I’ll open with my standard disclaimer. I like me some pop. And JT won me over several years ago with his smooth beats and his D&^% in a Box skit. How could I not love him?
And two years ago, he was playing a club tour, warming up for the release of “SexyBack”. I was lucky enough to see him perform at my favorite venue, 9:30 Club, which holds a cozy 1200 folks. Mt favorite part of that show was watching some drunk sorority girls trying to flash their phone numbers with their fingers from the 2nd floor balcony- they kept getting the numbers wrong. “Neewwwwww, Bambini! That’s not threeee! Three is thiiiiiisssss many!” Then they’d laugh and cling to each other and “Woooot!” Awesome. Yes, I did feel old.
My excuse for attending was to take my fearless 14 year old babysitter, also known as right hand. But after a full two weeks of trying to procure entry, I found out the day of that it was 21+. I know. Why, Justin? Why? But that did not keep me home, oh no. (She forgave me.) And I’m glad I went, because he had a full eleven piece band that was amazing. Any doubts I had about him being a studio wonder were soundly dispelled.
And now I know how he works his magic! ADD and OCD. I was perusing the new ADHD Alltop site today (cause in case you didn’t notice, I’m pretty ADD- I now embrace it.) and I came actoss an Adult ADHD strengths site. (links to JT article.) ADD strengths? Hmmm. So I checked it out, and JT was talking about hyperfocus and how it works for him instead of against him in music.
Since I’m married to someone who routinely listens to the same song eleventy twenty times looking for some slight variation known only to his ears, I see how that hyperfocus could be a gift to a musician. The article called it a blessing and a curse, and darn snickety that’s true for me.
Blessing: Helping me bang out an article that’s due in three hours.
Curse: the entire two weeks prior when I should have been doing it, but was researching 1998 Volvo Station wagons on Craigslist. Had to be 98, after that Ford took over and everything fell apart. Not that we were buying one, I just liked to look at them. Hmmm. Could I be OCD too?
Knowing that other people have the same kind of wackadoo brain that I have and still manage to kick ass in the world makes me happy. I also really love taking what was a crippling thing when I was younger and turning it into something that allows me to do all of the things that I want, and actually finish some of them.
I haven’t been on meds for ADD since college, but manage it a million other ways every day. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell where I stop and it starts, but maybe like my new favorite not-real person Dexter, I have a little room in my head. Except instead of a Dark Passenger that tells me to kill bad guys, like Dexter, I have a scatterbrained voice that tells me to check my e-mail every seventeen minutes and never, ever finish a drink. (My mom’s biggest complaint about me.:) “Would it kill you to just finish ONE?” as she collects the trail of 3/4 finished glasses around the kitchen.Yes, Mom. I think it would.
How do your daily neuroses get in your way, and how do they clear your path? Inquiring minds want to know.
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