A Dream About Lightning Bugs

by Ben Folds

  My dentist, Dr. McLeod

  Hitting bottom takes all forms. It doesn’t have to be a VH1 Behind the Music episode—you know that rockumentary TV series from the nineties, which was basically short documentaries of famous musical artists? Those were great! Each major musical artist’s story would inevitably climax at that moment when the artist seemed to be on top of the world…and then…addiction, debt, depression. *Cue dramatic music and bad video effects.* It was always something. Without exception. But no matter how many times it’s told, that story never gets old.

  My hitting bottom didn’t involve sleeping in my own piss in an alley (I don’t think), or being taken away in handcuffs from a casino, or shooting holes in my girl’s tires in my underwear while the neighbors called the cops. Nothing like that. That’s not the way it works for most of us. But most everyone will hit bottom in some way—subtly or loudly, many times or just once—and that’s why the sensational celebrity version of the story is always of interest. Hitting bottom is to acknowledge that the next lesson will not be cheap.

  You don’t actually need to have a demon you’ve run from your whole life to hit bottom. Demons can grow from a single cell in the petri dish of your soul while you’re neglecting yourself for years on end. Demons can be of our own creation. Unforced-error demons. There’s nothing romantic about any of that! It won’t sell a rockumentary most of the time, but it’s your life and you have to straighten it out. Eventually, as you address one issue you discover another, because everything is connected. Life. Love. Finances. Music. Even teeth.

  * * *

  —

  In 2010, my life was hitting bottom and I decided to finally say uncle! and submit myself to all the stuff that I’d been running from. I was going through my fourth divorce, the result of a personally devastating rebound that could’ve been avoided. If I didn’t rethink it all, I was in danger of losing the respect of my family and friends, my health, and my mind, along with half of my earnings (again). I didn’t know yet what drove this pattern of marriage and divorce, or my workaholism, the sleeplessness, or the dreaded gnawing anxiety I felt each morning before facing the day. But I knew it had real consequences. I had a spiritual toothache. And if my soul and artistry suffered too much more decay, not even Dr. McLeod would be able to help me. And I knew I had to turn the oil barge of patterns around and paddle ferociously to avert disaster.

  * * *

  —

  I moved to Los Angeles in 2011 after the divorce was filed. I still had my recording studio and my place in Nashville, but the twins, who were now twelve, had been moved to L.A., and so that’s where my heart would have to be. I went straight there, to space and silence, alone and shaking like a leaf. Sounds like a small deal, but I hadn’t stopped moving in my adult life, save for the time I had pneumonia. I remember that first painfully quiet night in my new apartment in Santa Monica, sad and demoralized, sitting on some cardboard boxes, when, suddenly, I felt an unexpected tiny dash of optimism. Or maybe it was relief. I jotted this down in my new living room full of unpacked housewares and Saran-wrapped furniture. The opening lines to the song “So There”:

  A mattress and a stereo, just like I started

  And a note composed with thumbs and phone on unpacked boxes

  Los Angeles is the place to be for self-help, self-awareness, and self-everything, except maybe self-service. I had to rethink my old-fashioned stance on therapy, and all kinds of other show-biz whiny-ass self-discovery shit, because I had never been a big believer in turning a flashlight and microscope on myself. But there’s a time and place for everything, and I had come to the right place at the right time. I needed to ignore all self-ridicule. I actually needed a hand. And asking for help can be scary for someone who has never let anyone near the black box.

  If you detect a little Born Again™ vibe in all of this, then yeah, fine. It’s an arduous process, rebooting your mind and soul. I did all the corny things you’d imagine you’d do upon moving to L.A.—old-fashioned jogging, yoga, Pilates, and, my favorite, Gyrotonic (look that up if you’re bored). I had just learned Transcendental Meditation back in Nashville, prior to my decision to move to L.A., which I now consider a turning point. Meditation gave my mind space and just enough openness for some perspective—a little crack in the soul through which to drive some reason.

