I watched Star Wars a million times as a kid (ask my parents if you don’t believe me), and my brothers and I were constantly reenacting the opening battle scene where the Imperial Forces capture Princess Leia’s ship. We would grab flashlight-weapons (sorry about using all your batteries, dad!) and hone them on the shutter doors in our living room—pretending that Storm Troopers were coming through them. In that battle, I always played the rebel forces, never the princess sending droids to bring her help.

I took the viral Star Wars character quiz on Facebook today, and I was initially surprised that it told me I was Princess Leia. My initial reaction? I can’t share this… I’m no princess! Who wants to be a Princess?

But, then, I thought about it. We all know that Star Wars is one of the best representations of sexism in film in terms of the numbers, and if you don’t, just read about it. Or, you could try to remember all of the female characters in Star Wars… Good luck on that one.

When I started comparing myself to Leia, I quickly realized that the quiz was poignantly accurate: She is a badass, I am a badass; she is brave, I am brave; she is loyal, I am loyal; she sees and brings out the good in the scum that is Hans Solo, I see and bring out the good in others; she fights injustices, I fight injustices. She is a senator, I want to be a senator. The list goes on and on.

That last one resonated with me. Why not choose to call her Senator Leia Organa? That was her main role in the film. Or, the quiz could have called her General Leia Organa. Both of which are far more fitting than Princess Leia.

It’s ironic that Disney bought LukasArts. They are the single worst perpetrator of destroying hope for strong women. Sure, they’ve attempted to clean up their image by making movies with strong female leads, but these stories suck (When they choose to write good scripts, I’ll describe them more intelligently and with stronger adjectives). The stories they are pushing on us now will never be as timeless and well liked as the drivel they’ve pushed on us for the past century.

I’m not perfect. I am still what many feminists would call a male pig and have dreams about Leia’s bronze-bikini scene (I can’t help but find that outfit sexy), but I’m also a proponent of equal opportunity for the sexes and for a dismantling of many of the gender-role stereotypes. I don’t even think about it except when analyzing sexism, but 75% of my bosses at work are female, and their sex has never been an influencing factor of why I respect and admire them as superiors. I’ve even been labeled as a feminist. I’m okay with that. I have nieces that I want to grow up to be senators—not princesses. If I have a daughter, I don’t want her to date Hans Solo, but I do want her to be a boss like General Leia and to emulate her many heroic attributes.

I’m not waiting on Disney or the powers that be to reverse the stereotypes they’ve perpetuated. I, as a true man in every sense of the definition, am taking my own stand and encouraging every other guy who takes this quiz and gets a female character, especially Senator and General Leia Organa, to post their results proudly. Be aware that what we do or don’t do enables sexism. Be the change. –End Rant-

We live in an era where free speech is abundant—and I love this. Unfortunately, that same abundantly free speech is often coupled with ignorance and illogical argumentation. Notice how I used the word argumentation. While the connotations of this word illicit meanings of rage-filled, heated, and often violent confrontations, the word itself means something entirely different. The denotation reveals something, well, a lot more logical: "the action or process of reasoning systematically in support of an idea, action, or theory." This is the lovechild of the likes of Aristotle and Plato. It is a science.

Let’s get back to free speech because it is something near and dear to my heart. This is arguably (See how I keep using this word?) one of the most, if not the most, prized, valued, pointed to, and revered freedoms that we as Americans enjoy, yet our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and teachers have failed to educate us on what the freedom of speech means. It means, “the right to express any opinions without censorship or restraint.” Notice that this doesn’t have a caveat about how the expresser of said opinions will be free from looking like a fool—and trust me, I’ve done enough of that in my life to know that it’s not a freedom afforded to me. That would be an interesting world to live in where we got to say whatever we wanted without sounding moronic or upsetting anyone else…

The point is that you can say whatever you like, really! You can do it on YouTube, Facebook, a relatively unknown blog (Oh, that’s me!), the radio, or on TV (If you are lucky enough to have that sort of distribution). That doesn’t mean that you won’t offend anyone, people won’t debate the merits of your argument (There it is again.), or you won’t lose your job. That’s not a protected right, nor should it be. Feel free to argue that point with me, if you choose.

The recent gush of speech from Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty in GQ magazine has a lot of people upset. A&E fired him because of what he said. And that, too, has offended a great many people. It seems that the most common argument being made is that this is an affront to free speech. It isn’t, and it never was. It turns out that his message has not been censored or restrained. You can still read the article here.

