Imagine Dragons, The Artist's Way, and trying to "see with eyes unclouded by hate"

Ok, I have a confession to make. For those of you who know me, and specifically anyone from my Hastings days, this may come as a shock to you:

I kind of like Imagine Dragons.

I spent a long time being WAY too critical about music. If it wasn't the music I liked, your taste was bad and your music was bad and that was it. I thought this way for too long, and working at a music store (RIP Hastings, gone too soon) should have helped me get over my snobbery. Alas, it didn't.

Being married to someone with different music tastes ALSO should have helped me overcome my sense of music superiority. Would it surprise you to hear that it did not, at least not for a long time? Feels bad, man.

During my time at Hastings, Imagine Dragons was rocketing to stardom with their album Night Visions. Their singles Radioactive or On Top Of The World haunted my waking hours. At work, we played the CD during business hours over the store's sound system, and it kept selling out, so we kept playing it. It was on every radio station, in every grocery store, and even on the bus.

For a long time, I really, REALLY, did not like Imagine Dragons. Then my kids came along.

Having kids changes a lot of things for a person. For me, it highlighted my weaknesses and magnified my flaws. Without a doubt, I had some work to do (and still do) to become the person I want to be for them. One of the things that had to change was my attitude towards music that wasn't "mine".

My kids are old enough to have their own music tastes thanks to Fortnite and their own Spotify accounts. Wouldn't you know it, my kids love Imagine Dragons, Coldplay (that's a topic for another time), Taylor Swift, video game rap battles, Minecraft lo-fi, and Five Nights at Freddy's themed music, among other things.

I don't want my kids to grow up being rude to other people because they like different music, so I did what anyone would do in this situation:

I dove in, using my time at home to listen to a whole lot more than my meticulously curated playlists. I listened through Shanley's favorite artists and found some jams. Take Me to the Beach by Imagine Dragons actually slaps. Coldplay has a discography full of classics - this is well-established fact.

Through this journey of musical explanation, I came to a crystal clear (and totally obvious) truth: I can still like "my" music AND I'm allowed to like other stuff too. It's not like I'm cheating on hardcore with pop music or something like that. Music genres aren't jealous lovers, and anyone who gatekeeps a genre doesn't need to be taken seriously anyway.

Any band is more than the art that they make, and I think what really sold me on Imagine Dragons is everything that they do outside of making music. For example, the LOVELOUD Festival that happens every year in Utah was created by Dan Reynolds, the frontman. He's been very vocal about his support for the LGBTQ+ community and mental health. Dan is a great example of living life in a way that matches up with your passions and finding ways to do good in the world while doing what you love.

We had the chance to take the kids to see Imagine Dragons in concert in September, and I'll never forget watching my kids scream every word to the songs without a care in the world. The energy was phenomenal, they sounded great, and we all had a blast. That experience by itself made me a fan.

Thank you, Imagine Dragons. 

Last time I talked about one of my all-time favorite books: The Phantom Tollbooth. If you haven't read it yet, please do. It's so good, I give out copies to people. Not in a "hey this will change your life and I'm a cool guy for giving it to you" kind of way. I digress.

Today I'm gonna tell you about The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I haven't made it super far (as of this writing, I'm on chapter three) but I've already seen some big changes from using this book. Specifically, two basic, fundamental pieces of the book: Morning Pages and The Artist Date.

Growing up, I tried to journal. I really did. Multiple times. Each time I would forget, or say "not today", or just spend that journaling time doing other things. I think my record was maybe a couple weeks?

So what's different?

The whole point of the Morning Pages is to write three full pages of whatever's in your brain. No agenda, no goals, no judgment - just writing whatever's on your mind. They're not meant to be shared, or even reread, at first. I've loved it.

I wake up in the morning, send everyone off for the day, and write. It's made a huge difference in my mental health and how I feel throughout the day. I look forward to writing them, and it feels like something has unlocked in my brain. I can't say enough good things about it!

The Artist Date is what I've really struggled with. The idea is that you take yourself out once a week and do something you want to do for an hour or two. It could be a day at the beach, a movie, shopping, a long walk - whatever you want to spend time doing. And it's been hard to make that happen.

You see, in my brain, being unemployed has meant every single dollar and cent has to be specifically for bills. No funny business, no fun stuff, no little treats. Pair that with a tendency to not advocate for myself and a fondness for Not Other People™️ and you get an award-winning recipe for some intense anxiety around finances and doing things in general.

Naturally, some of the first things to go were the fun, "self-care" things like going to Dutch Bros. for some of my favorite hot chocolate or going to a store just because we can. While battening down the hatches and getting better at money has been a really, really good thing for our family, it's also been hard to justify taking time to enjoy anything.

What I'm learning to do now, courtesy of this book, is to find the line between nurturing my inner artist and balancing the limitations of our reality, and I'm not gonna lie - it's been tough. I can think of a million reasons to not do an Artist Date in a given week.

BUT

I've also relearned that some of the best ways to get some good quality time in is by doing something for free. Walking in a park. People watching at the mall (the people watching in Portland is excellent, by the way). Driving down to Guitar Center and playing Free Bird or Stairway to Heaven until I get kicked out (I've never done this).

So maybe you need an Artist Date too. "I'm not an artist!" you might say. Well guess what: everyone is an artist in their own way. Art is the process of creation and can be defined in unlimited ways. We all have the capacity to create beautiful, amazing, things and you owe it to yourself to dream a little more.

This time of year is when things really start to get intense: multiple holidays, kids are out of school, germs assault our homes, patience and time seem to be in short supply, and the sun goes down before people are getting out of work. (Tell your representative to get rid of Daylight Savings Time - studies show changing our clocks forward and back cause accidents, health problems, and general bad attitudes)

This year in the United States is an election year, and boy howdy has it been a doozy.

I'm not here to tell you what the right choice is. We all have the responsibility to do our own research, choose for ourselves, and make those decisions.

What I can tell you is that as a parent, I worry about the type of world my kids will live in. I worry about their role models, their friends, their family, and ultimately, them.

I worry that we're all continuing in a death spiral of doom and gloom and maybe there won't be much of a world left for them.

It's times like these when I think about one of my favorite movies, Princess Mononoke. I first saw this as an 8-year-old on accident while at a friend's house and I loved it. Watching it as an adult, however, has made me love it more.

Essentially, a prince in pre-Industrial Revolution Japan defends his village from a demon and ends up becoming infected. He chooses to leave his village to find the source of the infection and hopefully save his life, despite cutting all ties with his community.

It's during this dialogue with the village wise woman where the movie's theme starts to take shape (sorry in advance - the clip appears to have been filmed with a potato). "To see with eyes unclouded by hate" has become a personal ideal of mine, so much so that I made a shirt inspired by this phrase.

This call to action reappears later in the film as the prince discovers the source of the demon's suffering in a place called Iron Town - a city built around an ironworks facility, which is also a fortress. The demon was created by the guns these people used to slaughter the wild boar population, which were trying to prevent the forest from being cleared.

As a kid, I thought the animation and story were cool (one warrior gets his arms shot off by a bow and arrow), but as an adult the movie is so much more than the fight scenes. Besides advocating for the environment, this movie's charge to "see with eyes unclouded by hate" is a good example for us all as we fight for survival in what seems like an increasingly hostile world.

Looking at the state of, well, everything, is a lot to take in. That doesn't mean we give up though - that means we work harder at seeing through eyes unclouded by hate and help others do the same. It might be uncomfortable, scary, or even straight up impossible sometimes, but I think it's worth doing, and I hope you will too.

Before you go: text or call that person you've been thinking about. Check in with the people in your life. Get outside. Feel the air in your lungs. Treat yourself to something your inner child would love. Take a deep breath, relax your jaw, and drop your shoulders.

It's going to be ok. Thanks for being here.

- Kit