- I was born in Michigan. My family moved to Texas when I was 4. I have lived in Michigan, Texas, and Massachusetts. I have never lived alone. I still consider Boston to be my home because it is the place I felt and feel the most comfortable.
- My life is divided into two distinct phases – my music / drumming phase and my writing / politics phase. People that know me in politics often have little or no idea how wholly consumed I once was by music, how good I used to be at it, or what happened that resulted in me getting out of it and into other things. Once while having drinks with politipals, someone started saying that drummers now are “funkier” than they ever were. I piped up and said that that was nonsense, and that you’d be hard pressed to find someone “funkier” than Clyde Stubblefield, who played for James Brown (and was the Funky Drummer), or any number of drummers from the 60′s and 70′s and someone said “Whatever, Josh, what do you know about music?” It does not happen very often, but I was honestly speechless. They had no idea that I at least had some claim to making an argument, and there was no way for me to explain it without a story that might as well have started with the line, “Since the dawn of time…”
- I do not believe in God in the anthropomorphic-white-beard-and-sandals sense, but I do not begrudge people that do, no matter the denomination. I understand the function of religion, even if it is not for me; hence the lack of begrudging.It was not for lack of evangelism – for one, my grandfather was an Assembly of God preacher for 60 years. For another, growing up in Texas, it was not a full week if I had not been proselytized to repeatedly, usually by mean-spirited kids who smiled when they said I would go to Hell if I did not start going to church. Their church, specifically.When I was very young, I wondered if something was wrong with me because I had not felt The Call To Jesus as so many of my classmates seemingly had, even as I was suspicious that such a thing seemed to be used by some of those aforementioned mean-spirited kids as a tool for social stratification. Eventually I decided it was best not to force it, reasoning that if Jesus was what they said He was He would probably know the difference.
- My disinterest was also not for lack of study – since I was accosted about it so often at school I wanted to learn as much about each religion as I could, so I would read the Bible and whatever other religious texts or philosophies I could get my hands on. This was a time when you could buy the Koran in paperback at Waldenbooks and not sweat it, even as a junior high school student.This study led to me engaging too much, I guess, in spirited debate. In sixth grade in the space of one week I was accused of being gay, a Satanist, and a Jew – all in one week, and all by the same wonderful kid.
I think this period – and the need to understand people and where they come from that was engendered by it – played a very large part in making me who I am, and contributed to my fascination with people, and how government and law and terrorism and happiness and economics and religion and fear and joy affects us. I am, at my core, a people person, and I feel complimented when people say I have never met a stranger.
- To keep going on this topic for one more point: I do explicitly believe in good and evil as tangible things rather than mere concepts. I also believe that we are rewarded or punished based on the choices we make and the way we live our lives. Also, an afterlife; and that there is certainly more in the world than what we can see or know as we are. So I’m not a die-and-then-forever-darkness, no-karmic-justice downer.
- I wrote a symphony when I was a senior in high school, and I conducted the premier performance by my high school wind ensemble. I wrote it for a friend of mine that committed suicide. After all of my fancy book learning in music theory, composition, and counterpoint, there are still moments in that piece that make me happier than any music I wrote later on.
- In the battle between music and lyrics, lyrics usually win. I will tolerate very simplistic music for good songwriting. Some exceptions where music alone wins or is enough: the horn break in Jungle Boogie. RJD2. Battles. The main guitar riff from Stayin’ Alive. Most samples from Tricky’s Pre-Millenium Tension. Most songs by Prince. There are others.
- I wish I had been in a rock band. I think those days have passed for me even though I can drum again. Dave and I are in talks to put together an electro-funk outfit, so maybe there is still hope.
- I vehemently defend my nerdiness. I am a word nerd, a movie nerd, a video game nerd, a music nerd, a tech/gadget nerd, a policy and politics nerd. I prefer reading to most other activities.In politics I would often run with people that had very expensive / grown-up hobbies. They would ask me what I was going to do that night and I would often say that I was going to play video games. This was usually met with confusion or ridicule that would turn into an argument over whether it was more silly to play Halo 3 or spend ten grand on golf when you only play twice a year. Now we have a president who is a badass and also collected comic books. He has a top-secret super-crypto BlackBerry ginned up by the NSA because he refused to give it up, even though he probably had 30 people like me telling him that there. was. no. way. he. could. have. a. BlackBerry. Nerd power is on the rise.
- In my Top Ten Movies list reside, in places of honor, both Blade and Robocop.
- I could never get really excited about the Beatles. I have come to like some Beatles songs as I have gotten older and I recognize their importance in music history, but Motown and bands like Led Zepplin or The Who have much more titanic places for me, taking up much bigger stretches of real estate. Sam Cooke and James Brown are bigger for me than John Lennon, and probably always will be. I also never liked Seinfeld much. I think Arrested Development was far superior. With both The Beatles and Seinfeld, I never disliked them, necessarily, I just did not think they were better than pretty good.
- The best thing I have ever done was getting married. It is not for everyone, but for me it worked.
- I have known the woman I married since I was 15 and she was 14. We’ve been together more than ten years now. My best friend Dave has been my best friend Dave since we were 11 or so. Most of my friends have been my friends for a very long time. I collect people and I keep them around and I like it that way.
