I didn’t start listening to OK Go seriously until about a year and a half ago. Of course I knew about them. I heard Get Over It on Q101 driving my sister to school. Of course I’d seen “the treadmill video,” A Million Ways, and the one video with the Rube Goldberg Machine. But honestly, though my respect for them kept ratcheting upwards with each of their successive successful endeavors, I didn’t put it together that it was all the same band until I watched them spoof themselves for the Muppets. That’s when I decided to get serious, and bought all three of their albums.

Many, many plays and video views later, I firmly feel that these guys are my spirit bros. Damian and Tim met at Interlochen? Good God, I was that theater kid who wished she’d gone to Interlochen. (I went to French camp. Lac du Bois in Minnesota. It was great.) Andy designs mobile apps? When I first started listening to them, I was trying (and failing) to teach myself the same for a totally unrelated personal venture. I work with someone whose friend’s sister is an ex of Dan’s, and he’s apparently really a great guy.  Also, he and Tim are a little ridiculous together. Well, ok then.  What’s not to dig about these guys?

Not only are they totally diggable, but when I started listening to their music and watching their videos, it gave me the kick in the ass that I needed to start slowly shuffling my way out of a five-year creative drought.  At that point, I was someone who used to do theater,whoused to draw and paint, who used to try to build and make things.  I had been struggling with just getting by for so long that all of those things that I’d used to do had nearly been forgotten where I dropped them at the wayside.  Watching OK Go’s videos reminded me why I had taken so much pleasure from doing, making, and building.  Frankly, they made me a little jealous.  And they also made me nostalgic for high school (which actually sucked for me), and that made me angry enough to get up and start doing things myself.  I damn sure won’t ever look back on high school as the best time of my life, gentlemen, thank you very much.   

I am not a person who believes in coincidences. I believe in paying attention to the patterns you recognize in your life. OK Go lit the fire under my butt to get me back down the path of creativity. And when I started following that path I felt like the universe was getting them involved with me the same way that I had involved them. For instance, while pursuing a theater project, I met a former professor of Tim’s, sheerly by the coincidence that I was seeking help from the theater school at my alma mater. He had a framed, autographed still of Here It Goes Again on his wall. Clearly the universe was telling me that I was heading in the right direction.

So when I found out about the contest to make their next music video, I couldn’t help but feel like yet again, OK Go was lighting another fire under my butt and that yet again, the universe was slapping me upside the head as it tossed the opportunity in my lap.  “You want creative opportunities?” it asked. “Here. Do this thing for your favorite band.  In a month.  Oh, and here’s the whole story for your video. Go figure out the details.  Remember – one month.”

I can’t help but hear Damian singing directly to me in I’m Not Through, just as I hear in the lyrics myself talking to myself.  My creative voice has temporarily grabbed a hold of his, telling me I’d better sit down, listen up, and figure this video out or else I might as well just call my whole affair with creative expression done.  And that’s the story of my video, too. My lil Stickman, my creation, is just trying to get along, but his creative voice keeps tripping him up. And while his creative voice can be an ass sometimes, though it can cause him to fall flat on his face or want to give up, he ultimately comes to realize that it is trying to help him learn to fly.  And manohman, once he gets flying, who knows how high he can go?