David Michael Bruno

What will you be known for?

Sometimes the “What will you be known for?” question irks me. Like there is going to be one thing about me that everyone who shares at my funeral will say.
“Dave was the guy who loved a good joke!”
Well, of course I love a good joke. And I love telling good jokes, which, I might add, happens all the time. It’s uncanny. Even so, is humor my “What will you be known for?” attribute?
Let it be known that I’d like to be known for, not only how funny I am, but also how wise I am. I’m not interested in being the funniest person alive. I’m not capable of being the smartest. I just want to be remembered as joyful and thoughtful. And compassionate. and creative. And proactive. And restful. And all sorts of things.

Anyway, I was giving some thought to all this on my compute home from work. I was thinking about the obvious. We will never be known for anything worth being known for if we allow inconsequential things take up most of our attention.

I asked my oldest daughter, who has been riding horses for years now, “Would you rather have $10,000 or a horse?”
“Does the horse come with tack, food, and medical supplies?”
“No, you have to pay for that. You just get either ten grand or a horse.”
She said she’d take the money, save it, get a job to earn more, and prepare for a time when she could really afford to own a horse. This made me feel all sweet inside. Rightfully so. She’s a great kid!
But the nutty thing is that, if instead of buying her countless Christmas and birthday gifts and odds and ends throughout the years (most of all of which she no longer has or no longer wants) we simply tucked the money away, she’d be able to afford a horse by now.
There is, of course, value in buying gifts. I’m not advocating a lifestyle of everyday stodginess in pursuit of someday happiness. Sometimes, though, we know the things we’d like to be known for. But we get ourselves distracted by things and activities of lesser concern. It’s not worth it.
As best as I can tell, there is only one surefire means to avoid whiling away life on things and activities you don’t want to be known for: sacrifice.

3 Consumer Justifications That End In Crap

There are at least three excuses those of us with too much stuff use to justify our excess.

It would be wasteful to get rid of it. Uh, no. It was wasteful to get it in the first place. Now it’s just plain stupid to allow it to keep cluttering up your life. What’s wasteful is the mental and physical space that the stuff you don’t need and don’t even want is taking up. Stop wasting your life. Get rid of the crap.

I might need it some day. The moment this justification passes your lips you know it’s not true. Seriously. Here, try this experiment. Go into your garage, find that box you haven’t opened in a decade, dig inside of it, and pull out that graphing calculator. Now go stand in front of a mirror and, speaking out loud, convince yourself that you might need it some day. Liar, liar, pants on fire. Get rid of the crap.

It has sentimental value. Then why did you bury it in the closet? Besides, you don’t even like the uncle who gave it to you. The nostalgia you’re really missing out on are all the good times you could be having if you weren’t constantly reshuffling stuff inside your garage and closets. Get rid of the crap.

One thing is for sure. If you use these three justifications to keep loads of stuff, at the end of your days you are going to have, well, loads of stuff. Do you want the end to be filled with crap? Purge the things that are messing up your house and dominating your material and spiritual space. Then go live a joyful life that blesses others.

A Participation

At the conference I was just at this past weekend, a panel of authors was asked to reflect on their definition of story. What is a story? There were a lot of good insights and answers.
Sitting in my chair listening to the panel, my mind got to wandering. It usually wanders. What is a story? After a moment of reflection I landed on what I feel is an accurate synonym for the word story. A story is a “participation.”
A story truly becomes a story when those who hear or read or watch it can take part in it. This seems to me like a reasonable understanding of what makes a story a story, though I don’t want to make a technical argument to backup this definition in this short blog post.

By this definition, there are many stories all around us. There are endless opportunities to participate. Certainly throughout our lives we are participants in many stories, small and grand. Well, but if we are going to be main characters in a story, then whose story are we going to take part in? Whose story are we going to focus our energies on? Participate wholeheartedly in?

BMW? The Gap? Apple? Patagonia? Frigidaire? This list could go on and on and on. It’s kind of late, though, so I’m going to trust you get the point.

