Dr. Dog: The Truth Don't Stop

As promised, here is the omitted introduction from last week’s Where We Are. I hope hall had a great weekend. Also, if you enjoy this piece, please, let me know or consider sharing it with a friend, it’s the best way to help us grow.

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Sometimes I get stuck. On a particular train of thought, an activity, or a maybe a particular piece of artwork - come to think of it, I think I might be perpetually stuck with a rotating cast of whatever has my attention, and, trust me, something always does.

I remember reading that Chuck Palahniuk employed a writing technique he was shown by one of his favorite writers, Amy Hempel. I loved Palahniuk during my disaffected teenage years, and though I haven’t picked up a novel of his in over a decade, this little implementation has always stuck with me.

The idea is simple, instead of denoting time in dates, it should be marked by events. “It was the year I broke my arm that I quit smoking,” is probably a better line than “I quit smoking in 2020.” But as clever of a literary device it might be, I think it’s more indicative of how we actually view the passage of time.

For instance: I don’t think of the year I fell in love with my wife as 2010 but rather as a portrait of who I was and what was going on around me during that time. “I dropped out of college the year I fell I in love.” Not bad? “I fell in love during Obama’s first term.” Better.

One of the things that I’ve been stuck on the past week or so is the band Dr. Dog. Despite having a stupid name - so did The Beatles - Dr. Dog is one of the greatest American bands this side of the millennium. I listen to this band all the time, but this week has been almost nonstop.

I discovered them in 2008 when their record Fate was released, and have been a devoted listener ever since. Dr. Dog is a hardworking band and until recently, toured yearly. Since they’re, criminally, not one of the biggest bands in the world, I was able to catch quite a few of their shows. Between the concerts and the eight records they’ve released in the last 15 years, I can observe how I’ve changed and how I’ve developed my perception of the world periodically demarcated by this band.

I saw them with my brother-in-law at the Cannery Ballroom probably a decade ago, a venue that has since closed - he was a virtual stranger to me then compared to our relationship now. I saw them during my one semester at Belmont with people I haven’t spoken to since.

They’re one of my best friends favorite bands, too, and when he was in school in Georgia, I drove down for the weekend to see them with him at a tiny club in Athens. Most recently, however, I saw them on their last tour with my wife - who was pregnant at the time - and her brother and his wife.

If you know, you know.

From the time I bought Fate on CD at Target to listening to Shame, Shame while I dug out a pad for a new patio at my house, it’s difficult to contemplate exactly how different of a person I’ve become - from kid, to husband, to father.

There’s a possibility that my high school self might find my current iteration contemptible - or at least incomprehensible. I was so sure of myself at sixteen, which was probably a headache to my patient parents, but I’m sure of myself now - which is still probably a headache to my parents. So, who’s to say which version of myself is correct in their world view?

Sure, I use words like epistemological and hegemony, now, but I’m not necessarily convinced that wisdom moves in an upwards linear trajectory. And it’s not a given I’d be able to convince my younger self that my current core beliefs are better than my old ones - so maybe that’s why it’s not just old records I’ve been replaying but I’ve been stuck on some old ideas lately, too.

Not that I’m re-litigating my beliefs in meaning or divinity per se, just that I’m going over my notes. Maybe there’s no argument I could levy to convince him, and there’s certainly no linguistic shortcuts I could take. That 16-year-old might be a different person, but it’s still me. Maybe the only route is 15 years and 8 Dr. Dog records.

Of course, the scariest question - the one that I haven’t asked yet - is if all things are equal, is there a chance my thoughts and beliefs have another polar reversal in another 15 years?

It’s just so easy to dwell on the past. When B-Room came out in 2013, my band was still together and me and my new fiancee were driving to Asheville listening to the opening track in the Appalachian fog after we’d played a show in Knoxville. Later, my band’s manager floated the idea of us opening a few dates for my favorite Philly band - in retrospect, I see that this was never in the cards.

Maybe, we place too much emphasis on the past and the future. The past is too easily tinged with the halcyon gold of nostalgia, and the future is an addictive lure of our dreams of impractical lives held aloft from bruising reality.

If my previous self had been allowed to construct his ‘perfect’ reality void of all the disappointments that have taken place in the interim, then the life I would be currently leading would be an unfulfilled nightmare of self-indulgence and chicanery. As people, we’re not wise enough to forecast or account for our own development.

If you can’t loosen your grip on the past then the present pales in comparison, and if I hadn’t relinquished the idea of what my future should have been, then my life wouldn’t have unfolded in the mystical, wonderful way it has.

Some things change. Others don’t. And it’s an impossible task trying to discern which is which and where each of them belong.

When my wife was pregnant, we were driving home from one errand or another and a Dr. Dog song came on in the car. When I pointed out one of my favorite lines to her - a lyric of which I knew she was familiar - she started to cry.

Now, I’ll never be able to listen to that song without thinking of that exact moment. Maybe her reaction was due to the fact that she was only a few weeks away from delivering our baby, or maybe it was because she could see us as the kids we were when we first listened to it, or maybe it was because, for a brief moment, she could remember every moment in between.

Either way, it’s true.

I hate when people say
'Those were the days'
Oh, then what are these then?

To a better next week,

Cheers,

~FDA