richpeopleband-blog

[richpeopleband-blog]

Studio Update

So for anyone who reads this blog regularly you know that I’ve been in a depression for about three weeks now since getting home from touring all summer. I’m glad to report that the day after I aired a lot of that out I started coming back to life. I had a pretty decent Sunday and did some things to care for myself. Monday I met up with the Rich People boys to head to the studio to try out a new place, and none of us really new what to expect. It’s common in the music world for engineers/producers to reach out and offer services to artists on a trial basis and usually it’s super corny, but this dude Taylor reached out this summer while I was away and for some reason we thought it could be pretty cool. I checked out his discography and was really impressed with his work and portfolio, but also was skeptical because he works predominantly on extremely clean/high production/technical types of bands and we’re obviously not that.

When Rich People came together as a full band thing a few years ago, none of us really listened to the same things. I mean, Con and I listen to pretty much the same shit besides a few things and some generational gap differences, but Ty predominantly listens to R&B and hip hop and high production stuff for quite a few years now and really isn’t into too much rock music and Blake is just all over the place and still a complete mystery to me. I could go on on this topic for hours but I really only say it to say that we started out with very little common ground besides that all four of us thought the demoes for the songs we were making together sounded cool. Obviously we’re in a van traveling everywhere all the time together, so we each started throwing music on the stereo and over time we discovered the things that each other likes, the things from each others boxes that we also like, and then a very limited box of things that we all really liked together. At first the only full album we could all agree on was Now, Now’s album “Threads”, but it has expanded to some playlists and a few albums. I could go on about this for hours too but I’m only painting this picture to explain that we have slowly built an idea of where we actually want our sound to be moving toward. We have a pretty wide eclectic base and we aren’t limited to just talking about it in terms of influential artists. We describe parts as we flesh them out in colors and tones and textures, and we speak to each other in broad strokes about our goals as musicians, entertainers, public figures etc and in our general lives in terms of simple principles such as honesty, integrity, harmony, and acceptance. I can also say that our least favorite topic is patience, but I think we’ve talked that one to death and will talk it to some more death on every drive home for the rest of our career together so I’ll let it rest here.

Bottom line we have a sound and a vibe and some feelings in mind that we have wanted to pull out of our songs for a while. We went to this random studio in Maryland monday to record and walked in with zero expectations besides that this guy does really really high end clean work and we are emotional sludge monsters and that if we collaborate and play nice we might just get something really fucking cool out of this.

So we did.

We got something really fucking cool out of this.

We have officially turned a new chapter and it feels like we just found ourselves for the first time.

I feel completely refreshed and like this whole thing is about to start over just in a bigger way.

We have no plans to release any new music any time soon because Grace Session is still FULLLL of fucking life thanks to all of you. Watching it spread to different communities across America and pop up in scattered countries around the world is so fucking exciting. Maybe you're wondering why I’m hyping up something that we don’t plan to release to you any time soon. It’s because I want you to know that what we’re making now is worth the wait and we’re going to keep on working on a lot more stuff so that when we do release things it will move you the way it moves us. Thanks for your patience and all of the retweets and favs and all that stuff that helps us know you’re still listening. Every time you tell your friends to listen to us via a repost or blasting it in the car it means the world to us and helps us move toward being able to budget more creating and more releasing. So again...

Thank you,

Rob

[richpeopleband-blog]

Catch Up

So I’m playing catch-up the past two weeks since coming home from Warped Tour, and one of the things I need to catch up on is blogging. Over the summer I decided to take my social text updates to my personal facebook where I wrote long posts about the days and weeks and actually months I spent on tour. I left my apartment June 1st for a two week tour with Rich People and Tranquility from Michigan. Spent a few days in the midwest then came back east and ended up in Philly for 3 days then literally just left for two months to go sell merch for Grayscale on Warped Tour. I was gone for a while then I got home and everything just stopped. All the friends I made all summer went back to California and Massachusetts and everywhere else they’re from. Even Grayscale. They moved into a new place right before we left that’s just far enough away that I can’t just pop-in like I used to when they were in Northern Liberties. We were living like brothers all summer. On top of each other all day everyday walking around a festival and a bus, sleeping in bunk beds, getting each others’ food, watching each other’s backs and introducing each other to everyone we met. We moved as a unit. We had stressful moments a few times for sure, but for the most part we honestly laughed harder and more consistently and for a longer duration than I ever have before in my life. It was the best summer of my life without any competition. I felt more at home with those guys than some of my closest friends in the city or even Jersey where I grew up. They got me and I got them. A lot of the ways they are untangled faulty belief systems I’ve had about myself and others my entire life without them even saying words. I’ll keep this short and just say it was truly therapeutic. I needed that. We spent off days with Movements and Four Year, and I ended every night sitting in lawn chairs with Jake and Joe and sometimes Regan and John.

I got close with so many people so fast, but we got home and it all stopped. Luckily we have phones and social media and we all chat a bunch still but the close physical proximity to a lot of really great friends just fell off, and I fell into depression. I’m not quite out of it even as I type this two weeks later. Sure I’ve sprung back into my normal rhythm and finally started a new job two days ago, but honestly it’s hard for me to justify getting out of bed lately. I straight up don’t feel like it. I slept until 4:36PM the first day I got home and shrugged it off like oh that’s fine we didn’t get home until 7AM. After that though the excuses have just gotten thinner and thinner. I’m just not really taking care of myself. I usually stay very active and hit the gym a bunch and work a lot, but it’s been tough kick starting that. I went to gym maybe twice since I got home and did a minimal amount of things then drove home. I don’t have much money for food right now so I’ve been cooking tofu or eggs and pasta twice a day. I’m very hungry pretty often, but my funds are a little tight and I’m working on getting back on my feet. I’m definitely eating enough food so this isn’t a cry for help or anything like that. I have enough to hit the grocery store and stock my basics every week. I’m just trying to describe the overall feeling. I get really good news about huge opportunities for Rich People and all of this great stuff is happening around us and we’re about to record next week and we got beautiful new merch made and yada yada yada everything’s falling in place and I just can’t feel it right now. The positives of this are that our show Friday will be one of our best ever. When I feel raw like this I often build up then let everything in me come out when we play shows.