A&E made a decision as a business (although I won’t call it a business decision, which I’ll get to shortly) to no longer have Phil on their reality TV show. This was a moral decision based on their belief that what he said was homophobic bigotry. That’s the end of the story for all of us. We don’t need to argue about whether or not you think gays are going straight to hell or if you think god will have to sort them out with the drunks and terrorists. You can think or say whatever you’d like, just like Phil can. Just remember that somebody (like your employer) may not want to associate with you anymore. That’s just how free speech works. Yes, they didn’t likely have any legal rationale for letting him go (I said likely. There are probably a few attorneys out there that will say this is a smart move.), but in the entertainment industry where you can let someone go for gaining 10 pounds, the law isn’t usually on your side. Hell, even Hooters can do that.

Back to A&E’s decision: It wasn’t a good business choice. They are likely to loose more viewers than they are going to gain or maintain over this decision. The demographic for this particular show, as we can clearly see, is not offended by his comments. For A&E (and I don’t know what they were thinking, so this is purely speculative), it was something they felt obligated to do for their own moral reasons, much like the NFL will punish and suspend a player for making comments that don’t fall in line with their code of conduct. He’s been sidelined from the game, but his free speech has not.
 
What makes me happy is that this is the same level of outrage that happens everyday when an employee gets fired for speaking up about overtime violations, unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, and hostile work environments… Yeah… Don't we look foolish.

I haven’t heard it on the Internet today, but I bet there are more important things that we’re missing out on because of this. Here is some news in science. Here is some news that really does affect your personal freedoms. And here is some world news because it’s healthy to know our world.

You're welcome.

An open letter to my little man, Jackson Clay Blevins

I got you a matching hat to wear when you finally make it out to share this beautiful world with me. It's just like the hats I like to wear, but much, much smaller… I completely understand that you will be you and not who I might want you to be. Heck, you might not even like wearing hats. Hat hair is a real thing—especially if you end up having thick hair like your mom and dad (I've broken more than a couple of sets of hair clippers in my day).

Seriously, if you don't like hats, I won't make you wear them. You don't really have a choice about our daddy-son picture with matching hats (Hey, I'm still trying to get over 100 likes for a profile pic, and, uh, thanks in advance!). Until you learn to talk and make your opinions known like a grown-ass man, you don't have a choice. Yeah, you’re going to have to learn that you have to be strong to have choices. The world will try to control you, and you're going to have to learn to stand on your own. You're going to learn. That's how life works, but you'll have me here to teach you, don't worry. And if for some reason I'm not, you've got some crazy cool aunts and uncles that helped me become the man I am: They will do the same for you if I can't...

That’s just plan B, though. I will be here to tell you how life works; it doesn't. It isn't fair, and it's going to be tough. That's my job, to teach you and guide you through finding your place in this world. I’ll teach you to create your own joy. You’ll need to be passionate about something. This world has a lot to offer you, and you have a lot to offer it, but it won’t ever give you anything that you don’t find for yourself (I can hear myself lecturing teenage you about being bored right now.).

The only thing I ever want from you is for you to care. I would love it if you were to learn to sing and play the guitar; enjoy the outdoors and building a fire in the rain; and keep Sundays open for football. But if you play soccer, the violin, and Magic the Gathering comes back and you are the king of that at your lunch table, I'll make t-shirts and cheer you on (I’m going to embarrass you with how much I love you; get over it.).

I want to tell you things, and I want for you to trust me because I’ve already learned a lot of stuff the hard way. For starters, go to your school dance, and be a man and take the girl you want to take. Just make sure she doesn't dress like a hoochie momma (your mom won't like her if she does—trust me on this one.). When you get there, dance like you don't care who is watching because you won't. If you're not embarrassing your friends on a daily basis, you aren't a good friend, and you probably won't have any, anyway. Dare to be different, and don’t care about what other people say or think. Use the haters as fuel for your workouts, practices, and all the times you need courage.

I realize that my last paragraph was a little assuming, but it’s not exclusive. Hell, if you’re the type of guy that takes a guy to a dance, don’t let him dress like a hoochie momma, either (Moms really just don’t like slutty outfits.). This is the other thing I will teach you through my daily acceptance of who you become: There is the world as it is for everyone, the world as it is for you, and the world as it is going to be. Your world is the only thing you can control, and the world as it will be will be because of you. You can change the world, but it might just be on a smaller scale than you would like. Do it anyway.

No part of my existence cares about anything more than you, Jackson, and I can’t wait to hold you and to tell you everything I know and to teach you everything that I can do. You and me, kid; we’re going to do big things… or small things… or everything.

I wish I could start this out by saying that nobody knows what it was like for me to grow up poor, but the truth is that many of you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not special, and many, many people do have and have had it worse than I did. I’m not bitching and moaning: I’m more of a move-on-and-fix-it kind of guy, anyway. The only thing special about me is my voice. You see, poverty and literacy don’t go well together, and I’m a special kind of poor kid. I grew up and bought some new clothes and an education. I learned to blend in, and I’ve been living the Gatsby life ever since.

