Now That's A Graduation Speech!

Singer Eric Church offers graduating students from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill an epic commencement speech called "The Six Strings of Life". 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now that's a graduation speech. It's one more thing I'm.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Strong and Getty thing, or more importantly, commencement address, which
we've been talking about on the Armstrong and Getty Show
a lot and do every year this time of year.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
We got this text before we get to one that
has gone viral from last week. We got this text
from somebody. I was at the Berkeley graduation on Saturday,
my daughter's graduation. She went through the Davis School district.
Man went through the Davis School district and graduated from Berkeley. Anyway,
Robert Reich was the keynote speaker.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
He's a Berkeley professor. Remember he's the one last week.
He's a former economic advisor to Clinton and Obama. Everybody,
he's the guy the last week basically said the only
way you can become a billionaire is to be a
thief or a cheat. No other way you can become
a billionaire, hardcore socialist. The fact that a guy can

(00:58):
teach economics and advice and say there's no way to
become a billionaire on the up and up is amazing.
Remember when I complained about that Simpsons episode where they
had him the actual Robert Reich as a cartoon character
do a song about up with socialism.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
On the simple right. Yeah, disgusting.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
It was unbelievable. Anyway, Robert oak Reich was a keynote.
He wasn't as insufferable as I thought he would be,
although he'd go on and on about authoritarianism and how
they need to pack the Supreme Court and add New
States and abolish the electoral college to avoid authoritarianism. Yes, indeed,
I won't get off on that topic. That's what Kamala

(01:37):
Harris put out a video last week talking about packing
the Supreme Court in the New States, and maybe we'll
talk about that on the Armstrong and Getty radio show. Anyway,
the heartening thing was that one of the other speakers
was a guy named Manu Meal, a former Berkeley student
who founded Bridge USA. It was in response to the
twenty seventeen riots. When controversial that would be anybody that's conservative,

(01:57):
speakers were uninvited to speak on campus, and they had
him up there. He was engaging, funny and thoughtful on
that topic. So to your point on the radio show,
maybe the pendulum starting to swing back the other direction. Maybe?

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah. Yeah, As I often say, it's the end of
the beginning. People are aware and there's progress being made.
But man, it's going to be a long fight.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Havn't somebody represent the idea that they shouldn't have uninvited
those speakers at Berkeley a decade ago, or having Jonathan
Heide speak at NYU. That's a step in the right direction,
I would agree. Another liberal institution, but aren't they all
University of North Carolina tar Heels at Chapel Hill, they
had a country music star, Eric Church there to do

(02:43):
an address that he kind of combined music and his message.
And I haven't actually heard this. I've just had people
bring it up to me in real life. It went viral,
it got a lot of attention. So we're going to
play the whole thing for you here.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
You were made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly. There's a sound only
you can make, a voice that has never existed before
you and will never exist again, a contribution only you
can bring a way of seeing that belongs to only you.
The world does not need another cover song. It needs

(03:16):
an original. Six strings, six strings of life, and willingness
to keep them in tune, six principles, six pillars. When
all six are in tune with each other. The cord
your life makes is full and resonant and truth. All

(03:40):
six will drift, not one or two, all six and
their own time and their own season. Your faith will
go quiet when you need it loud. Your family will
get complicated in a way only the people who love
you most can complicate things. You will go through hard
seasons with your spouse. Viistion will hollow out, and your

(04:01):
resilience will wear thin. Your community will start to feel
like an obligation, and your world will try to sand
down the edges of exactly who you are. This is
not failure, This is not weakness. It's the inevitable universal
experience of living in an imperfect world that doesn't stop
to let us tune up, and the difference between a

(04:23):
life that sounds like music and a life that sounds
like noise. It's whether you stop and listen, whether you're
honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune,
and humble enough to make the adjustment instead of just
turning up the volume and hoping nobody notices. Wow, Because
you will notice, the part of you that knows what

(04:44):
the chord should sound like will always notice it will
not let you go. Life won't be right until it
is tuned. Trust what your heart hears and is telling
you about your song. So, graduates, now I encourage you
to take your six strings, make it something worth hearing,

(05:05):
and play your song. As I leave you with mine,
I carry you in.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
The Okay, we probably don't need this song. That was fantastic.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Oh where is the hall of fame of metaphors? That
needs to be in the front hall, the front entry.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
How freaking good was that?

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Oh lord, that was a poetry.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
We got to play that on the radio show.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
That is so damn good. Oh my god, all of it,
like you say, as a metaphors so good, you know
when they're out of tune and you either just blow
by it and hope nobody notices.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Well, yeah, and I've never been a fan of the
Pollyanna Lemonade will Rain from the Sky's bullshit speech either.
I just I like him saying, look, it is going
to be hairy at times. All the good stuff gets
tough at times. That's not failure. I've told the story

(06:10):
before of you know, the one real radio mentor I
had very young told me it's going to be hard,
it's going to take a long time, and you're not
gonna make any money. So when that was the situation,
I thought, here we go, we're on track.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Well, oh that was so good. Your family is going
to be out of tune at sometimes, your marriage, your ambition,
your morals, just all those things very fun. Then you
got to tune them back up because you know they're
out of tune. Yep, that's that is really good. Good
for him. It'd be better to give stand up there

(06:48):
and give a speech about how Trump is. Like getting
back to Scott Pelley, which I was talking about on
the radio show. He gave his commencement addressed not long
ago about basically Trump being a dictator and ruining the world,
and you're job to get out there and oppose him.
That's your role.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, Robert Reich saying we got to pack the Supreme Court,
an idea so horrifying even FDR was just shot down
for it.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, and just all that stuff. It's about, you know,
some other entity that you need to fight against as
opposed to your own life. The only the things you
can control in keeping them all in tune together. Wow,
that was so freaking good.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
No, that's an excellent point. You despare it there.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
No wonder people brought that up to me in real
life people. It's a couple of different people said me,
did you hear Eric Church's graduation thing? No, oh, you
got to hear it. People said, I thought, yeah, I've
heard this sort of thing before. That was really good.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, let's post that that audio end or video at
Armstrong and Giddy dot com so people can find it
super easily and zapper around with the friends.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Love that. Well, I guess that's it.