It’s also fine to feel this way. That’s a big thing I’ve realized in adulthood. It’s fine to be depressed. Depression is just a feeling. As a society we spend so much thought and energy trying to suppress certain feelings that we have deemed unsafe or scary. We call it negative and we can’t accept it. My personal truth is that I get depressed sometimes. I had extremely severe depressions starting at age twelve. There were some episodes before that, but that was the first time I was truly depressed and couldn’t shake it all day everyday for months. It was crippling. I was afraid of day-time and light and I was afraid of the night and the way I let the TV consume me. Back then I didn’t know how to deal so we started going to shows and got a rush from that. Then we started bands and started feeling like I belonged somewhere, but I couldn’t shake all the back and forth anger and depression. Anger became my favorite place to go because it beat depression as far as feeling alive goes. In my teen years I tried joining sports teams and clubs and disqualified myself from all of it. I tried medications and combinations of medications and therapy only to disqualify the help. I started drinking heavily whether I was with people of alone at age 15 and the rest is history that you can read about in my other 8 million blogs. The point is I never accepted my depressions even in my mid-twenties with multiple years clean and in a recovery program for years. I stil believed that feelings should be controlled and that “bad feelings” needed to go away. I’ve had thoughts of wanting to die so long and so consistently at this point that I just laugh them off and keep it moving at this point. It’s fine to have some humor and just accept the passing thoughts. Part of me will always be a “crazy person.” I talk openly and honestly with a big group of friends/fellow recovering addicts who completely get me on a very regular basis and I stay in tune with a solution based lifestyle. I keep my feet moving in the direction that I want to go at all times and allow my head to move at its own pace. I’ve practiced the lifestyle I live long enough that the volume on my pain is much much lower than it was when I was younger. Im not cured and I haven’t outsmarted my negative sense of self, lack of self worth, and general fear of life and living, but that’s not really my objective anymore. Just accepting myself and others and my role in this place and keeping it fucking moving. At this point I’m just ok.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Bliss To Come (Book)[Pt. 2]

Fierce Grace

“It’s just the way that it always starts

I’m seeking comfort at the end of fall

You make yourself so small

And you point your finger up like

It’s my fault that I’m tall”

“Fierce Grace” is the initial survey I conducted to assess my patterns in relationships, whether romantic or platonic. This was the first song we wrote for Grace Session and we only meant for it to be a single. I moved from New Jersey to South Philly a year and a half ago to achieve a lifelong goal: to be part of the best city on earth. I dove into the city’s recovery community really fast because of how welcoming it is, but there were still a lot of growing pains. Every romantic partner I’d ever been with or attempted to be with was severely incapable of being with just me despite their insistence that we’d be an exclusive item. I focused on their dishonesty and their struggles with self-worth and esteem. But, I only looked at my own issues on a superficial level when examining the relationships’ failures. I’m all about self-examination and philosophizing the intricacies of my personality and defective character traits but I was unable to see a real solution. “Fierce Grace” is not an example of my true beliefs or knowledge about these situations, but more so the gut reaction to them. What I’m saying isn’t necessarily “right,” just fierce.

“It’s just the way that you talk to me.” I complain about the tone that people who have put me on a pedestal use to speak to and of me. I’m angered that people have the audacity to blame me later for their inability to see us on a level playing field when I exclaim “you make yourself so small, and you point your finger up like it’s my fault that I’m tall.” I’m just a person: a very standard person at that. Sure, I cultivate my couple of talents and showcase them, and sure,  I made a decision to get clean and accept some help at a young age. Maybe I even have an “old soul,” but none of this really raises me above the line of human. Others’ allocation of assets in different places than mine also doesn’t take them above or below the line of human, but not everyone understands this. I’ve had people get semi-close to me who could never truly accept we were standing at eye level with one another. They often held a timid posture in my presence and suppressed the more colorful extremes of their personalities. I don’t have a problem with this, but I find half-people to be whole boring.

I made myself so small for so long and I won’t play the self-pitying victim any longer. I’m allowed to shine when I’m shining, and I no longer need to put others down when they’re shining either on some toxic self-centered, envious shit. I am unapologetically me. At the end of the day, I wasn’t meant to dance with everyone. I accept and am grateful that I have a lot of close friends that stay level, honest, and themselves when they’re around me, and I do my best to accept those who can’t. ”I could try to seperate myself, or I could try to unify. I could try to understand what you need or just be what I like.”


As with most of the songs I write, there are multiple stories being developed. Here the second verse takes an aside for my feelings surrounding my move to Philadelphia and my struggle to make certain friends or fit in in certain places. “I could try to be everything to everyone all at once. I could put myself away and posture my front.” I feel like this brings the struggle with self-esteem and worth full circle. It’s me telling myself that if I just throw enough of myself into enough places and blend in as best as I can, then I’ll find some validation and acceptance.  I’m a human being and not a chameleon, though, so of this I grew tired too.

If you’ve followed since Jacob’s Ladder, you might notice I’ve grown a lot. Grace Session really describes the second layer of self actualization that took place from fall 2015 thru winter 2017. It’s an isolated era of time that I tried to observe and report in broad strokes. To say it all here would take a while. It’s the phase where I stopped just building myself up and started realizing that I also deserved to be with people and in situations that matched the person I’ve been becoming. I can be full me in the places where I want to be, and I don’t have to do everything that everyone’s doing. I’ve grown into a completely new space and this is a time in my life where the size of my lifestyle and perspective shifts constantly make everything feel like starting over from scratch. The result of all my observations is Grace Session and I thank you for being a part of what we’ve done and what we strive to become.

Back Step

“The shedding of our shells that takes place ever so slowly

Through the letting ourselves be alone without lonely

In the time spent toward soul we become better friends

And the shells we call clothes become piles of thread”


At this point, following the songwriting process in chronological order doesn’t really matter. We wrote this second to last and rushed through it and passed over the details of this song with a minimum of concern. I was still working at the shipyard and I was working overtime on a Saturday when I started taking notes down for this song. I was the “fire watch” for a coworker because we had limited staff and limited work. In total,  I might have “fire watched” eight hours in the entire five years I was at the shipyard and they were the most painfully boring hours of my life. I just stood by a gas manifold and a guy up on a high-reach 60 feet in the air with a torch shot sparks and molten slag all over the place to remove a piece from a ship that wasn’t a permanent fixture or part of the final product.

I’m standing down there, bored to death, and I had this instrumental rhythm stuck in my head all week. I hadn’t gotten a chance to try out guitar chords for it yet at home, so it was just an idea. I was always super judgmental of my coworkers and how fucking lazy they were so I started singing little bars to myself about it.

“I always start to finish just before you start to come up.” On the job I’m usually putting my nose down and finishing jobs while in my peripheral vision coworkers are still bullshitting and drinking coffees. On union jobs everybody gets paid the same, but not everybody hustles the same. “I’m at the top of the staircase as your elevator catches up.” I’ll sling my tools on my back and climb the ladders while other guys just sit at the bottom waiting for high-reaches and scissor lifts to take them up as if they’re physically incapable of just slinging the shit up to the job.

