Josh Kerns and I recorded an interview with party rocker Andrew W.K. for our KIRO 97.3 show Seattle Sounds just days after the tragic school shooting in Chardon, Ohio. Not only an incendiary rock-and-roll frontman, Andrew W.K. is also a motivational speaker. So we asked him for advice:
What would your message be to kids around the country who are feeling lost and not like they have a place in the world?
W.K.: Really, your best friend has got to be you. And you got to find that satisfaction, that strength, and that joy within yourself. ‘Cause if you’re looking in other people or in circumstances or ways that you can live your life, that’s never going to give you that feeling. You’ve gotta be at home within yourself. And then you can go on these adventures and always be secure.
Did you struggle with that as a teenager?
For sure, yeah. And that was actually a big motivation for signing up for doing Andrew W.K. and do this adventure, is I wanted to find something that cheered me up.
I suffered a lot—and still have struggled—with all kinds of bad feelings and angers and depressions and things like that, like anybody. But I also always believed that there was some way to address them, and that you don’t have to take them to heart. You can heal them.
