Gumption: America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

by Nick Offerman

  In a sublime example of what made Chris Pratt such a genius on that quality program, he was to sing a song in the scene and play guitar, then get Jeff’s character to join in on the song. Well, naturally, Jeff warmed right into the singing and even began to harmonize with Chris, which was one of the dreamiest scenarios I could ever have imagined: Jeff, Chris, and Amy being hilarious, then Jeff Tweedy starts singing just like Jeff Tweedy, and they’ll just keep going until the director yells, “Cut!” except the director is me, so we’ll do this all night! Magnificent! It’s good to be the king!

  Except . . . every time Jeff would chime in, Pratt would immediately stop the song and say, “No, no . . . wrong. Listen to me.” I would think, “Agh! Chris! Jeff is singing! I would like to hear him! Singing out of that hole in his beautiful face!” But at the same time it was so goddamn funny that Chris’s character, Andy Dwyer, would unwittingly commit such a sacrilege. He even became visibly frustrated that Jeff “just couldn’t get it right.” Perhaps Pratt’s general secret was that he would simply discern what would be the one thing that his Andy shouldn’t do in a given scenario, and then he would do exactly that thing, with the relentless enthusiasm of a puppy. Whatever the source of his alchemy, I could never get enough of it, and it certainly served that night to allow Tweedy (and all present) to enjoy himself.

  That was the night Jeff and I became friends. I have had the pleasure of his company on several occasions since, most gratifyingly whilst directing a music video for Jeff and his older son (from his current marriage to Sue Miller, as Jeff and I have no kids of our own), Spencer. They have a two-man outfit called Tweedy, and our little video film was for their catchy ditty “Low Key.” Really the first project that I have directed all by myself, the video turned out quite satisfyingly, and so I would recommend you view it on the YouTube computer channel (a rare ilk of computer session that I can condone).

  Like so many of the troublemakers in my book, Jeff turned out to be incredibly nice. Like a goddamn sweetheart type of nice that I like. I mean to say I like it, which is why I put a ring on it. I can’t help but admire his commitment to his family, for one; to his bandmates and other crew, for two; and for three, to his home in Chicago. Sitting at the kitchen table in the Wilco loft, where the Topo Chico mineral water flows like translucent shavings from a Lie-Nielsen hand plane, I met the members of Wilco. They are handsome to a fault, as sweet as a piece of pecan pie, and I trembled to shake their hands, from nervous excitement, but also in fear that I would somehow clumsily injure the phalanges that spin such glorious noise.

  They drifted away to continue variously transforming mere air molecules into Willy Wonka’s sound waves, as Jeff and I tucked into a rap session. When I began to describe to him the objective of my book and some of the themes I wished to explore, he quickly revealed himself to be a kindred spirit, only except more perceptive and less reactionary and more smarter than me.

  Jeff said that “young people are trying to discern who they are, figure out their identity solely through the products they consume, which is the message the corporations are selling us. That’s exactly what they want us to do.” I replied that young people and also not-young people have me somewhat worried when I think about the consistency with which we Americans seem to fork over our hard-earned incomes to gargantuan corporations for goods that (a) we don’t need, (b) are poorly made, (c) in Asia, without thinking. In the same way that Wendell Berry reminds us to simply acknowledge our complicity with rapacious coal mining every time we turn on a light switch, I want us to remember, every time we click “Buy” on our seventh pair of garishly colored Nike sneakers, the American workers who are not getting to make shoes, and the all-but-enslaved Asian children and their parents who are. Oh, sorry—Mauritius! Every choice we make in life can either support our own homes and communities or deny them.

  One of the topics that we found mutually fascinating was the proliferation of smartphone use among young people, but really, by now, people of all ages. I know the gadgets are handy, and they may be here to stay, but there are a couple of issues that need addressing.

  Firstly, people have quickly come to be perfectly comfortable with asking a person whom they view as good quarry, for a picture. The picture is rarely desired because the supplicant wants a nice picture of someone they admire in some way. Instead, the photograph’s value is to be redeemed, as quickly as possible, upon a social media site like Twitter or Instagram or FacePlace. It is as though our civilization is in a giant scavenger hunt, and a photograph of a person with any degree of celebrity has a point value, to be hurriedly logged, tabulated, and then left to descend in the user’s “feed,” as the hunt for more slivers of fame continues, dogged and never ending.

  The rub is this: It’s nice to meet fans. I love it. Fan interaction is almost always nice (unless a meal is interrupted—please don’t be that douche bag), because it’s a reminder from the world that I have a very lucky job. I love my vocation of making people feel better somehow through entertaining them, and so it’s gratifying when they tell me that my efforts are succeeding. My favorite interaction is, unsurprisingly, a resolute handshake with eye contact, followed by an exchange of names and perhaps a pleasantry. However, when the focus is shifted, as it so often is, to the photo, the artifact of the interaction, then that is plainly demeaning and sad to me. This instantly objectifies me, in your eyes, transforming me from a human being worth countenancing to a brass ring or chit to be snatched and cashed in, like any roadside attraction. I have often thought that I might as well send a cardboard standee of myself, for all the interest people have in human interaction here in the age of the selfie. My new policy in autograph lines is to insist that phones be put away.