I approach the song with judgement and anger, but like most of our songs that begin with this exact tone, I eventually turn the focus on myself and see that this is really just a me problem. The chorus is written from a place where I recognize my egotism and overly-inflated sense of pride while also playing the tape out to what this kind of attitude typically leads to for myself. I fly too close to the sun and then I burn out.

The song’s frame was built in the shipyard, but humility is a principle that I’ve seen a lack of in myself in all areas of life. I know better, but nine times out of nine I burn myself out with unrealistic expectations and the resulting isolation. From this state, I’m then asking that no one judges me for all the judgmental vibrations I’ve thrown around. By this point in writing, plenty of stuff was swirling around in my life, so naturally the topic started to just grow new heads and run in different directions. I started imagining a romantic situation where I was just running away up the stairs of a building. So “if you’re ever looking up and see that I’m falling down” is me literally plummeting from atop this building. I saw it as either I had enough of myself and was ending it, or my ego had grown too large and I thought I could fly. The staircase and the elevator became literal and of course I was running on foot toward my ending faster than my unmotivated partner could even keep up on an elevator. If I take this scope and widen it at this point, I can see that I’ve always felt like I was in a race for the end. I’ve raced to end my suffering, my youth and its limitations, my drug use, my poverty and lack of comfort, of working mundane jobs as a result of my hustle with music, and my journey to enlightenment. I’ve always felt like life is a race with a clear finish.

During the writing of this EP, it hit me that everywhere I am right now was once a dream. Touring, owning a van, having good friends, being appreciated for who I am, having bandmates who are on the same page, and being loved despite whatever and being welcomed wherever I go. If I only focus on what I don’t yet have then I’ll never appreciate what I do. If what I have currently is reality and everything else is fantasy, fear or resentment, I can choose to accept where I’m at or be angry with it, but at least it’s a choice. More often than not, I choose optimism and to not view the world as a hostile place. This has helped me heal emotionally. I’m far less reactive and slightly less judgmental than I once was. I’ll get to anger, but for right now I can say that some of that volume has lessened as well.
“I was wrong… the shell was all misaligned.” The second verse really plays more on my thoughts on my romantic patterns. This is one of the only literal lines about being a ship welder that I’ve ever written, and it refers to when a shell plate on a piece of the ship is not placed correctly which happens all of the time and calls for re-fitting. I’m comparing this exterior shell not lining up with my attitudes and behaviors that show outwardly not lining up with my true desire to love and be loved without reservation.

“…so I backstepped the seam and told myself I’d be fine” refers to me saying fuck it. I’ll leave it fucked up and someone can come repair it later. I’m just going to weld this seam up as-is. A seam is where two shell plates meet and a welder inserts filler metal and melts both steel shell plates’ edges and the filler metal together at a very high temperature in a coalescence process to create a bond that actually results in the three surfaces becoming one. “Backstepping” is the process of welding in long stitches that isn’t just starting at one end and going to the other. It’s picking out a meter at the end and welding it out, then going to the meter just before that and tying the end of the new weld into the starting place of the last weld. This got too technical already but if any welders are reading this at least they’ll know I’m a legit blue collar dirt-boy. My sun sign in astrology is Cancer which is represented by the image of a crab, and now that I’m all shelled up I say the most deeply dismissive line I’ve ever muttered. “Love is cool, love is fine, love is wondering if I have the time.”

I walk away from this song knowing that I’ve been looking at this life all wrong and with the disturbing realization that it always feels like it takes me longer than everyone else to figure out these simple things in life. Just be here, right now, and love.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Bliss To Come (Book) [Pt. 1]

Bliss to Come

A Literary Companion to ​Grace Session

By Robert Rich

--

© 2018 Robert Rich.

Gra℗​ce Session 2018 Rich People.

This book was edited by Danielle Chelosky and James Cassar. This book was typeset and designed for print by James Cassar. Printed by Blurb. || blurb.com

richpeopleband.com

Author’s Note

So... this entire book is just one long winded author’s note, but I would like to preface this overall piece with some general intentions. My primary purpose as an artist, a recovering addict, and a human is to provoke the type of thought that leads to change for myself and others. I don’t want to be original, and I don’t need to be understood. I’ve spent enough of my life exploring obscure trails that are off the beaten path, and climbing down different rabbit holes that result in self-destruction and suffering for myself and those who love me. I got clean from drugs at the age of twenty-one and got involved in a twelve step program that has helped me to navigate the mainstream of society without needing to get high anymore.

My recovery process is a continuous movement away from isolation and toward oneness with other human beings, my true self, and the forces in this universe greater than anything I can fully comprehend. I love to wax intellectual and philosophical with my fucking homies for days on end, but in the broad scope the whole thing really comes down to separation and unity for me.

I started this band Rich People a couple of years back because I had an intention to build this vehicle where I could create an atmosphere of unity in some corner of the world. If it was just about a band at this point, I have better things to do with my time and there’s way too much service work to be done in the drug community to be spending this much time just rockin’ out and havin’ a good time.

To make this a little bit more personal than I usually get in my blog or lyrics, I will say that I worked an eleventh and twelfth step in my recovery program a few years back. Those steps say a lot of things, but some force in this universe grabbed me out of the grip of active addiction and helped me to become a vessel of hope. It caused me to channel some sounds and words alongside the message I received in meetings out into a world that can always use more realistic optimism. Honestly this shit is all pretty dark, depressing, and intense. But, it seems to lighten up the rest of my life to release some morbid energy through this outlet and transform it into something better. I suggest anyone reading this to do whatever the fuck it is you want to do and just do the shit out of it. I love you very much.

In Loving Memory of Alan Cohen

The final years of your life gave me permission to be all the way and unafraid to be, and your death told me to stop fucking waiting around.

Thank You For Sharing

119

“Love,

Grant me the grace

To float into this fearful space Foresight to see that bliss can be And the patience to let it happen”

When I was a 13 year old boy, I sat in a church pew for one of the last times. The boys wore white suits and waited to receive the body and blood of a fictional character who ruled the modern world with fear and promises of salvation. On that day of “confirmation,” the only thing that was confirmed for me was that “God” as I currently understood it was not real, didn’t love me, and would never help me. If God were real, I asked it to reveal itself in the form of enlightenment or euphoria. Nothing came. I spent the next decade convincing myself the world was a hostile place, isolating and slowly killing myself.

Quick backstory for anyone who’s just joining us...

I abused substances consistently for six years - from age fifteen to twenty-one. I drank drinks, then I sold pills, then I did pills, then I shot dope, then I smoked crack. I only stopped when I was arrested, went to rehab, or took maintenance drugs. I woke up every day and could hardly make it from my couch to the trash can in the kitchen before getting sick. I was living to use and using to live.