Jerseys and jeans

Jeans have a ridiculous half-life around the legs of little boys, and jerseys only tend to be relevant for a few years. While other kids were sporting Jordan’s jersey, I was just getting a brand new/old Clyde Drexler jersey (this promulgates my current belief that true hipsters are born from poverty). I know what you’re asking yourself, “You mad, bro?” No, no I’m not mad. I loved that jersey. I loved every irrelevant jersey I ever owned.

My closest brother to me in age, Aaron, is only 2 ½ years older. Right after I hit my first growth spurt, we were almost the same size; what he was growing out of could fit me almost perfectly. If there was one thing I knew, it was that I would be getting those jeans…

I coveted that pair of my brother’s jeans: It didn’t have grass stains, the knees weren’t tattered and torn away from use, and they were short enough that I wouldn’t have to roll them up this time. Brand? What brand, what label? Brands didn’t matter. Besides, unless some other family gave it to us, it was Rustler— some Wrangler knockoff—anyway. This pair would keep the snow off my skin in the winter when I rolled down a hill, built a snow fort, or made snow flavored snow cones.

Being the youngest boy in a family with 4 brothers and 3 sisters meant that everything I owned had been worn by one of my older siblings. It never really felt like anything was ever mine—try to imagine growing up around someone else’s dog, and when that dog grew old, went blind, started peeing in the house, and couldn’t hear, that’s when you got it. Congratulations! But I wanted that pair of jeans. They had some life left.

The snowball effect

It was a little bit like Christmas, but it was a Christmas that you never saw coming. It almost always started from the top, though. Sometimes, my oldest brother would clean his room and figure out that he wanted to get rid of a few shirts he’d outgrown, or one of the other moms at church would give a bag of clothes to my mom, and that’s when the fluffy, white trash bags would start rolling downhill to me. But when? My second oldest brother would get a few new shirts and it might be a couple of days, weeks, or months, but that would make it down to the next brother in line, and he would need to clear out his old clothes, and then Aaron would get one of those bags. And that’s when I knew my time was coming.

Socks and underwear

Yes, when you’re poor, you get these used. I won’t out anyone by name, but let’s just say that one of my brothers earned the nickname Skids. I know what you’re thinking: Gross… Yeah, poverty ain’t pretty. But walking a mile in someone else’s underwear is nothing like walking a mile in their socks. Did you know that the elastic band in socks tends to wear out after a few owners? Imagine how aggravated little ol’ OCD me was when my socks started sliding down and falling off of my feet—worst feeling ever.

Sometimes we did get new socks and underwear, and let’s just say that getting socks for Christmas isn’t as bad as it sounds.

The new outfit

I remember it like yesterday. Mom took me to the clothing section at Kmart to pick out a brand new outfit for the church dance.  I couldn’t believe it. I picked the shirt, I picked the jeans. The price tag on the jeans was more than my mom had planned on, but I was a total brat about it. I just had to have the white-washed jeans. They were so in…

The shirt was a blue-ish purple button up. It was perfect. More than perfect, it was mine. I remember wearing that outfit every chance I had. I wore the jeans until they too became holey. My mom cut them into jean shorts for me, like so many other pairs of jeans, so that I could keep wearing them. That lost its appeal when Maggie made fun of me in the church gym because they were too tight on me. I never wore them again.

The big joke

If there is one universal truth, it’s that people will make fun of you for being poor, for wearing the wrong brand, for having baggy clothes. Kids are mean. I remember going through the lost and found in school looking for new clothes. I found a few gems. I still have the red Structure shirt I found in the locker room bin. The sleeves have holes in them, now (go figure), but it makes a great camping shirt. I can’t forget the sheer terror that overtook me when someone recognized it as being his. I lied about the size and said that my grandmother had gotten it for me for Christmas. I still feel guilty about not returning it to him right then and there (You can have it back if you're reading this!), but I couldn’t take being the kid who wore lost and found clothes. It was bad enough being the home-schooled-Mormon kid.

The Christmas gift

Christmas time was always a stressful time at our house. How my parents afforded what they were able to give us is still beyond me. I probably asked for more than I should have. I can only imagine the guilt my parents faced each year in not being able to make all of my wildest dreams come true.

There was one Christmas that still leaves a sick feeling in my stomach when I think about it. We had just pulled into the Wal-Mart in Bristol when I vaulted out of our 12 passenger van in excitement to run inside and look at all the toys I would never get. Bam! I had slung the door right into the nice, shiny car beside us. I ran around the corner to tell my mom, but I was met by some lady screaming and yelling about all of the damage I had done (it was a small scratch). She started yelling at my mom, and I just knew that it meant I had ruined Christmas for my entire family. My mom was always telling me to slow down, and this time I had done it. My mom was already halfway down the parking lot and didn’t know the woman was yelling at me. I was 4 or 5. I didn’t know what to do, so I just ran after my mom. The lady just kept yelling as she hopped into her car and lite her cigarette.

