that skill and then bring people together, play with others with that skill on a high level, collaborative level. It’s not like painting where you’re just, that’s it, you’re alone. Fell in love with playing with other kids in orchestra and string quartets, and just everything around that, like I said, the whole culture, the conversations, the meeting people that are passionate about that. You just connect, so it’s an activity that can fuel you for a lifetime, easily, if not several lifetimes.

And now I realize it even more than then how much of a practice it is for things that you need to know to just enjoy life and communicate with others. There’s so many lessons built into it. When I say music, I mean the study of music and the activity of doing it with others. So I enjoyed that solitary process and then also the process of working with musicians. It’s a natural high like none other.

I love rehearsing, too. Just getting people together and … Something might sound like crap, and then working through the difficulties. So that’s the other opportunity that music can provide to people that are willing to study it is how to navigate problem solving, how to navigate communicating with people that don’t communicate the way you do, and they are not understanding how you’re trying to explain a musical idea with words. And sometimes it helps to not even talk about it. You just play, and you find your way. And it can bring up a lot of, it can trigger people. It can get people angry, you know, if … So you have this opportunity on how to learn how to communicate non-violently in a way. A lot of musicians don’t learn it. 

And there’s just so much behind the scenes that has nothing to do with playing your instrument to make that music happen, psychologically speaking. Navigating personalities and making people feel treasured or loved or appreciated that then will contribute to the group dynamic. And just by picking the correct words, Joni Mitchell talked about this a lot. She’s like, it’s just this so delicate, paper-thin thing that you’re always aware of when you’re producing an album or you’re working with your band. Just the wrong choice of words, and then it’s ruined, or it’s tainted, and then you’re … there’s no getting back from that.

So that’s one of the things that the music journey can bring. There’s so many things. And then just the act of performing can be a meditation in itself. You are practicing, when you perform, being in the present moment. The more that you can be in the present moment when you’re performing with your musicians, generally the more joyful it will be. And then you’re given the opportunity to just accept things as they are. So a lot of musicians don’t get that. They’re so focused on perfection, and I was this way too for a long time. I would get upset on stage. I would make faces. And it’s only in like the last 4 years, maybe 5 years, I’ve started to try another way, just to smile if a mistake, or something goes wrong. We just smile. I still, I’m not perfect. I still might get triggered. “We rehearsed that! What the heck? What are we doing?”

But it really, music, because you’re in rhythm, it’s different than regular life. When you’re playing in a band, and you start playing, there’s a commitment that happens. You just, “OK. We’re on this. We’re going. And everybody’s on board until this piece is over.” You know? So, what other areas of life are like that? If you’re talking to somebody, you can stop and think about what you’re going to say. But in music, you’ve got to stay in the rhythm. You’ve got to stay in the flow. Not “got to,” but you have the opportunity to really be in the present moment. But most of life is not like that.

It can just be fun, too. It can be just playful. The whole playful aspect of it, when you lose yourself and you forget, you kind of lose your identity. You’re just playing and hearing sounds. So I’ve been playing music for, been a musician since I was 10. So that’s 39 years. And it’s one of the things where, yeah, I can, my thoughts will stop, or they’ll just focus on that one thing, and sometimes I won’t remember maybe a song go by. Sometimes I’ll find I don’t remember what happened during that time. You just sort of disappear. It’s what meditators go for, or they’re hoping that might come up is that your brain activity starts to calm down a little bit.

There’s a magic spot that occurs. So when you’re practicing, you’re really pushing. You’re pushing your comfort zone. You’re continually trying to raise the bar in little incremental, just teeny little bits. And then when you perform, you back off into a comfort zone where then that’s where the magic occurs. You don’t want to be on stage, “I’m going to go for it. Risk!” Like that. It’s just a little bit back behind that. You still might have this playful, like, “Let’s go! Let’s do it!” But it’s … the stuff you really know well, that’s where you’re like watching your hands and you’re, “Wow! What’s going on there?” You know, the magic.

And the songs that you know really well, too, this is the ironic thing, too. I used to be like, when I was a kid, “Ah, I don’t want to play that song again. We’ve played it so many times.” Or like, say, James Brown’s “I Feel Good” or something. But then I notice later on, “Hmm.” With the band. Some of those songs that we’ve played a million times, those are the ones where the kind of the little magical things start happening. There’s familiarity, where everybody’s just sort of watching and observing, and then it moves into that playful zone.

So yeah, it’s a two-step process. Practice, and then perform. The performance zone is where you get to let go, hopefully. And you hopefully find musicians or attract musicians who can do that. And some of them you find that you don’t even have to talk about it, just, that’s what happens. So it’s really cool. And those ones you stay with a long time. I have a few that I’ve played with a long time, and constantly just new people coming in. That’s what makes it, that’s the uncertainty piece again that makes it not boring, that makes it interesting and challenging and juicy is when I find new musicians to collaborate with and try to meet them wherever they are, find their unique gift to the project.

There’s no destination. It’s always, it’s change. You know? That’s the thing. The one thing you can count is change, so it’s never, for me, it’s never an arrival. I used to have this fixation with, if I speak about my music career, “One day, I’ll have enough time to do what I want to do and spend a lot of time being in the creative mode, and I just need to get all my financial stuff in order and all that. I’ll have a platform where I can, one day I’ll get there.”

In our culture, western culture, we’re taught to strive, to push hard, that struggle is necessary to get there, to get to the other side where you can do what you really are here to do, what is your calling. “We’re going to make it happen. We’re going to strive. We’re going to work hard.” That’s what I did for a long time. And I still see some beauty in that, actually. Because you don’t just accidentally write a symphony. But some people might say you do, I don’t know. Some people might. I don’t think Beethoven accidentally wrote a symphony. I don’t think Mozart. I think that tradition of writing music, or like the Sistene Chapel. There’s the tradition of study, of studying with a master, studying, going to school, learning the basics. And it’s not easy. So there’s a struggle there that results in something.

OK, so that’s transformative. Creating something that is left behind. This is another thing that’s been coming up for me, is we humans want to leave stuff behind. We want to leave things or creations. And for me, what has been coming up is at my current age, almost 50, it’s really becoming important. “What do I want to leave behind, and what can I do that is beyond just me?” You’re creating something from nothing. It’s just thought turning into things. And left some things behind. Left some arrangements, left some new works of music that some people might enjoy. 

This relates back to that, again, like one day, if I work hard enough, I’ll be able to relax and just do music. Because I’ve been just working for 30 years to get to that point. Do I want to keep up this push, push kind of, strive, push the envelope? How much of it do I want to keep, and how much of it do I want to relax and enjoy witnessing life? Observing life a little more. Enjoying my relationships. Enjoying getting to know people. So there’s this question mark. Why do I want to spend a lot of time writing music and pushing the envelope at this point in my life right now? It’s kind of there.

And there’s so many different genres and flavors, and you get to … I try to see the worth in all of them. And I used to be, as a kid, I was very opinionated. Classical music was the best thing. Or straight ahead jazz was the best thing. Only the music that had the tradition of study. Folk music, eh. Rock and roll, no. But later on, I definitely learned to appreciate fiddle music and folk music, so it’s great. It’s been a great ride. It still is. It’s just ongoing. It’s an ongoing transformation. It does not let you down. It throws uncertainty at you all the time. So you have an opportunity to take that lesson and then go, “Well, what other areas of my life am I being thrown uncertainty? So I could take it over there, too.” With a relationship, or … It takes you down those roads, if you want to.

Sometimes we just have one or two rehearsals, and then it’s “Boom. Go.” Jazz musicians are used to doing that a lot. Classical musicians as well, but especially jazz musicians. They’re used to playing on the spur of the moment, playing something they just heard off the top of their head, just going for it. So there’s that creative alchemy that occurs when things are on the edge. So I try to get musicians that are comfortable with that space, comfortable being on the edge, comfortable being pushed a little bit.

They also, musicians I have, that I work with, they have to be able to work fast. They have to think on their feet, because stuff just happens. You can’t stop, again. So a lot of times, I’ll be in rehearsal, and a couple of the musicians I work with, have worked with for like 25 years, 20 years, will say stuff, and the new people will, they can’t follow it. They’re like, “What are we talking about?” So it’ll just go like right over their heads. So I’ll say something to them, “Why don’t we go back to that chord, and … ?” So you got to be quick on your feet with the musical language.

There are so many choices now for an audience member, for somebody who is a music lover, that it’s really hard to keep regulars coming. It just requires an immense amount of push, immense amount of marketing, which I resent. I hate it. I’m still doing it because people show up. 