I write a very long-winded blog that goes into way more detail about this and my life struggles since being clean, but to put it simply, I was a dope fiend and a scumbag. Like my good friend Ray — who saved my life once upon a time — always says "I was the three worst things you can be in this life: a liar, a cheat, and a thief."

I turned twenty-one and a month later I met Ray and got clean, and the rest is history.

It wasn’t until I was getting clean that the word “God” clicked for me. Somebody told me it could stand for ​G​ood ​O​rderly​ D​irection. I once considered myself the kind of guy who always just assumed​ I was God and in full control. “God” now seemed to sum up all the new things in my life that were keeping me clean. Somebody told me “God” could be the people at the meetings, the books that were helping me to start understanding myself, and just the idea that I wasn’t in control and invincible like I once believed. That was “God.” I could get with that. I’ve read some philosophy books, and I’ve had a ​lot of conversations with people over the past seven years that really helped me hone in on my beliefs. I aim to treat the world well and

eliminate personal separations from it so I can feel and do better. It’s about not being perfect and accepting my humanity while also striving to improve every day.

I recently decided that prayers and affirmations are basically the same thing. I say some things I want. I get focused on them. I incorporate them into my existence. Maybe it’s the law of attraction, maybe it’s astrology, maybe everybody’s sending me all the fucking good vibes — I don’t know. But I’m okay with ​not knowing now, which is also something that plagued me growing up: the incessant need to understand everything and be understood by everyone. I don’t really care about the whys and hows anymore. I just try to do the right thing for the right reasons, even though sometimes I do the wrong thing in subtle insidious ways.

That’s why life is a process. All of us operate alongside two things: wanting love and fearing its absence. We do the best we can with what we’re currently able to understand and accept. This is not a philosophy book, and this was only supposed to be an introduction, so I’ll end with this. Religion destroyed the idea of spirituality for me. If it weren’t for a couple of drug addicts in a church basement, I would have died alone before I restored my faith in life, the world, and humanity.

We pick up where ​Jacob’s Ladder left off... This is my recollection of the events that took place from when I moved to Philadelphia on November 24th, 2015 up to February 2017.

This is ​Bliss to Come.

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Layover

I don’t really feel like blogging but I really just have to articulate where I’m at right now in my life. So We just did a two week tour with Tranquility from Michigan/Ohio and it was amazing. Truly just a good time with a good group of people. We got back to Philly Sunday and played one last show together then they headed to Drexel University for a couple days to record and I went home and spent the past three days catching up with all my recovery friends/network. While it was really enjoyable just hanging out for three days it also kind of just felt like a layover or like I’m in limbo somewhere. I’m currently being driven out to meet up with A Philly band called Grayscale who I’m going to sell merch for on Warped Tour. I’m truly enjoying the touring stuff now and being home the past three days has just been riddled with boredom and subtle anxiety. This summer is going to be one of my coolest summers to date. I try to act cool about it because a lot of my friends have toured way heavy for different amounts of time but the truth is that I never really have. Rich People has been doing 1-3 week tours for the past 3 years but that’s in a van and just running from city to city hoping to find a place to stay each night. This is like Bobby sleeping on a bus and being fed everyday for free and probably being handed a pair of vans for free too. I’m gonna wear a laminate. This is cool shit. I’d be more anxious but tbh this just feels like the next logical step in my life. It doesn’t feel as foreign as it would have if this was a couple years ago but that’s mostly because the Grayscale dudes are just solid comforting cool dudes. Collin is the dude that sings for them and he’s one of the few people who i truly trust when he says “you guys are doing everything right just keep going” and I’m genuinely comfortable about hanging and traveling with the whole group for six weeks. Solid people. Regardless I’m anxious right now for no real reason just because it’s something different. I (Rob Rich) made my own social media accounts separate from the Rich People stuff so that my friends at home could see what I’m up to on this cool trip. @robrichfanclub is the Instagram one and i forget my twitter but Twitter isn’t really my thing anyway but I’m gonna post pics and stuff on Instagram if you want to follow me there. Anyway i feel better just having written this all out so I’m gonna go enjoy my night now. Almost there.

[richpeopleband-blog]

I learn a lot about a lot of things all the time. I’ve acquired knowledge. Not on any substantial academic level or anything like that but I mean about life and People and myself. I’m learning a lot everyday and it’s exciting because despite any amount of data collection and evidence it still takes me forever to grasp the practical application of daily habits that are conducive to my life feeling good. Think snooze button on a grander scale. Things like being sociable and taking the lead and initiating conversation. I prefer to sit in my head and talk to myself all day no matter how lonely and boring it becomes, because it is comfortable and safe. I won’t offend or harm anyone if I stay up here most of the time then come down sporadically when I’m feeling ok and tell everyone how great it is being me.

To be honest it is great being me, but only because I have really good friends who pull me out more often than I necessarily want. My life can be as good as I allow it to be at any given moment just based on allowing in some outside perspective and conversation. I lived like life was a race until I was about 23 or 24 when I realized that I could just let go of this delusional ideal state of solitude and mystique. I realized that self sufficiency was something I was only trying to prove to others based on expectations I thought they or you had of me. If complete self-sufficiency was possible for me without complete self-destruction where would I be? Let’s play the tape out and say I’m completely self sufficient and completely alone because I don’t need or trust anyone.

Knowledge is great and has its place, but humor and connection are truly some (often under-valued) useful things.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Assigned Value

I think that i often assign value to things I’m doing or that i want to do because i feel a need to justify myself. I think i promote those things via my public outlets at least partially to seek outside validation for those things that i am and that i want. Sometimes i think i even get so caught up in those things and in adding more depth and variety to keep my case interesting enough to myself or others that i fabricate new meaning and new wants.

I don’t need to build a case to prove my wants and beliefs to be sufficient enough. I don’t need to prove myself innocent, pure, interesting, or desirable enough in the court of public or personal opinion to be deserving of my original wants in the first place, but I am who I am sometimes.

Im an unchained melody and i enjoy the things i enjoy and want more of those things for myself. I do not care what those things do for you just as long as they’re not taking anything away from you to my awareness.

There is no set of circumstances that can make me happy unless it is the happiness itself that I’m seeking and allowing the circumstances that i have deemed desirable to just occur.

