Class of '26

Thank you, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Ha ha ha, alright. Thank you. Guys, I’m not the Pope. Thank you. Thank you. My goodness, normally people aren’t that happy to see me walk onstage if I’m not carrying a guitar.

Well, who’d have thought I, of all people, would be giving the commencement address at a place like Brown? Or that I’d be given this fancy gown and an honorary doctorate? I’ve no doubt your President, Dr. Holman, approved me as a speaker because I’m famous and not so much for my academic achievements, but, I did do some research of my own when I was asked here.

Ha, yeah, I know, I’m old to you graduates. I think your parents are happier to see me up here than you are. You would have been happier with Sabrina Carpenter, but I’m from Rhode Island so I’m the local guy. Well, I’m flattered, Madam President. Thank you for having me here and for my fancy gown! It’s hot out here and really bright, so I promise I won’t drag, this won’t take long.

I watched some commencement addresses online. Never let anyone tell you I’m not willing to prepare. As near as I can tell, a good commencement address is usually broken into three parts. First, there’s some kind of acknowledgement of what you’ve done. Well, who am I to comment on that? I never went to college, much less one in the Ivy League, and so you graduates know much better than I what you’ve done to be sitting here. In fact, I think it’s fair to say no one could ever know better than you. Each one of you knows what you’ve gone through over the last number of years to be sitting there in your gowns and holding your… scrolls? Diplomas. Sorry, the last one I got was for high school, and that was thirty years ago. But you were the ones who stayed up late studying, who spent all those hours in the library, who wrote the exams. So, who am I to say? You understand what you did, and you should all be proud of it. Moms and Dads, you should be proud too, and I know you helped, but it was them, these students. This is the first real professional accomplishment of your lives for most of you. Don’t let anyone tell you not to be proud.You deserve that. Something was truly under your control as an adult and now here you are.

The second part of a good commencement address is advice. To tell you what you should do next.

But you know what, Class of ’26? I was worried I might be the wrong person for the job.

Many of you, you see, might be a little worried that you don’t know what to do next. Many of you think you know for sure what you’ll do next, and it’ll turn out that you’ll be doing something totally different. For some of you it’ll be a job, for some grad school, for some volunteering, I don’t know, but the future is more complicated than you think. Trust me, it’s gonna throw some curveballs at you, and you may end up in a really unexpected place.

And me, well, the thing is, I am doing the exact thing I knew I was going to do from the time I was twelve or thirteen. Maybe even younger.

I started taking piano when I was six. My parents weren’t all that musically inclined, but they figured it was a good thing to put a kid into. You know what they say; twenty percent of children take music lessons and eighty percent of adults wish they had. Well, my folks got me in the twenty, and once I started, no one could pull me away.

I’ve been asked a thousand times, maybe ten thousand, why I’m good at music. Why I’m going at playing instruments and singing and writing songs. I think people want to know some secret formula. Why is anyone talented? Is it in the body? In the case of sports I guess you might have to be big and strong, but anyone who’s seen me try to play a sport knows being a rock star isn’t about being super athletic. So is musical ability something in the brain? I’m not sure it is the way you think.

When a kid is learning an instrument, a little kid, you want them to practice for twenty minutes five times a week. That’s all it takes to progress at the rate you’re supposed to, and it’s all most children can really do. But not me, folks. Oh no. I would practice for two hours a day. Maybe more. I’d practice until my parents went crazy and had to make me stop. I’d sneak downstairs early in the mornings to get more in. And I don’t mean just fooling around, I really would practice. My teacher would give me more to learn, more sheet music to memorize, and I’d eat it up and beg for more. If my teacher wanted to teach me one concept I’d ask to learn three.

When I got my first guitar at ten, well, I loved it even more than piano. Anyway, by then I’d pretty much outgrown every piano teacher in town. Like it says in the song, I played it ‘til my fingers bled.

