There's a song you've probably heard hundreds of times.

Maybe thousands.

You know exactly when the drums come in.

You know the guitar solo.

You know every word.

You've been listening to it for 30 years.

And then one day you hear something you've never heard before.

But the song didn't change…

You did.

Matt Fogelson talked about this several times during our conversation.

His favorite song is "Sweet Jane" by the Velvet Underground.

It's been with him through most of his life.

As a teenager, it was a party song.

After his father died, it became something completely different.

Matt returned to it over and over because it connected him to the kid he'd been before grief entered his life.

Years later, after moving to California, the same song became a connection to New York.

Same recording.

Same words.

Same chords.

Different song.

The same thing happened with Pearl Jam's " "

For years, Matt heard Eddie Vedder screaming "release me" and felt like the words were expressing something inside Matt himself.

Then, decades after his father's death, Matt heard the song differently.

This time, he imagined his father speaking to him through it.

But instead of Matt pleading to be released, he imagined his father saying it to him:

Release me.

Stop trying to understand me.

Stop trying to become me.

Stop building your life around maintaining a connection to me.

I'm okay.

Go live your life.

Matt had heard the song countless times.

But he'd never heard that song before.

I think that's one of the reasons we return to certain music throughout our lives.

The song becomes a kind of measuring stick.

At 16, it's about freedom.

At 25, it's about possibility.

At 40, it's about regret.

At 60, maybe it's about gratitude.

The lyrics didn't become wiser.

We just finally had the life experience to hear what was already there.

During our conversation, I almost said something about understanding songs better as I've gotten older.

Then I caught myself.

I probably don't understand them better.

I understand them differently.

I think that's true of more than music.

There are books I've returned to and wondered how I missed half of what they were saying.

Movies that hit completely differently after becoming a parent.

Things my parents said that sounded ridiculous when I was 18 and considerably less ridiculous now.

Places that once seemed ordinary and now feel important.

Maybe even people we thought we understood.

The thing hasn't changed.

We have.

We've added marriages.

Kids.

Deaths.

Failures.

Successes.

Regrets.

A few thousand ordinary Tuesdays.

And all of that comes with us when we encounter something again.

Maybe that's why the things we really love rarely stay frozen in time.

We keep bringing new versions of ourselves back to them.

And every once in a while, something we've known by heart for decades introduces itself again.

Same song.

Different listener.

If you missed my conversation with Matt Fogelson, you can watch the full interview here.

We follow Matt's journey from losing his father as a young man, to following him into law, to eventually questioning the stories he'd been telling himself about his father—and himself—for decades.

We talk about fatherhood, grief, identity, music, leaving a successful career, giving yourself permission to pursue the things you love, and what Matt hopes his own son will someday remember about him.

And while you're there, please subscribe to the Campfire Gentleman YouTube channel so my son will quit bothering me about it.

He's very concerned about our subscriber count.

Until next time—
🔥Keep the fires burning,
— Clay

P.S. I’d rather grow Campfire Gentleman through real connections than algorithms.
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