Richard Radstone 
“WORD SHARE” reach out
Please send a photo of yourself, a friend, a family member, or anyone you can find holding their written word. It does not matter what language, if the spelling is correct, or even how good the photography is…
…What does matter is that the word is honest and comes from the heart.
From Lyndel: Australia, Murwillumbah, Mt Warning – A prominent feature anywhere in the Tweed Valley. We live in a caldera (extinct volcano) and this mountain is what remains of the plug of the volcano.
“WHERE WE LIVE” reach out
Please send a photo taken within 3 miles of where you live. Make it a scenic or a place representing your life and culture – you can even take a picture of your home or a room in it.
Gonna let it flow, as being on location prepping for a production I’m directing this week, time is crazy crunched today. But in a weird way in introducing today’s strangers-now-friends, music roadies Ian and his working buddy who prefers to be called Dr. Fresh, it just seems so appropriate.
It was last night that I met them, a couple of guys sitting fireside in the Burbank Marriott courtyard. I introduced myself as they welcomed me into their rather colorful conversations about roadie life—I was home.
A say colorful as both an understatement and a testament to their authenticity and integrity. Two guys who have seen a lot and are living examples of what it means to respect your neighbor as well as stand true to a word so commonly misunderstood: Respect.
We talk shortly about our experiences, commonalities, and differences. Throw some one-liners, toss a few unmentionable references (yup, keeping this PG-13), and the general harassment expected by working buddies. They even tolerated my Sidewalk Ghosts soapbox. I’m telling you, I love these guys. Then I jump right in. Ian, what’s your why?
“for me, it’s about human connection. It’s about how you relate to people.”
“Your question is why?” he further sums me up. “And I say, why care? Yeah. Why care is the question because you already said it yourself. Every single person is completely different. So why care what anybody is? The why is because everybody’s why is so different or so personal to themselves. So, why care?
I don’t mean to make your question sound like it shouldn’t be asked, because it should be asked. But why care Why? It doesn’t make any sense. Because we’re all just living our lives. We’re all just here, you know. You can label anybody.”
Ian points to Dr. Fresh. “He’s a guitar tech. I’m a drum tech.” He gestures toward our surroundings, “or he’s this person, or whatever. But what we see might not be our real personalities. Nothing defines us entirely. So why care? If you have an opinion as to why, you’ll say, well, this is why I think everything is. But it’s not going to affect anybody else in a way that really affects them. And they’re probably not going to change their answer. They’re not going to change their mind about how things are, or why things are. So my answer is why care?”
I’m telling you, Ian is a deep thinker. His perspective gained from plus 20 years front and backstage of many major acts. His thoughts are very profound and relatable to all the crazy stuff that’s going on in the world right now. A refreshing point of view compared to all the misused hate, tolerance, and understanding. Words that began as good motivations that are slowly becoming weaponized and argumentative. Yet here we are, a bunch of dudes who don’t even know each other sitting down and managing to see the value of one another—as I said, I love these guys.
We talked about why people get so intolerant and looked at the notion of it’s OK to dislike. But in that outlook, the importance of integrity and the rules of empathy toward others grew.
Ian continues, “if we go out there in the world, and I’m learning this lesson hard, it’s like, no, that person really sucks. Yeah, you know, but they’ve got their own life going on. There’s people that love them of course, but for me, they’re toxic and I want nothing to do with them. Yeah, ever.
But they’re still human. Yeah, you might hate every single thing about that person. And then if you saw them about to get, like, decapitated. Yeah, like a windmill has its pieces stripped off of it by the wind and then coming at they’re neck. You might still actually tackle them so that that thing goes by and they’re still alive because we’re empathic in the way that we would want to save a life, even if we hate that life.
I try to be a decent human being,” Ian tells me, “you know, like you guys have integrity,” he points to the doctor and me. “You’re not going to bag on somebody else. Now we’re getting into culture. You’re getting how you treat others. Sure. How do you perceive the bullshit? How do you not go back to bullshit stuff? Yeah, it’s happening everywhere. And you find that those people that do what you do. There’s a range of people who will follow those rules and not follow those rules. And that’s what happens with us to where we feel this way and where I’m 20 years in, and those people exist. People that will totally, like, make everything that they’re doing about themselves and not about the artists and not about their product. But you learn to kind of read the artist going, Oh, I’m stressed right now, and you learn to look back and make sure they’re comfortable as fuck. Yeah. When they just go, hey, here we are, and that’s my guy and blah blah blah. To hear them say, I like you. Because for me, it’s about human connection. It’s about how you relate to people. Can you sort of take their experiences and make them something that makes you go, Oh, if that guy had that experience and I can relate that to what I do, to what my daily life is like, or to what my goals are.
