Doesn’t Remind Me - An Ode To ‘Exile’

Listening for this reading is Audioslave’s song “Doesn’t Remind Me”, but if that gets to be too heavy for you — switch to Happy Feet’s “Boogie Wonderland” as sung by the late, great Brittany Murphy.

When people ask me, I like to say I don’t have regrets — just lessons. I am only 30 after all. 

One such lesson is the value of persistence even when things are their absolute hardest. That lesson was also learned the hardest possible way. 

My brother and I learned that lesson After Daddy passed — we quit Tae Kwon Do right on the threshold of earning our black belts. 

Up until ages 12 and 14 when our Daddy died, there wasn't a single thing my brother and I hadn't ever shared. 

We did everything together, but everything at that point was strongly linked to our family foundation.

Together, my brother and I had advanced over the period of four years from bushy-tailed and bright-eyed white belts all the way up to our multi-striped red belts. 

We were on the verge of earning our black belts, the big test in view and then onto competitions, when Daddy died. 

Side-by-side with Daddy’s help, my brother and I learned martial arts. 

We sparred together, we did our routines together, we raced each other, and we kicked each others’ asses. Him more than me, because my brother has always been three times my size — which just made me a feistier human being. 

And it was side-by-side in the face of our Saesong (Tae Kwon Do’s grandmaster), that we quit together. 

It was only a couple months After Daddy, but our hearts were too broken and karate was “Our” thing — Our being Daddy’s, Brother’s, and Mine. 

So we quit even though our Saesong did everything he could to convince us to stay.

Having discussed this at length with my brother, we don’t consider this a true regret — it was the right decision, because our broken hearts could not handle going to the dojo anymore, but it was a lesson. 

For four years, that dojo was our home away from home and we associated it strongly with Daddy since he was the one who motivated us to get into Tae Kwon Doe. We just absolutely could not do it anymore.

It was our first big pivot together and my brother and I have endured every single pivot together. From womb to the tomb, my brother has been there.

But in the earliest mornings After Daddy, when VH1 played in the background on our televisions as we got dressed for school — we weren’t having those conversations.

We were barely able to get ourselves dressed and back to elementary school for me and middle school for him.

We clung to the identities shaped by Daddy — music and sports — but we found new identities too as we moved forward out of elementary and middle school and into our higher educations. 

The first song I remember hearing after my father died in February 2006 was one of those popular songs on VH1 back in those days and I heard it clearly, because it didn't remind me of anything.

It was music like I had never heard it before -- or at least since Daddy died. It was the first song to truly resonate with my broken-hearted 12-year-old self. 

While musically it was new to me, the music video for 'Doesn't Remind Me' was everything I had ever known, Philadelphia,  Daddy’s hometown. 

 

“Doesn’t Remind Me” was my very first “Cranes in the Sky” — just released 11 years earlier. 

The first time I heard that song as a young and aspiring guitarist, it was the end of Tom Morello’s guitar solo at 3:28 that jarred me from the edge of my bed where I was sitting depressed and onto my feet with just enough strength to reach for my clothes.

In the background, Chris Cornell emotionally sung about things that he loved, the things he lost… 

In the video, the little boy who had also lost his father to the Iraq War (2003-2011) was reaching the climactic and vicious moment of “fuck this, I’m out” that one reaches with their trauma.

“Things that I held sacred, that I dropped

I won’t lie, no more, you can bet

Don’t want to learn what I need...”

I was 12 when that song zapped me awake again -- roughly two months post the death of my father. 

Contextually, the beginning of the Iraq War was a scary time to be a human let alone a human child in the 2000s.

Throw on a traumatic loss of the man I loved most in the world and it's no surprise that Audioslave's song resonated so strongly with my younger self. 

The world was in a real hostile war with real weapons the likes of which hadn’t been seen since conflicts such as both Great Wars, Pearl Harbor, and the Vietnam War. 

‘Doesn’t Remind Me’’ charted in the Billboard 100s so it was everywhere that season of music. 

Written by Brad Wilk, the late Chris Cornell, Tim Commerford, and Tom Morello, the music video depicted the pain and sorrow of a young American boy who lost his father just as the Iraq War was beginning to flare up. 

In the video, it was that child's first significant loss and, at the same time, I was living my first significant loss. 

I saw myself in that video when I was 12 -- I still see myself as that child with a stronger worldview and bigger perspective at 30.

The boy in the video was small like me, hurt like me, viciously angry like me, and in a world of pain like me. 

In the new After Daddy world, that song spoke to me unlike any and whenever I feel some kind of way about the world we live in, I turn to anything that doesn't remind me of anything.

After all, I too love throwing my voice and breaking guitars.