The whole time we were in there, I was sick with guilt. I couldn’t enjoy playing with the toys at all. I just knew she’d be out there waiting to make us pay for the damage I had done. She wasn’t there when we got out, and we got Christmas after all.

I forgive four-year-old me.

The working class

My dad worked hard. He was always working. He would take service calls at all hours of the night and even on Christmas and other holidays. I didn’t understand it then, but I am so proud of him for that. My parents were hard working people. And they worked hard at home to keep the family going.  If something broke, my dad could fix it. I would spend hours buzzing around him, watching him meticulously take something apart, fix it, and put it back together (I wondered why I always seemed to annoy him, but it makes perfect sense, now). And I learned. I learned how to fix anything and everything, how to make do with what I had, how to take care of what I had, and how to work.

When I was 12, I started my own lawn mowing business. It wasn’t easy getting accounts, but this is where I started making money off of my above-average-intelligence and natural business acumen. Most people were hesitant to give a kid a whack at their precious lawns, so I started offering the first job free, and then I did a job I could be proud of. I never once didn’t get money forced on me for that first job. And I had business cards. I designed them myself. Goodlawn of Springfield (I didn’t want to go violating any copyright laws, and I figured I was the only one in town). I offered military and veteran discounts, too. The old folks loved that one! In the first year, I made enough money to partner with my parents in buying a new Lawn Boy. It was a beauty. I was so proud of it. Before I knew it, I had several mowers, weed eaters, and a trailer—all of which I sold to pay for my first car.

I was buying everything new: new clothes, new shoes, new, new, new. I even started buying my lunch at school. I became a consumer. To fuel this new need of mine in the off season, I made business cards for snow removal. The first snow of the year, I went and banged on every door in my neighborhood.

“No thanks. I’ll do it myself!” SLAM!

Door after door, no takers. I started regretting all the money I had spent on those cards. I was smart enough to put magnets on them and tell each person to call me if they changed their minds.

6 inches of snow later, our home phone started ringing off the hook. I was singing and shoveling snow out of driveways and stuffing green, cold money into my pockets. “There’s no business like snow business, like snow business I know!”

Before I was even 14, I bought my first cell phone so that I could have a business line—and to call my mom when I needed a ride back from a job.

Pocket full of change

When I was still a little boy that couldn't mow lawns, I never had much spending money, so I would buy 10 cent Kool-Aid packets at Food Lion whenever we went. Kool-Aid is the official drink of poor (well, now it’s Mt. Dew, but it was, promise). I stuffed my purchase in my pocket and headed over to Revco (pretty much like a Walgreens) to look at the comic books with my brothers.

I felt a big hand grab my shoulder from behind.

“Hold it right there, thief!”

The manager pushed, prodded, and pulled on me and started searching my pockets. He pulled out my crumpled up Kool-Aid packets and told me that he was calling the police. I was scared and embarrassed. I kept telling him that I bought him, but he wouldn’t believe me. I just had to be a theif. My brothers ran up and started screaming that they didn’t even sell Kool-Aid there (they didn’t).

After what seemed like an eternity, he let me go and told me to leave his store.

I’m glad they’re out of business, now…

Free! Take one.

I learned a lot from growing up poor, and I wouldn’t trade my childhood for yours. I learned that sticks could be toy guns and swords and that there is never a good reason to be bored. The outdoors are the best free experience out there. Books are free, too, at the library. I learned to love reading.

I learned to love the kid in baggy clothes. I learned that nobody was better than me just because they thought they were. I think a lot of my competitive nature came from me wanting to show the world that I wasn’t trash, that I had value. You have value. You are not your fucking kakis.

I have value. Not because of the things I have, now. It was never about the things I have because I never had them. I will forgive a child if he scratches my car. People are people, and things are just things. Live richly like you are poor.

Evolutions cannot be disputed. Well, you can say whatever you’d like: Thankfully, in our country, crazy is a right. Adaptation has been proven in many forms of life. All species change and adapt to survive as a species. This is not an attempt to discredit a higher power. Any scientist that would like to retain that title will not dispute natural selection or adaptation.

As humans, we aren’t changing much physically. We haven’t needed to change for quite some time. Sure, we are getting taller (some of us—not me), more of us have blue eyes (lucky me!), and we’re becoming resistant to diseases, but we aren’t all that different than we were hundreds of years ago.

We have reached what I like to call a Post-Physical Evolution Stage (PPES). We are the only species to have reached this on earth. As David Attenborough, a British broadcaster and naturalist, points out in his work, we are the first species that has chosen to “opt out” of natural selection with the advent and use of birth control. This is big news for the human race.

