Tunes for Tuesday - Foster the People
How major life changes were prompted by a song
Every Tuesday, three songs by one artist or group and the songs that have shaped me. Only three of their songs? A tough ask. But each Tuesday, I'm going to try to summarise my love - or loathing - for a different artist or band.
The best bit? You can comment at the bottom of this post and pick the next one.
This week, one of my more obscure bands I enjoy - Foster the People.
The last line of the 2000 David Fincher film Fight Club is: "You met me at a very strange time in my life." I could apply that line to this week's Tunes for Tuesday artist, Foster the People.
Back in 2015 or 2016, I was travelling a lot, I was dating a lot, I was all over the place in more ways than one. A crystallising moment of my life came while stood in a Russian airport waiting to board a private plane. A song called Ask Yourself by Foster the People.
In it, the line "Well ask yourself, is this the life you've been waiting for?" is sung twice and in all honesty, I think I was ready for this question. I was a couple of years out from a divorce, and dating had become a constant cycle of meeting someone attractive who wasn't right for me, trying to make it work, admittedly while enjoying life experiences.
But the truth was, I thought, after listening to this song, I wasn't right for them. I was looking for something deeper and more meaningful. I'd made a number of compromises during my marriage that looking back, had weakened the structure of the foundations. I’d then become fairly uncompromising myself as a reaction. Complicated family? Not sure I can handle it. Ex who’s got a restraining order? Not for me.
Ask Yourself came on and it felt like a revelation. It was odd. I don't sit there waiting for bands to inspire me to major life changes. But it felt like one at that moment. I needed to change and if I could work on me a bit more, really work on what meant me myself, then I'd naturally attract the right sort of person, rather than someone all wrong for me outside of, in the words of Morgan Wallen, one wild night.
Well I'm bored of the game
And too tired to rage
I resolved to quit travelling so much. I worked more on my novels and learned the craft properly, converting great ideas into something a bit more solid. A good idea is one page of a 400-page book. It's useless on its own.
I read more. I ran more. I got healthy in body and mind and put myself in a place where I'd date, but not over-commit, and if it was wrong, I'd leave with no regrets. I had to ask myself what I wanted to be in myself.
Are You What You Want to Be? It was a bloody hard question to answer and I had to do a lot of thinking.
Then, of course, the right person came along. It's easy to make it sound simplistic when it's gone right, isn't it? Easy! But before that happens it doesn't feel easy at all. It's hard work trying to find the right happy. The truth was, though, I wasn;t ready for the right happy because I wasn't happy in myself. I'd travelled the world a bit, learned what a guy needs to learn about being a partner, a father, a man.
You know I try to live without regrets
I'm always moving forward and not looking back
But I tend to leave a trail of dead, while I'm moving ahead
There was, of course, some dead wood that naturally fell off me as I moved forward. My old career of travelling around thw world to report on poker tournaments was a good 60% of my income. I needed to convert that to remote work if I stood a chance of segueing into a writing career.
I needed to make hard, practical changes, around family, my responsibilities, money, all the not-fun stuff that unless you've had to deal with it, you're blissfully unaware of just how hard it is. Plus, I'd fallen in love. I'd met my partner, and within six months, we had a baby on the way. She had two boys already, so the challenge of being a 'step-Dad' in title but boy-bloke-buddy was going to come at me in Dolby Surround Sound.
Just like an animal I protect my pride
When I'm too bruised to fight
For a decade, I've come back to Foster the People in moments of self-doubt, of inspiration, of perspiration and contemplation. I haven't just chucked you four 'ation' words there, I mean each of them, I did a lot of thinking, some of it really cutting to my faults, I was inspired to become the author I always was in my heart, I worked my arse off and I cared more for everyone around me. These guys were often the soundtrack to deeper thought.
There's a theory that goes something like this: a boy comes of age twice. Once when he physically turns from boy to adult and again when he turns from adult to man. For some people, that can take a shocking amount of time. I think I did well to attempt the latter around my mid-thirties.
I’ve realised now in my mid-forties that those years between a marriage and a life partner were some of the wildest, craziest, unplanned years of my life, and while I wouldn't want to live them again, they're the reason I have a unique perspective on life now. I've been through a lot and it's only been while working on novels recently that I've reminisced on how many major life-changing events I've lived through. It helps the writing a lot, but even more importantly, it helped in my Coming of Age.