Week Sixteen: Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week “High Speed Rail”

Jesse Sample’s Freak of the Week airs every WEDNESDAY at 6pm EASTERN only on RadioRadioX.com

This is Jesse Sample. In this life, we afford ourselves superpowers. If you look at a human life, any human life, in any given moment, you can start to see the outlines of a lifetime of choices, internal conversations, heartbreaks, redemptions, whatever…essentially a whole universe ran through some abstract version of a thing we call consciousness. If you open your eyes, all your eyes, you can see a rough summation of a life. This person, or being, has chosen paths on a great journey and, at any moment in time, we can look at them and try our best, to take in a small part of an epic story.

We’ve chosen a path. The universe gave us things, let’s call it a hand of cards, and we’ve played that hand, never fully knowing the rules of the game. We’ve found pockets or little stops along the way where we created safety, we felt empowered, or we found love. I think of a guy like Andre Agassi. This guy dominated an era of a sport. I’m not saying anything controversial in this, but what’s more fascinating than his excellence at tennis is the ingredient list for a recipe like that. What kind of life made that an outcome. What feelings went through his stomach at any mundane moment when he was 14 and perhaps waiting for school bus. You can plug your favorite genius into this question, and it doesn’t really matter the context of what they were great at. Their inner world made this the outcome we know.

For this week, I allowed myself to do what comes natural to me. I didn’t try and capture it with my camera. I didn’t try and expand my poetic prowess within the confines of an Italian sonnet. I didn’t try to vocally produce a foreign melody that was challenging for me. I love those things, and they expand my world, but this week I gave myself permission to be natural. I stacked guitar tracks and made a small fire in quiet chill of my heroes’ shadows and stared into the flames and went to another world. I can transport myself to another place. That’s what I’m good at.

It’s not just our heroes that possess this rare ability. It’s you and me, too. We spend our lives trying to find the purest version of it. I think it’s one of the greatest gifts we get in this life. It can be tennis, chess, or giving your friends unsolicited advice in a funny way that brings joy to everyone. You find that thing, whatever it is, and you allow yourself to express with abandon. You do what comes naturally and you fucking rock until there’s nothing left.

Thanks to all of you tuned into RadioRadioX. This is the Freak of the Week, “High Speed Rail.”

(PS I just think about what it would be like if Tom Waits tried to sing like Michael Jackson. Yes it would be funny and Tom could do something interesting because that’s what he does. My Michael Jackson built a world out of “Chimones” and “Hee Hee’s” He felt these things and eventually so would we. Our unique story is what makes us high level if we choose to allow ourselves to have it.