  My neurologist friends, many of whom I’ve made through my interest in music therapy, tell me that new thinking requires new material pathways to be formed in your brain. You have to work to dig these new neuro highways every day, despite the old ruts and the grip that your old habits have on you. Old-fashioned plasticity. It’s one day at a time. The physical and mental can’t be separated any more than the music and the life. My Folds’ Hack Method™ for rehabilitating myself was a simple matter of taking lessons from what had always worked in my artistry. After years of taking from my life to make songs, it was time to do the reverse and let what I’d learned from songwriting now inform my life.

  I feel another play coming on. Let’s imagine a surreal classroom lit magically with some dry ice for effect. Younger iterations of myself seated, dressed in variations of Angus Young from AC/DC, with older me the teacher in front—pacing the room full-thespian Dead Poets Society style. Here we go.

  What Music Can Teach Life: A Damn Short Play

  BEARDED NOW ME: “Okay, kids, settle down. Little Ben, seated up front in the muddy shoes, what did you learn after school waiting around construction sites?”

  CHILD ME: “I learned the value of taking time. Taking the time to discover what it is I want to create, and not letting what’s around me lead too much!”

  BEARDED NOW ME: “Very good, very good. Okay! Pubescent Ben. Yes, you back there with all the zits. What have you got for me?”

  TEENAGE ME: “As a musician you can only get so far without outside help, like a teacher or a mentor? Sir!”

  BEARDED NOW ME: “That’s exactly right. No man is an island. All right, you in the back, please wake up! Yes, you. Silly young man in the Bavarian getup, can you tell us something you’ve learned?”

  YOUNG ADULT ME: “Always be present, because your actions affect others, and being on autopilot is being an existential chicken!”

  [A few in the class chuckle. They think the word “chicken” is funny.]

  BEARDED NOW ME: “Now, settle! Okay, my class of various-aged young Bens, there is one concept above all that has made your songs better. That bedrock we spoke about? What is that?”

  ROOM FULL OF ME: “SELF-HONESTY, SIR!”

  BEARDED NOW ME: “Right!” [The classroom door opens slowly, interrupting the lesson.] “Oh, wait, what do we have here? Sir, you’re very late today!”

  2008 ME: [In suit and tie, sheepishly puts away cellphone and takes seat.] “Sorry, sir. Meeting with my lawyer went late.”

  BEARDED NOW ME: “We’re all telling what we learned. What’s yours?”

  2008 ME: “Uh…discovery?”

  BEARDED NOW ME: “Well played! All the honesty in the world is great, but a life, like a song, needs to have a sense of discovery! People, can you see how all of these musical lessons, if they’d just sink in a little, might help you in your life, right?…All right, all you little shits, think about that as you go out into the world for the next forty years or so and fuck up a lot. Then write me a book about it. On my desk, 2019! Class dismissed—except you, 2008! We need to speak after class!”

  All of those musically philosophical tidbits I worked so hard to learn for my musicianship actually did seem to apply to my life. Artistically, I knew not to always head for comfort. Maybe in other facets of my life I should try lurching toward things that made me terribly uncomfortable, that broke my habits and patterns? If it was a food I never wanted before—what the hell, I’d make myself try it. I’d never been social—ugh—so I’d do that too. I did stuff I wasn’t coordinated at, e
ven if it was just Pilates. I would say things aloud in therapy that were embarrassing and true, things I’d never said before. And I consciously attached those thoughts and feelings to all the physical therapy that felt equally awkward. Like an Alexander Technique session, for instance. Or basketball and volleyball. As I experienced how foreign and awkward an activity or physical movement could be, rather than fight it or avoid going into a weird physical position I would relax into it and laugh at myself. Who cares? It’s like letting the water run brown and writing a few shitty verses.

