Every Day Should Be a Good Day to Die…

After several days of barely being able to listen to a Dave Matthews Band song without tearing up, I think I’ve finally come to terms with LeRoi Moore’s death.

I know. It’s ridiculous. I didn’t know the man. I don’t know the band personally. But I’ve been a fan of DMB since 1994, and it’s difficult to realize that the band is no longer the same. And while rock history is littered with bands who have carried on after losing a member/s, no matter how the Dave Matthews Band chooses to go on, they will no longer be the “founding five.” And that’s just sad.

I feel like I owe Roi and the band at least a little bit of grieving at this difficult time. 2005 was filled with watershed moments for me, but the most difficult of these was losing my grandfather. I’d lost other family members, but none were quite as close to me as he was. He was not only my “Papa,” but he was also a great pal and my personal hero in many respects. I’ve never cried harder than I did at his funeral, and I still sort of hate going to family gatherings even three years on because I know that he won’t be there. And yet I still expect to see him, and every time I look for him and see nothing but a void.

A few days after Papa’s funeral, I’m driving to work with DMB’s Busted Stuff in my CD player. And “You Never Know” comes on, which had never been one of my favorite songs. But I hadn’t quite dealt with his death yet, so I’m a little too inside my own head (never a good thing when speeding down the Bronx River Parkway) and, consequently, I don’t change the track. And then suddenly, I hear the lyrics almost if I’m hearing them for the first time:

There’s not a moment to lose in the game

Don’t let the troubles in your head

Steal too much time

You’ll soon be dead

So play…

And, suddenly, I got it. By the time, Dave sang “But every day should be a good day to die,” I was almost in tears. 

“You Never Know”

Damn right, you don’t. 

We need to live life so that “every day should be a good day to die.” We can’t take a second of this life for granted, and can’t spare a second not at least attempting to live our dreams. Because you never know if this second might be your last.

Some people might take the lyrics to “You Never Know” to be morbid and depressing, but I see them as inspiring. I took the sadness I was feeling over my grandfather’s death, along with the lessons I’d learned from some other epiphanies I’d had earlier in the year, and committed myself to finishing the first draft of a novel less than six months later. And while I hope that novel gets published someday, just in writing it I feel like I’ve honored my grandfather and how proud he always was of me. And I’ve honored myself and my dreams. And I’ve honored the band that continues to inspire me on an almost daily basis.

So as I’ve done so many times, I just want to thank Dave, Carter, Boyd, Stefan, and, especially at this moment, Leroi–the original five–for giving me and the rest of the world countless hours of music to listen to and dream by.

Don’t lose the dreams inside your head

They’ll only be there until you’re dead

Dream…

On a Rocky Mountain Oyster High…

While his usual Sunday morning column may be abbreviated due to his presence in Denver for the Democratic Convention, Jason Linkins is on fire with the funny this morning. And I think he may have set the record for Most Mentions of Fried Bull Testicles in One Blog Article (because I’m sure someone, somewhere is keeping track of those stats).

I so wish I was in Denver right now, and not just because I might be lucky enough to run into Jason Linkins and Chuck Todd and buy them a round of brews and Rocky Mountain Oysters. Frankly, it’s been a long time since I’ve been excited for a Democratic Convention (okay–it’s actually the first time I’ve been excited for a political convention, Democratic or otherwise). And I’d just love to actually be where the action is, right in the middle of all of it.

Instead, I’ll be on the couch, most likely enjoying a few adult beverages and watching history unfold. That is, of course, in between screaming at the punditocracy for wondering what’s so wrong with Obama that he’s not blowing McCain out of the water.

Actually, I have a theory about why Obama’s not blowing McCain out of the water at this point (and I have to give partial credit to my infinitely smart and wise spouse here, because we came up with this theory together). And it’s a theory that dovetails with my theory as to why Obama chose Joe Biden–the older white guy who’s been a senator for nearly forty years and appears to some to be the antithesis to Obama’s “change message”–as his running mate.

And the theory goes like this: No matter what people say, the majority of Americans aren’t ready for “Change We Can Believe In.” What they really want is “Change we can kind of sort of deal with because we know the country’s been headed in the wrong direction and I really wanna like this Obama guy but he’s black and that kind of bothers me–not that I’m racist or anything–and then I also hear he might be a secret Muslim which is sort of weird and then he’s also got that crazy pastor and all these other shady people in Chicago who he maybe kinda sorta hung out with once or twice and that wife of his really has a mouth on her. But he’s got cute kids, though.”

