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Our Own Country from cshindle1 on 8tracks.

It’s the still of the night where I find some of my deepest and most introspective thoughts and dreams. It’s typically the weekend where I can really afford the time to let go of my conservatisms of being equipped to head to work and be responsible. It’s the kind of night where I’ve been able to sit back and reflect on the aspects of my life which are truly most valuable.

I don’t get a lot of time to do it. The weekends are finite and my energy level and inspiration are much more endangered than ever before. That’s what happens when you’re a dad. Not that it takes chemical stimulation, but I’ve been able to unlock some of my deepest soulful feelings with the help of inebriants. Tonight is no different. And with that, I’m caught thinking about my fortunes and how I’ve never really publically let down my veil of secrecy on this blog.

I spend a lot of time pontificating about what I think life is, my lessons I glean from my kids, and how much I love the music and hate ‘the Man.’ Tonight, I spent the evening watching a chick flick. And normally this would mean nothing, but I also stumbled on to a song earlier while working on a Saturday for the man which seemed to prime to proverbial pump of inspiration. This is an entry to the love of my life that has saved me from everything I thought that would take my life.

If I can start with the simplest message; I love you. And this isn’t enough. I still don’t measure up. I think we both know that the last few months have been difficult by our standards. I haven’t been the most open. My communication has been less than efficient. I know I could’ve explained things better, expressed things clearer, been more transparent with my feelings. You could’ve been more connected to me. I’ve felt your distance, like a cold highway to nowhere at times. Some may have been my gross misinterpretation of reality. To that I’m guilty. But some is the plateau of complacency a relationship can reach at times when life trumps teamwork.

Tonight is my night to sidestep the routine and seize that late night moment of tranquility and inspiration to eloquently plant the seed of confidence and concern.

There’s a contentment that you reach in a relationship and I suppose at times it’s easy to misconstrue for complacency. After all, we’re not the youngsters who had the knotted up sexual tension as a result of bad timing and inappropriate circumstances. As everyone knows, I’m still that young boy that met you years ago and hung onto the gleaming hope that you would give me the time of day. Now that I know the time of day and the clock seems to always be ticking forward despite how hard I dig my heels in, we’re growing up and those innocently guilty years are behind us.

And that’s OK. And as easy as it sounds, we can’t lose the intimate focus of love on each other. It’s easy to look in the rear view mirror and evaluate the road that you’ve driven over these years. And it’s obvious that my metaphoric driving hasn’t been the safest or the most insurable. Before you, the official you, I’ve wrecked many a car. My journey has been riddled with horrible decisions where it’s cost me sanity, self respect, and dignity. All for the thrill of the speed of life. And interestingly, coincidentally, or even karmically, you’ve always been in the traffic jam of my life. It took me years to figure out the direction it would take to find the true depth of love.

Shit it may have been a dozen years of criss-crossing you during the gridlock of our relationships. It was easy to wave out of the window and wonder what it would be like to be in the same car. Only years later we are now caught in traffic together. Enough with the car metaphors. Get to the point.

I wish I could. I used to be eloquent. I could tell the story, elevate the audience to a new level of thinking, and connect them to something so deep. I’d been told that I could recite the alphabet and people would listen on the edge of their seats waiting for that next letter. Tonight, I’m struggling to put it all together. I hate not feeling like I can tell you in words how I feel. It’s hard knowing that you feel something so strong and so deep and you’re not able to effectively and eloquently communicate to the one person that needs to know it more than anyone else.

What I know is this:

No words are enough. Nothing I can write here will ever do justice the level of the deepest most soulful love I have for you. It’s more than a peck the cheek or the firm embrace. It’s more than the stern discipline that we team together on our boys. It’s more than the tender kiss on your neck. Even with a vivid imagination, I can’t even approximate a life where you and I don’t drive together. There’s that car metaphor again. If I could just tell you without words. But I don’t know how. What I do know that is that I hold you above everyone and everything.

You represent everything I’d sacrifice everything for. It’s a unit of teamwork where confidence overrides anxiety. I’m learning everyday that the novelty of intrigue and the unexpected can be happily superseded by the hands of time and lovely comfort.

A few years ago, I stumbled onto a book written by one of my musical idols. The concept was something that I knew I would relate; being a punk-philosophied individual now adjusting to the new role of fatherhood. The book was “Punk Rock Dad” by Jim Lindberg the former lead singer of Pennywise. For the punk-uneducated, Pennywise is a working class band from Hermosa Beach, California and have been around for over 20 years. And as most bands of this vintage, they have struggled with the rigorous touring, a lack of finances, substances, authority figures, failures, and now…old age.

Lindberg’s book really resonated with me coming from the skate community. We were misunderstood and hated and trying to determine our identity. Now we’re growing up and have children we need to teach respect and compassion to. I couldn’t put the book down. It outlined the challenges of being an individual within a broken system that you despised, having children in a world that was flawed, and now becoming part of that system you once fought to change. Jim’s intimate description of his emotional awakenings weren’t at all that different from what I’ve felt having Son #1.