So, 20 years ago, that was easier. I’m making peace with that, but I’m thinking about it all the time. I don’t want to have two jobs. I don’t want to have marketing and music. I want to get back to just music. Look, I don’t think Beethoven was, not that I’m Beethoven or anything, but was dealing with marketing. He probably had somebody that was helping him with that, his benefactor. So I’m trying to at least get toward that, where I have hired help. And I do. I have hired help right now, but it’s still not enough. I’m still having to do most of the marketing myself. That’s what modern … it bothers me all the time. 

If I was just spending five hours of my day writing music, practicing, what would my music look like? But on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things, like the Buddhist way of looking at it, it doesn’t matter. Who cares? There’s a million other people. Why should you get to do it? Because I want to! Because I’m here! What makes you … ? So then I go back to, “Well, I have a community, so maybe I do deserve it, because I … or maybe it is worthwhile, because I do have, built a community, and they enjoy it, and so I’m bringing something that’s greater than myself to a community. So then I should do it. I should spend more time on the music, less time on the marketing.” I mean, it’s ridiculous. 

With music, you have two worlds. You have the music business, and then music. And they are completely different things. Completely. Here’s an interesting thing. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at the music business because of necessity. You know the mother of invention thing again. I’ve gotten to the point where I have a club in Austin that want to bring me in as a partner, and I was pretty excited about that because we have an opportunity to build something that you could duplicate and take it to other cities or … and it could become an asset. That’s the first time in my music career that somebody has seen my worth as a businessman and is willing to … So it’s pretty exciting, but again, it’s not what I wanted to create. But it’s fine. I’ll take it. Santana owns shopping malls. That’s one of his … he invests in those strip centers. He’s been doing that for years so that he can do music. Anyway, that’s the new world of modern music making, making it. Willie Nelson, Dale Watson has a couple bars.

I guess I’m struggling now with deciding how I want to, what do I want to do? Again, because I’ve got more time coming up after raising kids for … How long have I been raising kids? 22 years, 23 years. What do I want to create next? But I do feel like, again, looking back, when I’m most happiest is when I’m on a mission that involves a lot more people than just me. If I’m raising money, or if I’m doing a music project that’s a benefit, I have all of a sudden this endless well of energy. So I was listening to this podcast recently, and the guy said, he said, “Nature’s way of punishing humans that are just doing things for themselves is depression or pain, anxiety, or whatever.” If you’re out there working toward a mission, working with a mission that is about something that’s just huger than you, just gigantic, then Nature rewards you with energy and passion and all this. I’ve noticed, just looking back, that that’s true. Some of the projects that I have exhausted myself on are free ones. And as long as there are people there with me, and I’m not alone, have collaborators, the energy just appears. The universe rewards you.

So I’m thinking, “Well, what can I do next musically?” And I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire for that, to bring people together. So one of the things that I’m, one of the many projects, is there’s right now in the world we live in, cover music, taking very popular music that people are familiar with and redoing it is very popular now. It’s a very popular way for artists to get known and make a lot of money. So I thought, “Well, why don’t we harness the power of covers and give all the money to somebody, or give all the money to a good cause?” And I’ve got the relationships with Strings musicians and play with musicians in town, and I can bring all that together. So that’s something I’m really excited about. And that’s something that’s totally within my skill set. So one of the things I’m doing is I want to do that one by one. I want to talk to all my musicians about that mission. Instead of sending out like a blanket email, I want to meet or talk to each one on the phone and see how they resonate with that and build an orchestra of musicians that will do this for good, for no pay. For nothing. And I’ve already got a few that are willing to contribute arrangements and scoring and the recording. I mean, everybody just starts coming together.

There’s nothing that’s completely selfless out there. Right? I mean, we enjoy helping others because it makes us feel good. But if you’re going to feel good, you might as well bring some people along with you, then why not? Then you have more to give. You have a well to give from. If you’re just struggling and in survival mode all the time, then you don’t have anything to, you don’t have any resources to then help others.

But I really feel like this could be the time when people wake up, more and more people wake up. People are waking up in the time of where we are with the current things that are going on in our American climate. In other words, instead of operating from the survival of the fittest mode, which Darwin taught us. What does that mean? Is it everyone for themselves? And everyone making a little pile to then at the end of life they have some pile they can live off of? That was the old model that my parents followed. What’s the new model going to be? Could be helping each other and living off the simplest way that you can live, and really survival of the collaborators. So, that project which I’m talking about, bringing the orchestra together, where I know every musician, and I get to know, talk to them one at a time, that’s an example, people coming together and doing it for just for the love of it and to give it away.

But it’s all about we have only so much time, so I want to just be writing music and then going on walks, spending time with family. But right now, the whole day is split between marketing and barely writing music ever. Barely ever. And I’m actually mastering and mixing an album right now. Because I don’t have the money to pay somebody $100 an hour. I can do it. I know how to do it. A lot of musicians have that skill as well. But it’s in the back of my mind. Maybe it’ll happen. Or do I need to push and make it happen?

But one thing that I’ve found that really works is house concerts. So there’s an endless supply of venues when you connect with people one-on-one and bring their family and friends together for a house concert. So I don’t do much with clubs in Austin. I have one show a month at a club, and that’s it. And then the house concerts are just amazing. There an amazing way to connect with people in an independent environment. We did two this weekend, and I don’t have to worry about the turnout, because the host is doing that. For a house concert, a lot of people ask, “Well, how much space do I need?” Enough for 20 people. 20 folks or more, and it can be inside or outside, either one. We did one last Saturday, it was outside. We had 80 people, right by a pool. I brought a little P.A. system and some lights. It was magical. The sun went down. It was gorgeous. But we require a minimum of 20, and that may go up as the years move on. I’ve got another friend who requires 30. And so you just go out, and you enroll or get your friends excited about it. It can be like a potluck, you can bring food, or you can provide hors d'oeuvres and drinks, and everybody has a great time. We usually have a meet and greet for an hour, and then we do an hour concert, and then people hang out afterwards. And we’re all friends at the end. We’re strangers at the beginning, and at the end of the show, we’re all friends. I encourage you to check that out. You can find out about Strings Attached house concerts, just Google “Strings Attached house concerts,” and it’ll take you to a landing page with information on how to sign up for that. We travel all over the world, not just Austin. Working on one for New York City right now. So it’s a lot of fun. So it’s a great model that seems to replenish itself. It seems sustainable. Whereas the club model in Austin is soul sucking. I have the responsibility. This one club I play at, I fill it up, but let’s say if I was playing two or three of those a week, it’d be ridiculous. There’s no way to sustain that in Austin. It’s done. The way Austin used to be in the ‘70s, it’s gone. It’s gone. There may be other communities in America where it’s like Austin was in the ‘70s, so I encourage musicians to not give up and maybe find places like that.

I use every opportunity, every time I’m performing, to put it out there. I plant the seed. I’ll say it once at every show. I try to, at every show, just as an invitation. If you see a concert like this, if you see us playing in your living room or your backyard, if that’s something that seems exciting to you, come up and say hello to me. And then people will just come right up to me, and then we’ll actually even, sometimes I’ll say, “Let’s pick a date,” right there, and make it happen. And then I have mailing list cards that people fill out so I can follow up. And then that just grows, every show. It just grows and grows and grows, new people, new people, new people, all the time. And you’re just following up, following up. There’s endless number of people.

So I’m excited. There is plenty of opportunity. We’re in a great time. But the big question mark is, how to get back to just doing mainly music. That is my big question mark. I think it’s learning to live as simple as possible. I’m willing to live out of a trailer if I have to. I don’t need a house. And start from there.

Am I good enough? That’s come up. Definitely. A lot. It still comes up. You know, the questionable voices in your head. Absolutely. But then when you see what people that aren’t even close to your level are doing out there, then you get that answer right away. Because I’ve spent so much time doing it. It goes back to my 9 years old, I was playing professionally at age 16 or 17, so I was already good enough to play in the symphony. I got into the Austin Lyric Opera at age 20. So there are jobs available if I want to do that model, be a highly trained musician, I was already doing that. 

I do definitely come from that tradition of people that have teachers. They aren’t just stumbling into this. This is a craft. This is a mastery that takes 10,000 hours. I do struggle with seeing people that don’t follow that. I struggle with it. I have some judgement about it. But there’s a lot, like in this culture of endless shelf space, digital shelf space, anybody can do anything. Throw some words up, it’s a song. Yeah, I struggle with that. I struggle sometimes, but then I feel the feelings and go, “That’s a waste of time. Why do I need to do that? It’s going to happen anyway. So just go back to your thing. Do your thing. Have fun with it. Connect with your people.” 
But gosh, the environment that we’re in is, everybody can do it now, so then we’re flooded. Everybody’s trying to do it. I’m competing with a lawyer who is doing this on the weekends, you know? But it’s all good. Everybody can find their tribe. There’s enough people on the earth.