I don’t even have to want happiness. I’ve spent enough time wanting things that weren’t happiness to know that I wanted to try it out. I’ve tried wanting knowledge and depth and to an extent only learned more ways to paint others as separate from myself. I’ve wanted material success and got so much so fast at the cost of my time, sanity, and health. I worked so hard that the only function of that large number in my bank account every two weeks was to be spent filling an endless void with material possessions and loud experiences to drown the voice in my head that never stopped analyzing and bringing me down. I’ve wanted other things too in different proportions and have suffered proportionately to the size of those other wants. I don’t even mind suffering most of the time because it’s just such a standard state of being.

I started having an existenstial crisis the first time i watched fight club on hbo in 1999. I think i thought i was Tyler Durden for a decade after that. I don’t know if I’ve spent much of my life outside of an existential contemplation mode but i can say that the past few years have had more sane time than not, more intensely and for more prolonged periods of time. I do my best to just act like a “bro” and keep things simple and humorous anymore. I enjoy uplifting people and I’m fully aware that i like doing it for myself. I don’t do it for anyone else. I give of myself and accept myself getting filled up more and more. Shits deep but it’s also not that deep. People are people no more no less and I’m just a people.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Things Change

I’ve been quiet on the internet lately. I like the internet and i don’t have a problem with it I’m just the kind of person who doesn’t really keep up with phone things. I live a very full double-life or maybe some would say triple-life. It’s a very personable and physically available life though and with my phone and social media way on the back burner I kind of just use to stay in tune with homies or bands that I like and then to promote band events and write this blog when I have something to say. It’s wild looking back on this whole blog and just Rich People in general the past three years. We’ve done so many things and it’s all still just the beginning. I still consider us to be a very new band which is an appropriate assessment by any standard. Recently I’ve been coming into myself in ways i never thought i would all the while writing a new album. As we write and as i see these recent huge shifts in my personality and inner self it all feels like we’re just writing our first album.

Jacobs Ladder is a back-story and has an extremely dark “obscure” type of tone. It’s the story of a young lost “miscreant” (to use Danielle Chelosky’s word), self. I had a couple of years clean and my head was just about to start popping out of my ass. I threw together some songs and wrote some resentful lyrics that showed some signs of possibly moving toward getting better. Every song started with a victim mentality despite the complete awareness of the fact that I was almost never truly a victim. Some of the songs moved toward recognition of my part in things but in general the underlying foundation was still in a place of deep-seated pain. I was struggling against my new-found freedom and fear of failure and it manifested in a lot of black clothes and morbidly serious faces. I’ve been told that my live presence can be absolutely terrifying sometimes with that crazy look in my eyes. The truth is, I’ve seen a lot of shit and I used to think that needed to be understood in order for Rich People to be effective.

In the time after releasing that album/“full length demo” I became something I never was before. I became the “front man” and that comes with more responsibility than I expected. Because of this my personality began to shift in a positive way and it forced me away from certain reservations I still held about my connections with people. We started writing “Grace Session” and during that time period some of these shifts really started coming to the surface and the pain of how i was outgrew my fears of becoming something new. By the time i wrote the last line in “White Mark” (“I want to be all the way and unafraid to be”) I was already kind of over the dark boring atypical emo aesthetic and vibe and was ready to just let this thing be even more natural that it already was.

We released “Grace Session” after sitting on it and touring and playing shows for a year and immediately started writing a new LP. All of our material that is currently released was written before the band played its first show and then thru out the first year of the band. So many personality shifts have occurred since then and it really really shows in this new material. This will be the true first album of Rich People. I’m glad we got a couple years of trial and error and rehearsal and running around down before we got here but this is fucking exciting. In hindsight, and this is corny, but i feel like the first couple of years were a lot of searching for things that were right under our noses and this current space is just full of more self-awareness and acceptance.

Things Change,

RP

[richpeopleband-blog]

HALT

I say I don’t care a lot and I’m not sure what I mean by it anymore. I know that I care deeply about many things, but in the same breath i feel very detached from people and my emotions most of the time. Maybe just my emotions. It’s like i have the emotions and I can identify them but I’m somehow cushioned away. I listen to a friend talking about their really heavy deep stuff and i can feel myself identifying and empathizing and being in it with them for a moment, but the whole time it feels like the strong emotions I’m having are five feet away and I’m indifferent to them. I don’t always feel this way but it is pretty common for me. I recognize that i probably worked too many shifts this week and didn’t eat enough or sleep enough, so I’m sure that these are contributing factors. Feelings are just funny and even though what I’m describing kind of seems like a lack-of emotion as I’m writing it down, I’m aware that it is not. It’s a feeling of exhaustion. I’m mentally physically and spiritually drained today and pretty much all week but at the end of the day I’m off tomorrow and I plan to rest. Objectively I feel great about my life and overall I’m in a great place and really enjoying most aspects of it. When I got clean the people who helped me used to say HALT. They suggested pausing for a moment when i feel any type of way and assessing whether i was too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. Typically if I’m feeling off my square it’s one of those so that makes these things easier to identify. I’m not always quick to get back into a solution mentality but I’m quicker than I once was and that’s tight. Time to sleep

Goodnight,

Rob

[richpeopleband-blog]

Non-Anti

When I can take a step back from my emotional reaction to things I can take an objective perspective of things, and the objective for me is sanity and healing. I saw someone posting anti suicide stuff this morning and I’m not anti anti-suicide by any means, I just choose to try and not be anti anything. So maybe you’re thinking I support suicide, but no I don’t. I had a buddy in elementary and middle school. We had the same flip up hair and were into the same stuff. I thought we would be friends forever. In middle school we each gained new preferences and we naturally just shifted apart. A year or two into high school he killed himself. Since then a large number of my friends and acquaintances have taken the same approach whether it be intentional or via drugs. I would love to bury my head in the sand sometimes and in a way I have to some degree. I’m very numb about the whole thing and choose to put my emotions selectively through music and other creative outlets. I would be a full blown mess if I attached myself to everything that I’ve seen in my life pre-addiction, active addiction, and in recovery. People live long lives and never experience half of this shit. And I’m not worse off for it either and I’m definitely by no means pitiful about it. I have a perspective of life and mortality that yields an end result of a lot of peace and acceptance. It didn’t always feel like peace and acceptance but it definitely grew into those things.

I’m not anti-suicide, I’m just pro-living my life. I don’t know any serial-grievers who are of any great service to anyone. I’ve never read a pity post or a “where was everybody when they showed signs” post written by someone who wasn’t even close to someone who committed suicide, and though to myself damn this post is going to spark a lot of change and growth in the community. I get it. Religious interpretations woven deeply into the fabric of our nation’s mentality mixed in with the big pharma and therapeutic community’s billion dollar propaganda campaign it’s harder and harder every year for someone who’s truly lost to find a simple real solution.

