We are just two weeks away from the release of Work Songs, and as I assemble boxes and mailers to start sending preorder books, shirts, and coffee, I couldn’t help but reflect on the road that got us here. So, I thought I would write to share some thoughts on why I wrote this book, and what I think it could mean for us.
I spent two years in a trailer in the woods writing Work Songs. It was a series of long days, late nights, and lost weekends filled with what would become a predictable cycle: the joy of discovering a story worth telling, the monotony of researching all the relevant facts and related ideas, the hellish struggle of finding the words to say it right, and the thrill of finally putting the pen down. It’s a cycle that I went through 32 times—one for each essay in the book.
But why write a book with 32 essays about work?
By now you’ve probably heard me talk through the concept for this one a few times—that for as long as we’ve had language, we’ve had music for the work we do. Music that gave people meaning, connection, and strength to endure some of the hardest and worst working conditions in human history. But modern work has no song. We let the music die, and we did it when we needed it the most. So, I wrote these essays in hopes that they might do for us what the work songs of yore did before: give us the meaning, connection, and strength we need to do our work.
Maybe it's interesting in theory, but what could this book actually do for us? It’s a good question, and admittedly, my answer is biased. Because I think that stories can permanently change the course of a person’s life. And that’s not because of the emerging research in psychology on narrative identity and the transformative power of story. It’s because I once read a book that changed mine.
It was April 6, 2005. I was on tour with my last band, and we pulled over at a thrift store off of Interstate 5 in California. Out of boredom, I walked over to the bookshelf, and it’s important to note that up until that point in my life, I had never really read any books outside of those I needed for school. But for some reason, I bought a book that day called Brighter Than a Thousand Suns for $0.50. It was written in 1958 about the Manhattan Project, and I can't tell you why I picked it up, but I can tell you that it changed everything.
Because as I read about the 125,000 people who came together with the sole intention of ending the war and saving the world, I became fascinated. Not by the power of the bomb that they created, but by the power of their shared purpose to fuel an impossible dream. This became the first of many books that I would read about national security, international relations, and economics.
It’s because of this book that I went back to school to get a degree in national security so that I could work for the United States Government. It’s because of this book that I started to spend most of my free time learning how to write. And it’s because of this book that I lived in DC and went to brunch with a friend on November 4, 2012 who brought his friend from Richmond to join. Her name was Angie, and she’s now my wife. This is how a random book from a California thrift store permanently changed the course of my life.
Of course, I’m not trying to say that Work Songs will change yours. I’d be pretty skeptical of any self-published author who would make such a claim. But I do know that the stories in this book are important. Because we live in a time where our attention is funneled into an endless array of 24/7 news, heated exchanges, and mind-numbing content. This can create a deafening hum that drowns out many of the stories from the past that we need the most right now.
A deafening hum that makes it hard to hear our song.
Until we sing again,
Matt