A Very Good Piece Of Creative Advice From Tom Morello

As a cantankerous alt-rock grunge-loving teenager, I was not particularly a Rage Against the Machine guy — I mean, I liked the music but it didn’t connect with me, and my theory now as to why that was? I was just a selfish teenage dickhead whose angst was not political, not global, and I was honestly a little walled off from the world’s problems and definitely up the ass of my own problems. The private, self-absorbed, inward-looking angst of NIN was more my thing than the outward-facing rage of, well, RATM.

Fast-forward to now. My kid, who you may know as “B-Dub,” has been playing guitar now for… *checks watch* oh my god since he was five years old. And he’s now three inches taller than me, just to give you that sense.

He discovered Rage, and further, Tom Morello.

And Morello became something of an inspiration to him — the kid loves his attitude toward playing, toward guitar gear, obviously his political stances, and even more obviously, the dude’s actual ability, which is appropriately legendary. The guy, with minimal gear, can make a guitar sound impossible, like he’s forcing it to do literal magic. So, as such, I’ve become a proper RATM fan in the present. And recently we had the opportunity to see Tom Morello with a full band accompaniment, and further, we got the chance to give the kid special access in the form of a VIP “guitar package,” which was like, this thing before the show you could go to where you got to check out Morello’s long-serving guitars, his pedal board, and talk to his guitar techs about all of it. Got this for the kid for an early Christmas present as a surprise.

Thing was, they sent out an email that falsely stated we’d be meeting Tom himself alongside the man’s guitars — but then they sent a follow-up email the next morning to say, “Oops, nope, that’s not true, sorry, sorry, our bad.” Which, hey, that sucks but I knew it going in and suspected the first email was wrong; the initial package description was clear about not meeting the guy. I was under no illusion and expected the clarification that inevitably, if disappointingly, came.

So, we go to the show.

We go to the VIP experience.

And they tell us, “Tom feels bad and wants to make it right,” so suddenly the man hisownself shows up, does some Q&A alongside his guitar techs, and then takes photos with everyone.

It was, needless to say, pretty fucking rad.

But during the Q&A, he said something that struck me in the heart like a pure beam of light. I’m gonna be honest — it was so good, I don’t even remember the question. I think it was a throwaway question and he might’ve even meant this statement as not a throwaway, exactly, but given more as a casual response, and not a statement with the creative weight that I felt it carried.

This is what he said:

“Don’t leave behind who you are in what you do.”

And man, that’s just fucking good advice.

I recognize it’s not particularly profound advice, really, but I do think it speaks to the danger that all creative people face, and that’s whether you make words or physical art or music. Hell, maybe it speaks to the danger everybody faces, regardless of your life path or career choice or whatever — the more of yourself you slap up on that altar of success, the more of You that you have to cut away… the less it all means. The less reason you have to do it.

The less it all matters.

With writing, I am wont to remind folks that who you are really matters to that process. And it matters in a thousand different ways. Two of the most important are: first, you write how you write and that’s important to figure out through endless iteration and reiteration of process, and second, very little if anything we write can truly be original, but the one original thing we get to bring to the table is ourselves. Because we are each of us a truly unique confluence of creative and critical molecules. No one is like you. No one! No one has the particular, peculiar combination of experiences and fears and delights and fetishes and anxieties and neurodivergences that comprise the YOU that shows up to the page, so it’s foolish to try to push that part away. That part is the only part that matters.

And so I really loved what he said — don’t leave yourself behind. Because it’s easy, so easy, to do that. It’s tempting to believe we’re the thing that’s holding ourselves back, or that we’re the thing standing in our way — and that’s not to say we can’t be our own worst enemies. We can! We can absolutely get in our own heads and fuck ourselves up. But sometimes, the thing we get in our own heads about is self-doubt. Imposter syndrome. This feeling that nobody wants us at the party, that we weren’t invited, and if we’re going to show up we better show up with a mask on, or pretending to be someone else. So we need to write in this genre or with that trope or using some particular trick or convention. Even AI represents a way away from yourself — it’s not you. It’s a sticky stolen mash-up of everyone else. Use AI, you’re leaving yourself behind (amongst several other critical sins). Hell, with AI, it’s worse than that — you’ve discarded yourself, given over your agency and your creativity to Techbro Billionaires and their Great and Powerful Oz machine.

You’re not an imposter.

You belong here.

The invitation to the party is you. You’re it. Your creative and emotional DNA is the key that unlocks the door to get inside.

Shit, it’s the only real way past the ropes.

So, I dunno. It hit me and for me was a useful reminder and, as such, I thought I’d pass it along.

Don’t leave behind who you are in what you do.

Fuck yeah.

Also, hey, Tom Morello seems like a real one. Put on a helluva show, and he also had an opener that he invited, a San Diego hyper-political rap-punk group called the Neighborhood Kids, who fucking slammed that stage with intense energy. (Check ’em out here.)

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All right, fuck it, another quick story. So, during the performance, both with Morello and the Neighborhood Kids, there was political talk, with a bonus chant demanded of FUCK ICE. And let’s be honest — most of the crowd was what the Neighborhood Kids called “old rockers.” White dude graybeards with metal shirts and shit. Not all of them! There were some youths! I saw some trans folks! I sat next to a cool Latino dude who was a big guitar nerd. But mostly: yeah, old white guys. I guess, at this point, myself included in that group. And it was fine! They were awesome old white dudes, still trying to headbang and throwing up horns and fists and trying very hard to jump up and down on creaky old knees. They were committed, and they were politically invested.

Anyway, during the chant of FUCK ICE, two things happened:

First, when that chant was over, a guy behind me — not an old guy, but a young guy, I’d say late 20s, early 30s, standing there with his girlfriend — waited for a moment and yelled FUCK SOCIALISM.

I turned to glare at him.

A lot of people turned to glare at him.

His girlfriend, perhaps seeing this, hit him on the arm.

He received — thankful for him — no acknowledgement of what he yelled from the stage.

Then, directly in front of me was this meatball-looking dude, this absolute casino-fiend of a man (did I mention the show took place in a casino theater? eennh it did) with hair slicked back and dreams of having starred on The Sopranos — soon as the chant was over, he and his starving-bird-girlfriend got up and walked out of the show in a huff. As if FUCK ICE was a bridge too far for them.

I guess they were hoping Tom Morello was raging against the machine of… socialism? He was mad at progressive thought? Raging against immigrants? Like, what the fuck? What machine did you think was the problem? Did these people ever actually listen to RATM? And then I realized — no, they didn’t, not really. Guys like that, they just heard the guitar and the fuck you I won’t do what you tell me and in their minds etched that saying onto their feelings about Big Government or Big Woke or some other stupid shit, and they ignored literally all the rest of it, and then they come to a Tom Morello show thinking he’s on their team while mostly being fans of like, Limp Bizkit or whatever.

Dipshits, dipshits, everywhere.

Anyway! Sorry, had to add that story in.

BYE.