So, what does it mean? As a PPES, we are now evolving because of knowledge. Our growth and prosperity as a species is now reliant upon what we can pass down, what our children can learn. The survival of our species is directly tied to our knowledge. We live in what may well be the most pivotal stage in human development. Knowledge and scientific discovery is our key to survival.

Intangible sociological concepts have overcome tangible physical characteristics in our evolution as a species. We are different than our ancestors because of how we interact: We have moved (mostly) from the first stages of social interaction—hunter/gatherer societies—into the fourth stage, what Lord Kames called the commercial stage. While property and trade brought about the complex legal systems that our civilized societies now have, it is becoming clear that a fifth stage has emerged: mutual reliance as a race.

With the emergence of scientific knowledge—modern medicine, nuclear science, etc.—we are our own gods, so to speak. We have a never-before-seen control of our own destiny. We can blow ourselves up, fail to invent a vaccine for a super virus, or pass on false knowledge and societal practices that will kill our race. We have entered a new social contract that is directly tied to our lack of physical evolution. Evolution, meet sociology. Mind matters.

So we learn. We adapt. Freedom is no longer a luxury; it is the key to our survival as a race. We must be free and learned. Tyrannical governments have no earned power under this social contract as the meaning of the greater good evolves.

What we choose to teach our children will ripple throughout time. Knowledge can only be guaranteed a half-life: Will our children cling to the morals of a free-society? Only if we teach them…

To learn is to evolve. I choose to learn and to teach. Much of my life has been dedicated to learning, but this learning has only been possible because of those before me that have chosen to teach through their writing (Lord Kames, for instance) and because of those who have chosen to teach me in their lifetime (my family, teachers, and friends).

Evolve your mind. The human race is counting on you.

I’ve been busy, but I haven’t been busy writing. If you’re one of the many people that have continued to visit my blog over the last couple of months, you know this already. I have a million excuses I could share, but the prevailing reason I haven’t been writing is because I haven’t wanted to write about anything. The thousands of ideas I’ve had lined up against the million excuses and battled like Spartans and Persians. The ideas fought valiantly, but they couldn’t overcome the numbers, that darkness that poured over them from above.

The battles continue, and I’m starting to win. Some of the ideas that managed to retreat are even coming back to join our ranks—and we are strong. Our strength is in our lines; I will not send them off to die alone. I will secure their advance. So, for now, I push one clear message, a collage of ideas.

What have I been doing this whole time? Surely the Man of Many Hats has not been sitting idle.

You’re right, of course. I have kept myself very busy. After my friend Clay died, my desire to control my surroundings intensified. Every morning, I’ve woken up and immediately began pushing and stretching myself so that I can collapse into one big pile of horse and rider at the end of the day, hoping to get some real sleep that is untouched by loss and haunting visuals. That sleep hardly ever comes, but I’ve pressed on anyway. And I get stuff done. My new normal is starting to take shape.

Because I’ve been unable to write creatively (music, blog posts, poetry, checks—you name it), my other talents have gotten a lot more attention. The new girlfriend, who has been so wonderful and supportive through all of this, has been the beneficiary of a lot of this unrestrained energy. She even let me make her graduation announcements. It wasn’t a charge I took lightly, and the results show this. I couldn’t be more proud of how this turned out.

Nothing makes a man feel more like a man that being able to make his girl something she can use, and it’s even more of a testosterone booster when she shows it off and brags about it to her friends.

We drove through Texas this spring, and I made her let me take some pictures of her. Despite how gorgeous she is, she doesn't act like she is, so it took some convincing. I took these with my iPhone 5, so they didn’t start out great (besides having the perfect subject), but that’s why God invented Photoshop … And it turns out that I paid attention during my graphic design classes in college.

I added some convincing clouds, changed the lighting, and brought out the blues in the blue bonnets. For those of you who are fluent in Photoshop, you’re probably laughing right now, but I don’t do this shit for a living. I do this on a Sunday night, bat .750 at softball on a Monday night, and play live music somewhere on a Tuesday night. I don’t care about being the best—just being my best, and I do a helluva a job at that …

This last month has taught me so much. It hasn’t come in coherent thoughts. My brain split and pulled apart. My memory and stream of consciousness flew out like the Big Bang. Only just this week have I started to feel my gravity pulling my thoughts back toward me, as they fidget and bump against each other—trying to put themselves back together —to make sense.

That’s how most of my thoughts are, still, so that’s how I write right now. It’s not normally been my style. I’ve been limited to a very straightforward writing process—linear—probably because of all of the writing styles I’ve been taught to mimic over the years. I don’t say this bitterly; I’ve benefited greatly from these styles. My writing is precise, and it is accurate. I’ve learned writing as an instrument, a tool. I see things in sentences that most people don’t. Words break apart like the poles of a tent. I see noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, clauses, asides, and fragments. They pull apart and separate. I see them as parts that my eyes can lift up and rearrange. Ah, technical writing classes …

Creative writing classes taught me to break the rules to express emotion and convey feeling: communicate in a way that makes your audience feel something that you want them to. To mess with the tempo of the reader. To set their pace. Slow them down. And. Stop. Slap a period—zoom from the dash just to show them the difference in your writing and the craft it takes to control them as you speed them through the next section, only to leave them wanting it faster, for you to keep going just a little bit longer. They want you to tell them how to feel. And you will—if you do it right.