That’s talent, I think. It’s not something in your brain or in your soul. It’s desire. It’s just a willingness to work. If I’d practiced the same amount as any other kid, I wouldn’t be standing here, I’d be a guy doing a regular job who could play a little piano. And I think that’s true of most things. Folks, I don’t know much about law, but I am convinced that the difference between a great lawyer and me is that a great lawyer just wanted to spend all their spare time reading the law. I think the difference between a doctor and anyone else is a doctor couldn’t get enough of biology and medicine. If you know a really great barber, he’s great because he thinks about cutting hair all the time and puts in more hours than anyone else. That’s the difference.

I don’t know what each of you wants to do. I bet there’s a lot of you want to be lawyers and doctors and even barbers. Artists, stockbrokers, whatever. Look at all the things you’ve studied, earth sciences and statistics and urban studies. If you’re going to be great at those things, it’s because you can’t stop practicing. You can’t get enough.

I mean, sometimes it’s a drag. You’ll get tired. Sometimes I can’t even look at a guitar. I gotta go watch TV or play Call of Duty. But it always calls me back. I recharge and I want more.

If you’re doing something right now that makes you feel that way I am telling you right now you could not be luckier. And if you’re not, should you panic? Nope. You will find it. Get out there and do stuff. Do hobbies. Experience new things. Try doing a few different jobs. Help other people at their thing. I know a guy who’s the best technical producer I have ever known, just a wizard in the booth, who wasn’t in music at all until he was in his thirties, and now he’s the best. It happens, and it can happen to you. You will find the thing you love to do and are good at. Do that. Don’t worry, you’ll make some money at it. Might not be as much as some people but it’ll be enough.

But you know what? You gotta be careful, because it’s a trap, too.

By the time I was a teenager, I was one hundred percent sure I’d end up a music star. Hundred percent, and I was focused like a laser. A laser. I thought of nothing else. Sure, it didn’t happen right away, because it doesn’t. You need to get a band together and it never works out so you break up and get another one. You play dive bars and festivals for six fans. It takes awhile for the break to come, and you don’t know what that break is gonna be. Maybe you get famous on Youtube, or a song gets put in a TV show or a movie by someone you know, or you get seen by the right person, but if you keep at it these things will happen.

And if you keep working you will be successful. Not every day is perfect. You’ll make mistakes. I sure made a lot early on, but you practice and work and work and practice and success comes.

But that makes you think you can control it all. All that time, things weren’t always perfect, but it was always progress. I was always getting better. I was always getting just a little more popular. I was always getting closer. I was like an engineer in a train, pushing up the track, mile by mile. It seemed completely inevitable things would go well, because my work was paying off. There’s something called winner’s disease, where if your work and planning results in success you think you’ll always keep winning, but you can’t. Never forget that.

Of course, I did get there, here I am. If you spend all your time working on one thing, practicing for one future, having one goal, you might get it, but it fools you into thinking you’ve got that control over everything in your life, not just your greatest passion. And you don’t. Your health might not go your way, or some other misfortune. The world’s chaotic and you can’t control everything. You need to rely on other people, and that’s where it can really, really go wrong.

See, everything I did when it came to music worked for me and I had that going for me. But – and a lot of you know where I’m going with this, right? – you can be unpleasantly surprised sometimes. And so, yeah, my manager stole a lot of money from me back in the 2000s.

I even knew that was a risk in my business. Stories about that are pretty old. So I thought I was really keeping an eye on it. But things were complicated, too hard to entirely control, and he was good at stealing. Knew how to forge documents, move things around just so. And yeah, he fleeced me for a lot and blew it all on drugs and gambling and cars. Heck, I wasn’t even the only one. But he got me.

Now, I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me, and I’m sure not begging for money. I’m very lucky when it comes to money, and I’ve still got more than anyone really needs. I’m just fortunate that the job I’m good at pays more than most jobs, so things are fine. But that was a heck of a thing when it comes to trust. And I don’t just mean trust in a manager. I mean… trust in how the universe works. Trust in yourself, in whether you can actually control your destiny.

After that I started wondering if I really could trust the other people in the music industry. Ours is an industry with a reputation for scummy behavior, and I’ll tell you what… it’s true. A lot of backstabbing. I’d always sort of ignored it because things had always gone pretty well, but when your eyes are opened by one incident you notice others. I remember something my Dad told me; if you turn on the light and see one rat, there’s ten. But you have to see the first one to know there’s a problem.

