Ego Checks, MGMT, and How to Play Guitar Like Alyosha Karamazov

There’s a lot of reasons I took a month off of social media. From getting this website launch-ready to something as small as the lyrics to a song. In short, I was presented with a lot of life opportunities to learn from and I felt that if I really wanted to grow, they’d have to have my undivided attention.

I was struggling to decide which of these lessons I would write about, partly because it feels like everyday now I’m given a different outlook on each one. But after about 2 weeks straight of me chilling at Cartel Coffee existentializing, I managed to narrow it down to three: an ego check, a record and a Russian monk.

Friday, February 2nd.

Basically how it went down was I got scheduled for this worship night with some musicians that I’ve looked up to for a while. Immediately the nervousness started to set in.

I prepped all week, really felt like I was even going somewhere with guitar. I thought things were clicking internally and translating into my instrument. I would even say I felt confident. I drove to the church jamming the songs, envisioning myself nailing the parts I practiced.

Technical difficulties every now and then are inevitable and happened to fall during rehearsal time, leaving us with only about 45 minutes to run the 10 song set. On top of that, everything I practiced playing ended up just not fitting with the rest of the band no matter what I tried.

Rehearsal finished, we went backstage to do the pre-service prayer thing. I’m second guessing every detail of each song, frantically writing last minute chords with a dull pencil on the first piece of paper I could find.

We walked back out from the greenroom.

My hands were literally shaking as I looked up at the stage. I might have even done one of those anxious “gulps” you’d see in cartoons. I walked forward trying to prepare myself for what would be the most humiliating service of my recent memory.

I got up, placed the haphazardly written chord chart down by my pedalboard and grabbed my guitar. Tracks start, vibes are happening and… I could hear everybody else but me.

After growing up competitively swimming, I imagined the whole scenario as basically the race started, every other musician was in the water and there I was still on the diving block… scared out of my mind… watching.

I’ve played enough sets to have had this happen numerous times, usually when it does I can figure out how to navigate the situation to get back on track within a few seconds.

But nah man, not that night.

It was just one more thing to add to the worry and nervousness that had been there in hiding all week. The confidence I had placed in my guitar, which I worked so hard to build up, vanished by the end of the first song. All of those hours of rehearsing in my room felt like they were for nothing.

I didn’t realize until after, but with that mindset of fear and insecurity I decided what type of outcome and what type of leader I was going to be in that moment.

The set ended, I packed up, feeling beyond embarrassed. I was frustrated with myself, the situation, even guitar. Trying not to be melodramatic here, but it was really one of those nights where I left going: "Holy crap, am I even supposed to be doing this?”.

That’s when it hit me. I played an entire worship night and nowhere was Jesus a part of my story. For an entire week, I placed my trust, happiness and honestly, my self-worth into an instrument instead of a God that could have easily taken care of everything I was worrying about. I was just too prideful to ask.

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Then I heard a song, well more like record, cause it's a straight up banger top to bottom: MGMT’s Little Dark Age. Specifically, “TSLAMP” (Time Spent Looking at My Phone).

Not only is the instrumentation incredibly innovative and one step further into the weird alternative vibes my reverb-soaked indie heart beats for, the lyrics are amazing as well.

It starts:

“Time spent sitting all alone

Time spent looking at my phone

I try to pull the curtains back

Turn you off, can't be touched

When all I want and all I know

Is time spent looking at my phone”

And ends:

“You should come with me

We can lose ourselves in nothing

Happy faces from the feed

And we try to turn them into something

Even if you choose to believe that it's empty

You come back to me again

You can go ahead and stop pretending”

For some reason both of these stanzas did a number on me. My life was revolving around other people's opinions, but not even their real perceptions of who I was. Many of those notions had root in the digital façade of the personality and life I was creating on these apps. That's why that ego check stung so bad, my friends that attended got to see a failure of mine and I couldn’t delete it or wait 24 hours for it to go away. It was real.