But, the technical writing classes taught me all of the rules. I’m good at breaking them. I’ve always been a rule breaker. I’m a rebel, a patriot. My heart bleeds, but it doesn’t bleed red or blue. Red, white, and blue, yes. I’m a family man without a family man of my own, though that may be in my future. I want to do things in life. I have so many hopes and dreams. I have so much more to do, and I don’t know how long I have to do them. It’s overwhelming, really. It’s hard to focus on just one thing, and that’s not my fragmented brain talking. I mean, I did name my blog The Man of Many Hats. I’ve always been this way. I want it all. I want everything. And I want it now.

Right this very moment, I just want a couple of hats to choose from. It’s exhausting.

I already feel like I’m rambling because I haven’t paid much attention to what I’ve written so far. There is no string for you to follow back to the source unless you were in my head this whole time. Be glad you weren’t—trust me. I think I said something earlier about everything I’ve learned recently. I’ve had all kinds of introspective waves of thinking crash down on me lately, and this is what I’ve learned:

The only bright spot in having the greatest trial of your life, to have to see things and feel things that most people shouldn’t, is that when you get through it, recover, you will be the strongest you’ve ever been in your life. It's simple logic.

Nothing is easy just because it sounds like a motivational poster when you type it out (see above). It’s the fucking hardest time of your life, people! It’s going to take time, luck, love, help, and perseverance.

I can’t take personal credit for anything in my life. It’s amazing how much I rely on the people I choose to be in it. Every success I have is not mine alone. I’ve been humbled.

Character tests work with who you are like the levels of ability and skill in a video game. Most games, you improve each separate area in increments independent of each other by gaining experience points and completing missions. Like the games, you can’t grow one area disproportionately from the other, or so it seems. And, I hope it that’s how it works: I need to level up in a lot of areas.

Have some goddamned principles in life. Live by them. Don’t compromise yourself because it’s always too costly. I always respected Clay for his convictions. It was one of the many reasons I looked up to him. My southern upbringing taught me to admire a man for his convictions. It’s a common ground based on honor.

My vision has been blurred, but I can see clearly now … that the rain is still there. You have to look between the drops to see anything. Don’t go to fast. Focus on the important things, and block out what’s unimportant.

Create something in life. The only thing stopping you is yourself. Never be afraid of what’s in this life. It’s only what’s after it that should scare you. I hate to quote RENT, but, yes, to quote RENT—I don’t care what you think of it: “No day but today.” I can always quote some Newsies if you want … :-p

Use emoticons to tell people how you feel, and tell everyone how you feel. Be honest. Don’t hide from yourself. That’s a dangerous game, my friend. Also, I lied. I’ve always been a big fan of emoticons. They may not speak a thousand words, but they can take the place of a sentence or two.

Seriously, a wink can take you pretty far—and get you pretty far ;-)

Sass.

Or, I’m kind of uncomfortable with this situation :-/

Ha, I’m never uncomfortable. That’s your mistake for taking that one that way if you’ve ever gotten it before. I may be weakened, but you’ll never get to see it, unless I want you to, then I trust you. But, I might just want you to think I am, too. I’ll keep you on your toes but make you feel flatfooted. You don’t play chess well without learning how to make moves.

Man, this stream doesn’t even seem to have the same formula for water in it anymore. Do you like it? Do you want more. Either way, I will give you what you really want, even if you don’t want it. I’ll stop ;-)

Being Clay’s friend was truly a gift. If you knew Clay, you knew the honest light that he was able to bring into any room and any conversation. He lived his life hard and completely unfiltered. Yes, his life was cut far too short, but he lived and loved more in his 27 years than most of us, if we’re lucky, will live in 60.

I use to imagine us all growing old together: He’d be there standing next to me (or close to me because picking my best man still isn’t a lock) at my wedding; we’d take our sons camping and teach them the ways of the woods; on Saturdays, we would tailgate before the MSU football games; and on weeknights we’d injure ourselves playing softball at the River—where he would somehow become the best hitter on the team … Okay, so that last one was pushing it. But, we would grow old gracefully and peacefully, reliving all of our old stories and reminiscing about how we got to where we are.

