A Wrestlemania Reflection

11 years ago today (April 3, 2005) I attended Wrestlemania 21 at The Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA. I went with my brother, friends from college and friends from high school. We couldn’t all get seats together so my friends from high school were seated right across from us. It was a magical day for a kid (at that time I was 21) who had been in love with pro-wrestling for his entire life. I finally made it to the Show of Shows. Wrestlemania. It was a good one too. It featured the first ever Money In The Bank Ladder Match. It featured two standout matches - my favorite wrestler Shawn Michaels versus Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle and The Undertaker versus Randy Orton. The event also featured Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin and Roddy Piper. In the co-main events Dave Bautista, who starred in the latest James Bond film and plays Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, wrestled, Motorhead played live and, John Cena won his first ever world championship. Since then Cena has won it 14 more times and become the undisputed face of WWE. Sadly, it was also the last Wrestlemania match for one of my favorites - Eddie Guerrero who would pass away in November of 2005 from acute heart failure. After Eddie’s passing I slowly lost interest with wrestling. Wrestlemania 21 would be the last Wrestlemania I’d watch for 8 years.

I am not sure how I reconnected with wrestling. I really don’t. I very rarely watched it on TV over the next 8 years. In fact the only time I would watch a match was if it would be good enough to become part of a social media news feed but safe to say around three years ago I got hooked again. Last year I was lucky enough to go to my first ever house show in Madison Square Garden. Right behind Wrestlemania this is probably one of the coolest things you could do as wrestling fan. It was a wintery late February night. I was fortunate to attend with a young woman whom I had been dating and had convinced myself I had converted into a fan through watching the E! reality show Total Divas. I was wrong. Half way through a 3 hour and 15 minute show I looked over and though ‘Dear God! She’s bored out of her mind.’ It has been 45 minutes since her favorite wrestler - Nikki Bella - had won her match and I dreaded how much she was going to hate sitting here with a bunch of ‘smarks’ for the next hour plus. 'Smarks' or ‘Smart Marks’ is a wrestling term for fans who know the product is fake but still love it anyway - often times too much. Smarks are the people who complain about why Wrestler A isn’t a bigger star, or why Wrestler B is in the main event when he doesn’t “deserve” it, etc. etc. etc. Lucky for me she was loving and just happy that I was doing something that gave me joy. It was a special night and one I haven’t forgotten.

One of my takeaways from that night was that while a lot of the smarks were annoying to be around - they were often joyless and sarcastic, I got a huge kick out of watching the kids in the audience. It reminded me that wrestling isn’t FOR me. I mean I can still enjoy it - and I clearly do - but it’s for kids. These are characters. Men and women dressed as good guys and bad guys, monsters and myths. The awe and excitement that I saw in the little boys and little girls made me so happy. It reminded me of what I must’ve looked like and felt like watching wrestling Saturday mornings after Catechism classes at the local church. My brother and I learned the sacraments from 10:30-11:00am and then we learned more lessons about right and wrong from Hulk Hogan, The Million Dollar Man, Randy Savage, Sgt. Slaughter and The Ultimate Warrior from 12:00-1:00pm. The lessons were taught in their interviews and in the ring. The bad guys telling us how terrible America was and how anyone could be bought for the right amount of money. The good guys telling us to train, say our prayers and take our vitamins, and to fight hard even when the odds are against you. 

Today I will watch Wrestlemania for the first time with children. I’m anxious to see what it’s like. I hope they are filled with the same awe and wonder that I left watching my first Wrestlemania 26 years ago. Wrestling isn’t for me. It’s for them. It’s about taking simple stories and simple men and women and transforming them into something larger than life. Larger than life characters for little kids and the little kid that lives inside of us. It’ll always be for kids and that’s how it should be. If not, how else will you have a a new generation of young men and women who drag helpless dates to wrestling shows.

This Must Be The Place - The Talking Heads

I don’t know when I first heard it. I can’t even remember if I liked it. Even still, "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)" by The Talking Heads remains one of the songs that seem to be the perfect soundtrack for most any kind of mood I find myself in. 

The song was part of the Speaking In Tongues album and was released in November of 1983. Lead singer and writer David Byrne said that he wrote "This Must Be The Place" as a love song:

"That's a love song made up almost completely of non sequiturs, phrases that may have a strong emotional resonance but don't have any narrative qualities. It's a real honest kind of love song."

Byrne mentions the thing I love the most about the song, the phrases in the song have such wonderful emotion and vivid imagery but there is no narrative. They are stand alone pieces. I believe that is why I can always go back this song whenever I am happy, sad, in love, out of love, lost or found. I would say that over the course of the last six years whenever some important in my life seems to leave or exit I play this song on repeat. It just makes sense for me. 

There is always a line or lines in the song that can reflect the moment in my life. Music is magic. It’s the soundtrack to my life (all of our lives really). When I am in love I can connect with the following verse:

I got plenty of time

You got light in your eyes

And you're standing here beside me

I love the passing of time

Never for money, always for love

Cover up and say goodnight, say goodnight

There have been plenty of times since I came to New Jersey where I feel lost. Where I miss home and my friends. Then I realize the place I long for is 3000 miles away. Those people aren’t anywhere near. I remember that this is where I live. This is where my life is now. It’s at those times that I can hear Byrne singing:

Home, is where I want to be

But I guess I'm already there

When I was in my last relationship there was a line that reminded me of my girlfriend and how I felt like I belonged wherever I was because she was there with me.:

I come home, she lifted up her wings

I guess that this must be the place

I can't tell one from the other

I find you, or you find me?