And then you find out you don’t exactly own the rights to the songs you wrote. That happened to me, what a shock that was, folks. You find out, sure, you can still make money playing them, you still have some royalties coming in. But they’re not REALLY yours. Other people who had nothing to do with writing those songs, who didn’t spend all that time practicing and sweating and grinding to create all that, get a lot of the money.

Now I know you’re thinking, is this guy saying I can’t trust anyone? No, no, I’m not saying that. But I’m saying you’d better be sure. You’d better be sure.

Ah… sorry. Sorry, it’s hot out here. Ooooh, heh, I’m sweating.

So this is the third part of a good commencement speech, when I wrap up the message with a bit of a meaningful twist. Because you see, it’s not just about your job. It’s not just about your investments. You have to be careful of everyone. Your doctor. Your lawyer. Everyone. Even your family.

See, the day comes when maybe there’s something about even people you love that just make you wonder. Things that added up over the years. When your wife seems to change just in little ways, at first you think maybe it’s just that, well, she’s fifty years old too, and maybe she’s like me and feels it a bit, even if you still think she’s beautiful. And the kids aren’t grown up yet really, but they’re almost in college, they don’t need her as much anymore, so maybe that’s something. And things she says, you know? Like suddenly saying “I’m not all that good a wife” and you think she’s just fishing for a compliment. And then, this one time, she comes home from what was supposed to be a night with a few friends, and she’s home late and prancing around the bedroom happy about her night out, and you think geez, that was some night out, and later you remember that’s how she acted on her first few dates with you. And a few other things… and then one night, you’re just lying there in bed, and suddenly all those little things come together like… like a constellation where you finally see why they thought it looked like an animal, and you wonder if the worst thing happened.

And you use some of that money you’ve got, and you hire a P.I., and find out it did.

When you’ve been betrayed by everyone – by your manager, by your colleagues, even your goddamn WIFE – what do you do?

You take control. That’s what you do. You realize you spent too much time focusing on one thing – music, in my case – and not enough on other things.

Don’t worry, President, I’m almost done. Ah… ah, yeah. Almost done. I’ll be done soon.

See, you graduates have spent the last four years doing your best to take control of your lives, but you had to take control of yourselves. Self control is hard but it’s simple, too. You take control of the only person you have total control over. It takes a lot of hard work to graduate from a place like this. A lot of self control and discipline. Hours and hours and days and weeks of it. But as hard as that is, it’s easier than controlling other people. Only you command yourself. How to control others?

I know a way. There’s one thing you can always do. I don’t know much about anything except music, I never went to a place like this. But hey, I can use google.

I bet you’ve never heard of something called Amanita ocreata. It’s Latin. Well, some of you have if you’re in the right program. The destroying angel mushroom. We have it out in California – they don’t exist here in New England. They basically look like white mushrooms if you don’t know just what to look for, but if you do they’re all over northern California near oak trees. And no matter how much you cook them they’re always poisonous.

And so I put some in the risotto I cooked two nights ago for my wife and kids. Because you know what I found out? My kids knew too. They were lying for Cassie and what she was doing. Six months at least, and they were playing me for a fool. But I got control back.

You stay back! You stay the fuck back! Here… don’t try me! It’s loaded! Sit the FUCK down!

Don’t trust anyone. Never. You can only trust yourself. Work as hard as you can. Find what you are good at and love doing and rely on yourself. You’ll never let yourself down even when others do. Keep control. I … Jesus, that hurts. Ate some of those mushrooms an hour ago. This is how long it took them too. Christ… STAY BACK! Never trust anyone but yourself… no one else… no one…

HORROR AT BROWN UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT (AP) (MAY 25, 2026)

In a bizarre and grisly scene at Brown University’s spring commencement ceremony, rock legend James “Dig” Diaz, famous frontman of rock quartet The Rodents, confessed to the poison murders of his wife and children. Brandishing a gun, Diaz collapsed before the horrified audience and later died, presumably from ingesting the same poisonous mushrooms he had used on his own family…