I get it. I watched an episode of 90210 when I was a little kid and I asked my dad what heroin is. I had no social context for anything just that this dude said heroin on a TV show and was the coolest character on the show. My dad said heroin is a drug and once you do it you either die or go to jail. After that the only things I ever heard about it were exactly the same and reinforced this idea. I believed that once you do heroin you are never ever ever ever allowed back. By the time my depressed and confused adolescent self decided heroin was just the next logical step I was so beat up I just didn’t care if that was going to be the results. I lived in a self made prison that I was too misinformed and ignorant to get out of. Luckily I met some people that literally handed me a simple solution and proof that it works and then said oh yeah and here’s a blue print for a successful life since your brain sucks at it. Most people don’t have access to this but we’re sooooo fucked that the universe opened up a worm hole and passed us this program. I’m glad it’s not a cult and has no leaders or religious vibes or really much weird shit or I would have freaked out.

I went off on a tangent but bottom line I’m not anti suicide, I’m not anti addiction or anti-drug use, and I’m not really anti anything else because there’s no solution in anti. It’s like saying that our prison system and therapeutic community and big pharma is making our country a more peaceful loving mindful growing evolving empathetic unified place with less death drug use rape and crime. We got kids shooting kids in schools. But we’ll be screaming about how anti we are and how great the stats are on our anti efforts until the bitter ends. Hard to swallow some days but I’m coming into more peace the more I accept the world and it’s ways as just the contrast that I was meant to build my preferences from. I prefer to be happy and build things up and recognize and appreciate and amplify that shit.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Letting Go

So last night we were at practice and after we ran thru the set list a couple times we had some discussions about things we want to do and things that we no longer want to do. There were some heated moments and it was overall really cool. The thing about us that I really enjoy is that the four of us are almost always on the same page and our only friction is with outside influences. It definitely came up that I’m personally frustrated with the social media and general DIY shit, and so I decided to take a step back from certain things. I don’t need to be playing around on twitter and instragram and trying to figure out Facebook algorithms and Fucking what kind of content gets the best reaction at which time of day and on what days. That whole sentence is a waste of my mental capacity that could be better spent writing music (Ya know, the actual thing that I want to do here). I like writing music, I like writing blogs, and I like creating imagery for our Instagram. Other than that it’s all just me scratching my head saying oh I need to be good at Twitter how can I write a great fucking tweet and go viral and blah blah blah it makes me unhappy and it’s not what I was meant to do. So I won’t anymore. I’m talking to the boys and seeing who wants to do what but I personally will only be blogging and posting news and photos and shit to our site and avoiding socials for now. We’ve also been spending a lot of time manifesting this new album and honestly I just love this part of this so much. I’ve been making albums since I was 13-14 years old back in 2004. The type of music has changed dramatically and the feelings of writing new material has just expanded in the most beautiful way. I truly don’t know what I would have done growing up if it wasn’t for this aspect of my life. I did so much dumbass self destructive shit that should have gotten me killed and I like to think that music is something that I held on for. So anyway if you tweet us or dm us from now on it’s just the band responding not one specific personality. If you enjoy me writing about my life or the music or lyrics from my perspective I’m going to still blog and keep this site updated but the social media thing is just not what I’m good at. So yeah this is one of those positive departures.

Thanks for letting me share,

Rob

[richpeopleband-blog]

Misinformed

I like being a happy person. Sometimes I’m really just on one for a minute and laughing and smiley and I especially like it when people ask if I’ve “met someone” or if I “just got laid” or some other sort of external suggestion. I find it funny that homies believe those types of things are even part of a short list of things that could make me happy. Those things definitely aid my happiness or are results of my happiness (however it works) but I’m just happy. I’m just ok with me. I really can’t say it enough lately. I’m in a new space and I just really appreciate what happiness is because I was fucking misinformed about it for most of my life. I thought it was something that would change who I am and make all the things that people like about me go away. Who I am is who I am. Most of the character traits that I thought were what made me cool growing up were actually the things that people just tolerated. The self-pity act, the edgey sense of humor, the ability to shit talk in a way that could destroy a person’s day in very few words, standoffish hard ass demeanor, arrogance, pretentiousness, band name dropping, fraudulent music genre interest, a beard, etc etc etc. I probably missed opportunities to provide way more clear examples but anyway...

I’ve been a lot of things that for some reason at the time I thought were making me seem more interesting. In reality I’m an interesting person who made it harder for people to see how interesting I was for a long time because of the masks I wore and the defective misinformed character traits that I held on to. It was all defense mechanisms and I was on defense from every angle. I believed that this world is a hostile environment and that I need to be on guard against anybody who’s trying to get over on me. Nobody’s going to get the last laugh because I’m smarter than you guys and more able to stand alone. And I was soooo smart that I did stand alone. I pushed away from mankind in an effort to save myself from it.

How about drugs? If drugs were the answer then I don’t even know what the fuck the question was. But it seemed like a really smart idea for a long time. Drugs were inanimate and could make me feel or unfeel however I wanted and were in my control until they ran out. Drugs never cheated on me. Drugs never jumped me and broke my bones. Drugs never even made a passive-aggressive jab at me. They were just there and all I had to do to keep them around was harm the hostile human race who I loathed anyway by stealing all their shit and selling them drugs. I “never cared” but I always cared so much. I lost and gave up the fight and slowly started to untangle the deeply woven intricate mess of ideas and attitudes that I held for so long. Now I’m here 6 years and 8 months to the day later writing about accepting happiness on a blog that people read. Better yet a blog that people read and feel safe and comfortable enough to walk up to me at a show and let me know that they do so and that they enjoy it or that it helps them in some way. Something must have really changed if people feel comfortable and safe in my presence because 6 years and 8 months ago you would have avoided me at all costs and felt completely uncomfortable exchanging any words with me. I just didn’t give off a welcoming vibe. So shit changes

Thanks for letting me share

By the way, if you want to read a more in-depth piece that I wrote that’s much more formatted and cleaned up I wrote a book about the first couple years I lived in Philadelphia and it’s available in the store. If it says it’s sold out just hit us up and tell us to order more. I forget if there’s any left at Blake’s but I have about 3 in my backpack that I wanted to hold for anyone I might run into that wouldn’t be down to order one off of the internet.