I feel like I’m on a good path. I feel like I’m really onto something. I really feel fulfilled in the relationships I’m building with musicians, with volunteers, with fans. Because if I get more people involved with me that really see the mission, and then that can reverberate out even more. It’s like an amplifier. I would love to get more people on board that get it and feel a strong love for it, and that I don’t need to explain a lot. I would love to see that, that kind of quick transformation, because it can happen quick. I’m just speaking to the music right now.

I like for things to be exciting, and sometimes I don’t know what to do about boredom. You know, there’s boredom. There’s this drive, and this must’ve been from childhood. You know, drive. Be in an adventure. Life’s an adventure. Yeah, let’s go! Let’s do it! You know? That’s part of being a musician, pushing yourself. But there’s a lot of boredom in life, and being kind of like trapped. It’s like, no matter how hard you try, there’s still an element of life, you’re just trapped. Sometimes you can’t make shit happen. You’re just there. So I’m sitting with that idea. This was how I was feeling before the podcast. I’m excited about the podcast, because see, that’s uncertainty. I don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a thrill to it. That’s great. But then, what about after the podcast? You know?

And Stevie Wonder said it, I want to be free. I’m really working on being free. I’m not there yet, but I’m working on it. But then I’ve seen Stevie Wonder, age 68, 69, or whatever, and he’s touring these big arenas. He’s got a big machine behind him. And I don’t know if that’s free. He’s got people taking him around. Maybe it is. Maybe he’s giving all that money to a good cause. Probably is. What does it look like for him to be free?

I don’t know what a rut is. I’ve known boredom. I’d rather get in the car and go to Barton Creek, or go meet up with some people, meet some people. If there’s any rut, that’s the rut I feel in my life is I want to connect more with people and meet new people, because studying music is such a solitary activity. So at this point in my life, I love connecting with people. I love meeting new people and finding out about them. That’s exciting. So that’s one way that I get out of a rut if I’m in a rut, or I feel bored. But at the same time, I want to challenge myself. “Well, maybe you’re supposed to be sitting here today not doing anything, not driving downtown and trying to meet somebody and hear music. And maybe you need to sit with that for a bit.” I don’t know.

The chase, you know? A lot of it’s a chase. Chasing uncertainty. But isn’t it funny? Because there are some people that are happy to just sit in their chair at the end of the day and watch TV. And that seems like death to me, sitting and watching a TV, or being on a screen for a long period of time. I mean, watching a work of art, that’s great. Movie can be a work of art. But coming back and doing the same thing every day? Ah, no. I don’t want to do that. But yeah. We’ll see. We’ll see what comes next. That’s what’s exciting about life.

Well, I’ve got this project called WePlayAustinMusic.com, which is two playlists I’m curating, and the idea is, what if thousands of businesses, restaurants, bars, coworking spaces, if they were playing Austin music all day long, day after day, and that multiplied across, like I said, thousands of people, thousands of business in Austin, celebrating the diversity of Austin music, and all those plays through Pandora and Spotify generated interest in Austin musicians and music, and generated some income? Wouldn’t that be cool? And it could work that way. Again it’s called, “WePlayAustinMusic.com.” All the information’s there.

And all our shows are at StringsAttached.org. We do house concerts on the weekends. We play once a month at the Townsend. And I encourage you to follow us on Pandora and Spotify. Just look up Will Taylor and Strings Attached. There’s a lot going on.

You can check out the outreach work we do, which is StringsAttachedCares.org, where we go to places around Austin and bring vibrant musicians and get people to sing along and play with us, memory care centers, retirement homes, schools. We get kids that have never seen a violin or a viola to get to see that and touch it firsthand in elementary schools.That’s StringsAttachedCares.org.

Episode 005 - Breathe Deep

Rod Haden

In this episode, I sit down with Christopher Howell on squeaky chairs in a church conference room to talk about personal growth, spiritual exploration, addiction, work, cancer, and taking yoga out of the studio and onto the trail. He is doing what many people dream of doing: earning a living doing what he loves. Yoga Hike is a deeply satisfying experience. I've done it twice, and will be out on one of Austin's many trails with Christopher and his team again soon. Check it out on the web at yogahike.com or on Facebook ( you can also search Facebook for "Yoga Hike"). He's also on Instagram at @yoga_hike.

Here's the transcript:

I tried college out of high school. I wasn’t a disciplined student, but I was a good salesman. And in those days, it was still believed that you could get by in life with a good handshake and a smile. And so I went that route. I was up in College Station selling shoes at 18, 19, 20, and she would drive in on the weekends, got pregnant one weekend, and as a good Catholic boy, that’s what you did in those days.

And I wasn’t good at relationships. And I was in my 20s. I was in my 20s. I mean, that’s just it. I hope no one ever gets married before they’re 30. Wasn’t for me. And no birth control as a Catholic, and so, you know, we had 3 boys and a miscarriage. We were pregnant the whole time that we were together. I was money-driven. That’s all I wanted. I wanted to be successful. I was one of the top Chevrolet salesmen in the country, number 3 in the state of Texas. I like to, still like to brag about that 25 years later. The only path for me after that was to buy a dealership, and that wasn’t a path that was going to suit me.

I was an alcoholic in my marriage. I was just very irresponsible 20 year old, had 3 kids from 20 to 27 like that. I wasn’t actually, I’m not that kind of guy. I’m not the father of 3 children kind of guy. And so the cocaine came as a way of covering the feelings that came with all of that, all the shame around even saying, “Hey, I’m not that kind of guy.” You know, I can say that now, 27 years later, but I couldn’t say it then.

For about a year following the divorce, all I cared about was being successful. I didn’t really deal with the pain of making my first mistake. I was kind of a golden boy growing up. I didn’t make a mistake until that divorce, and it hit me pretty hard. I mean, I got in trouble as a kid, but that was part of the adventure for me. That was the first time that, because I had a pretty strong Catholic background, that was the first time I’d ever failed at anything. I really never made a mistake.  And I didn’t really deal with that.

I felt if I were successful enough, it would make up for it. I got introduced to cocaine, did coke for about 9 months and then, I think I probably had a psychotic break, a drug-induced psychotic break, quit my job one day, left my demo, walked from the dealership to my house. That was about an 8 hour walk, went to bed for about 2 months.

Then got in my car, started driving around. I drove from here to California, and then I was making my way, I was going to go to Florida, and met these hippies down in South Padre.  I was 28 at this time. I even remember the night before meeting them. I mean, I got down on my knees, and I prayed with all of my might to try and find a way out of the hell that I was in.  And that showed up for me. And they invited me to go on a meditation, and I was pretty much a confirmed atheist following my divorce and such. But the girls were hot, so I said I would join them.

We met on the beach at dawn, swam out to this sandbar, and the leader of the group gave us a mantra to use, just saying a series of words over and over again to confuse the brain. And we’re doing them silently. He also told us to visualize dolphins while we were doing these mantras. I played along. Peer pressure. About 20 minutes into the experience, there was like a simultaneous breath, and everyone opened their eyes at the same time. We all kind of looked in one direction, like satellites, you know, and there was a school of 15 dolphins that went swimming by, the same amount that was in our circle. And so, that was interesting to me. It reawakened me to the possibility of some kind of mystery beyond my understanding that I’d pursued in the Catholic church as a child. The only thing that I’ve come to is that there’s this idea that Jung has of synchronicity.

So these people that I met down in South Padre were from Austin, and so I moved to Austin to study with these guys. The excuse I gave my family was that I was going to learn how to do massage therapist. I didn’t tell them I was coming up here to study with a hippie.They were intense. They used breathwork as the therapy for cleansing the body to make that realm of possibility more accessible to the psyche. The guy that was leading the group, I sat outside of his house for half an hour bawling, trying to get the courage to walk up and ask him if he would be my teacher. He was connected to something that was, that I very much wanted to be connected to.

What I’ve done since shortly after that experience, I got introduced to The Power of the Myth. that was an interview with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. And I have chased the references of that conversation for the last 30 years. So all of my reading has been on the authors that he’s referenced.

