Breath of the Wild (Out Now!)

Hello! This is your friend in the orange hoodie, Nathan K. (who has a new song out today called Breath of the Wild)

My grandmother had this green gameboy pocket that she got when she was in the hospital a lot for lung surgery. Coincidentally, her favorite game was Dr. Mario. I remember when we were going through her stuff after she died, we found it in her bedside table drawer with all of the Mario games and my mom exclaimed “she loved those people”. She really did. I do too.

I had the original gray gameboy, the thick one. All of us kids got it one year as the “big present”, which was tricky because there were at least 3 of us kids at that time. Pretty sure there were 4 of us, but one was a baby who didn’t yet know anything about video games. But still, 3 kids sharing a gameboy was a challenge.

Our first game was Legend of Zelda, Link’s Awakening. I loved it. My favorite thing about it was you could “trick” the shopkeeper into turning his head for a second, then sneak out with something cool like a sword or a shield. Only problem with that was, for the rest of the game, all of the townspeople would call you “Thief” instead of the name you typed in at the beginning of the game. You could also never go back to the store, or the shopkeeper would kill you. Worth it? Worth it.

I never made it out of the mysterious forest though, and eventually gave up. On the entire Zelda franchise. A friend gave me Space Invaders for a bday gift a few months later, and then we got Mario 2: Six Golden Coins (still my favorite of the Mario franchise, or tied with the DS one where you could get a tiny mushroom to become tiny Mario who could jump super high. I loved that one too).

2 or 3 decades later, our 8 year old neighbor got a Nintendo Switch and got Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and we would play it all the time. Also got super lost, but as an adult it was so fun to get lost in a world other than this current crazy world. I got to thinking about how I dont ever take time to do things like that any more.

Overworking becomes this badge of honor as an adult. It’s a good distraction for deep thinking because you can be too tired to think at the end of the day, but also have a perfect excuse.It feels a lot more honorable than the extreme selfishness that is sometimes branded as “self-care” on social media. Even though it’s kind of the same thing. There is a middle ground and and I’m learning to find it. You can do both self-care and take care of others. Reminds me of this quote I thought of senior year of high school that I wrote for some kind of “advice to future seniors” thing, that I wrote, and later got too busy to follow. “You shouldn’t have to slow down to smell the roses, you should already be going that slow.” Cheesier said than done..

On that note, I want to let you know I have a new song out today called “Breath of the Wild” that is about all of this stuff. It’s a quick 1 min 49 seconds, so you can listen and enjoy without the guilt of taking too much of a break. You can listen on any platform you’d like. Feel free to share with a friend or your gameboy loving grandma if you’re lucky enough to still have her around.

Sincerely,
Nathan

UPCOMING SHOWS:
– 4/6: Nashville TN (DRKMTTR w/ Frank Hurricane, Cherry Blossoms, Hunter Storm Smith) – click for tickets
– 5/17: Kansas City KS (Squanchero Gardens w/ Sara Beth Go)- click for RSVP
– 6/21: Red Lodge MT (Red Lodge Songwriter Festival – I’m a finalist in the Rocky Mountain Songwriter Contest!)
– 7/3 -7/6: Urbana IL (Audiofeed Festival)