A participation. It’s your leading role. What story are you going to take part in?

How I Came to Sell a Guitar

Thinking about music this week caused me to recall an outtake from my soon-to-be published book, The 100 Thing Challenge. It reminds me of a truism I’ve discovered the hard way, the humiliating way: if you aren’t good at it, you ain’t gonna get better by buying stuff at the store.

I felt a little too good about a song I wrote extemporaneously one night while tucking in our daughter Bridget, who was nearly three years old at the time. She liked the song. She is my daughter, and she loves me. To her it does not matter what my singing voice sounds like. I knew that, but I should have kept it in mind.
I finger picked a simple G, D, and C.

It’s time to go to bed my girl
Time to lay down your head
We wish the days would last without end
But it’s time instead to dream

It’s time to close your eyes my girl
See what the night may bring
We love the light and the warmth of the sun
But our hearts were made to dream

So dream your dreams tonight
And all things will be alright
And in the morning light, when the sun shines again
Won’t you share your dreams with me?
May your dreams never end

Then I finished tucking in Bridget and thought, “Look, I know I cannot sing. I know I am not a singer songwriter. But what I’ve just done is create a really good song. If I knew Bob Carlisle, this song of mine could get on volume three of the Butterfly Kisses album.” [Wait, what volume is he on now? I wrote this a while ago.]
I imagined work-hardened dads in rural American, who never learned how to be sensitive and who cannot say, “I love you,” to their young daughters, listening to my song and tearing up. I was amazed.
So I bought a whole recording setup. I bought a small portable preamp and two microphones, one for my Breedlove acoustic guitar and one for my own voice. I bought booms to hold the microphones in place. And I bought cords to connect everything to the old Apple laptop computer I owned. I was prepared to be a singer songwriter. I was set.
When all the accessories were ready, I crooned that tender lullaby in the dark of the master bedroom closet, using our hanging clothes to deaden erratic acoustic reflections. Recording in a closet full of clothes is an old makeshift studio trick of singer songwriters, I have heard. I made several takes. It felt good. Singer songwriters call the times they record their songs “sessions.” This session was going well. No one in the house knew what I was doing, but they sure were going to be surprised.
After I was satisfied, I unplugged everything and took my Apple laptop computer to my desk. I got my headphones comfortably positioned over my ears. I moved the cursor where it needed to be and clicked the playback button in Pro Tools to listen to the song.
Now, I was under no impression that I was going to hear a perfect take. Even in the midst of my pride, some humility found a means to temper enthusiasm for my talent. I figured that listening to my songs would be helpful and even inspirational. I judged that, even though “It’s Time for Bed, My Girl” was a damn good song, maybe by hearing recordings of my songs I could learn to sing better and write more profound words. I thought that. But I didn’t believe it. Really my heart was racing and I anticipated being shocked and thinking to myself, “Wow. Wow, David Michael Bruno. I never knew you were capable of this.” I clicked the mouse.
Surely I was not. Not capable of this. Worry and shame rung in my ears when my digital voice croaked back lyrics that sounded simplistic. My eyes shifted to make sure I was alone in the room. Where did the song I wrote go? What is this godawful noise?
Very soon thereafter I sold that small portable preamp and the microphones and the audio cables on eBay. I gave the mic stands to my father-in-law Billy, who is a professional musician, and I never admitted to him what my voice sounded like on a computer. Not long after that, I sold my last singer songwriter accessory, my Breedlove acoustic guitar.

After the 100 Thing Challenge ended, I decided to buy another guitar. Another Breedlove acoustic. But I’ve not recorded myself singing and never will again, God willing.

First Hutchmoot Reaction - Ron Block

I have this rule of thumb that goes like this. Every honorable man should have at least a minor crush on Alison Krauss and should flat-out love Union Station. Therefore, this past weekend I was all aswoon to be in the presence of Ron Block at Hutchmoot in Nashville.