And I added work by Stanislav Grof, who’s one of the leading technologists in brain studies, near-death experiences, and how to access that using breathing techniques. Grof’s background is that he was the leading psychology researcher of LSD research in Czechoslovakia in the ‘60s. And then when he moved to the U.S., he couldn’t use LSD, and so he found this breathing technique, which I think is more impactful than LSD. I think that breathwork is more substantive and accessible, and you get as much of it or as little of it as you want at any time.

Psychologists will work with having you exame decisions you made as a child from 1 to 6 years old, or something like that, and that’s kind of determined who you are as a human being. Well, a spinoff from the work that Stan Grof does with breathwork, he does what’s called holotropic breathing, and it’ll be deep, round, circular breathing, where you go beyond hyperventilation for 3, 4, 6 hours, and using different sounds and things like that, it creates a what he calls a non-ordinary state of consciousness which is also the way he describes near-death experiences. And so all spiritual awakenings, according to this theory, come from that edge.

A deviation from that work was there was some work in the ‘80s and ‘90s called rebirthing. And the rebirthing is using the same, similar, breathing techniques as Grof, but what you’re working on is the interpretation, what they were working with is that the decisions and the way your personality is shaped by the way that you interpreted your birth experience. And so what you’re working on doing is breathing deep, full breaths and clearing out the cellular memory of whatever decisions were made during that birth process. So when you have a thought, it creates a chemical reaction in your body, and that gets stored in your body unless you find some way to work it out, and then you get addicted to that chemical blend, and that influences your psychology. By using specific breathing techniques, they would use an affirmation process. You’d write affirmations over and over and over and over again to stir up a thought that you hadn’t fully integrated. Like it might be, “I, Christopher, am an innocent child of God. All my desires are holy and always have been.” That was the first thought that I worked with, and I probably wrote that thousands and thousands and thousands of times because just to work through the layers of where I wasn’t an innocent child because of all of the shame that I’d carried. And using these breathing techniques helped facilitate that for me. And then part of the work there was discovering what your purpose is, and helping people realize their oneness is part of what my purpose is using my charisma, my ability to learn.

I was introduced to a weekend encounter group. With the rebirthing work, there’s not a lot of emotional work done. You’re supposed to breathe through the emotion, and I think that’s one of the fallacies of the work, or one of the shortcomings of the work. I think you need both. And so I was introduced to this encounter group where we just cried and screamed and everything at 100%. The weekend was about expressing yourself at 100% through the entire weekend. And so every time I went, you found new expression, new levels of 100%. There was tons of healing that went on in those classes. I was able to do years worth of therapy in one weekend, all the time. And I went into a training to learn how to facilitate those weekends. 2 years worth of training once a month out at a corporate headquarters, a Thursday through Monday training, and then every other weekend at a local training facility, for 2 years. Only like maybe 5% of the people that went through the training ever graduated and became facilitators, because you have to go through your stuff. So I took my sales background, I became a good teacher, and I learned how to fill these courses for these folks. They didn’t have a machine that would regularly put together classes that they could count on in size that they needed, and so I helped build that machine and then helped build franchises for them and other centers around the country with that.

I didn’t get a buzz from putting people in Chevrolets any more. I really got a buzz in putting people into their lives. And so as easy as I could make that process for people to make the decision to take those steps and make those changes, and we finally found a path and you know, worked on it for 2 years.

I was teaching, I was facilitating the weekend events. And what those were was a male and a female instructor and 24 students. They paid about anywhere from $500 to $700 to be in the weekend. And then there’s 20 to 30 graduate assistants who come back to help provide the same course experience for other people. So I got trained on how to facilitate those, but in the path, along the road there, one of the things that the franchises had a problem with is they didn’t know how to put people in the classes. They were just weak at doing it. Attracting people to the class. Anyway, I found a path. I found an introductory workshop that made it easy for people to make the decision, see if it was good for them, found a way to get the graduates to make that available to their community.

So I worked in that for about 7 or 8 years, and then the facilitators starting going in another direction. I went to massage school. This was in my late 30s I guess. So through all of that work, you’re also working with the work of Louise Hay. Louise Hay’s work is that you store different thoughts, feelings, and attitudes in different parts of your body, and those can contribute to different types of illnesses. So she’s got this catalog of “here’s the illness, here’s the low quality thought that might be impacting that area, here are some high quality thoughts that you can add into it,” and that’s affirmations, and you would work to that.

So through that, I got to understand where thoughts, feelings, and attitudes are stored in the body. I can look at somebody’s posture and kind of have an idea about their psychology just from being in the work and doing it myself. And massage is a great way to work it out of people, so it was like doing the same kind of work that we were doing in these encounter groups, but instead, I could just put you on the table, have you practice specific breathing techniques while we’re doing massage, and we can work those thoughts and stuff out of your body in a massage. So it was all the same kind of work.

So I had a lot of clients that we did an intake on what are your dreams, what you think your purpose is, if massage could facilitate that, that kind of thing. From there I opened the Center for Health Resources on Burnet Road. We had 4 rooms there. I rented out 3 of the rooms to other therapists, helped therapists coming out of massage school learn how to build their own business, and there’s 2 people still operating in that room now, and that was started probably in around 2000. So, after having a full practice for about 7 or 8 years, I was still traveling around, teaching weekend courses every once in awhile, but it wasn’t a full-time gig. And I had been exploring this breathwork more deeply.

And so, there’s one process where you can fast for several days, a vision quest kind of process. Fast for several days, and then I would go… this is the first time I went camping, actually. That was on my 40th birthday. So I fasted, and then I got to Enchanted Rock and started a silent meditation, stayed up all night Friday night keeping a fire burning, and then hiking, started hiking at sunrise, practicing these breathing techniques in hopes that I would have some kind of vision, like, you know, Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days, and Billy Jack got in the snake pit and got bit by a bunch of snakes.

You don’t know Billy Jack? It’s a great cult movie from the ‘70s, really influenced me when I was 13 and just after my father had died. Yeah, that’s how he had gotten his transition was, they like put him in a snake pit. You gotta see it. It’s a cult classic. Yeah. “One tin soldier rides away!”

So anyway, just to produce a non-ordinary state of consciousness along that lines without using mushrooms or LSD. And I had a non-ordinary experience for about 6 hours. So what I wanted to do was I initially wanted to start taking people on those kinds of adventures. I wanted to take you, have you start fasting, get to a campsite, stay up all night in silence keeping a fire burning, teach you these specific breathing techniques. You would have to learn the breathing techniques before we go on this adventure. There would be like an advanced thing, and then bring you into this other realm.

But to do that, I felt like I needed more credentials, and so I wanted to go back to school and get a doctorate in transpersonal psychology so that I could have an academic conversation about what I was doing. My wife’s business, was quite successful at the time. We were in a position we could do that, where I could go back to school. And in that process -- this was probably 41, 42 -- after selling the Center for Health Resources, back in school at ACC, and I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Then the testicular cancer really kicked a hole in all of that. I put too much emphasis on, “Why didn’t I catch that low quality thought in order for that illness to show up in my body?” So I had a little guilt and shame and stuff around that. I used to think Louise Hay was a bible. And we don’t know what the fuck cancer is. We don’t know, really know, what disease is. I mean, when you really get honest about it. There is so much variable.

And so that started tainting me. So after I got sick, I didn’t, I wasn’t interested in going back to school right away. I went to work at a plant nursery digging holes in the winter for, I think I was working $8 or $10 an hour. I mean, really just digging holes. And so, I didn’t say much, and when spring started coming around, I had a conversation with the owner and told him that I had some other skills. We had discussed partnering and opening a second location, and I recommended instead that we build something here, build something spectacular here. And it ended up going from a 6 employee place to 30 employee place. And 2 ½ acres into 5 acres, and it’s one of the top 100 destination nurseries in the country. And it’s fantastic.

While working at the nursery, I was just kind of slipping further and further away from any metaphysic healing, oneness. I don’t care. I’m working for this guy that’s a, just a… I call him this deeply rooted Aggie, deeply rooted into family in a spiritual way, but doesn’t care anything about any of the other… I don’t think out of the 7 years that I was with him, I might have hugged him once. And I hug everybody. Yeah. But we were buddies, you know what I mean? And he was a hunter. I started just becoming a Joe Six Pack. Worked hard, drank hard, and gained about 60 pounds...

So I went to the nursery just to heal from the radiation. I was really sick after radiation, and I didn’t have any juice. I didn’t want to think. And this was a nice… It was a great hobby. We were wildly successful in what we were doing, but it just wasn’t really true to me. And so I was just kind of slowly slipped into this depression, which I didn’t really realize. I was kind of in a panic mode.

