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What Dan Dyer Says
DV: What sort of things make you reflect on or bring you back to being a “manchild” or makes...
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DV: What sort of things make you reflect on or bring you back to being a “manchild” or makes you feel like a little boy again?
DD: Well, obviously referencing the lyric from “Great Ocean.” The whole “manchild” thing to me is just… For me, the older I get, I just find that I don’t really… Obviously I do, I become more mature and wiser, but the other side keeps getting younger and becomes more and more of a child.and even understanding what that means. Not childish, but just the things I’d equate with being a kid, like being imaginative and inquisitive and not taking things so seriously – and just maintaining that. From the simpleness of sitting down and daydreaming to being into playing video games or whatever, and just having a good time. I don’t know, I just feel like it’s what I am. There’s definitely a part of me that you’d definitely call “the man,” you know, to be protective. If you mess with me or something like that, within the man is definitely going to come out. I feel like I can handle myself. I feel like I’m a responsible person and all that, but then there’s the other side, which I think it’s a balance of just a total child. I mean, the business I’m allows a lot of that to happen. The more people I meet, and outside of the music business, the more I find that. People that are just…I think a good life is one that you can … at the same time have an overall enjoyment of just being alive and doing what you’re doing. I think that’s very child-like. You don’t worry about things necessarily that we tend to now. That’s just a constant state of being.
Purposefully do to maintain child-like innocence?
The biggest thing I do is just stop. Stop and take a second and just appreciate. Kind of be in the moment, whatever. And take a second to stop and gain a little perspective and just, at the end of the day, just be thankful that I’m here at all – involved in whatever I’m doing, whether it’s a problem I’m having or whether it’s something great, like, just the opportunity to be involved in any of it. That always just lightens me up right there. Just, ‘You know what? No matter what it is, I’m here.’ I don’t know, it just takes me out of whatever seriousness I’m in. Obviously, having a kid will do that as well. Having my daughter, who can’t quite play yet or anything, but I can see that coming along with that and just really getting to kind of feel her childhood. That experience will probably make me even a bigger kid.
In today’s world you don’t often find people that will stop and be thankful for what they have, who they are and where they’re at. What do you think kind of instilled that in you or inspired that in you?
Well, I think myself, personally, I’ve always been a thinker. I’ve always liked to think about certain things, certain problems. I’ve spent a lot of time with God, with the concept of God, with religion and certain things that have always just been issues to me that I’ve struggled with. Struggled with in a sense that all the explanations and all the viewpoints and all the – even religions… There seemed to be a unity there, but then what I was hearing people say didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It seemed like it was all too complicated to me. I think getting into that and thinking about it and really spending a lot of time turning it over in my head kind of brought me to the idea of “a moment.” What a moment to me means, which is… It’s pretty. It’s really indefinable, but for lack of a… You really can’t say anything from our language – a moment, and really appreciating that and appreciating the power of it. I think there’s a lot philosophically resides in the idea of a moment. The more I got into that and understood it or whatever, the more I have appreciated it and tried to have a sense of “step back” and enjoy that.
That’s pretty cool. Why do you think a lot of us are afraid to “go lay down in the river?”
Uh… Well. I think people are afraid of change. I know people are afraid of change – for a lot of different reasons. We use religion as a reason and people are brought up in a certain way and are told a certain thing and a lot of ‘em have to live this existence and are almost forced to believe certain things as kids. You don’t really know any better and you’re not necessarily developed enough to question. And when you do question. When you finally get around to the position to actually be able to say that, “Something about this doesn’t feel right.” Part of the teachings that brought you to that point almost forbid you to challenge a lot – to challenge the question. Whether literally, whether it’s literally the religion that counts…whether it’s your family or the people around you – your peers and all that stuff that challenges you. For you to bring it up would be blasphemy or would be sinful or whatever, and so I think a lot of it is related to that. People are afraid to change. That’s pretty heavy, but it could be as simple as a haircut. You get used to something and you get comfortable with something and to leave it behind is a scary thing that’s risky. I think, you know, people get attached to things and they’re too afraid to try – to live outside of what they’re used to. That concept can be as big as you want it to be or it can even be literal – like somebody’s afraid – they can’t swim. Somebody doesn’t know how to swim, so they don’t even want to… I know people like that, who won’t go in the water because they don’t know how to swim. I know how to swim. I’m assuming you know how to swim. It’s not a difficult thing. It amazes me. It amazes me that if they were to step in the water, they would sink. They’d get in there they’d just freeze up. And, of course, you’d sink like a 20-pound rock and just further strengthen their fear. I don’t know if that answers your question or not. It’s kind of rambling on.
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