If anybody wants to start a “street team” I’m all about it we promote pretty well and the touring has been awesome but we can always use a lot of help. It might look like we know what we’re doing but we truly don’t know everything and it takes team work to make the dream work ya know? Idk my boss says that when we’re all standing around looking at the floor. I’m done.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Joy Notes

So if you’ve been reading this for a while you might have noticed a bit of a shift or a pivot in me recently. Simply put I’m happier. Or maybe I’m more accepting of happiness and what it means. Honestly anyone who is in my day to day life or has interacted with me knows I’m pretty much always a ball of joy and laughter. It has taken me a very very long and intense time to accept that happiness doesn’t make me weak or not interesting. In the grand scheme I’m only 27 so I guess its not really a long time at all and it’s all relative anyway. It’s a lot like when I was getting clean and I thought that without hard drugs and a dark lifestyle I wouldn’t be able to write music that was interesting and relatable. That obviously was not true because I’ve only written more substantial material since being clean and the records and writing have only gotten more deep and more interesting in my opinion. It has also become a bore to me for myself or any band I encounter to just be hard-panned to one side of a one-dimensional line. I always thought I would stop being "Rob Rich" if I left this one corner of my box. If anything I’ve just left behind this old persona that never served me except with the small crowd of fellow miscreants I grew up around and have blossomed into something greater. I have zero hesitance about speaking highly of myself and I can take a compliment from people pretty well now. I don’t squirm as much when someone tells me they love Rich People or the blog or something now.

I’ve struggled to even blog lately. Or maybe for quite a while. Maybe since this began. It’s like the heavy morbidly serious issues in my life have really dissipated a lot and I’ve been having such a nice physical experience for so long that sometimes it almost feels forced to go back in the story book of my past and rekindle that stuff. Plainly put I’ve had many point A’s and point B’s and the more joy and growth that I’ve accepted the better I feel and the better I’m able to tell my story. That’s all Rich People is. It’s a story of my life. The people who come out to all of the shows and hit us up on twitter and all that and the people who take it upon themselves to go promote our shit all over the internet have just become part of that story and I’m enjoying it so much.

We’ve been talking about LP2 pretty much since we released "Jacob’s Ladder”. Ty’s cousin was taking pictures of us and asked us to pick one word that we wanted to move toward. We threw words back and forth in a private text message for a while and then one word came out. Harmony. We immediately said that LP2 would be titled “Harmony” and that we would work towards it. We’ve never lost sight of that idea and it’s really built a ton of momentum over the past two years. We’re big believers in thoughts manifesting into physical reality. So we’ve allowed the idea of that to pick up a lot of steam even when we took that detour to produce “Grace Session”. That was all part of it anyway. I knew that Harmony had to be a place I was actually moving toward and accepting of before we really jumped into this and the results so far have been the most exciting music I’ve ever participated in the creation of.

If I had to put it simply, I would relate it to the first three steps of that program I go to.

“Jacob’s Ladder” identifies the problem, which is me.

“Grace Session” identifies the insanity in my old belief systems, and shows evidence of hope and the possibility for growth

“Harmony” is our commitment to living in solution despite whatever my cynical inner sixteen year old has to say about it

The writing process is going smoothly and we have a lot going on. We’re announcing another tour this week and we have a couple of shirts and physical copies of the album leftover from the last tour and release show up on the Web Store on this site. I appreciate everyone who always grabs merch when we play your town or from the store, because its truly the only means of income that really keeps this stuff moving so thank you. If it wasn’t for monetary support through the buying of merch, bands could never sustain and grow so thank you.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Edgey

It’s funny how life just boils down to what we want. I’ll start off by saying that I’ve truly realized and am continually clarifying that the main thing I want is joy. As time goes on the conditions between me and that being my dominant want are disappearing. Plain and simple I find all of the edgey dark shit that once eluded me from the idea of mundane “normal” life is no longer attractive and can be a bore to watch. I think that Rich People started on a note where I still felt a lot of pain and was still portraying that character but we’ve grown a lot the past two years. I’ve grown a lot. Contrary to what i was always most afraid of, the realness and intensity has only intensified in the music and in the live presence as I’ve grown closer to bliss. The highs have only balanced out and created a more well-rounded atmosphere. We’re a fucking presence now and I realize more and more everyday that it’s all a result of suggestions that I’ve blindly taken over the years from people with more life experience than me. Considering the person who I once was it’s still surprising to me that I ever did any of this shit. I don’t even need to understand why, how, and when things are happening or going to happen anymore. I don’t need to censor myself or stand still in fear of success because of what it says about me to the old homies from my lower-middle class hometown. I can leave the way the I’m perceived to someone else.

Life is about what I want, and I’m allowed to want. I deserve to want. It’s funny we’ll tell people they’re deserving and turn around and disqualify ourselves from deservingness. I’ll compare the way I see myself to the way I perceive others. I was once told that I wouldn’t recognize myself if I walked past myself in an airport. I wonder what I’d think if I did eventually recognize myself

Ill do the pious martyr humble do-gooder thing where I’ll say... you guys deserve everything that life has to offer, but not me. Oh no, If they had any clue what I’m really thinking and the shit that I’ve done they’d know that I’m not deserving, but I can’t let go of that so I don’t even want to look at that. I’ll play “positive” and cheer people on, but I’ll stay on the sidelines because I’m too fearful to change and leave this comfortable level of pain that feels like I can control it. This quietly numbing buzz of familiar struggling that allows for some pretty nice days and doesn’t drop me into too many harsh lows anymore, but never really let’s me build myself up. It’s ok though, I’m fine and shits pretty good and even that is way better than what I truly deserve. I truly deserve to have ODed and died in 2011 or be locked up for the better part of my very short life-expectancy. I should really just be grateful.

... and that’s a lot of words and is really fuckin boring. It was enough for a while and goes much further than that, but I’m happy as fuck, and free as hell, and humorous as shit and killing it now. I’m ecstatic about life despite extreme contrast that I’m exposed to constantly because of my involvement in an addiction recovery program. If anything I feel like I’m just getting closer and closer to my intention to turn the amazing atmosphere that I experience there out into the world. And I don’t even want that just for the sake of wanting to help people(which I also find boring to hear) I do it because I enjoy it and I would love to be able to walk around at least some corner of this world and truly feel that atmosphere anywhere. We’re nowhere close to original in this intention because many many many bands have that atmosphere, I just want to have that. It’s that simple. I want what I want and that’s all I’m worried about. Ask about me and my character from anyone that knows me. Easily I could name 200 people right now that would/have said I’ve helped them. I giggle every single time and anyone who knows me knows the giggle even if we’ve met for less than five minutes ever. I say thanks, but I’m just having fun and doing what I want to do. I used to want to martyr and “save people” and be a good person and bring people together and link and build and blah blah blah I’m bored again. I’m hype as shit about my life, I’m allowing it to happen in its own time, and I’m joyous. It’s hilarious that the result of my focus on those things somehow yields a result of people getting something out of what I’m doing. I do all this shit for me. My original intent when rich people started was that we would bring people together. The manifestation of that intention is more real now that that is no longer my intention at all. I currently only intend to get closer to my inner self and be more harmonious and joyous. My close circle hears me say this all of the time so forgive me if I’ve never mentioned it here because I feel like I say it too much, but my goal in life is to be less childish and more childlike. I can’t make anything happen for anyone else so I’m done trying and there’s freedom in that. Thanks for letting me share.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Forward Motion

