Passion over consequence. When did the latter take the lead?

I’ve wanted to write this piece since April, but I’ve struggled with it. The original version was supposed to feature lyrics from multiple songs from Untitled to frame a sort of imagery to walk you through as I made my points. Instead, I’m going with a lyric from Taking Back Sunday’s “Swing,” because it’s all I need.

I decided to give up on the piece all together since it wasn’t coming together. So, I talked it out on Off The Record, my podcast with Jesse Cannon, instead. The episode went up today and is called Keep Getting Them Checks; the conversation about the title of this post takes place about two-thirds of the way in.

After taping the podcast, I had more thoughts and thought I had no place to put them. It’s a good thing I have a blog with my name in the domain.

Here we go.

I believe that blink-182 should go on an indefinite hiatus again.

Passion is the single word I would use to describe my internal feelings surrounding the band’s reunion tour in 2009. I always dreamed of the tour, but never believed in a possible reality where it existed. But it came around, and it was better than my dreams. That neverhappens.

That was 2009, though.

A colleague of mine harped on blink for most of 2013 for never doing anything “daring.” Why could Green Day go play Dookie unannounced on a UK tour, but blink could only play an amphitheater in City X in State Y? In the fall of 2013, that changed. blink played a string of small room shows, followed by a residency of their most important release, followed by a promise of making new music again within 90 days.

However, things fell apart.

I was walking down the street in April listening to We Don’t Need To Whisper by Angels & Airwaves, and what I felt was passion by its creator in the most pure sense of the word. There was an urgency recorded underneath melodies that would have withered away if that passion was not let out.

Surrounding that walk, something embarrassing happened: The members of blink-182 took public “shots" at one another and failed to meet promises made to themselves and fans (again). And then I started to consider, why are we witnessing this?

Because there are consequences now.

There are consequences to 40 year-old men walking away from one of the biggest bands in the world. And everything else that happens within.

2009 was a different era. blink’s reunion was felt so heavily because there was a hole so large that even bands climbing to their peaks, like Fall Out Boy or Paramore, couldn’t fill it. But now it’s 2014, and we got what we wanted.

We got a chance to see blink-182. I have seen them ten times, and that’s ten more times than I ever believed to be a reality before 2009! We got music, too. Some of us liked it. Some of us hated it. Regardless, we got what we wanted.

I have no desire to tell the members of the corporation that is blink-182 what to do with their lives, but from the perspective of a fan of the band, I had a nicer time listening to We Don’t Need To Whisper than Neighborhoods because there are captured moments of passion that cannot be faked.

Don’t make me new music if you can’t book studio time because of never-ending excuses.

Don’t keep touring because you are now trapped in this existence if you have the means not to be.

But most of all, please don’t let your passion burn out because you believe you are trapped by the consequences of losing safety.

The point is, passion over consequence. Don’t let the latter take the lead.

I believe blink-182 should go on a hiatus again. Do you?