I dropped 60 pounds on P90X. While I was working at the nursery. And I got almost an elite, fit body. First time I’d been fit in my whole life. And on P90X, there’s a yoga section, and I physically hurt myself every time I did the yoga portion. And so, about a year out of the nursery, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was 51 years old and didn’t want to do massage again, and so I was kind of freaking out again. You know, I was having a spiritual crisis that I had like when I was 27.

I could’ve ridden that at the nursery until I died, and I’d have been just fine. I’d have been as happy as anybody could expect to be in their life, you know? It would’ve been just fine. And I think what it was for me was, like I said, meeting those people down in South Padre, the night before I was on my knees praying with all my might. And I had one of those nights. While losing the weight had a lot to do with it. I do believe that that weight was a result of thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that I was carrying in my body, and I wasn’t carrying that anymore. So I had to take those layers off to get down to something closer to the core of whatever was going on, so it was more accessible then. Here I am, a 51-year-old guy. I don’t want to go back into car sales. The relationship business stuff is… the way that I was doing it was in the past. I didn’t have enough education or credentials to really start something new with that at the level of, there’s already work out there that’s great. There’s other programs that I send people to now for that kind of work because it’s better than anything I could’ve done. Anyway, so I was in a panic on what am I going to do, and it was a, I think, probably like a midlife crisis. It was that same kind of feeling of just getting down on my knees and praying with all my might on, I’m so fucking lost. I remember one night just really wailing and wanting it so passionately. And then it was probably within days of that that I found Sapphire’s yoga class.

And so I went to a beginner’s yoga class at Yoga Yoga with Sapphire Bell. Sapphire Bell’s parents were yoga teachers at Esalen in Big Sur. Right? So she was doing yoga in utero. But in her class, man, in addition to the asanas or postures that she was putting you in, she was getting people to breathe efficiently and deeply, and while they’re doing that, she’s just dropping in all these huge spiritual bombs that were in alignment with all the other stuff that I’d been… I was like, wow, this is really powerful.

The reason that I was hurting myself was because I didn’t have alignment. You know. P90X is an extreme workout. You’re going to get to an elite, fit body in 90 days, and that’s extreme. The yoga portion of it is extreme yoga. That’s for people who had been in yoga, they know the difference, you know, if you’re in Warrior I, you ought to be able to look down and see your big toe. I didn’t know that. My knee was bending over in the other direction. And all the modifications that were available. That’s why I was hurting myself. I didn’t know good posture, and I didn’t know modifications.

So I went to yoga every day for a year. There might have been a couple of 6-day weeks in there, but most of them were 7 days a week. Wow, my body’s starting to vibrate up right now just talking about it. I’d never been fit before, and so what I liked was the fitness aspect of yoga. I liked that I could still get my workout. But like I said, in that very first class, I knew what she was doing with breath. I had an understanding. I was like, wow, this is profoundly therapeutic. And they were bringing in high quality thoughts at the same time. And now, how can I maintain that same breath and state of mind while holding a posture? That was interesting to me. That added another dimension to the experience.

And rapid therapy started happening for me. You know, that depression I kind of slipped into over the 6 years started peeling away. So then I went to yoga therapy training with Genevieve Yellin at Sundara Yoga Therapy, and that was just 200 hours of training. It kind of teaches you how to learn how to be a yoga teacher, really. Then you have to find your practice and continue doing other training. I wouldn’t consider myself a yoga therapist until I’d done 1,000 hours of training with them and maybe 10,000 hours in practice with classes.

But it was incredibly therapeutic. I did a bunch of emotional release work, and it brought me back to that connection that I had before I got sick, brought me back to that mystery in a very powerful and emotional way. And in the middle of that training, I thought, “Man, if I make my way through this, I’m going to bring as many people with me as I can.”

And that’s how Yoga Hike ended up coming to be. It was after I did my year of training, now I’m a 52-year-old guy, I’ve only got 200 hours worth of training, and you know, who wants to go to that class? So I started inviting friends that I trusted to go with me to the Austin 360 bridge for sunrise, and I would just kind of practice teaching yoga with them. So then I put it up on Facebook as an event, and 4, 6,10, 12 people started showing up to the events, and I was making it donation-based classes. Then there was one event where 5,000 people on Facebook said that they were going, and so I had to build a website to filter that to something that was manageable, and something that was manageable all across the board. I didn’t know what was going to be what.

And so, but we had 100 people show up on a January in 37 degree weather, overcast, sprinkling a little bit, and we had to cross 100 feet of water ankle-high deep, and nobody turned around. That’s when I realized that there’s something larger than me that I want to try and ride with, and so the following week we had 80 people at the same location, and then 2 weeks later we had 90 people show up to clean up the Onion Creek trail that had been flooded the year before.

What I have found is that there’s something that’s informing the trees and informing the birds and the cosmos. Seems like there’s something there that has order, and the human ego seems to be the only thing in the universe that’s disrupting a natural flow with all of that. And so what I hope to do is have myself be more connected to whatever it is that it’s informing the trees and the birds and the sun and the oceans and the moons and all of that and have a heartfelt connection to that. And being on the trail seems to do it in a more profound way than being in a yoga studio where all that aliveness has been kind of manufactured out to make walls and air conditioning and all that kind of thing. So I think the reason that Yoga Hike has been so profound for people is because they’re more connected to whatever all that source is. I just open them up to specific techniques and mental games that connect them to that for themselves.

It’s because of whatever I’m synced up with, I’m sure, but I’m just amazed at how many people that I meet that, what the Austin experience has been for them is that they’ve had that transition like you speak about having, you know, 3 years ago, that this is a place that was an impetus for it. So there’s something magical here.

I think I’m a spiritual atheist. We may edit that out later. I don’t know. I’ve tried it on a few people. They don’t seem to like it. But the thing is, is that there seems to be some higher functioning in the brain that if we’ll surrender to it in a really powerful way, a higher brain functioning comes in and guides us on our path like it would a bird, you know? And I think it comes to that mental breakdown, where you’re just, “God, I can’t keep moving like this. I need something.” Where it’s a cry from deep in my soul. I think everybody gets to that. I think that’s what it is. It’s that final breakdown on, fuck, I’ve got nothing left. Help. And it feels like God comes in, so I could see why books would be written about that.

For the business of Yoga Hike, we’re hoping to expand that this year to where we can have 6 or 8 classes going every month instead of the 4 classes that are happening now. And then I’m interested in weekend adventures. I’ve tested a couple of them, camping locally, come out on a Saturday, set up camp. We do a sunset practice, or sunset hike and practice, a night hike back, have some dutch oven cooking overnight, a big campfire, have scotch and a cigar. It’s not a yoga retreat. It’s a yoga hike. And no pressure to have scotch or a cigar. I need to work on that marketing a little bit. And then a sunrise hike in the morning, and paddleboards, and a couple of kayaks, and that kind of thing. So Camp Yoga Hike is on the horizon.

Travel Yoga Hike, or Yoga Hike Travel, is also on the horizon. We’ve done a few trips where we went to Yosemite from a Thursday through Sunday and had a cabin a mile from the Yosemite park entrance. So all the food is catered by Whole Foods, a big, huge deck to do a morning practice on, go out to the hike in the park from can until can’t. And those have been great. So I’m hoping to do more of that. September this year, I feel pretty good that I’m going to take a group to Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, which has one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen anywhere, any time. You’ve seen it in movies. It’s a cool spot. And then, you know, if I’m smart enough, and I pull the right kind of team together, I’d like for travel, for Yoga Hike Travel, to expand to being international, trips to international locations. I’m interested in that landing out in Norway, and there’s other places, and then having nationally ranked yoga teachers be part of that.

We’re starting to hire teachers now. I’m starting to get the courage to ask people that are way better at teaching yoga than me. I’ve been a little intimidated by that, so we’re going to start branching out into bringing masters in and getting #OldGuyYoga off the trail, with the exception of adventures. The weekends and the long adventures, I’m interested in facilitating those, because we can incorporate a bunch of other work.

That’s the biggest challenge that I’m having with Yoga Hike right now, is that I think that I’m trying to open people up to too large an experience at their introductory experience. Right now, the hikes that I lead, I think I’m more intense than what people are expecting to show up for. Some of these other great teachers have the finesse to ease people into that in a beginner’s class without them knowing. I think that’ll come from experience. I don’t have that right now. I think I hit people too hard on their intro experience. That’s one of the reasons I’m interested in bringing in other teachers that are a little bit more gentle in that approach and haven’t had the experience of taking people as deep, so they’re not going to. I feel like I bring a whole encounter group, weekend encounter group experience, into the way that I say, “Deeply connect to your breath, your purpose, and your intention.”