“I read this article about the gray rock theory about how narcissists need to have a drama thing happening around them. They need to be the center of attention. And if you can extricate yourself from their story of themselves.”
But what about those people who truly hurt you? I ask. The Doctor steps up.
“So I dealt with some narcissists in my family and professionally. And I had to be around them. I had to deal with it. But eventually, I didn’t anymore. I read this article about the gray rock theory about how narcissists need to have a drama thing happening around them. They need to be the center of attention. And if you can extricate yourself from their story of themselves. From what’s happening in and around them, you are no longer an extra on the set of their life. I’ve done that with a number of people and it helps my life so much. To just slowly make myself not important to the drama of their life.”
“There’s a T-shirt that we’ve all seen on tour.” Ian concludes in his signature style of language-filled humor, “it says, I have fucked up way bigger gigs than yours. Yes, that’s a T-shirt that just exists. It’s posted on different venues and stuff. Yeah. You know, as an artist, please forgive me, but I’ve fucked up bigger games than yours.
Shit happens and fess up to it. Relax. Don’t try to hide it or anything. We all know this can happen. So just let it be and we’ll get through it. But there’s so many people that can’t handle failure, and I think it’s due to the social media thing.”
Ian, Doctor Fresh, keep up the good work, the better times rolling, and I’ll do all I can to keep my eyes focused on the wings. Rock on my brothers!!
Talk tomorrow my good friends,
Richard
He calls it a metaphor for life. A concept that, as today’s stranger-now-friend Chava reveals his story, is an idea that hits me deeply as I reflect on the years of my existence.
“There are days that you think are impossible, and then there are days that you couldn’t be happier…” Chava begins.
“…and just when you think you’re done climbing, there’s always another hill. You realize how little you need to live a happy life, because you’re carrying everything with you. You find out that at the end of the day it’s all about people.
Everybody gets along because we all have the same goal. Right? You could do it for religious reasons. You can do it for physical exercise. You can do it just because you need to meditate.”
So what exactly is the it Chava is speaking about? And in that it, why did he walk 500-miles in which he left his phone at home? A trek where he pushed off his stress, disengaged from his comfortable world, and carried only one responsibility with him—that being: His teenage son who chose to join him on the journey.
They call it: Camino de Santiago—and on it, a path labeled The French Way. An experience that, passing through Pamplona, Logroño, Burgos, and León, covered footpaths dating back to ancient pilgrimages. A decision brought on by a moment of life analysis, and one that has now reframed the way Chava currently looks at all things. And as I better get to know him, it is not hard to see the refreshed man he is.
So I sit here and write—my room window open, and ambient iTunes playing, as I do my best to honor my pledge of transparency: Doing what I can to be entertaining and vulnerable as I author this daily blog. An effort I tribute to you by revealing both my whys and whys shared as we seek a more collective answer to the same.
Chave speaks of his kids and the experience they shared on the Camino.
“It’s a beautiful thing if you ever find yourself in a place where it seems that you can make sense of it all.”
“We may not have the time with our kids that we think we have. So the first Camino was very very somber, but very uplifting at the end when I walked with that one with my daughter. The second time I walked it with my son and it was just the opposite. It was very joyful.”
He returns to his Metaphor for life, “you know, but it’s a beautiful thing if you ever find yourself in a place where it seems that you can make sense of it all.”
A feeling he recalls as he thinks back to June 2011—the starting day of his first Camino walk.
“We started walking and after the first day, I thought it was a mistake. It’s like, I’m not going to make it this! It’s awful! It was painful. It was the first day. It was just straight climbing, and the next day it was straight down. I had blisters. My back was hurting. My feet were hurting. But there’s this other thing. I think it’s probably one of the most beautiful things about the Camino. That is, you experience all these traditions and rituals and stuff, you know, and one of them is you have to take a rock from where you live. I remember I took a rock from my yard. It was with me throughout the hike, and as you walk, you transfer all the bad juju and regrets into it. All of the emotional garbage you have you just transfer into the rock.