  The second issue involves brandishing one’s phone at any sort of live event, or while taking part in any audience. It saddens me to have to include such an admonishing tone in what has been, for me at least, a pleasant sojourn together so far, but if you pull out your phone at a live event, then you are an asshole. Whether you’re taking pictures or recording or whatever else your cool apps can do now, you are decisively not playing well with others. With your selfish action, you are degrading not only your experience but the reverie of all those many people in your periphery who have no choice but to witness your gadget and your egregious lapse of attention and respect.

  When we purchase a ticket to participate in the audience of a film, play, dance recital, musical performance, or any other live show, we enter into a tacit agreement, along with the rest of the audience, that we will behave with all the decorum appropriate to the genre. This never includes holding up an illuminated screen in the purview of all the audience around you.

  In the film of his Sunken Treasure tour, Jeff addresses the audience at one point with frustration (for people in the back loudly talking during the songs) that quickly mellows into eloquence about experiencing live entertainment. He said, “You feel yourself being in a roomful of people, with all their hearts beating, and all their thoughts and feelings, and you’re a part of it—you’re not just you. . . . It’s a really wonderful thing to be a part of, but you have to pay attention to it. . . . You don’t set yourself apart from everybody . . . you’re a part of something, and it’s wonderful.”

  It’s a great concert film, more of a tour film, actually, and I was very moved by that testimonial. Jeff went on to persuade his audience to experience the sensation of remaining completely silent as a group for a time, and the intense hive focus is palpable even in the film, so it must have been utterly fantastic in the room. I am grateful to Jeff for reminding us of the magic that can be achieved in a roomful of people, which is what I have always loved expressly about performing live theater: If you’re not there, then you don’t get to feel the magic. Attempting to capture a piece of that essence on your phone device is antithetical to the whole point of buying a ticket and sitting in a seat. You can’t preserve the magic of the medicine being exchanged between performer a
nd audience. Yes, it works both ways—we performers need you to be there for us just as much as you want us to give of ourselves to you.

  Holding up a phone or, God forbid, a tablet, is merely the surface of the crime, but the core of the matter is philosophically more rotten. I’ll let Jeff take over with an anecdote from a show:

  I was really proud of myself because . . . I thought I had come up with the most exquisite way to express how I was feeling and I actually told the person in front of me—I said, “I do want you to film this and I want you to put it on YouTube—you’re surrendering your memory to an imperfect medium. Your memory is already imperfect, but this is worse. This is worse. It’s never gonna be as good as being here with all these people, losing yourself and at the same time finding yourself a part of something bigger than yourself. You’re never going to experience that in that thing.” And it’s the only thing I’ve never seen on YouTube.

  I said, “You are the best husband I have ever had.” And he said, “What?” And I said, “Nothing.”

  One thing I love about being married to Jeff is that, at moments like this, he can calm me down, by now with just a glance, after all we’ve been through, but even back then, he simply stated that he also meets a lot of kids by whom he is really inspired. First of all, let’s take a minute to highlight the Tweedy lads, Spencer and Sam. Both top-drawer young men, refreshingly smart and talented.

  Spencer is a rock drummer with a classy sense of panache, already playing with his dad, not to mention Mavis Staples and other major acts for whom Jeff produces records. The first time we chatted, he gave me a comprehensive overview of Chicago politics, in particular how they applied to some current school funding issues, all the while showing me hilarious videos on his phone. Plus, he’s got excellent manners, and the deadpan of Buster Keaton. We have spoken on many topics, and I’m usually the one getting the education.

  Receiving such lessons from a teenager gives me hope for our future, indeed. Jeff also mentioned that his kids and their friends were really curious and learning to do things that we would never have done as kids, like getting together to make pasta for a handmade pasta party; one kid raises chickens in his parents’ basement, which he then barters for guitar strings and other sundries. If I was worried about future generations, pasta and basement poultry make a good start toward assuaging my fear. Jeff adroitly pointed out that kids spending all day in front of the TV, computer, or video games or delinquently committing crimes is a newsworthy story, as in “What is to become of our nation’s youth?,” but when kids are engaged in satisfying, old-fashioned work or play outside, it’s just not a story, so we don’t hear about it with nearly as much frequency. The silence doesn’t mean the good stuff is not happening.

  Sam, the Tweedys’ youngest, has a winning demeanor once you get his attention, which can prove to be an elusive prize. Once you get it, though, you are aware of a sharp customer staring out from under his bangs. He’s the kid whom all the parents would have had programming their VCRs back in my day. Sammy knows how things operate. Forgivably young, he is still in school and so has appeared less around the scene, but Jeff and Sue operate with their boys in evidence whenever possible—not on display, but as participants in their lives: the hallmark of a family of quality doing it right.