  I just let it all go. I embraced the cringe. I decided to associate new awkward thoughts with new awkward physical activities. Let’s say I was afraid of telling friends “I love you.” I’d chunk that with a yoga pose that I was equally self-conscious about—call it the “I love ya, man” pose. The pose didn’t kill me, so neither would expressing the thought to which it was now connected.

  As much as anything, I made myself slow down and experience some silence.

  I also wrote for hours a day. About everything. It was a lot of god-awful embarrassing journaling. The reunion record I made in 2013 with Ben Folds Five, The Sound of the Life of the Mind, is basically the distilling of these thoughts into music with rhyme. “On Being Frank” is about having spent my life always needing to have a partner and suddenly deciding to take the steps to learn what it is I really want for myself, so that I can be a solid half of a partnership. The character in that song is an imaginary version of Frank Sinatra’s tour manager, suffering from an identity crisis after Frank’s death. The funny thing is that I ended up sitting next to this very man in real life in Las Vegas. I played him the song and he said it had a nice melody but he didn’t think it sounded like him. Of course not; it was about me.

  Home, for me, was always someone else, you know

  And shadows always fall when the sun goes down

  “Away When You Were Here” was about the death of my father—but not really, because he’s still alive. It’s another song on this album where I’m working out the cold harsh truth that there is only me, my decisions, and my own direction. No one else’s stamp of approval can make things okay. That’s up to us. Many lines came straight from my diary:

  This morning I wake to be older than you were

  Fresh white snow for miles—every footstep will be mine

  The process of tending to myself, after years of refusal, was unbelievably time-consuming. Every day I woke up wanting to just abandon all of it and get back to work. Avoid! But I muscled through with a routine that started the minute I opened my eyes. The very carving out of time to do these things for myself was, for me, radical. And maybe that was all I needed to do. Just make the time. Maybe I could have done all of this stuff earlier along the way, in small doses, and avoided the crash I experienced, who knows? But here I am.

  * * *

  —

  While taking the uncomfortable route and facing the scary stuff was foreign to me in my personal life, it was very familiar to my artistic self. The willingness to be brutally self-honest and to go somewhere unlit and awkward is the way I’d always written songs. That’s not impulsiveness, as it turns out. That’s courage. My bad impersonation of courage in my personal life was to jump off the deep end, belly flopping over and over again.

  I dived into crazy shit regularly, not to discover something new, but to fill silence. The deep-end jumping became routine, and so did the punishment: “Thank you, sir, may I have another? Thank you, sir, may I have another?” That’s not courage, that’s running in a loop, like a scared child. And with each loop, the drama becomes less interesting. Loss of interest is, of course, a death blow to creativity.

  So, I consider these years as ones of serious personal rehabilitation. I was still working and touring, but I took longer, and more frequent, breaks to stay healthy. And of course, like at any rehab, I was eventually discharged and began my transition back into the real world, knowing full well that I would need to keep an eye on my life and my choices every single day. I might relapse from time to time, but that was okay. As I got stronger personally, I had broader shoulders to rest my art upon. Soon, my artistic appetite began to return—and along with it, my interest. In fact, I became insatiably interested.

  FOLLOWING INTEREST

  I USED TO TELL PEOPLE that I followed my instinct when making artistic and career decisions. But these days I am more likely to say that I follow my interest. The fine songwriter Dan Wilson once told me he thought interest is what makes the world go ’round, second only to the will to survive. It might seem like semantics, but these language cues make a difference to me. I’m compelled to turn corners and pages out of interest, not because of instinct.

  Whenever I’ve announced, “I’m going with my instincts on this one,” I’ve felt like I was throwing down a challenge against all advice, facts, or common sense.

  The pundits said it couldn’t be done, but Folds proved them all wrong! He has instinct!

  That places too much pressure on my instinct. It’s too results-oriented to feel artistic. I believe an artistic decision should be allowed to feel innocent, unburdened, and uncorrupted by considerations of outcome. Sure, I don’t deny instinct itself exists, or that it drives many of our decisions. But I’d rather leave mine to do its subconscious work in the shadows beneath the slats of my ego. Not on display, with everyone placing bets on it.

