Time & Distance, Fame & Glory... (part I)

Time and Distance, Fame & Glory… part I

Ok. So I’ve always had a bit of a preoccupation with being a rockstar. You could, if you wanted to push the boundaries of our relationship argue that it is more of an obsession. In my house, if something is indescribably beyond the most righteous and wonderful thing, it is “rockstar crazy.” When one of my boys is being exhuberant, joyful, and clever (ok, now, we’re talking about their behaviour pretty much ALL of the time), words like “charming” or “precocious” simply don’t cut it. Instead I prefer “rockstar.”

Getting the picture?

When I was nine years old, Mtv was rockin’ the boob-tube, and I was strictly forbidden from plucking that “fruit” from the proverbial “tv tree.” But as humans have proven before, the lure was too tantalizing. I saw that it looked good on the tree, was pleasing to the taste, and good for food. Mmmm. Adam Curry and the Top 20 video count-down. This is where I met ---- (wait for it) ---- Axl Rose.

Appetite for Destruction offended any reasonable person. “Welcome to the Jungle” was this heinous new sound, bred in L.A. and taking over the radio. Rage poured out of this little man with the leather pants. At first I didn’t know what to make of it. It made me uncomfortable. But I was drawn in, and soon I was running home from the bus stop to catch the last 3 videos of the count down. First it was the Jungle. Then it was “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” and then it was … a LIVE video---- “Paradise City”. Oh man. That white leather suit --- the huge stadium, Slash just rockin’ his big hair and top hat. It defied belief. Could ANYthing be cooler?

My aunt and uncle took care of my grandmother in their home in La Habra, California. My dad had lived in SoCal for a considerable amount of time, first attending, and then working at UCLA. And his best friend lived in Anaheim, so we visted southern California relatively often. That means probably five times (?) before I was 12 years old.

Most trips down there included a visit to DisneyLand, where Jerry was a maintenance supervisor or something like that. I always remembered that Jerry broke a rib or a wrist building the Pirates of the Carribean. Somehow that made me proud. Anyway, I remember being in La Habra when I was 13 or 14. I don’t remember what age I was exactly, but I remember that it was the summer between my eighth and ninth grades---it was the summer between middle school (psh) and … HIGH school. I was headed for the big time.

I laid in bed that night, listening to my walkman. Tape player. Yeah. I always went to sleep with music playing. One time, I fell asleep to Nirvana’s Nevermind, only to wake up later, completely disoriented by the hidden track at the end of the cd.

Ok, anyways…

So I’m listening to (c’mon, guess) Appetite for Destruction, and I notice that there are two different guitar sounds? And they’re playing different things that even though they are different, appear to somehow go together! I marveled at my discovery, and being a prideful person, believed myself to be specially gifted to have such depth of aural insight. I thought to myself, “it’s destiny! Next year, I’ll be in high school, and I’ll finally be able to hook up with some other bad-asses and be in a real-live, balls-to-the-wall, MTV-here-we-come rock-n-roll band.”

Several years later, I had realized that regardless of whatever talent I did or didn’t have, I was just too lazy. I know people who want it. And they go, go, go for it. It’s annoying they’re so persistent. And they’re my friends!

But there was still that persistent itch. That nagging fantasy. It looked a little different now. Well, actually it looked a lot different. I’d gone through (and thankfully come out the other side) of my hair band phase. My grunge-y phase. I took a long walk with the singer-songwriter phase.

Then I ran out of things to say about myself and the sad shape of this world without getting redundant on the one hand, and ridiculously self-absorbed on the other. Plus, it didn’t seem authentic to me anymore. I mean, I was married, very happily, so no misery on the love front to whine about. I had a home, and full-time job that were pleasing to me. So no tour-bus adventures of drugs, unknown destinations, or all night parties in nameless venues. And I had been given, and grasped onto, a sense of spiritual destiny that removed the existential fears that were the fodder of so many artistic trends.

By now, all I felt compelled to write about was my walk on, off, and around the path of God’s call on me.

Well, there’s never any shortage of material on that topic. And it is something that any person breathing can relate to, know it or not, as God has indeed made a call and claim on all things created. (So…what does this have to do with rock-stars? OR “time and distance, glory and fame? Get to it).

Well, it’s my blog, so I don’t HAVE to get to it. I can drag it out until the internet melts. But I won’t. Otherwise, how could I Facebook? Or Tweet? BTW, I think it’s awesome that “facebook” can double as a noun and a verb…

Did you know that there are “Christian Rock stars”? Sure you did. BUT, did you know that there are even celebrities among the genre of Worship music?! You actually might know that, because “inspirational” music is the fastest growing market share in the music industry. Nope. Not rap. Not RnB. Not Rock. Not Coldplay, not Train, not Eazy-E, not Chris Brown.

Church music rock stars. Guess what? I’d baptized my lifelong ambition to be a career performing musician. And it felt like a calling from God, not simply some self-aggrandizing ambition.

And maybe it is…(a calling I mean). Who knows the mind and plans of God? In time, He will reveal these things. But for now I'm awake and running today. So what do I do?