On a Super Bowl Sunday many years ago, I attended a Super Bowl party. It happened to be attended by country music superstar Toby Keith. Country music has turned soft in a lot of ways. He was part of a less soft tradition in country music than what today exists.
We nerded out, one writer to another for a good long time. Everyone else watched the game and we did too, but it was really two writers talking. He was very famous and I was hardly known. But man did he seem to want to talk to me more than anyone else in the room.
I usually hate talking to writers. They are so fake so often. So many pretend to write or do a total disservice to writing by using the language as a tool for filling the world with utter deceit. I like writers who actually write, and who seemed to write the truth. This was an uncommon thing then. As writing becomes more “democratized” truth delivered by regular folks becomes more common and is influencing writing and the ivory towers that welcomes a corruption of writing as a tool for truth.
I talked with him about his “economy of words.” For years that had been a thing as a writer that I loved most about country music: the ability to tell a powerful story in a short space, in the tradition of the ballad, passed over from the British Isles.
We shared details of techniques. For example, he talked with me about how he used his phone to collect voice memos throughout the day, where he kept ideas for his songs. I bet his voice memo spot is a beautiful place.
Unfortunately, what happens when someone with money dies is that the monetary aspect of the death overshadows the actual heart of the writer, and boy did that man build a money machine around himself. It was impressive to see how well he did. Money can magnify the weaknesses and the strengths of an individual both. Sometimes in that environment, relationships can get a lot more transactional much more easily. The artist with money does it to himself, he does it to others, and others do it to him.
It is nice to live the life of the wealthy artist, but it was that day as we watched the Super Bowl together that I nerded out with the artist, and I saw that Toby Keith really just wanted to be that artist. That he was. He dies prematurely this day after a battle with a cancer of his digestive tract.
Like an artist, throwing money at cancer does not tend to be the solution. We need to be careful when we supplant principles with resources. The cancer fight is often turned into that. A person is blinded and goes along with the most expensive treatment available to him with no other option even imaginable to anyone in the room. “At any cost,” becomes the line of reasoning, when the truth is that seldom in life will resources absent principle do anything but cause a big mess. Use resources in alignment with solid principle and great good is done in the world.
When Toby Keith and I spoke that Super Bowl Sunday, I brought up a song of his that I had listened to five thousand times of more, because alongside many other things, I liked the toughness of it. “Brought to you Courtesy of the Red White and Blue.” It was a very masculine song and beautiful, but unfortunately it was the song that helped lie us into two decades of wars in the Middle East, wars our people had no place in.
Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time and you must rely on your principles as well as you can. You must not let resources distract your from principles. That is not a battle of the rich, that is a battle of every man, woman, and child, rich or poor. It is the very essence of what morality and ethics are: Can you stay focussed on what matters? If resources are all that matters, a difficult road is ahead for every person who gets caught in that trap.
“Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue,” harbored some regret for him.
I brought that up to him that day as a song where I do not think he brought his finest. It was jingoistic. It was not his finest principles on display. I didn’t get all that out. In half a sentence, he knew what I was saying, and he harbored a guilt related to that song. I do not believe at that time in his life when I met him that he had people close to him that would say such a thing, that many people who loved his artistry would shut up about a detail like that, and that in all likelihood there wasn’t a lot of conversation about appreciation for his artistry. Usually it is really whiney liberals who talk about artistry. Those are easy voices to drown out.
For some reason, I was not an easy voice to drown out that afternoon, and the guilt came out.
This guy had a message. He had a conscience. He had a gift. Who knows if he used that all the ways he could have. That is between him and his maker. I am truly grateful for the glimmers of truth in life that he refused to stifle and which shined though him.
Today, one of my favorite poets has passed away, an inspiration to me prior to that day, and even more so for these many long years since we met.
-Allan Stevo
None of the million innocent Iraqis that died in a treasonous war will miss Toby Keith.