Don’t Drag Me Down – My story
This song from the SxDx album – White Light, White Heat, White Trash from circa 1996 has played an interesting dynamic in my life. I went and saw Social Distortion at the Vans Warped Tour (’97), one of my first concerts after being back, from serving my LDS mission in 1994 – 1996. I was standing there and listening to Social Distortion, and this song, “Don’t Drag Me Down,” it’s interesting, because this has been one of my favorite songs for a long time, ever since it came out.
STORYTIME FOR CONTEXT-
I remember growing up listening to bands like The Cramps, Sid Vicious and Sex Pistols, Joey and Tommy Ramone, The Rolling Stones to some degree. My dad’s vinyl collection included Kiss, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Boston -and plenty of other music that came from the Vietnam War and conflict and crisis. And so, for whatever be the reason, I’ve always kind of been tuned to seek a different fork socially and morally.
So, there I was in 1997, at Boreal Ski resort on July 5th – I think it was, watching Social Distortion! I was going through inner turmoil as the words entered and pierced my ears. These words collided with my worldviews of faith, even then in ’97. It’s not to say that I didn’t or don’t have faith. It’s not to say that I didn’t or don’t believe in morals. It’s not to say that I didn’t or don’t believe in reasonable social conventions and constructs!
In 1992 my freshman year I rushed a fraternity known as Sigma Chi at the University I first attended. Welp TLDR version is – I dropped out from rushing and trying to join the fraternity when I heard about some rumors or stories of its founding and origins.
So, in 1996, after I returned from France, it was then that I found myself at Boreal in 1997. This is where the Warped Vans Tour was – a growing festival where Sxdx, LagWagon and Pennywise were mainlining with many other bands that included from memory – Limp Bizkit, Protein, Descendents, Face to Face, Reel Big Fish, Blink 182, The Vandals, Sugar Ran and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones to name a few – see complete list here.
When SxDx began to play – and this is where the story telling becomes import contextually – I was in conflict. This band that I had first seen years earlier in San Francisco as a high schooler on a whim came flooding back into my core worldviews construction space. It was back then while listening to songs like Another State of Mind, Telling Them, The Creeps, – these songs and lyrics took me to a place where I used to wrangle with noise and unknowns and frustrations. It returns me to a place where I first learned it was ok to not be ok. I think it was then I was learning that the biggest lie one often tells is, “I’m fine.”
And so, this song, “Don’t Drag Me Down,” represents so much. For example, when Liz, my wife, asks me , from time to time, “Where do you stand with things?” Often I don’t respond because it’s generally a work in progress for me (under construction or renovations in progress). Sometimes, honestly, my best answer is silence, because I’m still in deep inner conflict with myself of trying to determine, reconcile, whatever that is – worldview, truth, fact, perception! It’s often a very a messy ball that requires calibration, re-work, patience and sometimes rest. As the song title suggests, “Another state of mind”, I am in and working through, I don’t know just yet how to explain it or describe it. All the inputs, entanglements, and synthesis to my personal worldviews hasn’t completed and development and growth or recalibration is on-going.
I watch a lot of people reacting to the different affairs of the world today, and there’s so many people that want to be so absolutely correct. They have drawn a line of absoluteness – often in the fairytale of the past. OFten long forgotten and not persistently cultivated. It is often just an absolute. It has just become a tagline, or slogan or punchline – it’s their way or no way! And it’s just because with little depth when I ask why? So often this absolutism infringes and disrupts another’s standards or rights, or whatever it may be – agency, free will, autonomy, the right to exist and just be. The justifications of that overreach is quite often due to a system or worldview or a complex that’s just flawed and difficult. It’s often like a stranger to them they long ago visited with memories growing farther and farther away from the event and happenings itself. It often just ends in a self-righteous statement like – “I have righteous anger, so I am justified.” And that righteous, “anger” that seeks justification, has the problem of turning into indignation, and then into hatred, and then ultimately into enmity.
So when I listen to “Don’t Drag Me Down,” it reminds me it’s okay to not have or hold to a paradoxical absolute. It’s okay to still be in progress – in movement. It’s normal to be seeking actively in order to resolve and reconcile and understand and identify what all the inputs mean to me. I stand by the stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, who said, “It’s okay to not have an opinion” while I am working through those processes. It is even ok to guard my lessons learned and not peddle my wares too openly or freely.
And further, it’s objective judgment despite all the other inputs. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willful or willing acceptance despite all external events.
I have often taken this approach when I come across and interact with various and often different external/internal inputs. Whether it’s evidence, faith, feeling, anything else! Whether it’s science or opinion or curated truth, whatever it may be. I encounter many diverse inputs, information, and evidence. Processing and parsing and acknowledging and discarding of all that noise is how I drive to get to whatever the decision I am going to make. I treat it like a buffet where I am seeking the best of all the things to feast with gratitude on all those inputs! And so, that can be a moving target, almost always in perpetual motion. It’s not that I am or am not authentic. It’s a difficult journey to navigate. To seek reasonable self scrutiny and derive meaningful outcomes and findings. Things are always, hopefully, more or less improving. Growing, stretching, evolving! Life is most often beautiful, even with those monsters trying to destroy because it’s easier to be a wrecker than to be a builder.
There is a phrase in this song dealing with eugenics and white supremacy in the group known as the KKK. It talks about how you take two steps forward and four steps back. It’s just always been notable to me this song is an expression of all things that when somebody that has power – that power is often is exerted in a way that is not correct, nor justifiable, equitable, or selfless. And so, in light of all things that are out there in the world, I try to take the approach of identifying and understanding context and not trying to be so bent on convincing the next person. I am learning that this is a process in preserving and respecting and honoring another’s agency. It preserves consent and it helps preserve the autonomy and the free will and the opportunity for another to be their own actor and own agent. I imagine that is what’s so scary to the authoritative types and is bringing so much fear to those that feel the need to curate with heavy fists of fury. Confidence and courage is not the absence of fear or removing it completely. It’s more that it is the ability for one to acknowledge it (fear), to process it, to work with it, and to move beyond the fear. Face everything and rise or false evidence appearing real. There’s so much more to it. And the authoritative and traditional approaches just because it used to be traditional or used to be tried and true are not necessarily anything more than a curated and often narrow sighted prescriptive path. It’s time to evolve and it’s time to find the next what is better or best. It’s time to see wonder and awe. To be able to encounter joy and celebrate it so I say as Sxdx says when Mike Ness sets this tune up,
Don’t drag me down Mother F*er!
Children are taught to hate
Parents just couldn't wait
Some are rich and some are poor
Others will just suffer more
Have you ever been ashamed
And felt society try to keep you down?
I begin to watch things change
And see them turn around
Turn around
They'll try to keep you down
Turn around
Turn around
Don't drag me down
Ignorance like a gun in hand
Reach out to the promised land
Your history books are full of lies
Media-blitz gonna dry your eyes
Have you ever been afraid
And felt society try to keep you down?
I begin to watch things change
And see them turn around
Turn around
They'll try to keep you down
Turn around
Turn around
Don't drag me down
Ignorance like a gun in hand
Reach out to the promised land
Your history books are full of lies
Media-blitz gonna dry your eyes
You're 18, wanna be a man
Your granddaddy's in the Ku Klux Klan
Taking two steps forward and four steps back
Gonna go to the White House and paint it black
Turn around
They'll try to keep you down
Turn around
Turn around
They'll try to keep you down
Turn around
Don't drag me down