There was a time before we were born

If someone asks, this is where I'll be, where I'll be

Tonight as I write this I am sad. A little more then deflated. I feel like I like a direction, purpose and energy that I had only a short time ago is lost and cannot find. It reminds me of one the final lyrics of the song.:

I'm just an animal looking for a home

And share the same space for a minute or two

It’s a sad notion. It’s how I feel tonight. Just a dumb animal looking for a place and time where I belong. But with the next line there is hope. Hope of finding that place, that time and that person who will make that place “home”. Of course there is hope, it is a love song after all:

And you love me till my heart stops

Love me till I'm dead

At the end of the interview that I quoted above David Byrne says this about his hesitation and approach to write a love song.

"I don't think I've ever done a real love song before. Mine always had a sort of reservation, or a twist. I tried to write one that wasn't corny, that didn't sound stupid or lame the way many do. I think I succeeded; I was pretty happy with that."

Well, Mr. Byrne thank you for this song. It has meant a lot to me the last few years. I am pretty happy with the way it came out too.

The video below is from the movie "This Must Be The Place" starring Sean Penn in what I can only imagine is Penn's attempt to look like Robert Smith from The Cure circa 1983.

Enjoy.

Daniel

Daniel is the Elton John song that means the most to me. I’ve always liked it. Even as a kid being 7, 8, 9 years old i remember liking it whenever it came on the radio. As I grew older it went from being just a song I liked to hear to meaning so much more.

I grew up in a very troubled home. I can honestly say that I don’t ever remember my parents being in love. i can’t even recall them being affectionate with one another. I don’t remember flowers or cards. I saw a lot of violence and anger in my home. I saw drug abuse and despair. I grew up and saw one parent who was broken, and through their pain break they broke other parent. Both of them damaged and hurt beyond repair. They’ll never be whole. I didn’t witness this alone though. Seeing all of this with me, experiencing it with me, was my younger brother. 

One of the biggest burdens that I carry with me is a sense of survivor’s guilt. You see, growing up I had one special skill, talent, passion, knack or whatever you want to call it and that was my performance is school. I was a really good student. Teachers loved me. I loved to read. When a Scholastic’s book order form came to school I couldn’t have been happier. More books to read. New things to learn. I was good at something. Steven was good too. Just not as good. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for him to be compared to me - not just at school but at home. To make a long story short, education became my ticket out of my circumstances. When I turned 18 I left and went to school two and half hours away from home. I met new friends and new people. I saw things that I never saw growing up. The problems of home seemed a million miles away. Steven never found his ticket. 

At some point early in his life Steven had to endure a lot of pain (physical and emotional) for not having school come as easily for him as it did for me. By the time he was in third grade he would hide his homework before my dad got home. By fifth grade Steven almost never “had homework”. Steven was smart. He was good with his hands. He could solve puzzles pretty well. But Steven never got to leave home. He never got to meet people and see places that would let him know there was something better. When we growing up together at least we had one another. We could be there for each other and I could try to take care of him and he could try to take care of me. The one day I turned 18 and I was gone, and he was still there. Still there dealing with all of it on his own. I’ve always felt guilty about that. I always look at my life and Steven’s and wonder “why me? What did I do that I was saved and he wasn’t? Could I have done more for him?”. 

As I got older and I listened to Daniel it would make me cry. It would remind me of Steven. Daniel was written by Elton John’s long time collaborator Bernie Taupin. It was supposed to be a song about a Vietnam veteran who comes home to adulation when all he wants to do is go home and forget his time as a soldier. However, a verse was cut from the original draft of the song and left the song up to much interpretation. For me the song has come to embody the way I imagine Steven feels about me and our childhood. I am Daniel who has been to Spain - I’ve traveled and seen the pretty things he never has.

I cry almost every single time I hear the song. Usually during the third verse:

Daniel my brother you are older than me

Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal

Your eyes have died but you see more than I

Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky

Each time I hear it I feel something different and it means something different. Sometimes I imagine it’s Steven asking me if I still remember how painful our childhood was but how I am lucky because I managed to get out (“you see more than I”). Sometimes Steven becomes Daniel in the verse. Even though Steven is younger he’s experienced more pain than I have because he was never been able to get away from the chaos. In that sense he is ‘older’ (Daniel my brother, you are older than me). 

The line that sticks out the most though is “Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal?”  I know how scarred we are. How much we’ve been hurt. How our past has shaped us and everything we’ve done for better or for worse and how we carry so many terrible memories with us. 

The song Daniel means a lot to me. It always will. While it reminds me of some terrible memories and horrible burden and pain I carry with me everyday, it also reminds me of my brother. Someone I love very much. Someone who I would do almost anything for. Someone who one day I hope can travel on a jet plane with me to go see Spain.

I love you little brother.