So I logged out and read a book.

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Which is where I learned the last lesson from a Russian monk named Alyosha Karamazov. He doesn’t play guitar but he taught me a lot about it.

A week before the worship night I was up with some buddies playing a camp in Prescott. There’s this super vibey downtown area, with a rad bookstore I go to whenever I visit. I had recently just finished 2001: A Space Odyssey and Slaughterhouse Five. Both which mention this dude named Dostoevsky (yeah, no idea how to properly pronounce that either).

In Space Odyssey, the last astronaut on the ship spends his free time listening to all of the writings of this guy. And Slaughterhouse has a quote near the middle of a book that reads “Everything there was to know about life was in The Brothers Karamazov, by Feodor Dostoevsky.”

With that in mind, I’m walking down isle of the shop, turn to my right and see that exact book with only one copy left in the entire store. I needed something to keep my mind off of the 30-degree weather, so I picked it up.

.

Now I’d write double the length this post already is trying to explain what The Brothers Karamazov is about, but for the sake of understanding how it changed my view of guitar we only need to know a couple things.

It’s a murder mystery, the book is told predominantly through the dialogue of characters and Alyosha Karamazov speaks less than most of them, even though he is the proclaimed hero of the novel.

I started thinking about how music I am influenced/surrounded by and the mystery in this book, both revolve around details. Some necessary and true, and some that are more or less distractions. Same goes for the pride I had practicing for that worship night. Its very foundation was built on a multitude of specific repressed insecurities that got masked with an ego I used to convince myself I could do it alone. Then I noticed how much social media was enhancing this "me" centered worldview. “Who viewed my story?”, “How much interaction did my last post get?”, “Bro if I chugged this jar of pickle juice would you retweet it?” (actually overheard this once).

Alyosha does a very simple but powerful thing that is responsible for the entire progression of the novel.

He listens.

Sure he talks, but not until he is absolutely sure the one that is speaking has said what they need to say. In the genre of mystery, this is more valuable than any evidence that could be brought to the table.

By asking questions and allowing others to give their account of events that took place, he influences the story in a way so it is told honestly, which would never be done by entering in to conversations with premeditated bias.

This guy was like a freaking Jesus wizard to me man.

So then I started listening to the details of those insecurities instead of taking the easy way out, ignoring them by posting something to make myself feel better for a moment. And no brainer when I found out they are complete lies and have nothing to do with what Jesus has already told me about who I am.

I was getting into this book. Halfway through I started thinking "Okay, so like what if this guy played guitar?". Well, he'd probably be really intentional, every note would have a purpose. But most importantly, he'd listen to not only the musical surroundings he's a part of but the spiritual as well.

If the keys/synth are ripping a solo, he'd be chilling' lower on the neck giving them their moment. Bass or drums are getting nasty throwing in all the sauce, he's holding down the rhythm.

But when he has his moment, that dude would say something profound with his instrument. He listened enough to realize what was a distraction and what needed to be said at the time. Because he wasn't just aware of where the band was taking the song, he was aware of where God was taking it as well.

Alyosha is a crazy deep character that I feel I have to read this book a couple times to have a complete opinion on. But without a doubt, he'd make a great guitarist.

In the end, thats why I took a month off: to listen. And I'm really glad I did.

(As always with these posts, I created a playlist of all of the songs I have been jamming while I was in my little bubble of Fletch isolation.)

Listen Here:

http://spoti.fi/2oyjSgH

Alien Boy - Oliver Tree

Cake - Toro y Moi

Bear Claws - The Academic

Me and Michael - MGMT

Broken Whiskey Glass - Post Malone

Dust - The Neighbourhood

Misty Mountain Hop - Led Zeppelin

Don't Stop - Fleetwood Mac

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - The Beatles

The World is Yours -Nas

Day I Die - The National

Why Won't They Talk to Me? - Tame Impala

DANCE - DNCE

TSLAMP - MGMT

John Wayne - Cigarettes After Sex