How much of me are they coming to the trail for? Those people that are coming back, are they coming back for the experience of the trail, or for me, or…? I’m hoping that they’re coming for the yoga and for the trail. I don’t want the Yoga Hike to be a cult of personality. What’s been great is that me, as a dumb ol’ country boy from Beaumont, Texas, people have had profound experiences on those hikes. And I want anybody that has the desire, to provide that, to be able to do that by facilitating a yoga hike.

So the one thing that I would hope that everyone, that I do want to close my experience with everyone with is that, there’s something about this that is a calling for you, and I hope that all the things fall into place in order to make this kind of experience a thing that supports the kind of lifestyle that you want to live. That’s my biggest dream for you and for anybody that’s interested in listening to this conversation between you and I.

Episode 004 - The Quiet Man

Rod Haden

I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season! I certainly am. Time is flying and my days are packed. This week we have a conversation with my father, Rudy Haden, a man who has fascinated me ever since I was a wee lad. He's that special kind of quiet that invites others to project onto him whatever they want him to be. Getting him to open up about his past, present, and future, and what he thinks and feels about all 3 was a very special treat for me. I've known the man for 45 years and heard some stories when we talked that I have never heard before. He is my role model for what it means to be a man, a father, and husband, and though we are very different from each other, I couldn't have asked for a better teacher. Thanks, Dad!

Transcript:

I don’t move around very good. I’m in pain quite a bit. It comes and goes. It comes and goes. Some days it’s worse; some days it’s not. It doesn’t seem to depend on how much exercise I get. Some days it’s painful to exercise; sometimes it’s not.

I sit and try to meditate, and it does nothing for me, but when I’m really quiet, or when I’m just totally listening to music, it’s like somebody plants knowledge into my head. I know and I understand things, which I had no idea before. So my meditation is basically checking out and listening to music.

Early on in our marriage, I was in an apprenticeship program, tool and die maker. I had to really concentrate at work. And it’s not easy for me to relate to other people, but I really worked on the journeymen. I would constantly hang around them, and ask them questions, and ask them the best way to do stuff, and I got in as I guess a favorite pupil with about 3 or 4 of them.

So that when I’d come home, I was exhausted, and I would lay down on the floor and play a Beethoven record or something with earphones on, and Robbie would get so pissed off at me because she was making dinner and taking care of the kids, and I was checked out. She didn’t understand that that’s the way I did my meditation.

I’ve been in and out of a lot of churches. My parents were married in a… I can’t think of the religion right now. Reverend Grace. I remember the name of the preacher that married them, and that was there. The guy wore a collar, but he wasn’t a Catholic. But he was deaf. He ministered to the deaf people. He was deaf himself.

He was in the deaf community, and in the basement of his church is where they held all the deaf fraternity meetings.It was based on the Masons. Only it was all deaf men. It was called the Frat. That was what my mom and dad called it. The Frat. We’re going to the Frat. When they went to Frat, the women all sat outside in the waiting room. The kids played on the floor. And when the big meeting was over, they’d throw the doors open, and everybody would go in and have a big social event.

And then my mother’s side of the family was deep into the Reform Christian Church, and I went to a lot of Bible schools and Sunday schools and stuff in that until I was about 3rd or 4th grade. And then I felt like I needed to get hooked up with different churches, so I went to a Methodist church, I went to a holy roller church with a friend, and I went to a couple of Catholic services. As a teen. None of that stuff stuck with me. 

Just because there was so much religion on my mother’s side of the family, I don’t know, I just felt like I was supposed to do it. In order to be accepted by them, I should have a church, but I never could find one. And I came away from it having no respect for organized religion because the main thing they wanted, no matter what it was, they wanted money up front. Seemed like everything was driven by the collection plate. If you were a big donor, you got a lot of attention. If you weren’t, you didn’t get much. And that’s what really turned me off. 

My dad was born on the farm in Kansas, and he was sent to the Kansas State Home for the Deaf and Blind. My dad was born deaf, they think because in the early days when they had the traveling doctors going around the frontier and the farms and stuff, my grandmother evidently had a lot of morning sickness, and the doctor prescribed quinine. Well, later on they found that quinine did stuff to the unborn child. 

My mom came over on the boat from Holland witH her mother. And my mother, we don’t know if she was born that way, or it was some kind of sickness or something that she got in Holland or on the boat or what, but ever since she was a baby, she was deaf. Then my mother was, because she was deaf mute, she was sent off to the school in Colorado Springs.

The strange thing is that the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind insisted that deaf people learn to lip read and speak, and so my mother was pretty good at lip reading and speaking. And they were discouraged from using sign language, so if you compare the deaf people now that use sign language to the old people that use sign language, now it’s all really broad and all over the place, and the older people, their signs are all close in and secretive about it, where now they’re just flamboyant about it. Their signs are all over the place. 

And my dad, the Kansas School for the Deaf and Blind weren’t that way. They were teaching them to do stuff and sign language and be able to be self-sufficient. 

See, in my dad’s side of the family, all the people learned sign language, the hearing and the non-hearing. So I had no idea whether they were hearing, any memory of whether they were hearing or not. On my mom’s side of the family, I had one uncle that learned the deaf sign language, learned the deaf alphabet, and he could do that. He was the only one that made any effort to sign to my mother. All her other brothers and sisters didn’t because she had been sent to school, and they were told that she was to learn to lip read, and so they would talk to her. But the thing of it is, it’s really easy to ignore somebody like that, because all you do is turn away. Turn around, they can’t see your signs. They can’t read your lips. So, whenever there was an argument or something, it was easy just to walk away from that.

My dad’s family had a big get-together once every summer. They came from all over the place. They were Kansas, Nebraska, western Colorado, and they’d have these big, long picnics on the weekend, and there were aunts and uncles and cousins. I didn’t even know all the cousins I had. But I never just seemed to fit in.

He worked in a factory. He started out in a printing shop, a paper cutter. Cutting stuff for the print shop. Then ended up in Shwayder Bros./Samsonite, cutting stuff for the suitcases and plastic tops of card tables and chairs. And my mom worked there on the assembly line putting stuff together. And my Uncle Jim and Aunt Julia also worked in the same factory. Shwayder Bros. hired a lot of, I guess what they called the handicapped people. 

Clarence, he was a rancher. He raised horses, and at one time he had a riding stable up on Lookout Mountain just above Denver. And they had 2 boys, and the youngest one, John, he had a pinto pony named Ruben. And they taught me how to ride. And I could put the bridle on Ruben, lead him over to the fence, they had a rail fence, and I’d climb up the rail fence and get on him. And I was, what, 5 years old.

John would go off hunting. He’d go out, he had a rifle, and he’d go out shooting magpies. I had no idea what magpies were. I was determined I was going to follow him one day and see where he was going, and I’d see these cow patties in various places, you know. So I thought cow patties were magpies, and cousin John shot them. I couldn’t have been 4 or 5 years old. And then he, one time he put his rifle in, we had a, there was a kind of a mud room entrance to the farmhouse, and he left his rifle leaned up against the thing, and he had a thing in the chamber, and I went up there and was messing with it, and I inadvertently pulled the trigger. And it shot a hole in the roof. My Uncle Clarence was really pissed off at John for doing that.

My bed was in this big room where the radio was. There was no TV in those days. It was during the war. World War II. I remember there was a big old tree in the backyard. When I wanted to get away, I’d just climb up in that tree and sit up there all by myself. Could see the whole neighborhood. 

I don’t remember when I realized that there was a hearing world and a deaf world. You never knew. I mean, you could talk to some people, and you had to sign to some people, and some people were talking and signing, and you know, there was no distinguishment. And a lot of the deaf people could read lips. I don’t know when I realized that. I suppose it happened to me some time in high school when, you know how high school gets. How clannish and cliquish it is, and some kids are favored by the teachers, and some aren’t. I realized I was different. During high school, I was really aware of it because people would kind of shy away from me. If I tried to be friendly with somebody, they wouldn’t necessarily because I was a child of dummies. That’s what deaf people were called in those days. They were deaf and dumb. The deaf and dumb part came from deaf and dumb, couldn’t speak. But the dummy part carried on as not being intelligent.