So for the aforementioned Americans–Ladies and Gentlemen, Joe Biden. Obama/Biden–Change You Can Deal With. Biden is a white, working-class Catholic who speaks his mind and is, therefore, prone to the occasional verbal slip-up. Most people can identify with more aspects of Biden’s personality and biography than not, thus making him the perfect person to persuade Americans who are still suspicious of or undecided about Obama to get on board the change train.

And speaking of people who are suspicious, here’s a little note to the Hillary supporters out there who are still angry that she isn’t the nominee/isn’t the VP pick/hasn’t been anointed Queen of the Universe: She lost. Get over it. The DNC did not “disenfranchise” you. The constitution does not cover voting rights in presidential primaries, so if the DNC had suddenly decided in the middle of the primary season that they wanted the nominee to be determined by a WWE Smackdown, then that’s what would have happened (and personally, I’d like to see that happen in 2012, because wouldn’t that be interesting?). You’ll get your moment at the convention and Hillary will presumably give a speech in which she tells all of you for the forty-thousandth time to back the party candidate. So after that, could we maybe all just believe her and get on board before you hand the election to John “I have a proven record of not doing shit for women other than letting them buy me houses” McCain? Please?

So yeah–there are a few reasons as to why Obama’s not blowing McCain away right now and why all the pundits will spend next week foaming at the mouth about what needs to happen during the convention for Obama to really start to run away with the race. None of these reasons preclude the fact, however, that Obama has been ahead of McCain this entire time. Seriously–if you watch the talking heads on the TeeVee, you’d think that Obama’s behind and has no hope of catching up and what the fuck’s wrong with him anyway? But really, what fun would this campaign season be for the pundits if Obama were absolutely smoking McCain’s ass right now? Because as we all know horserace = ratings. But as Chuck Todd has reminded us on several occasions, even a slight lead in the polls can translate to a landslide in the electoral college. And as we all should know by now, electoral math is the only math that matters.

Well, okay, I’m just rambling right now. Maybe I’m just incoherent because I’m sad that I’m not in Denver, and I’m probably a little dizzy from hunger right now as well, so I should probably eat. Fried bull testicles, anyone?

R.I.P. Leroi Moore

There are no words, whether you’re a Dave Matthews Band fan or not:

Leroi Moore has died.

I speculated previously when the band announced that he had been readmitted to the hospital following his June 30 accident that things seemed serious. But to actually get the news that he had passed is still both shocking and devastating.

I’m generally not a person who sulks around saying “we should do x because it’s what he would have wanted” when someone dies, but I have to note that the band went ahead and played their show in Los Angeles last night (which is, ironically, where Roi died–and, again, not to be too sentimental, but you almost have to wonder if he was waiting for the rest of the band to show up in L.A. before he left). And as of this writing, they’ve announced no plans to cancel shows, just as they soldiered on after Roi’s accident. I’d like to think that the music of the Dave Matthews Band is just as therapeutic for the band itself (and maybe more so) as it is for the rest of us who have been carried through bad times on the strength of their songs, and that playing through their pain would be better than not playing at all.

I’m so sad about this that I feel like I’m not making much sense, so I’ll just let the man speak for himself:

Loving Wings–a song I always thought was a Roi Tour De Force.

You’ll be missed, Roi. My condolences to your family, the band, and every fan. Our lives are a little less bright today.

Can I Have a Waffle Cone of Silence with Two Scoops of Vanilla?

Much has been made all over the intertubes about John McCain being in his motorcade and not in the so-called “Cone of Silence” for the first part of Rick Warren’s forum with the Presidential candidates last Saturday night. So my intention here is not to add my voice to the din. My intention is, instead, to say this:

I want a Cone of Silence.

Seriously. Where does one go about getting one?

Right now, when things are crazy at my non-blogging-job-that-actually-pays-me-a-salary, I want nothing more than to hold up my hand when someone approaches my desk and say “Not now–I’m in the Cone of Silence.”

I’d like to leave a message on my voice mail that says, “Hi, you’ve reached Amy. I’m not available to take your call right now because I’m in the Cone of Silence and must not be disturbed. I’ll return your call as soon as Rick Warren calls me to the stage.”

Or maybe my email out-of-office message could read “Amy will be inside the Cone of Silence until August 25. If you need immediate assistance from someone outside the Cone of Silence, please contact _______ at _________.”

Now, I understand that John McCain would have very good reasons for wanting to be outside the Cone of Silence. But unless you’re trying to hear trade secrets or forum questions or other classified information (and I’m not saying that McCain was trying to do any of the aforementioned because, really, who knows? And who’s going to admit that they know if they do?), right now I can’t think of one good reason why anyone would want to be outside of something as serene-sounding as a Cone of Silence. But then again, I’m probably just having a bad day. I just happen to think at the moment that the world might be a better place if we all could retreat into a Cone of Silence every once in a while.