  I used to feel guilty when I strayed from the Script™. Mine, of course, has always been tour-record-tour-record. Yours may be work-sleep-work-sleep, speak-travel-write-speak-travel-write, or even left-right-left-right. Whatever your personal Script™, others become accustomed to, and dependent on, your following it. Veering off to follow interests can raise great concern. For instance, anyone whose livelihood might depend on my success might not want to see me taking too many unlucrative detours. Too many of those and lights out.

  But I no longer feel guilt for following what glows, for going off-book. It turns out that it’s actually my responsibility to identify and follow my interests. Being interested is why I still have a gig at all. Following my interests has resulted in rewarding but unpredictable gigs like The Sing-Off, an NBC prime-time singing show for a cappella groups. That came about because I was dillydallying around, recording university a cappella groups on their campuses, when I “should have been” touring or recording. Driving around with an engineer and mics and setting them up in cafeterias and dorm rooms didn’t seem like a good way to spend my time, to some people I worked with. At least at the time. But my business partners chilled after I signed solid contracts with a major network TV show. Who’d have thunk? Not I. I was just interested in capturing live college singing, but, sure, I’ll gladly take the opportunity and paycheck.

  One standout detour of interest was taking a year to compose a concerto for piano and orchestra. I took a small commission and made the time because it was interesting. I agreed to a premiere performance of it with the NSO and the Nashville Ballet, which commissioned the piece. I did not expect that night to turn into six nights, and I’ve never otherwise sold eleven thousand tickets to premiere a new song or album. It turns out someone else was interested.

  My manager these days, Mike, isn’t even a music manager. I just found him interesting, so we joined forces eight years ago. He’s not terribly concerned with the Script™. He could see how it was choking off my creativity. Mike’s from a politics background, so he’s quite happy to make time for me to travel to Washington, D.C., with Americans for the Arts to go to bat for arts funding, or to attend both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions for the same purpose. He books me on music-therapy panels or looks into letting scientists put me into a brain scanner while I improvise songs. These aren’t terribly lucrative endeavors. But they seem to keep leading to better artistic places and better gigs. Like my role as Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra. That isn’t the sort of thing that
normal music-biz managers would encourage. (To all those out there who think people who take government work are rolling in it: Uh. No.) It’s not where the Script™ would have taken me. But surrounding myself with the people I find interesting, and who share the same interests, keeps my inner robot at bay.

  * * *

  —

  When it comes to my method of working, and how I spend my time, I’ll admit that I’m not terribly disciplined. But I am a hard worker and these are two different things. I’m fueled by obsession and hyper-focus more than by routine. The obvious downside to being undisciplined and obsessive is the very real risk that some things will go pear-shaped. I’ve taken some bad detours, as you’ve seen. For those like myself, it’s often hard to know when perceived instinct is actually just some corrupted impulse. Like the impulse egging me on to have another tequila. Hey, that’s not instinct! Or the one telling me to forgo sleep to spend another four hours robotically scrolling through eBay for a certain RCA speaker made in 1958. But the upside of my lack of discipline is that I’ve given myself a hall pass to roam. Over fences, through open doors, creatively.

  I still see myself as a class tourist, equally uneasy and at home in different neighborhoods. There is no one class to be, no one club to join, no one way to create, no universal behavior of an artist, and there’s no such thing as cool. Any songwriter I’ve ever admired was probably kicked out of the Serious Songwriters’ Club™ long ago, if such a thing exists. I hope I’ve been kicked out too. I’ll settle for writing good songs.

  Throughout my life, each time I’ve spotted something inspiring, a beautiful flicker, an idea, or a feeling I wanted to capture, there were always bullying voices—inside, and out—suggesting it was off-limits: