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.