The last time we checked in with Patrick Kindlon, his band was called END OF A YEAR. Then it became END OF A YEAR SELF DEFENSE FAMILY. And now, it’s down to just SELF DEFENSE FAMILY. The highly prolific band has been churning out 7″s and splits left and right over the past 12-18 months, and in some sense, it’s hard to believe that this is the same band that released the very “Revolution Summer” full-length Sincerely on Revelation Records in 2006. The post-hardcore/indie-whatever group has seen their sound morph as much as their band name, and that kind of unpredictability as made things awfully interesting. Pastepunk’s James Hepplewhite caught with Kindlon for an absurdly long conversation that’s raw, gorgeously honest, and just a bit vulgar, and we promise that there’s more to come with Part Two in the future. – Jordan

James Hepplewhite: Ostensibly, we are here to talk about the Island Series, yes? So, how did you guys convince Deathwish to send you to Jamaica?

Patrick Kindlon: Here’s the thing about Deathwish that I don’t think everybody understands: Jake is on some real art shit, he’s an artistic dude and enjoys artistic shit. All the bands on the label know this or bands that want to be on the label that need an angle to appeal to the label, just hit Jake on some “hey man, I’m an artist, I’d really like to do this artistic shit” and he’s usually good with it. Tre, who is the other half of Deathwish, is not so much of an artist, but he enjoys anything weird and fun. Between weird and fun and artistic, you can convince those dudes of all sorts of crazy shit.

James: Is that kind of how you’ve convinced them to… help you book a tour of gay strip clubs on the west coast?

Patrick: *laughs* They’re not helping me with that. I don’t even know how supportive they are of my weird touring shit. That’s… not exclusively gay strip clubs we’re touring… Touring to me is fun, but not as fun as people make it out to be. It’s only fun if you have events or interesting stops on the way.

Actually playing shows, you’ve seen us, we don’t play in front of very many people, so to us, we could just as well be playing really hard in someone else’s basement, we could really give a shit. While we like to play, the playing… I don’t need to be in Duluth to play awesome. I don’t care about the shows per se.

I’ve played every scumbag, low life 300 or under cap room in North America at this point, so I don’t get terribly interested in doing anonymous venue A in wherever. To me, doing places that are at least interesting from a venue standpoint, or would provide us a good story…

Part of the reason the gay strip clubs thing came up was because originally we had gotten booked on a straight strip club, or I guess it could be a lesbian strip club, where there’s naked women dancing. Whatever the hell that is. I like strip clubs just fine, but I didn’t want to deal with anybody’s bullshit about sexism or fucking misogyny or anybody hitting me with some shit they just learned in college.

So I said oh, okay, let’s counterbalance this by… throwing in some gay strip clubs?

Yeah. Personally, I prefer to look at naked women, but a show is a show. I’ll do it at a gay strip club, I’ll do it at a straight strip club… I WILL DO IT ANY PLACE THAT’S INTERESTING. I will do it south of the border. I don’t know if they do shows, that’s cool, you know, not south of the border Mexico, but south of the border South Carolina.

Literally, any place fun or interesting. That band Sun, not a terribly dynamic for me personally, but something I learned recently was that they will do tours where they insist on doing irregular venues. Places that aren’t typically venues and are a nightmare for a promoter, and I don’t know how anybody books them, to me, that’s far more interesting. If some kid gets a PA and wants me to play his Dad’s funeral home or a graveyard, or a porno store, that is way, way more interesting than playing a club with an equally shitty PA.

James: Okay. You might have a problems playing a graveyard, the whole respect for the dead thing…

Patrick: Oh, I thought you were concerned about ghosts.

James: There is also ghosts, but bear in mind: this is not hardtimes.ca.

Patrick: They can be conspiratorial, they probably think ghosts caused 9/11.

James: Thank God you went there before I did. Please, keep going.

Patrick: I love hardtimes, don’t get me wrong, I’ll give a shoutout to hardtimes, but they’re on some real conspiratorial shit. Regarding graveyards, I’m a very respectful person, I’ll respect the dead just fine. I don’t see why they need me to, really, I don’t think they’re terribly concerned. Any place that we’re not gonna get run out of by cops in the first 20 minutes is and is interesting, that’s cool.

