Episode Thirty-One: The Byte - Joe Armstrong

Host of the podcast "Independent's Day" Joe is all about music... in this byte-sized episode, hear how this art form has shaped and inspired his life and how, when a tree falls in the forest, it definitely makes a sound.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode 31 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

This interview is special for me.

I'm interviewing a childhood friend,

A good friend from high school,

Who has his own podcast.

It's super groovy.

It's called Independence Day.

He interviews independent musicians.

You get to hear a little conversation.

You get to hear a little music.

He's also an accomplished musician,

Singer,

And songwriter.

I urge you to check his albums out.

Sidewalk Chalk Manifesto and Silverface Champs.

You can find those albums wherever you find your music,

Whether it's on iTunes,

Amazon Music or Spotify.

Stay tuned after the interview to hear one of Joe's songs from the album Silverface Champs.

And now,

Without further ado,

Episode 31 and my interview with Joe Armstrong.

Second grade,

I had an awful,

Awful,

Awful nun for a teacher.

I mean,

She would pick kids up by their ears.

She would call kids names.

She would,

On my last name,

Armstrong,

She would always take me and put me in the back of the class and put the first one first and say,

Well,

The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

And I was like,

It's not my fault my name is A.

Don't screw me over just because you've got some bone to pick with whatever whomever.

I don't view miracles,

I don't think the way or magic the way other people would view those sorts of things,

Right?

I don't want to create the usual science versus religion fights.

I don't think it gets anybody anywhere.

Maybe they can coexist.

Maybe they can't.

I don't know.

That's not for me to say.

I can say I have witnessed what other people would consider to be miraculous things in life,

But some of them are very,

Very simple.

You know,

I mean,

I,

You know,

Again,

I got the cloud got seeded a little bit,

So I took some notes and things because I knew it couldn't be like other people are going to have a lightning bolt story.

I was driving and a truck missed me and I saw a cloud that looked like Jesus.

And then I went to get ice cream or whatever.

Right.

For me,

It's very,

Very different.

And it's,

And it's things that are somewhere grandiose and some are subtle,

Right?

I think,

I think it's a miracle that life exists at all.

I think it's a miracle that people fall in love.

I think it's a miracle that art exists,

Especially in a society,

Which although it professes to support the arts doesn't in any practical way,

Other countries do support the arts with money because that's how you know,

Someone cares about something is if they spend money doing it now,

Sure.

People go to concerts or whatever,

But it's a much more complicated discussion.

If you want to hear that discussion,

Stop in independent state.

We talked about that all the time,

A little cross promotion there.

Miracles to me don't exist in the way that other,

I think that the way that I perceive them,

That other people perceive them in their lives.

Right.

Let me think here.

Look at my list of stuff and see what I even,

What some ideas.

Oh,

Here's one moment.

It's not really a miracle,

But it's a,

I hiked not too terribly long ago.

I hiked a 200 plus mile trail in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

And it's not a precarious trail in the sense.

I mean,

There are parts where you could certainly die if you fell off the edge,

But like you kind of have to try a little bit or you'd have to take a wrong spill,

But it's a grueling trip that takes people between seven and 30 days to do.

And the very,

Very end of this trail ends at Mount Whitney,

The tallest mountain in contiguous 48 States,

Which I have honored to say that I have had the privilege to summit about five or six times in my life.

But so I'm familiar with the very end of the trail.

And I had met a couple of friends along the way from back East.

And cause I was by myself on this giant adventure.

And at the very end part,

You're coming down from the tallest point in the contiguous 48 States to the trailhead,

Which is around 8,

400 feet of altitude.

And it's about 11 miles over that stretch coming down about 6,

000 feet.

And the closer you get to the end,

You start to see the town and the distance down in the Valley and the Owens Valley and California is not central Valley,

But one Valley to the East of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

And you getting them closer still.

And you can kind of see the little trailhead.

There's cars can drive up down there.

There's a Whitney portal store,

Which sells the most expensive and delicious mediocre cheeseburger you'll ever have a few,

Five,

200 miles in the wilderness.

And my girlfriend and partner was going to be picking me up there.

So I was looking forward to seeing her.

I haven't,

I've showered three times in three weeks.

And even those were cold and then questionable places,

Back country type situations.

And I'm excited.

I'm exhausted.

I've lost 15 pounds and I'm elated that I've done this.

I've been trying to do this for years and I'm hiking down an area,

Which I'm kind of familiar with.

And I hear this huge cracking sound very loud.

And I look in front of me and a pine tree,

7,

500 feet tall.

I don't know how,

How,

How large broke off at about 10 or 15,

17 feet above the ground and fell directly across the trail about 30 feet in front of where I was walking.

And I was kind of by myself,

My friends were another hundred paces or so behind me,

But we all kind of yelled out,

Hey,

Is everyone okay?

And there was another person kind of walking by at the time.

Once we ascertained that everyone was okay.

It's like,

You know,

We said the only thing that you can say was,

Holy shit.

Like if I had been walking under that tree at that time,

It would have happened so fast.

I wouldn't have even had the chance to even know what was happening.

It would have smashed me in the head and I'd be dead.

All of my friends would be dead or some combination or whatever,

But this tree,

Which is,

Who knows 200 years old,

It's been here for most of the American experience.

It's been here for the moon landing.

It's been here for the civil war.

It's been here growing up there in those mountains for some reason,

Let go at that time.

Now I being a non-religious person,

I'm not going to ascribe meaning to that in the way that someone else would,

But I do find,

I mean,

Like that concept of miracles being something that's just kind of like so far outside the mean or something unique that you witnessed that you wouldn't have had,

That you wouldn't experience in a normal situation.

So it fell into,

So then,

You know,

You have the,

Like the mortality thoughts,

Like that could have fallen on my head after something I've been trying to do.

It's,

It's a mile from the end of a 220 mile hike.

And I would have succeeded because the trail technically ends on the top of the mountain,

But then you have to hike out to get to the trailhead.

And I thought,

Well,

At least I would have succeeded in my goal,

But I'd be dead.

And then,

You know,

Then you think of all the other close calls you've had in your life.

But then as my friends caught up to me and walked up,

We had to climb over at this giant tree because it's large and this branch is all in the path.

I picked up a piece of the tree.

I picked up a branch and I said,

I'm taking this with me.

And my friends said,

Isn't that like,

Isn't that bad juju?

Is that bad luck?

And I said,

No,

This is good juju.

This tree did not kill me like anything else that hasn't killed me in my life.

So I kept the little six inch chunk of that tree and I keep it on a bookshelf here now,

Just to kind of remind me of the time when I wasn't killed by a tree.

So when it comes to something,

A prototypical example of a miracle,

Sure.

I'll give you that one.

This has been episode 31 of Bite Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us.

If only we open our eyes to it.

I need to thank the redoubtable Joe Armstrong for being my guest today,

As well as the creators of the music used.

Chilled Music,

Frank Schroeder,

Lilo Sound,

Kevin McLeod,

And Music L-Files.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

Thank you for listening and here's my one request.

Be like Joe,

Discover what you love and then go for it.

And here's Joe and his song JL Have Not from his album Silver Champs.

It's not yours.

It's not yours.

It's mine.

It's mine.