  Talking to Jeff about religion, big surprise, we again came down on the same side of the bunk (is that the saying?) regarding any sort of evangelical proselytizing on the part of any faith. With his dreamy face, he said, regarding religion’s supposed benefit (the removal of ambiguity in one’s life concerning the big picture), “I would rather have people happy than sad and coping in some way, but to me the best thing— I don’t get to make the rules, but if I [did], everybody would work really, really hard at being okay with not knowing. Everybody would just put their heads together and hug each other and say, ‘We don’t fucking know.’ So let’s dance.”

  I was recently walking across Manchester, England, to go see Jeff and Spencer and some friends play a show at the Ritz. I passed a smartly dressed, handsome young fellow at a corner, handing out a beautiful colored pamphlet with a blue whale on the front, and—what’s that? Across the top of the cover was printed the question “Was Life Created?”

  “Are you a creationist?” I asked him.

  “No, Jehovah’s Witness,” he replied, as friendly as could be.

  “Wow. I would very much like one of those, thank you! This will most assuredly make it into my Jeff chapter!”

  He was puzzled by this, but his conditioning won out in the end as he bade me a cheerful good-bye.

  This was fascinating to me. Here I was, a freewheeling Yank in northern England, and a young chap randomly hands me this bullshit. I read the thing, and the basic objective of the writing is to convince the initiate that “science” is not as reliable a resource for describing the physical world, including all life thereupon, and its creation, as the Christian Bible. They were also quick to point out that the Jehovah’s Witness interpretation of the Bible as scientific truth was much less bat-shit crazy than those of other, more fundamentalist sects.

  Here’s what I want to try to get across to you, and them: I want you to think about why it is, really, that your church has you out on that corner. Is it really because of your concern for me and the rest of the uninitiated public? Us non-witnesses? If the contents of your brochure held even one sentence that was not meant as propaganda, like, say, the hard, cold information that we know as science, still fallible by the way, but way more honest, then why would you need to be recruiting others to your cause? Can you understand that your belief system is based upon a book written by human men, describing a creation story that is made up almost entirely of supernatural elements? And so, subscribing to that story as “the truth” requires, by definition, an act of faith. That is why we often refer to religious beliefs as “faith.” That’s fine and dandy. All who subscribe to your faith are welcome to believe that the world began in any way you like. In fact, our Constitution explicitly states that you may so freely believe.

  I would also just like to point out that there are no scientists handing out any brochures on any street corners, hoping to convince people that their version of creation is actually true. The scientists are at the pub watching a sporting match of “footie” whilst enjoying a pint with their mates. The difference between their relative confidence and your uncertainty, Bible-brochure-hander-outers, is that they can prove the facts of science (to put it very simply), and you can’t prove the first phrase of your claims. Please think about that. Why do you suppose some guys who wrote a Bible had the “God” character in the Bible recommend that you convince all the other people to sign up for this program? What if we pagans happen to be the absolutely most Christlike Samaritans on the planet, but we don’t believe in God? Is that not okay with you? Think about it.

  By the way, as Jeff pointed out, as well as Wendell Berry, we don’t know. Scientifically or biblically, we can never actually know everything, ever. Those big questions are what we call “mysteries,” and they’re a really cool and irrefutable part of life. Instead of denying them or embroidering religious myths around them, let us simply respect them. Democrats, Republicans, women, men, in-betweeners, Americans, earthlings, let’s all try to respect the mysteries that make us all just people. We’re complicated; we defy really any absolute categorization beyond that of “human.”

  Jeff was there to reassure me. He said gently to my whiskered face, “‘What do I have control over and how can I take [my] power back over the actual things that [I] have control over? What would make the world a better place based on what I’m actually able to do?’ And what would make the world a better place, if people followed my example, would be if they made shit instead of destroying shit. If they spent more of their day being squarely on the side of creation versus destruction. I say [it] all the time [when asked]—‘What do you think politically, where do you stand as an artist?’—Art is i
ts own country. It’s its own state, and I don’t need to have a political view—What I do is political . . . squarely, on the side of creation, there’s a place for you . . . you invest yourself. That’s what it is.”

  I walked into the empty Ritz theater in Manchester where Jeff stood alone onstage with the vintage Gibson J-200 that he calls Buck, getting ready to sound check. He was performing Neil Young’s song “The Losing End,” and he smiled and nodded when he saw me. He sang:

  Well, I miss you more than ever,

  since you’ve gone

  I can hardly maintain.

  Things are different ’round here

  every night,

  my tears fall down like rain.

  I thought the same thing that every fan thinks when it seems as though Jeff Tweedy is singing to him or her alone: “I will have you for my husband.”

  18

  GEORGE SAUNDERS

  I need to come clean here. I’m afraid I must level with you. A big part of my attraction to this project, if it’s not already perfectly obvious, has been my selfish desire to meet some of my heroes. My editor, Jill Something, and I were discussing the loose shape of this undertaking, when it occurred to me: I could exploit this “book project” to serve my own nefarious motives. We quickly amassed our list of thirty-eight or forty Americans, starting with mostly historical, or “dead,” individuals, and then there were some obvious living figures who were proffered by Jill, knowing me rather well after editing my first effort at a “book project” (the canoe one).