About eight months ago, I heard the book’s concept was going to be expanded into a documentary call "The Other F Word." Jim would be the main source of executive production but it would touch some of my adolescent idols who are now middle aged adults with families and lives. It was their story of going from the one ‘F’ word to the new ‘F’ word; Fatherhood. I’ve been waiting months for the Seattle screening. And on November 18th, I was able to have my excitement and anticipation fulfilled.

I wanted to make sure I moderated my expectations of the film. After all, films based on books are typically nowhere near as satisfying. Moreover, this wasn’t necessarily a re-creation of the book; it adopted the concept of punk growing up. The film opens up pretty fluffy mostly documenting the chronicles of the subject fathers in their early years performing and why they got into punk music. Most had somewhat self destructive tendencies and absent parents. The punk community presented them a family that understood them. After all, at the very core of our existence, we all want to be accepted. I wanted to hear more about the inner most feelings of how the metamorphosis has been challenging but empowering and painful. It took seemingly too long to get into it.

But gradually, the film drops into the candid and revealing feelings of these musicians/fathers. Be warned, sometimes it’s inarticulate and profane. But in other moments it’s incredibly revealing and tearful. The interestingly poignant observations from this film weren’t necessarily the revealing moments on screen between father and child but were the raw emotions being described by the dad despite the lack of articulation. At one point of the film, you wonder about the sanity of Duane Peters of US Bombs fame. Driving in his beat up old van he looks lost, degenerate, and is barely understandable.

Later in the film, he breaks away from the saturated drug induced euphoria in a strangely focused moment. Talking about his son Chess, he re-creates in vivid detail the day his son was killed in a car accident. Through the slurs and transgressions, you can envision how difficult it was to see his son’s car tore in two with no body left to identify. The harsh reality of his lost son drives him to a suicide mission. He awkwardly revisits the fumbling for his gun and one drug induced fit later he has the firearm in his mouth. In his description of the moment you can feel life slip away through his tears. And before he pulls the trigger, his other two boys find him and save him from himself. Rebounding, he has found peace in what’s left. Life.

In an equally moving moment, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers provides a contradiction of the popular perception of a punk musician. Coming from a family that wasn’t there for him, he’s solely focused on being there for his daughter no matter where in the world he is. And in what may be one of the most revealing comments of the film, he remarks how he didn’t give his children life. Between the joyful tears of appreciating, he murmurs it was his children who gave him life and focus.

At the center of the film is Lindberg, who finds himself torn between the pressures of the band, making a living and being a father to his three daughters. As his priorities are turning, we see him abruptly leave a worldwide tour in progress without informing his bandmates. He flies back to Hermosa Beach to attend the father-daughter dance with his middle daughter who has never had her father to herself. He recognizes that this daughter really needs his undivided focus. During filming, he quits Pennywise so he’ll no longer miss those milestones; birthdays, first days of school, and dances are more important than the next show in Denmark or Japan.

The film was what I had hoped; an intimate portrait of the misunderstood youth now grown and maturing into fathers. It asks what happens when a generation's ultimate anti-authoritarians -- punk rockers -- become society's ultimate authorities – dads. We're all growing and trying to find our identity and our way. I didn't come from a broken home. I wasn't abused. I was a suburban white kid like so many others. And because it was so homogeneous, I struggled with finding my identity and needed to escape to something different. I found skateboarding and punk rock. I felt accepted and part of something that shared my natural interest in questioning and fighting the status quo.



Now where did you go when you grow up? I feel like this film spoke to the misunderstood creative subset of my generation. And while we all had dissimilar upbringing, we share in a belief of changing the world. I think about it a lot now. I’m still idealistically driven but I'm learning how to be a better father every day. It’s not perfect and has flaws but I focus on what my children need to be emotionally successful in their lives. It’s the examples of hard work, being idealistic and being educated to fight for what you believe in. I don't want them to settle but do want them to push themselves, their beliefs, and ways of thinking.

These are punk rock values and are what inspired this blog. These are the lessons of strength and how it’s OK to feel pain and cry then feel joy and laugh.


A lot of people you cross paths with will always ask what you do for a living and gauge how successful are you. Folks will talk about how their job is their calling and may even rub their success, or lack thereof, in your face. They're missing the point; they're missing what it is to be alive. I was at the emotional bottom when Son #1 was born almost seven years ago. And while we may have brought him into this world, he kept me IN this world. He kept me living with a simple thing called hope and that old punk rock concept of changing the world.

I remember being young and wanting to set the world on fire with my ideals. I wanted to change the world. And now what I’m starting to realize is that I can change the world, I can make an influential difference on a system. The way I can change it is by raising better children.