- I grind my teeth in my sleep and snore horribly. I mean, it is awful. I also do not like to sleep very much, although as I have gotten older I sleep more whether I want to or not. I am still a night owl and would prefer to have a schedule reversed from what is normally accepted if it were possible.
- I smoked cigarettes for ten years before quitting cold turkey in November of 2005. I stayed quit for 3 years, but have recently started again, smoking probably ten cigarettes a week unless I am at a party or something, in which case the total goes up. I would rather have not started again, but I am not ready to quit again yet. Apparently.
- My favorite writers are Hunter Thompson and Stephen King – this must be true owing to how many books by each I own. My favorite books, though, are things by Harper Lee and Jay McInerney and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Kurt Vonnegut and John Steinbeck.I think people do not give Stephen King enough of a chance, as his books are full of characters that may as well walk and talk in real life, which I think is much harder to write than most people realize. Atticus Finch and Jay Gatsby are certainly great literary characters but they are not real to me the way Eddie Dean is.
- I have more memories of laughing than of pain, so I think I am winning so far.
- When it comes to things I do, I have two modes: On or Off, Full-Speed-Turbo or Totally Disinterested. When I am interested in something I am Fully. Involved. until I get bored or disillusioned and then I could give a damn, although I will sometimes keep doing a thing I have come to hate out of personal guilt. Like, I used to smoke a pipe when I was 19 or 20, and so I bought some pipes and received a few as gifts. I have not smoked a pipe in almost ten years and yet I still own all of the pipes, because they are perfectly good pipes and hey, I might take it up again someday.(I won’t.)
- I wear my emotions on my sleeve and am a totally open book about almost everything. My third grade teacher described me as “blunt, to a fault” and that trait has stuck. You would think being this way would have also produced a thick skin, but I share a familial trait in that I do not take criticism well and am prone to defensiveness. I am trying to strangle this latter trait but old habits die hard.On the flip side, my beliefs and principles are carefully considered and then hard held – I am fiercely liberal, pro-worker, pro-people. I believe the American League is totally valid and I believe that there is beauty in most things. I believe in love.
- I am apparently totally maddening to argue with. My parents eventually gave up on trying to exercise total authority through a simple word or command because I would have an entire case prepared with logical arguments and well-thought out examples and precedents about why I should be able to go to the arcade. Now, as an adult, I cannot ever just let something go – if there is a conflict I have to have it out immediately and examine everyone’s motivations and perceptions so that the problem can be solved, because I have to solve the problem, because there is no problem that cannot be solved.If I had to argue with me I would probably give up or resort to base invective. Or both.
- When I was younger I thought life was scary and longed for growing up, when life would cease to be scary. Imagine my surprise.
- I have developed into a class warrior in the last few years and it feels right.
- I have had many plans that did not work out, some spectacularly and disastrously so. That has not stopped me from making other plans or betting on myself.
- I am a firm believer in shattering taboos. Sex and swearing are things to be enjoyed and celebrated rather than feared. I do not understand parents who balk at allowing their children to be exposed to any sort of amorous content, or nudity in art, but will let them watch incredibly violent things like slasher movies and Die Hard. If you want to trace society’s ills to the root, I guarantee it will be violence far, far more often than it will ever be tits.I also think the internet is a wondrous thing, and that meeting people on the internet is just as good as meeting them at the bar or the library or what have you. It is where I have met some of my best friends, three of whom I stayed with on our 4,200 mile road trip to the inauguration. They were all excellent hosts.
- I think there is nothing better than good writing or good music. Guys like Sam Cooke and Beethoven always picked the right notes, and I am not kidding when I say there is something very life-affirming in that, something that can solve some of the intractable inexorabilities about the shortcomings of life.I think I loved composing so much in part because of the communicative power of music. I have heard people discuss power in terms of politics and business and military might, but to me there is something secret and special about being able to reach inside someone who has never met you and make them feel something without words or pictures or anything other than sound. That, I think, is real power, like someone knowing your name before you even know they exist.
Words have a similar power. Words can mercilessly bludgeon and be an unstoppable force that wrests you away from what you think you know and plants you in what the writer wants you to know. It is my opinion that artists of all modes are responsible for showing us what we fear with the greater aim of enabling us to conquer it.
Steinbeck talked about this when he accepted the Nobel prize:
“Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches – nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.
Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion. My great predecessor, William Faulkner, speaking here, referred to it as a tragedy of universal fear so long sustained that there were no longer problems of the spirit, so that only the human heart in conflict with itself seemed worth writing about.
Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well as of human weakness. He knew that the understanding and the resolution of fear are a large part of the writer’s reason for being. This is not new. The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.
Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit – for gallantry in defeat – for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature. “
I have been trying to articulate what I believe to be the goal of art (and not just my art or writing or composing, but certainly also those things) for as long as I can remember, and I had to look back to find it said better than I could hope to manage. It is not a thing we do in a vacuum or solely for ourselves, or if it is then I do not recognize it as art.
I think a man that does not acknowledge fear and accept it and wrest with it is only skimming the surface of his life. You cannot be controlled by it, but you do, to paraphrase Hunter Thompson, have to keep it in front of you like a thing that might have to be killed.
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