What Being Broke Taught Me
I hate everything being curated for me. It sucks having everything I want pop up at my fingertips before I even want it. I’m bored by it. Where is the growth? Where is the challenge? Netflix says this is a 98% match. Well, you're right on the money but I couldn’t be more upset about it. Let me make some questionable choices for once. I want to buy an album I hate and force myself to listen to it because I spent money on it.
Once a month, when I was 17, before work, I would stop in at CD Warehouse. Jewel-case after gleaming jewel-case would call for my attention, but I wouldn’t let the end-caps and fancy signs pull me off my path to the bargain bin. We’re not talking Whole Foods clearance section pricing. “was $15 is now only 14.50 for a loaf of bread” You could get a full album for $.99
Now with back turned to the stack of CDs I would let loose my right arm in an awkward reach—like you forgot your keys but remember just in time to not break stride and still reach them.
And there my hand would find purpose in the chaos. If it was under $7 I’d buy it.
I would listen to that album until next month because...well it’s 2007 and I only have a dumb phone and a cd player in my car. No spotify. No algorithms. Just listening to an album I randomly picked up for probably $2-4. I would listen front to back and then do it all over again.
Those albums became an anthem for that season of my life. Plenty of friends have this season categorized with music, but they all stayed in more or less the same genre. I didn’t have that luxury. I was broke. So I bought randomly picked albums I hated. Until.
Until. I didn’t.
I took an ethnomusicology class in my brief stent as a classroom student—I grew up homeschooled and the idea that we all have to sit through a bunch of other people talking at us when we could just read the source information baffled my mind and made me realize, I’m an outside student.
So, this ethnomusicology course, only one thing stuck with me, but I’ve carried it to every aspect of my life.
“If you don’t like something, listen to it more and find the exact thing you don’t like. This clarifies your taste and ear.”
Expert advice.
But I wouldn’t take this course for another 5 years. So why is 17-year-old Sasquatch doing that? It’s not because I knew anything about taste at that age. “I don’t like these shorts because they don’t go past my knees when I sit down.”
Lil’ Squatch had these albums given straight from the hand of God. No joke. They mean that much to me. The albums I received from that bargain bin taught me something. Being broke sometimes has hidden gems scattered in the shit. And I don’t have to like everything but I can’t hate on anything.
Let’s dive a little deeper into the mental state of mind of young Squatch. 3 years into a relationship with, who I now know will be my wife of 14 years, Molly. I had a solid group of really encouraging friends. But when I was 16 I found out my dad was a sex offender.
My dad called me upstairs. The same stairs I ripped my toenail off on while running down jazzed after watching The Little Giants. He told us he wasn’t able to be our basketball coach anymore because of something that he hadn’t shared with us. Yet.
My dad was wrongfully convicted?
All the times we moved. All the times there was so much animosity around us. All the times we were working at 3 in the morning cleaning banks and pressure washing parking lots and sidewalks. All the times we would switch a church because, “They just don’t want us there anymore.” Oh, and the cops visits.
And he's on the offender list?
Watchdog sites-- that term is burned into memory. I don’t know that I ever finished thinking about it. Not that I wanted to keep thinking about it. But that I just stopped thinking about it. Until 2 years ago.
Look, this film isn’t for my dad. It’s not a tribute to the wonderful man that he is. It’s for anyone that has felt those same emotions I felt on that day. The feeling of the world collapsing in on itself and you don’t know if you can even figure out how to breathe again. When you cry with a pain in your chest and there’s no one with answers. That’s who it’s for.
but…why did they do that?
I still don’t know.
So that’s all swirling around in the jelly upstairs of the young Squatch. I found escape and survival in that musical discovery. I fell asleep with music playing and there, found purpose in the chaos. These songs talked to me. They lifted me when I was pretty much brain dead. That’s a pretty cool miracle if you ask me. I’m eternally grateful for the role music has played in my life.
Broke aint half bad if you got music keeping you company. Music and comedy. Hmm. Maybe I should tell you how comedy relates to the documentary.
If you're reading down this far. It means something connected. And that's a cool feeling as an artist.
be well, do good work, stay disciplined,
Sasquatch