We’re getting a generator and recording in kind of interesting places in 2012. I haven’t announced this yet, but we’re recording in only haunted places. We’re getting a generator, we’re using the generator to feed power to recording equipment, we’re gonna do interesting places. There’s a haunted castle that we found, we’re gonna do a haunted ski lodge. Here’s the reality: same thing with shows, shows to me need to be interesting at this point in my life, same thing with recording. I read people talk about sonic quality of certain studios and sonic quality of engineers and to me, that’s 88% horseshit, as long as the music is clear and conveyed and I understand what’s going on, I’m happy with most recordings. When I read people’s total baloney on websites these total frauds that talk about 180 gram vinyl as though they know what they’re talking about, I don’t care about the fidelity of the project so much as did it capture anything interesting.

This weekend we’re headed to that KrazyFest event. On the way back, we pass through Centralia, PA. We’ve stopped off there and saw the place, it’s pretty interesting, I don’t know if you know that spot, it’s the one where there’s a coal mine underneath it and the coal mine caught fire. There’s what’s called a coal vein, this vein of coal, once on fire could burn for another 100 years, they don’t know.

So the place is just fabulously interesting from a weird spot point of view and we’re gonna go record on a mound of smoking earth this weekend, with a four track just because that shit is fun.

/INCIDENTAL DISCUSSION OF REDNECKS, HOMOPHOBIA, NECK TATTOOS AND GREYHOUND STATIONS/

James: That Greyhound cross country trip you livetweeted is the elephant in the room, look, at this point we’ve both given both of our say, alma maters great stories

Patrick: You talk about our alma maters as in school, but I feel like I didn’t get my real education until I rode a Greyhound across the United States. I should have skipped college and…

James: *laughs* Just go man, go from here, just start talking and I will let you know if I want to interrupt.

Patrick: I learned everything I need to learn about the human condition over the four days it took me to cross the United States via mass transit bus. It was… I don’t like to get too melodramatic, whenever someone tells me about their problems in life, their weird fucked up parents kept them in a cage in their basement or complain to me about some problem they’ve got I’m reminded that someone just jumped into a swimming pool that was too shallow and broke their spine.

So, all things need to kept in perspective. I’m not going to make Greyhound out to be a Venezuelan prison, but it’s not terribly far off.

James: Would Self Defense Family play in a Venezuelan prison?

Patrick: Sooner than I’d play in a Greyhound, how about that? I don’t know if you ever watch the specials on the National Geographic Channel, which was essentially the film “No Escape”, which was scary as shit, but back to college talk… I feel like many of the views you formulate as a young person, you formulate typically in a vacuum. You don’t have enough world experience to say those things with any degree of conviction.

For example, as a young person, many people hold the value that all people are created equal, democratic elections are an imperfect, however, still the best means of electoral government. These are ideas that you believe in as a kid and then you ride a fucking Greyhound bus and you realize you lied to yourself… because you interact with a class of people on a Greyhound bus that will change your perspective on voting rights, they’ll change your perspective on… you could go so far as forced sterilization.

James: That seems excessive.

Patrick: You know what? Exactly, it seems excessive, but that’s because you haven’t taken a Greyhound yet.

James: I have taken the Greyhound from Pittsburgh to Erie.

Patrick: Not good enough. I need you to go a solid 36 hours. I need you to stop in St. Louis for 4 hours.

James: Why St. Louis and why not say, Utah? Wait. East St. Louis or West St. Louis?

Patrick: Whichever part looks like shit. I thought that was just called St. Louis.

James: My guess is that’s East St. Louis and I think that’s what Dennis O’Neil based Hub City off of, but keep going, keep going.

Patrick: It’s what I based Bartertown from Beyond Thunderdome on. You get on the bus and almost immediately, now I’ve never been to prison, I’ve visited several prisons in my life and I watched an episode of Oz once…

So I think I know about as much as I can without having been there. It is very similar to prison. People segregate by race and try to align themselves with anybody they can identify with visually. Almost immediately, the white dudes gravitate towards each other. So I’ve got dudes that I’ve got nothing in common with, whatsoever,

James: Except for your skin color…

Patrick: *laughs* Except for my skin color, Well, that’s only partially true because these dudes skin color I would define it as weathered and grime covered, so I’m not weathered and grime covered

James: What you’re describing is the kind of nuance you are on Greyhound for…

Patrick: True. So, almost immediately, people start to define themselves by race. That’s a little… alarming to someone like me that is not on Greyhound for the friendships, or the gang affiliation. I’m not there for either one. So when dudes need my attention suddenly and want to talk to me unspoken racial thing they do happens, they then feel totally at ease talking to you in ways that nobody in the Northeast could ever imagine speaking. For example: Dude is having an angry conversation on the phone with the $200 a week motel he will be staying in when he arrives in New Jersey and he’s saying “you quoted me at $200,” and obviously, the lady on the phone is telling him $250 now, so he’s getting angry.

He gets off the phone he turns to me and says “these fucking Indians” and I’m looking around, thinking Jesus Christ, I don’t care if you’re racist, it doesn’t do anything to me, but what if there’s an Indian man on this bus, that’s not very couth, my man… and then then! he turns away, looks forward, then turns around to me again and says, “Just like the f-ing Jews.”

Now I think his rationale was that there’s no Jews and no Indians on the bus, so he’s clear to do that. But… I could be Jewish. It’s not like he’s talking about, it’s not like he turns to me and says “These Nigerians”, because I don’t look very Nigerian, but I do look convincingly Jewish enough, I could be Jewish, I should ask my mom, I don’t know, maybe I am Jewish.

So it’s weird to me, that somebody would just offer weirdly anti-Semitic language to someone they don’t know their background, what if I date a Jewish girl? That is the sort of dialogue that you run into on the Greyhound. Now don’t get me wrong, I respect honest speak, I like the fact that the people on the Greyhound they don’t censor themselves in any way, that’s cool

James: Wait wait wait you were just talking about how their lack of censorship with that stuff makes you uncomfortable…

Patrick: Right, right that’s what i was going to get to. While I respect that they just let it all hang out, if I was in the room with the ten smartest human beings on earth and they were letting it all hang out, no filter the ten smartest people on North America are all offering their opinion to you…

Listen, a lady sat next to me at a bus stop, she’s a 30 year old black lady, hooded sweatshirt, sweatpants, headphones. Just looked like a lady. I had no opinion on her when she sat down, and she turns to me and she says, well, this is after pleasantries, and she says “It’s nice to sit next to you” and I said “thank you very much”, she says “I just can’t sit next to the blacks.” And this woman is as dark a woman as you’re going to come across outside of West Africa.

I don’t know what conversation I’ve been invited into here, I don’t know what… she proceeds to explain to me all the things that are bad about African Americans. (Her list is very long, by the way.) She goes on about this for a long time with… slightly more tact than the guy that offered the sentiment about the Jews.

To put this in perspective, I ran into confusing racism on that bus, so as a person that, I’m probably not the most progressive dude on earth but I would never not identify myself as a racist, so… to be on that bus already there’s a lot of… I’ve entered a strange cultural thing going on, where certain things that I was taught as a kid are not acceptable are suddenly acceptable.

Let’s talk about what else was acceptable: Sexual assault, that’s pretty acceptable. I wake up at 2 a.m. to screaming… and if you’ve ever woken up to screaming on a Greyhound bus, you’re really thinking the worst.

James: *laughs*

Patrick: My first instinct was to put my head between my legs because I was waiting for gunshots.

James: *sobbing, laughing* I laugh because otherwise I’d cry.

Patrick: Laugh all you want, I experience misery so you can experience joy. There’s screaming and I look back and there’s a man being restrained and a woman screaming at him. The woman is saying “you f-ing pervert, get the hell away from me and give me back my damn money.” Bus driver pulls over says “Allright, what’s going on here?” This dude, has solicited this girl for oral sex, when she refused, he robbed her.

I want you to think about this dude. This dude basically is a laser of anti-social behavior, like he is the most concentrated anti-social behavior I’ve ever heard of. Like, only if he had a mace that he just swung around randomly, could you be any more anti-social than this.

James: So, what you met was Chaotic Evil guy on the bus.

Patrick: No question, Chaotic Evil guy on the bus. By the way, we’re trying to figure this out, bus driver is trying to get to the bottom of this thing. Lady in the back, apropos to nothing, like she’s not involved in this in any way, she’s fifteen seats back, she just starts yelling at the top of her lungs, “y’all motherfuckers better figure your goddamn shit out, because baby’s got to go to school goddamnit!” And she’s screaming this.

Now, if you’ve ever been some place where the law of the jungle actually reigns…

James: Yes, it’s called the State of Warre.

Patrick: I WAS THERE. Everybody looks at this person that is losing their mind seemingly having nothing to do with the actual issue, and the whole thing dissolves, like we stopped talking about the fact that this woman was assaulted, we stopped talking about the fact that she was robbed and the bus driver sits down and starts driving. Actually, the guy that assaulted comes to sit near me. That was the only change. We never got to the bottom of whether or not she was robbed, we never got to the bottom of her allegation of sexual assault, so…

The bus in every way that I can quantify was a lot like Lord of the Flies. I was waiting for someone to throw a rock at my head and say “Shut up, Piggy!” I felt like I was Piggy on Lord Of the Flies.

James: To get back to the Deathwish stuff, which I hope you don’t mind talking about, for the haunted stuff in 2012 are you guys just recording stuff you’ve written already or are you going to jam there?

Patrick: We do both, for a full length, we’re gonna write music.

Here’s something that’s really interesting: The music of ours that people like best is songs that we wrote in the studio with no prepared riffs or parts or anything. That’s…personally, I don’t care too much if people love it or don’t love it, but the new full length I’d like to be much more methodical than anything we’ve ever done and much better planned out, but for seven inches, I don’t even like to go in with lyrics or lyric ideas. I like the band to come in totally naked and write a song, I like to sit down and then weirdly people seem to like it.

People seem to love those songs, but not to get too heavy on it is that it’s a thing a lot of bands don’t seem to get, is that there’s something about slowly making love to your old lady and building it up, but there’s also something to be said for nasty, quick sex that people like because it’s dirty and fast and fun I think that’s what people should try more. People should go into a studio naked, no songs and see what happens, because what you get out of this is quick, maybe stupid, maybe out of every five songs, three and a half are really good, but that’s still really awesome because you made something out of legit nothing you came and you just fucking…

James: Did some artist shit?

Patrick: Did some artist shit and it’s weird to me that people are scared of that. Because seven inches, I keep saying that I’m gonna stop making that I’m gonna stop supporting seven inches because they’re so damn wasteful, the vinyl process is so dirty and so anti-Planet Earth that I just want to get away from it, but as I haven’t done that yet, I gotta say that seven inches, singles, EPs, vinyl or cassette or digital, it doesn’t matter. to me they work best as short idiotic explosions of bands just jerking around and that’s how I think they sound best, and that’s what I think is most interesting and I’d like to see more bands do that.

For example, when we record this weekend, I don’t have any lyrics and I don’t think the band has any riffs. We’re just going to a field with an electric/acoustic and plug it in and see see what the fuck happens. I’m sure some dude who… some band that’s taking three and a half years to write what in any other era would be considered an EP but is now an LP because LPs are the whole line has shifted and an LP at twenty minutes, the band that takes three years to write it and this dude is probably listening to this and saying Self Defense Family is a bunch of frauds, they don’t even care about their music, they go in and wing it.

I’d argue the opposite. What I’m doing is actual music shit, whereas for example, anybody that saw us in England on our last tour, we played a lot of our songs in a way that sounded nothing like any of our songs.

James: Can you explain that?

Patrick: We’d take slow songs and make them five times slower, we’d jam the end of songs, we’d jam the bridge of songs, we’d extend things by a factor of three or some nights a factor of five, that shit is to me real music shit, because you’re on a tightrope and that’s fun.

There’s two ways to approach it really. You can want to be a machine, and I do respect that actually. When people talk about RUSH, when people say you see RUSH live, which I hope to do on the 22nd, it’s like listening to the CD+, it is so tight and so unbelievably spot on it is a wonder unto itself. And that’s awesome, I fully respect that, but if you are not RUSH, if you cannot do that, then I think it behooves you do jam out to do fun weird shit because there is no point at all to being that band in the middle that just competently delivers a set, no artistic expression and no virtuosity.

James: That’s further on top of playing the songs you’ve already done is not compulsory?

Patrick: I’d agree it’s not compulsory, it’s probably why punk and hardcore music doesn’t have a door price over $10, because people only do what’s compulsory, because people only do the bare minimum, when you talk about other types of music, people are totally willing to pay, go above and beyond. I saw one of those country dudes, one of those arena country dudes, and the performance was next level. I don’t get into that performance bullshit that is so obviously the same town to town it’s some bullshit put on act, I don’t enjoy that very much, but, I have to say, that these country dudes earn their money in a way that quote unquote underground bands do not, because so many underground bands to me, it’s straight up fucking depressing at this point just play their set, with no variation on what I’ve already heard.

This probably has something to do with why people stay home after the age of 25, because here’s the thing: my band has an audience for a number of reasons and I would not seek to put it off on any one thing, nor would I try to blame, I don’t want to sound like I’m fishing for compliments here, I’m… I think part of that is because intentionally or not, I’d like to appeal to the person I am, I’d like to look into the audience and see myself and since I am now over the age of 25, I’d like to see people that age. That doesn’t mean I shit on the 18 year old that comes to my show, far from it, thank you very much 18 year old for coming, but I guess what I’m saying is that anyone that is relying on a fanbase of people the age of 25, is gonna suffer because they’re playing anything akin to punk or hardcore music, because people that age don’t want to go out, they’ve either got families, they’ve got work or they’ve moved on to something they find more fulfilling from a spectator point of view.

So I think some of that obviously has to do with the fact that punk and hardcore bands are so obvious and they do the same exact thing every time you see them, I’m not saying this not to name names but I couldn’t even think of who I would mean by this but I’m trying to think of bands I’ve seen in the last year, there’s certain bands I’ve seen that it’s the same fucking thing every time I see them, why would I go more than twice? After twice I’m cashed, I say “Okay, I know what this is.”

There’s three movies that I’ll watch any time in my life, and other than that, I don’t own any movies. I don’t watch any movies more than once, why the fuck would I? I’ve only read one book more than once…

James: Which book?

Patrick: Once I’ve done it… I’ve done it. I’ve read the Rules of Attraction more than once… well, that’s not true, I’ve read Less Than Zero a few times, but that’s because it was the only book in the room.

James: Less Than Zero?

Patrick: Yeah. I really like Less Than Zero.

James: Okay. You can’t see, but I’m sitting on top of stacks and stacks of books, so that’s a whole other thing… but… to go back even further into the conversation and to keep this thing moving like a downward spiral… the names of people on You Are Beneath Me… I guess the obvious question is why but how do you correlate songs to a person?

Patrick: This is some behind the scenes are shit that the layman may not understand…

James: … that’s why I do these things…

Patrick: *laughs* No… It’s actually the simplest thing in the world: I learn about a person, let’s say it’s an artist or an athlete, when I learn about their personal history, when you learn about someone in that fashion, you don’t get to know them but you read about them. When you read or are told about that person, typically it’s done in life-spanning broad strokes and hyper-specifics that the storyteller might find interesting, etc. That’s the way we tell stories about people.

When you do that, you see people’s outlines. You see what they are or what they convey to the world. that’s something you don’t get from meeting somebody. You might get a feeling from them, but you don’t get them fully. You don’t get their motivations. They’re not a character to you, yet.

When you see someone like that in that way, you see all of them, you see where you and that person have overlap. Maybe you have similar background, maybe you have similar motivations, maybe you have similar anxieties. It makes it much easier to write about yourself if you have this person to tie that idea to. So, when i’m singing about different people on that record, the specifics are to those people, but the sentiment are typically problems I got, which are problems that that person and I share.

James: And that to me is what makes “Eddie Antar” so incredibly interesting. I liked that song and I liked that guy on Wikipedia, the song itself is about how a tree crashed through your roof when the girl next to you was sleeping?

Patrick: Yep.

James: You felt at that moment like a fraud that you couldn’t keep anything together, but you didn’t say anything to her and didn’t wake her up, then I look at Eddie Antar and went, oh hey, here’s a guy best known for a pyramid scheme that also fell through. Huh. I assume I’m barking up the right tree here, right?

Patrick: Now you’ve got me wondering if I should be Mysterious Artist Dude and just say, “I prefer the listener to take what they want from that.” Maybe I should do that shit, I don’t know. For the most part, I consider myself a well-balanced individual, I’m not cutting myself, I don’t listen to MINISTRY b-sides all day, know what I”m saying, but I got my problems, just like everybody else. Chief among them is feeling like, I often convince people on the strength of the fact that I’m cool or interesting but I can’t actually provide them shit. I can’t make a life for them in any sort of way.

Right now I’m trying to go a year without paying rent. That is my current goal. I’ve been tempted, it’s only been two months and I’ve been tempted to want to pay rent some times just to have a place to live, I’m not gonna do it, I’m gonna go twelve months, no rent.

Now, let me ask you a question: Living in the United States in the year 2011, being an adult man, what kind of life am I providing for a woman? I’ll answer for you, a real shitty one.

I’ve written a lot of songs about this, actually. I’ve met some wonderful women in my life and people in general, who put their trust in me and I never rip anybody off, I never scumbag anyone on money, that shit isn’t really a problem I got. Money, that doesn’t mean a thing to me. But I’m somewhat of a fraud, I get people to care about me and then say “guess what, I’m never gonna be able to give you the motherfucking things you like!”

I got a lot of songs about that.

James: Oh God, so “Jeni Leigh”, then…

Patrick: Want me to explain that one now?

James: …Yeah. I… kinda wanted to tease you about it a little, but talk about that one. That’s my favorite song on the record.

Patrick: I like that one too.

James: Wait was that one the one you wrote in the studio?

Patrick: You know what, I don’t remember. For full lengths, we used to be totally arduous, we practiced so damn much, here’s my new thing: People will often times consider it a failure when their band didn’t practice, and I used to get depressed if we missed a week at all. To me: If we’re not recording what we’re practicing, I feel lost. I don’t feel like… because the stuff that we come out with is fun and exciting and rewarding and then if we practice it fifty more times, to me it doesn’t have that anymore. What is thrilling for me is to be at a level where everybody we play with….

When we practiced too much, songs lost their flavor, we would beat songs up until they were no longer interesting. There’s songs of ours that I don’t like, because to me they were over-practiced, or we thought we knew what we were doing because we’ve done it so much, we thought we had a song, but all we really had was something we knew. There’s a difference there.

I like to practice in a studio. Bring everybody together. We play old stuff for 20 minutes to get loose and then we play new stuff and whatever happens happens. When I was a kid, I used to get sad if we didn’t practice once a week. Now? It’s wonderful now. Everybody is always thinking of ideas, not necessarily musical ideas, but just ideas for us as a band, and applying those things on their own at all times. Then, we get together, and freeform collage style. To me, that is so rewarding, listen, if I got any advice for the kids of this world, young dudes that are just starting to play in bands: Just stick with it, because everything is cool and exciting, but when you start to get actually good at what you do and you understand the people you play with perfectly, it becomes fifty times more rewarding.

I understand that it’s also fun to climb a ladder, to want to be on a bigger label, to want to be on bigger tours and that stuff is all fun and exciting and just like anything in life you want to push it to see how far you can take it. When you get a little bit older, and I don’t mean to sound like an ancient person here, I’m not, when you get a little more experienced, because kids that have been playing together since they’re 14, they’ve probably experienced this in their early 20s, but when you understand the dudes you’re playing with and you understand the purpose and the goal of what you’re trying to do, music becomes so fun!

I see a lot of people stop playing and put their instruments down or never do shit again… they’ll say this is my last band or I’m not doing anything after this. I think that’s crazy, because those people should maybe keep going until they find that sweet spot where they understand their reason for doing things. Because once you understand your reason for doing things, music is incredibly fun. That’s where I think we’re at now.

We try not to get too heavy on the subject, because there’s a lot of these bands that are writing songs about being bands and to me that’s very strange and alienating, I”m in a band and I don’t even like that sort of material. So I got no desire to do that, and I don’t want to talk about being in a band all the time, but I, can get emotional on the subject.

I think once you are actually creating real shit that you find fulfilling, it’s worth… if you had to take 20 years until you get to the point where you are creating something legitimate and feel some degree of pride in it, even for four minutes until you get sick of it? That’s worth a lot of shit right there.

James: I’ve never been in a band so… I assume you’re right…

Patrick: Well, hold on. You write, right?

James: I enjoy being told by other people that I am correct, yes.

Patrick: Okay. Same thing with writing. You probably sucked balls when you started, right?

James: There is an argument I still do.

Patrick: For example: I’m a very bad runner. I’m a very poor runner. My shoulders hurt real bad when I run. I don’t know why that is. Maybe someone that’s listening to this can write me and tell me my form is bad. I’m a very piss poor runner. The longest I’ve ever run is four miles. That’s not very far. But when I got to mile two on that four miles, the longest I’ve ever run, I hit whatever they call that in running, whatever that moment is in running, that barrier that is your personal hurdle that you cannot get across, has been overcome. You can just run seemingly forever you only stop running because you have to use the bathroom.

That is a wonderful, wonderful experience. With running I’ve never experienced it again. With music, I feel blessed to say I experience it fairly often now, with writing, I don’t… I still am very frustrated person when it comes to my writing, I have not hit a sweet spot like that yet. I think that almost anything you can do, you will hit that at some juncture and it makes anything you have to do up until that point very much worthwhile.

Part Two to Come…