And then in high school, I don’t ever, in junior high or any of those, I don’t ever remember having a parent-teacher conversation. Nobody ever, none of my teachers ever contacted my parents, even when I wouldn’t do my homework or my grades were down. There was nothing. They just passed me along. And in high school, I signed up to take a Spanish class, and I was discouraged. I should take English. I was going to sign up to take some math classes, and I was discouraged. I was to take a general math class where the big thing was to learn how to write a check and keep a bank account and pay your taxes. There was none of that geometry stuff. I didn’t get hooked on that stuff until my senior year in high school. I finally got into an algebra class. 

And I hated high school. I just didn’t fit. Didn’t know how to talk to girls. I had no experience with girls. When friends come over, it was really awkward. If somebody came home with me, it was really, really awkward because of my parents. My parents would try to be friendly with them, but they didn’t know how to deal with it. And so they just dealt with me away from my house.

I really got big into leatherwork because I had an Industrial Arts teacher, Mr. Landon was… he taught Print Shop, Leather Shop, and Woodworking. And I took all those courses. Originally I thought I was going to be an Industrial Arts teacher, then I thought about getting a degree to be able to become a forest ranger, but there was no way. I couldn’t figure out how in the hell I was going to go to college to do that. Although it was a lot easier to go to college in those days than it is now. The costs weren’t so damn much. 

 And I was really into skiing, through the Boy Scouts. Some of us in the neighborhood learned to ski. It was scary in the beginning until I learned to parallel ski. Once I got out of the snowplow thing. I got fairly good at parallel. I never was Olympic quality, but I could do alright. I just loved the freedom. Just felt free. Riding up to the top of the mountain and letting go. And then after I got out of the Navy, I really went into it for a couple of years. In fact, that’s how I met Ruth, my first wife. We met through a friend, and she was really impressed with my skiing. I took her skiing every weekend. She was really into that. And then somehow we ended up getting married.

I really got into skiing, and it was a really good friend that we skied with a lot. And he said he was going to join the Navy. At that time when you turned 18, you were eligible for the draft, so I turned 18 in 1955, and that was right between the Korean War and the Vietnam War, that period. His argument was, “If we join the Navy before we turn 18, we get out on our 21st birthday. Plus the Navy will send us to school.” He laid it out, you know, that we were going to end up getting drafted for 2 years anyway, and there was this opportunity, and I felt, “Yeah, this is a good idea.” It wasn’t all that analytical, it was it felt right. And so I did it. So we joined the Navy. We took tests and everything, and both of us qualified as machinists.

Yeah, I was out in ‘58. I rejoined in ‘61. I was out for 3 years.

I remember going and applying for this one job, and the guy interviewed me and said, “No, you’re too young. You couldn’t do all that.” And then that was the end of the interview. He didn’t believe me. And at the same time, I was going to night school, it was late ‘50s and early ‘60s recession. And you’d work for 3 months, and you’d get laid off. And you’d work for 3 months and get laid off. 

And then when I had such a hard time with all the on again, off again jobs, and I don’t know how I found out the Navy came up with a need for my particular skill. When I got out the first time, I was a second class petty officer, and they… I found out that I could go back in as a second class petty officer, got assigned to a ship in San Diego. We started, originally it was all those old diesel boats, and we worked on those all the time. And then the nuclear subs started to come in. Some of us were cleared to work on the nuclear subs.

So then I was going to make a career out of it. And I just remember getting a call, the piping over the com. And I just remember, “Petty Officer First Class Haden, report to the quarterdeck!” And I thought, “Oh crap! What have I done now?” I go up there, and a guy hands me, you know, he served me with separation papers, and I opened them up and looked at them, and it was, you know, legal language about… I showed the officer, and I said, “I don’t know what to do about this.” And he said, “Well, the first thing you ought to do is get a hold of the chaplain.” 

I knew things weren’t really good with us, but I didn’t think they were that bad. It was a real slap in the face getting served. I was just dumbfounded. “I don’t know what to do now? What?” I had to ask some officer who was probably a lieutenant junior grade or something and was probably 23 years old or something, you know, “What do I do now?”

So I made an appointment with the chaplain and talked to him, and then he got her and me into counseling. And it broke down and went to divorce. It was really traumatic. I had no idea what to do. I was at a loss. And that chaplain gave me options what to do. “Well, you can just not contest it and let her have the kids and stay in the Navy.” And I thought, “Crap, I’ve seen too many of those guys. I ain’t going to be one of them. I want a relationship with my children.” He just gave me all these different options to think about. If it’s something physical, like a computer or a computer program or a piece of machinery or a car or building or something like that, I’m very analytical. But when it comes to feelings and interactions with people, I’m more intuitive. One of my big things that I’ve known over the years is that when a door opens, you look to see whether you want to go through that door or not, whether it feels right or not, and that’s pretty much the way I’ve gone. From being a piecemeal machinist to a maintenance machinist to a tool and die maker to a numerical control programmer to a software developer, and that’s where I was until I retired. But all of those were, a door opened and I went through. There was no analytical thing about it. Did it feel right? Yeah, that felt like it was a good thing to do. 

And then when the divorce happened, I had already... You know, I was committed for another 4 years. And the padre, the chaplain, said, “You know, you could file for custody. If you get custody, you could get an honorable discharge for hardship.” And I just felt like, “Am I good enough to be a father to those kids?” And I just had the feeling, “Yeah, you can do this, but it ain’t going to happen anyway, but what the hell. Go for it.” And I’ll be damned if it didn’t happen. And I thought, “Oh crap. Now what do I do?” At that time, Harold had just gotten a divorce, and he was a single father with 2 kids. He had this big house. And he said, “You could come live with me, and we’ll help each other out.” And so we did. 

And it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But at the time, more than resistant to it, I was confused by it, scared of it. What am I going to do now? What am I going to do with the kids that I love so much? I had heard so many terrible things about split families, you know, kids bouncing back and forth and back and forth, loyalties, mothers saying bad things about the father and the father saying bad things about the mother, that at one point I thought that if I ever have to get divorced, then I’ll just let go of the kids, not be in their life. Well that was dumb-headed. I realize that now. Just so many things happened there that I had no clue. I had no idea what I was doing. Just taking it a day at a time.

And then when I got out of the Navy the second time, because I worked on nuclear submarines, I had a top, not a Top Secret, but a Secret clearance, so when I came out, I went to Rocky Flats, which was the big nuclear plant. They made triggers for the atomic bomb. And I applied there, and they said, “Well, it’s probably going to take about 6 months to get your clearance through the FBI.” 3 weeks later, I got a call says, “You’re hired.” 

I was a maintenance machinist. We just went around fixing pumps and stuff, generators. And they opened up an apprenticeship, and I was close to 40 years old. The cutoff date was 40. And I took the test, I went into the interviews and took all the tests and everything they gave us, and there were 2 of us that were picked for the apprenticeship, and I went into that. So I went into the tool and die shop, and that’s where they made all the tooling and everything for the equipment, the nuclear stuff. It was all classified stuff.

Well, when I got… finished my apprenticeship, I became a journeyman, and I worked nights. But during that time, they brought in a milling machine that was numerically controlled, and all those old journeymen, they had no clue about that thing, so I really jumped on that, and I learned all about how to manually program it. And so whenever they wanted to put something on there, why, I was assigned to do it. They had other numerically controlled machines all through the plant. Well, there was an opening there for a programmer, and I applied for it and got it. And in the meantime, during that time I had taken some nighttime college courses on FORTRAN and drafting programs through The University of Colorado.

You know, you get out of marriage and everything, and all you’ve got is work and little kids, and you just figure you need something else. That dating thing was not analytical. That was totally gut. I kept seeing it in the paper and throwing it away, seeing it in the paper and throwing it away. And I read it and thought, “Aw, what the hell. I’ll try it.” And I was ready to give up on that because I had 2 or 3 bad dates. I remember going and walking down the steps into her garden level apartment. And opening that door, and thought, “OK, this is a good one.” And we went out, and the rest is history.

It was such a whirlwind. We were going to get married at 6 months or something. I didn’t think it was right to get married right away. The divorce wouldn’t even be final until March. So then we thought, “OK, in the summer. No, let’s get married in June. How about Spring Break?” And I thought, “My God, this is soon!” But I’ve been following her lead for years. I just know that it sure as hell worked out. Here we are, almost 50 years later. 