On the other hand, though, I can’t hear the phrase “Cone of Silence” without picturing myself (or John McCain, although I try not to picture him whenever I can possibly help it) trapped underneath a gigantic waffle cone with no one to talk to. Or maybe being forced to wear the world’s largest dunce hat. I realize “Cone of Silence” is just a concept rather than a literal thing, but I can’t help but picture actual cone shapes when I hear the phrase (and the thought of John McCain wearing a gigantic dunce hat is hysterical. And probably a little too apropos on occasion.).

But as much as I yearn for a Cone of Silence most days, I know that in my practical reality I wouldn’t last very long inside one. While I frequently wish that people would just go away and stop talking to me, that feeling quickly passes and I’m suddenly wondering where everyone went because I don’t have anyone to talk to. It’s the eternal paradox of wanting to be alone but not wanting to be lonely, I suppose.

But I guess if I somehow found myself trapped inside a Waffle Cone of Silence, I’d at least be able to eat my way out.

The Little Ph.D Diploma That Could

Apparently, less than one in every one-thousand people on the planet holds a Ph.D. I am one of those people, and while I find the previous statistic overwhelming and humbling, I also find it easy to forget most days because I work at a university. And given the fact that I’m surrounded by Ph.Ds on a daily basis, it’s pretty easy to feel sometimes that I’m the dumbest girl in the room. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if what I’m admitting to here is the secret shame of most Ph.Ds–we’re all looking over our shoulders, waiting for that moment that someone, somewhere finally determines that our dissertation committees were all horribly, horribly wrong and we’re about to be exposed for the unworthy frauds that we are.

Perhaps this secret shame is what drives many of us to proudly display our diplomas in our offices, even though intellectually, everyone knows that none of us would be where we are without terminal degrees. I know that I am driven not only by this secret shame but also by the realization that despite the fact that my business card and email signature end in “Ph.D” and I’m referred to all over campus as “Dr. Amy Martin,” people walk into my office to find what I’ve been told looks like a fifteen-year old girl sitting behind my desk. And while my youthful appearance might score me some points if I were still looking to get a date to the prom, I figure that displaying my diploma in my office might give me some necessary credibility that my physical person doesn’t necessarily project (and the Dave Matthews Band tour posters on my office wall probably don’t help much in the credibility department, but you’ll have to pry those off my walls over my dead body).

So there it sits on my desk for all to see, in a lovely document frame–my Ph.D diploma. Except the document frame is an eight inch by ten inch, and my diploma is a little too small to take up the space, so I had to put a blank piece of paper behind the certificate to give the image that my document actually fits in the document frame. And then a few years ago, the ceiling in my apartment leaked, and my certificate got wet in the corner and now sports an ugly brown water stain.

But I’m generally pretty proud of my Little Ph.D Certificate That Could. And then I go to someone else’s office and see some eleven inch by seventeen inch monster in a gigantic oak frame, and I just want to run back to my office and put my certificate in a drawer before someone comes over and inwardly laughs at it, my teeny little diploma that looks like someone peed on it. 

And yes, I know–I know that it’s not the size of the diploma that matters but what you do with it. I know that for my particular field–composition studies–I went to one of the best schools in the country. But some days I long for a gigantic, old-fashioned diploma printed on real sheepskin. I remember a friend of mine once showed me her grandfather’s master’s degree and the thing took up half the goddamn wall. And it was a master’s degree, which made me wonder if Ph.D diplomas in those days were the size of plasma-screen TVs (and, ironically, my bachelor’s and master’s diplomas are larger in size than my Ph.D diploma, which is just an example of the quirky and entirely random differences between institutions of higher education).

But, again–it’s not the size of the degree but what you do with it. And sometimes, it’s not the degree at all-some of the most insightful people I’ve ever met didn’t finish high school, and a few of the biggest lamebrains I’ve come across hold terminal degrees in their respective fields. “Smart” and “capable” are matters of context. For example, while you might want me critiquing your writing, you certainly wouldn’t want me managing your finances. Under any circumstances. Trust me–you don’t want me around math.

And, ultimately, I know that on days when I’m feeling particularly unworthy of being anywhere within striking distance of the ivory tower, looking up at my wall and seeing a diploma as big as a Medieval tapestry isn’t going to help me. And, on the other hand, some days all I need to do is look over at my little water-stained Ph.D to know that I spent years preparing and that I really do belong in the same room as the rest of the smart kids. But either way, it’s all about me and my abilities, and a little (or big) piece of paper isn’t going to change that. 

And yet, a Ph.D diploma that’s at least as big as my TV would be nice. But I won’t hold my breath for a replacement.