I remember walking up a hill in a swampy area. Then you turn, and there it is. It has a wooden pole on top, and that’s where you leave the rock. With it, all the emotional garbage that you have been carrying with you.
When I dropped mine, I started getting very emotional as I looked at the hill and realized it was not a natural formation. It is a hill made up of all the rocks that people have been dropping there for 1200 years.”
“I know this sounds hoaky, but it was like I found the purpose of my life, you know? And that wasn’t why I chose to do that walk. It was more like a why that was chosen for me—and I just went along for the ride.”
So Chava left his past hurts on a mountain of unknown pains. A gesture that, regardless if left on stones at the Camino, or discarded in our own ways, allows each of us the same freedom—the gifts of healing, forgiveness, and the realization of the worth of a human being.
“I know this sounds hoaky,” Chava tells me, “but it was like I found the purpose of my life, you know? And that wasn’t why I chose to do that walk. It was more like a why that was chosen for me—and I just went along for the ride.
The thing is, we try to control all the things. The I’m going to go there. I’m going to do this, and the shit that happens. And it’s almost like the Camino says: No, you’re not the one in charge here. You know, you’re going to do things, and things are going to happen according to what I have planned. And for me, I learned that you just have to give in, and when I did, I was giddy stupid. I completely forgot about everything. All that I had planned and without a doubt every time there was a challenge I hadn’t anticipated, the outcome or the improvisation we did got us through. And it was way more than what I had planned for. That’s what I mean by it’s like a Metaphor for life.”
I ponder the title of the journey Chava traveled. Pause my intellectual self and listen beyond me to understand the big why as it applied to the El Camino—translated to English: The Way.
It’s beginning to rain outside, and as I stand up to close the window, it hits me: A higher recognition of the lessons learned and taught by Chava. Even a look at a possible whys, or the ways, we are each facing in our unique pilgrimages—and at the base of this finding, I can only find one constant. Symbolically, yet another mountain of stone that, still in the making, has the foundation to carry so many of us.
A simple fact that we each have hidden rocks, even a revelation to direct us in more compassionately viewing those around us. A choice that most likely has not been made on 500 miles of open trail but is one that we still can equally travel.
So to Chava, thank you for all you have shared and for the person in whom you are becoming.
Talk tomorrow my good friends,
Richard
“THERE”
In the blink of a breath,
he can live.
In the strike of a thought,
he can dissolve.
and…
in the blast of a diminished moment,
ignored can he be.
Never to be seen,
always to be heard…
he lives at your will.
A refiner who,
out of mind,
and never in view,
is ceaseless to carry you.
Over the pain of trials,
beneath the canopy of joy,
and,
in your every hour,
he dwells,
A constant nurturer.
An abrupt refiner.
A living presence
who,
above your pain,
and,
despite your laughter…
ever thrives.
Never Departing,
Often Reviled.
The Alfa.
The Omega.
Creator of magnificence.
Destroyer of crumbling coffins…
can be HE.
The hailed Redeemer.
The blamed Masochist.
All the while,
Listening.
All the while,
Seeing.
All the while…
THERE.
“We all looking for someone who will understand us.”
Subscribe and listen to “Sidewalk Ghosts” on your favorite podcast app.
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“Sidewalk Ghosts” on your favorite podcast app.
“The wiser he thinks he is, the more insane he looks in the mirror of reason”
Subscribe and listen to “Sidewalk Ghosts” on your favorite podcast app.
Subscribe and listen to
“Sidewalk Ghosts” on your favorite podcast app.
“The most important thing in your life is family”
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“Sidewalk Ghosts” on your favorite podcast app.
Boise, Idaho, USA
“WHERE WE LIVE” reach out
Please send a photo taken within 3 miles of where you live. Make it a scenic or a place representing your life and culture – you can even take a picture of your home or a room in it.
Everywhere we would go, people would stare at him… and it made me so mad, we were such good friends…
Subscribe and listen to “Sidewalk Ghosts” on your favorite podcast app.
Subscribe and listen to
“Sidewalk Ghosts” on your favorite podcast app.