When Mom and I met, she was determined that she had found me and that I was the guy, and she was going to marry me, and I had just 2 years ago gotten out of a marriage. I didn’t even know who the hell I was. I had 2 little kids, was living with my brother in his basement, and your Mom was determined we were going to get married, and she was going to have 2 kids. And then we got married, and she was determined she was going to have her own kid. And then she had her own kid, and then she determined that she wanted another one. In those days, it was all the hippie thing, you know. You replenish yourself. So I’d already, I was the husband and a wife, and we had a boy and a girl, so when I got married again, I said, “OK. One more, for Robbie.” But then she was Empty Arm Syndrome or something, and she was determined she was going to have you. And so we had you. Best thing in the world.

After I worked at Rocky Flats for 7 years, I got laid off because they were cutting back, cutting back on nuclear bombs and everything. So they had to cut back on the staff, and they ended up closing Rocky Flats because it was so contaminated. For a long time, I had to go in and be monitored by medical once a year because I was exposed to americium and some other chemicals I don’t remember. I’d go in, and they’d take blood. I was exposed, but I was never contaminated, so I was alright. 

I knew that if I was just a piecemeal machinist, I’d be doing that 3 months on, 3 months off thing for the rest of my life and never getting out of debt. And so I just followed the path. I knew that I had, because the layoff from Rocky Flats, the Bomb Factory, I was back in that mode of working in small shops for short periods of time. And I knew that I was going to get into numerical control. I wanted to. But my goal was the eastern boundary of Colorado, anything west, and the southern boundary of Colorado, anything north. And all I kept getting was this crap in Texas! And they kept offering to bring us down here for a weekend, for a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and put us up. And I thought, “Well, what the hell. It’s an opportunity to get out and spend the weekend on somebody else’s dime.” And I came down here, and I was interested. They were interested in me.

Because I worked so hard at it. I spent a lot of time self-educating. The computer has been the best damn thing in my life. Although I got a lot of enjoyment out of my kids. Just enjoying watching you do things and try things and being assistant coach for your soccer team and watching Rik at swim meets. I was a timer and a stroke judge, and I also shot the gun. Starter. It was either sit in that stupid tent, or else go out and participate. Mom just really enjoyed sitting there, and I enjoyed watching how the thing worked and keeping track of Rik’s times.

Yeah. I got involved in Scouts because of you. They fill out those papers, and I’d very carefully fill them out so that I didn’t raise any flags to where they’d want me to do something, and then when you guys went into Webelos, I said, “OK, I can do it for a year,” and the next thing I knew, I was a Scoutmaster. I seemed to get all the misfits. We had some strange kids in our troop. 

One of my favorite memories is that Ford Escort you had, when I taught you how to put new brakes on it. We went through one wheel together, and then I showed you how to do it, and then I said, “OK, you’re on your own now.” And then watched you do it on your own. It was big. 

Ruth was a very outgoing person. Early on, her dad was a senior forest ranger, and it entailed being lots of parties and groups and cocktail parties. And it’s pretty much the same with Mom now, Robbie. I’m just also-ran. I just tag along. We go into groups, and she’s willing to talk to anybody, and I have a hard, hard time. Especially with people I don’t know. I can open up like to you. I can have a conversation with you, or I can have a conversation with Rik. You get into a group of people like Rik’s New Years or Christmas when he has people over, I have a hard time talking to those people. Some of them I can talk to because I know them, but I can’t talk very long. I don’t know what to say. My brain just does not work that way. I’m very very shy. I had a hard time in my jobs too. I just never really fit into those kind of groups.

But the thing of it is, my brother Harold went through the same experience, and he didn’t have any trouble. My cousin Jimmy and my cousin Elaine. Man, Elaine was really into it. I mean, she could talk sign language with the fastest of them. And I couldn’t. I could tell that people automatically slowed down when they talked to me, and I would say, “What?” a lot, and they would spell it out, and then I would understand what the sign was. But deaf people don’t like to spell things out. And so, it was easy for me to check out because if you’re not looking at somebody and reading their signs, you’re not conversing with them. So you’re looking over here. They’re signing, and you’re not paying attention. And it’s a cop out, and I realize it now, 70 years later.

If I had nothing in common with, I’m at a loss. Walk up, you know, Robbie can talk to store clerks and have conversations, and I don’t know what the hell to say other than, “Have a good day.” I don’t know how to deal with those kinds of situations.

My mom was good at it. And my dad too, just talking to people. My dad carried a little pad of paper and a pencil in his shirt pocket, and he had no qualms at whipping that sucker out and writing, talking to people. And my mom would talk to them and try to read their lips. Biggest problem she had was that once people learned that she was reading their lips, they would exaggerate everything, and she couldn’t understand it.

Best thing I ever did was get hooked up with your mom. She’s given me so much love and stability. We still have our rough edges. Mostly it’s me not talking to her enough. That’s because she’s lost all her friends in Dallas. It’s become more important to her to be more interactive with me. I have to cope with it. One of the things is, this iPhone here, I couldn’t live without it. See that? 10:30? This one here. 10:30. It’s my alarm clock. It means “Get up and talk.” When I get up out of bed, it’s time to get up out of bed, because I slept in as long as she will tolerate, and I have to talk. Sometimes I just go on down the hall, saying, “I’m walking, and I’m talking. I’m walking, and I’m talking.” And then we’ll get in a conversation, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. This one here says, “Get up for PT” which is physical therapy, “and talk, and have a happy face.” Because she’s convinced that those girls will work harder with me if I have a happy face with them. The therapists. So that’s how I’m learning to cope with that stuff.

Big thing that we have is that she’s the balloon, and I hold onto her string. I keep her grounded. But every now and then, I have to kind of float with her. To keep me in the world. Not let me crawl in a hole. To give me love.  And it works. It works for us.

In Richardson after the stroke, I was pretty much isolated, just me and Robbie and my therapists, and the therapy ran out. Robbie over the years before that had been talking about someday we need to move to Austin to be with our kids and grandkids, you know. And then when I was in in-house rehab, I just realized that maybe that’s what we ought to do. And then it was a whirlwind.

I had nothing more there. She had all her friends and her contacts and her woo woo stuff was all up in that whole area up there. When we came down here, she had a, she’s still having a rough time, but she had a really rough time in the beginning, mostly with the driving thing. Over the years, I’ve had to map things out for her. And I still do that. I map out where she wants to go. I’m really proud of her, because she’s got to where she’s really moving around a lot.

Big events in my week are physical therapy, and now that’s about to stop and I have to do it on my own. I have to force myself to do it. It’s too easy to blow off. Mom will say, “Let’s go to lunch,” and I blow the rest of the afternoon off, which means I don’t do the exercises I should. I’ve got to do it, got to get myself on a regimen. You know the old saying, “Use it or lose it?” With me it’s really true. If I don’t do it, I’ll lose it. My walking is worse than it was 6 months ago. Although I try. I just don’t seem to be able to get the rhythm good enough, fast enough. And Robbie’s really patient with me. She just walks along at a slow crawl, either behind me or by my side.

She does a lot for me. She’s walking a narrow line about doing stuff for me and not doing stuff for me. She has to decide what I really need her to do and what I can do on my own. I try to do my own laundry, but she’s pretty much grabbed a hold of that. When she hears me kicking the bucket down the hall, she runs out and grabs it and does it, but she leaves the shirts and pants for me to hang up, which I can do. I can fold the other stuff, too, but she has a need to do something. So it’s a fine line on what she wants to do and what she wants me to do.

I’ve had a couple of times since I stroked. I thought my family would be better off without me, but then I realized that’s not true. Robbie would not be better off without me, even though she has to do so much of the physical part of it. I still keep track of the finances and when things need to be paid, the mortgage and utilities, and I give her moral support. I keep reminding her that she needs friends, and she needs to make them. She’s found a couple of lady friends that she really likes that she has coffee with on Wednesdays but I really wish she could find a clan. I just have to keep reminding her that she needs to look and not give up on it. So I can’t give up. I still got to hold that string.

The biggest thing is that she got all her talking and communication with all those people she had up north, and now she depends on me to do it, and it’s difficult for me. I try hard to do it, but it doesn’t satisfy her needs. People project onto me that I’m stuck up and antisocial. It’s not true. I just don’t know how to be social. It sounds like a cop out, you don’t know how. Of course you should know how. I read all kinds of books on how to do it. I can’t do it.

I don’t know if I can pinpoint things. It’s just a path. Some of it’s rocky and some of it’s grassy and easy going, and some of it’s a struggle to climb up, but I’m just on this path. Hadens are resilient. I don’t know whether it’s in genes or whatever the hell it is. It’s there. My next goal is make it to 85. Try to talk to my wife whenever I can. Enjoy my kids and grandchildren. I’m satisfied with my life.

 I don’t know how you’ll make sense out of any of that.