I didn’t know that that was this year. This was the year we would grow old together. This was the year we would share our last memories. One last everything. The stories we shared on our front porch are the only glory days I get to relive with him. All the fears and hopes we shared together are mine, now. And it’s crushingly lonely. He won’t be at my wedding, though I will wear his ashes around my neck, and I will have him. We won’t take our sons camping together. He won’t be there the next time I’m in a fight, either. And, we won’t get arrested for being drunk and disorderly at an MSU football game in our 50s. Maybe that last one is a bonus. Nah, I'll miss that, too.

It hurts. It’s not the normal type of hurt. I’m no stranger to pain or agony. When you live a life of love, you learn to lose because of the temporary nature of this beast we call life. But this—this is different. It’s more empty than what I’ve ever felt before. I can’t see the bottom, and my cries only return to me from the echo of the crumbling walls leading down. Down. Right now that is the only direction.

Sometimes the loss and my experience that night leads me tumbling, bouncing off the rocks only to feel the shock of something, something human—anything human. The numbness that comes from reaching terminal velocity is terrifying. The pain reminds me that I’m alive. I’m still here. And I’m not alone. I have support. I have a reason to snap out of this. And I do.

I won’t ever have Clay as a friend again, but I will always have him. I wear a different hat, now. I wear his hats: what he left for me, who he was. I don’t know what stories I will share in the future to show you what we are all missing; there are so many to choose from. I don’t know how I will ever live in his honor; there are too many ways to honor him. Do I try to be as strong as he was, both physically and spiritually? Do I write and perform more music? That may be hard. He knew all the words to my songs and would sing them around the house and at work. I still hear his voice in my head. Do I go hiking and loose myself in the love of Mother Nature? Do I even have the strength to do anything besides stabilize my life and hold on to everything I care about before it is ripped away from me? I know there is a message in all of this: a lesson to be learned. I will find it.

All in time. I need more time. We all need more time. We all want more time …

I can’t leave this alone without saying something positive and encouraging. During the chaos, a good friend of mine messaged me and told me this:

Live your life that way! People always say that actions speak louder than words. I say do both: tell of love and live in love. Grow old while you're still young. Regret nothing. Remember everything.

Clay would fucking kill me if I ever said, "Rest in peace" to him (that was never his style), so I say, "Keep kicking ass, Clayton Kent Stevens." I’ll be missing you.

Writing is art. Good writing is good art. Words have often been said to paint pictures. They do. They provide a connection between schemas we have already formed in our minds and what’s being communicated to us—in theory. Think of our brains as an unreliable Internet browser. We interpret code and display it for ourselves:

It gets a lot more complicated than this. Like I said, we’re unreliable. We are full of if-then statements: If you smell pine, then think of Christmas; if you think of Christmas, then remember a happy time; if you think of a happy time, then interpret it as either past, present, or future; if you think of past happiness, then feel sadness; if you feel sad, then drink . . .

This is the way we work. This is why art works. Some people are immune to it because they are coded differently, and we all interpret things in our own way because we are all using different browsers.

Why are we so drawn to the arts? We strive for connections, for greater meaning. This is why we create—to share how we see the world. And we need the help. This world is confusing: more beauty, joy, and happiness than we know how to deal with, but it’s juxtaposed against hatred, evil, and sadness. We search for a greater meaning in this mess.

This is why I create: why I wear the artist hat, why I write music, why I paint, why I write poetry, why I write this blog. Why. It is all about the why; to share meaning.

I feel this desire to make these connections and tell the people in the cave what I have seen, what I know.

This week, I wear the artist hat in its most widely understood meaning: the painter.

Those who know me well know that I have a strong spirit and a love for this world despite all that I know is wrong with it. I find the beauty in the dark. It glows and whispers to me, calling me forward to grab it, to hold it, and to know it. I give it a name, and I give it a voice.

I wrote this poem a few years back when I was lost. I stood firm holding tangled Jenga blocks, teetering and tottering above me, while something pulled at all of the wrong ones. I hurt. I always hurt. It’s the price I pay for always loving, for caring.

The tower of uncertainty and pain made me question my ability to open myself up again. Is the price of splendor paid by the temporary nature of everything of beauty—of the death of joy itself? It is. We know this. We live this. It is all around us:

And I had to share it through more than words for all of the browsers that can't display it, so I painted it:

We find hope in the strangest of places. For me, it was the image of a rose, dying in a magnificent display.

I got to the Brown Egg—Springfield’s best-kept secret when it comes to café-coffee shops—a little early, so I found a table and started going over my notes one last time. “Hey, how’s it going, man?” I peered up over the top edge of the papers in my hand to see Tyler Stokes hovering over the table.

He’s young—early 20s—and he looks it. He was dressed like all of the other college kids there: blue jeans and a faded sweater. But he didn’t blend in. He never does; nobody else there could wear a smile the way that he does. It’s warm and genuine, and it makes you feel like he knows something about life that you don’t, and he does.