I’m going thru a very quietly exciting phase in my life right now. I’m letting go of things that I’ve been working toward letting go of for quite some time now and it feels really good to watch the space between myself and bliss disappear. It’s funny I’ve been blogging with the assumption that the book I recently wrote was already out as a blog and as if anyone reading this already has all 40 pages of that context. I really didn’t blog very much this past year or even really last year. Tbh my blog is the least consistent blog in the history of blogs. I selfishly blog. I write it when I need to write and I can’t bring myself to write it when I don’t need to. It’s my private outlet that I share publicly sometimes. I write ALOT more than I post anywhere and someday maybe I’ll trust this space enough to really let it all out, but for now this has been amazing and this year has also been amazing.

Like I started to say I’ve been letting go of things. I’ve been focused on my actual wants and have been just letting the rest be the rest. I want to write music. I want to record music. I want to shoot all the cool ass cinematic ideas I have for music videos. I want to record LP2 that we destination named “Harmony” two and a half years ago. As we’ve started writing these new songs I’ve really deeply realized that this record won’t just be written by a group of four musicians. It has been manifesting itself in the lives and souls of four individuals since we got together and started this thing. The whole has become greater than the sum total of its parts and our only intention at this point is to get ourselves out of this album’s way. It’s a long way away from a release or a pressing as things in the music world come about very slowly but there is a lot happening and this year I believe our physical reality is going to take on a whole new dynamic with more touring and just more forward motion than ever before. It becomes increasingly harder for me to explain to newer and newer waves of listeners and readers how intense the shift has been in my life. Most of you didn’t experience Rob Rich the piece of shit junkie, and whenever it’s mentioned most of you can’t fathom or imagine the idea of it. I promise you that I was the lowest of the low. A true piece of shit, and I’ve changed. It feels like the change has truly sunken into me on a molecular level at this point. The stories sound like fiction coming out of my mouth and at this point all I can do is laugh and empathize with that little boy that stood 135 pounds soaking wet in August of 2011. I don’t even want to change the world or change you. I want to grow and accept me and accept you and accept the agreements of time and space and float through this beautiful place and uplift where I am and find joy in continued growth. I love when people tell me I did this and that for them. It really re-affirms that I’m doing something right. At the end of the day you were attracted toward this for whatever reason and I never did shit for you. I did this for me and you got what you allowed yourself to get from it. So when you tell me our music was on repeat in your car for a year through a divorce or my addict friends who said they put the CD on in the car every morning before work to get centered about who they are it’s really just your choice and your decision to allow yourself to be reminded. There’s an energy under this whole thing where you and me aren’t separate entities and because of that I know you are also just another soul dancing human with me and that if I just keep focusing on my joy you will either ask how I became joyous or you will not and that won’t affect me. I already see who people really are, and people who truly know me know that. You’re really something, and I’m just glad to see this platform expanding with everybody. Thank you again, my reader friends.

[richpeopleband-blog]

Detachment

I have a long-standing tumultuous relationship with detachment. It’s taken my entire life to come to a place of acceptance of my ways in many areas, and the journey is far from over. When I was a kid I enjoyed building forts, playing with action figures, and rolling around in the snow. I think that most of the kids in my neighborhood were on the same page and we often played together, but I’ve always had this thing about me where I didn’t really care when they left. Don’t get me wrong I was codependent on certain things growing up, but the older I got the more people left and the more time I spent alone. I didn’t even really mind it except when i thought about it too much or compared my situation to others. I started drinking at age 14 or 15 and by age 16 I drank alone and watched movies whenever I wanted to instead of just in social settings. I liked going out and getting wrecked with a crowd, but I also really enjoyed the warmth of sitting down in a quiet place and just indulging and getting out of myself. The party ended pretty early for me because I got to a point where I just ditched the people I called my circle and got into this strange habit of driving around my hometown drinking beers. I would go to these really weird dive bars that would serve me where none of the people looked like me and were all much older so I could just be anonymous. I didn’t care about their opinion of me I just wanted a weird creepy place to get fucked up that wasn’t my parent’s house and wasn’t with any body I knew. By 18 and 19 I was getting into hard drugs and my only company was people I could get something from.

I’ve always had what people tell me is an “old soul”, but I now believe I’ve just always been very cynical and I guess I did have some pretty intense life experience at young ages so maybe I aged quick during a certain time period but I don’t know.

Anyway I liked to be alone, but I also really like people. Sometimes I would push myself to be more sociable but whenever I go too long like that my response to situations and conversations starts to feel mechanical or like I’m repeating myself or being fake. I hear people say “I hate people” all of the time and I couldn’t relate any less. I love people. A big part of me always has had a sunny disposition towards human beings, even despite the way I wear my face sometimes or attitudes Ive held in the past. I’ve recognized that I just need to balance my social setting to quiet recharging ratio.

Sometimes I feel like I have a really intense mission in life and like I’m being rushed thru all of these experiences and relationships to be pushed into something greater. It’s kind of an exciting way to look at life, but it also creates a lot of space for solitude. Recharging at home alone reading a book or doing some inventory work on myself is great but solitude can become isolation very easily for me. I want to be around people who can help me continue to grow, and I want to grow toward a place of accepting that I deserve to be around people who can unconditionally love me without draining or attempting to anchor me. I no longer care when people cannot comprehend what I’m fucking talking about. It’s none of my business where people are at in their processes in life. Call me selfish, and I will gladly accept the title. My actions speak for themselves at this point.

So as I was saying I’ve gone back and forth on whether I’m too detached or not and whether or not that’s ok and my current understanding is that I have attachment to the things that truly matter to me and that attachment is plenty deep and the rest I just let go of easily because from this perspective anything but priority just simply doesn’t exist. I hugged 200 people who walked into Rich People’s release show last weekend. I hugged every single person who walked into that place. I might have missed 10. I meant every fucking hug, and every single face whether I knew the person or not reminded me of how great life is. They seemed happy to be hugged, and I felt love to be hugging. So I don’t really have too crazy of a relationship with detachment I just don’t always accept myself because I look around at how attached some of my old friends are to petty situations and can’t help but question if I’m damaged goods because I truly don’t give a fuck. I’m not though. I’m ok today. Thanks for letting me share.

[richpeopleband-blog]

“119″

Photo: Ian Jared Bell