He put his bag on the table, slid his coat around the chair next to me, and sat down. We chatted briefly about school, life, the weather—but I was eager to talk to him about his music, to find out why he smiles.

He’s not at all what you would expect. My first impressions of Tyler happened while he was on stage with his guitar in his hand. His presence was impeccable. As soon as his fingers slipped around the neck of that guitar, he changed. He aged five years and then commanded the audience like he does his instrument, playing us all note by note.

But at that moment, sitting across from me, he was just Tyler Stokes eating lunch and drinking a root beer out of a glass bottle.

It wasn’t until he brought a song he had just written over to his neighbor’s house, Devon Allman, son of Greg Allman of the Allman Brothers, that he realized that he had a knack for writing music, that he may just be something special. He put it in and played it for Devon:

And he did start writing music—all the time. In high school, he and his friends started a hobby band, Bucket of Truck. It was there that he first started developing his ability to write real songs for a real band.

Unlike some musicians, Tyler’s songs are based mostly on the music:

He writes anywhere and everywhere: his basement back home, a practice room, in the hallway before class, in his dorm room, while driving, etc. He puts a lot of his initial ideas on loose-leaf paper, but when it becomes tangible enough, he puts it all into his computer on GarageBand. He translates everything he hears in his head into parts—4 pieces, 5 pieces, 6 pieces—for his band to play: percussion, bass, guitar, keyboard, vocals, background, and high vocals. It’s a lot of work, but when he has it all together, he can hear if it’s a good idea or not. And then he takes it to his band members where they decide if it’s the right feel for their instrument and offer their creativity and professionalism to the process.

If you haven’t ever written a song, you may be thinking that it’s a stagnant process where you sit down, drop a song, and flush, but, like most songwriters, it takes him weeks to fully write out a song and develop it, usually about 10 hours from start to finish. Only once has he pushed a song out in one sitting. He wrote it in the 30 minutes he had between classes, but, like all of his songs that I’ve heard, it turned out to be the type you don’t flush. It’s called “Shadows,” and it’s been played in St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Nashville.

This sort of thing sounds like it takes a lot of talent, and Tyler agrees, to a certain extent. To him, talent can only take you so far, and the rest is hard work and what you learn along the way:

I’ve known a lot of talented musicians, and, although musically capable, most of them don’t write their own music. And most of the musicians I know that write music, don’t like to play covers. It’s a weird delineation that happens within the term musician. For his part, Tyler attributes this to his lacking the skill set that some musicians have to tediously perfect a song line by line on their instrument, and he speculates, from his experience, that the ability to write a song comes from just doing it:

This isn’t to degrade any musician that doesn’t write music. Some musicians, as Tyler puts it, just want to focus on the art of musicianship, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The art of songwriting is just a different step in a different direction, just like poetry is a little different from technical writing or writing a blog—all of which are forms of writing. Songwriting defines meaning for words, chords, notes, and rhythm. It is the hypertext markup language of music. It takes a musician and a writer, both.

This idea of assigning meaning to words for the audience to interpret can be a bit tricky for a songwriter. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia brings this up in the episode “The Nighman Cometh.” The gang writes a song with the line, “You gotta pay the troll toll if you want to get into that boy’s soul,” and the way that Frank sings it, it sounds like, “You gotta pay the troll toll if you wantto get into that boy's hole." This exact same thing happened to Tyler once:

What does Tyler fear besides being chased out of a bar and being tarred and feathered by an angry mob for singing about sodomy? Snakes, of course. It’s not a coincidence that Satan took the form of a snake in Genesis. Seriously, they are clearly evil. But the greatest fears, the fears that drive us, come from within:

The more I talked with Tyler, the more I realized that he is so much more than his smile, his band, or Tyler Stokes on stage. Each layer reveals more talents, gifts—and humility. His self-proclaimed hidden love is writing music for film, and he’s written music for three award-winning movies, one of which, The Barberless Barber, was bought by a French TV station; he co-wrote “There’s No Time” with Devon Allman, which will be on Devon’s album, Turquoise, scheduled for release on February 12, 2013; and he’s a full-time college student at Drury University, studying to become a music therapist (If you don’t know anything about music therapy, you should. Learn about it. This is the type of musician that chooses it as a major, if that tells you anything).

But his band is his main focus right now. Delta Sol Revival is one of the top bands in town, Tag Magazine voted their song, “Play” the third best new song of 2012, and they are about to release their first professionally produced album this spring. Check out DSR on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, listen to some of their songs, find out where they’re playing next, and go watch them. You won’t be disappointed. Trust me: I’m not a doctor.

He’s grounded, passionate, dedicated—and in more than just music or his music—and that’s why you’ll be seeing Tyler Stokes living the dream, or at least his meager version it:

Wherever Tyler ends up, you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll be out there making good music or doing good with his music—with a smile on his face . . .