woman get me a beer, beer get me a woman

MP3

he's voted almost every day now
and The Smiths win every time
he reads The Nation page to page now
even that can be a climb
he knows what's right - it doesn't take a modem
he's the Village Voice detective
he knows what consequences actions always bring
in his college introspective.

but ALL he wants is a t-shirt to say:

"woman get me a beer, beer get me a woman"

she spent a week in kosovo once
after Jennings, Tom, and Rather
taking time behind the war fronts
for the stories she could gather
perhaps a poet, perhaps a correspondent
she knows the myths in all she's seeing
she hears the music like an asian mob
with lyrics of a european

but ALL she wants is a t-shirt to say:

"woman get me a beer, beer get me a woman"

keep your populism off my pop music
keep your Karl Marx off my Richard Marx
this is my guilty pleasure
this is my guilty pleasure

woman get me a beer, beer get me a woman

Active Good Vs Passive Evil (Not A Mash-Up)

The good people are too defeatist these days. See that, even saying that is defeatist. Damn!

It seems to me the good people are on their heels, spending too much time analyzing and critisizing all the evil in the world. Instead of creating active goodness, they're dwelling on, and therefore becoming, passive evil.

We all do it. Let's read about how bad things are in Washington DC, in Pakistan, in Palestine, in Texas, in New York City. We've become a hybrid of Howard Dean and Ice T in his song "Momma's Gotta Die Tonight."

It's almost as if we think we can do something by being informed. "If I seem concerned then I'm doing my part..." As if seeming concerned can actually do anything. It's like being in an airplane that's about to crash, seeing another airplane that's about to crash, and being so completely worried about those other people. As if your worry could somehow help them. And you've focused so much on them you can't even help yourself now...

I see it in the music world. People bitching about how rotten music is. As if they were powerless to do anything about it. But music is quite egalitarian, and instead of complaining about everything, you can write your own songs and neutralize the crap that's out there. You can't complain about music, because you can always fix things. You should be able to say "music is the best it's ever been because I'm writing the stuff to make it so."

Active goodness sure beats passive evil. Too many good people are enamored with the international intrigue of all the bad news out there. It's good to be concerned, but I would say that the evil out there is potentially being doubled by the fact that it a) happens and then b) captures the attention of good people and paralyzes them from going about their life.

I'm not sure if I'm verbalizing this that well, maybe if I spoke from my own experience it would make more sense. It's fun the read the news everyday and hear about how bad things are. I could waste eight hours a day getting in-depth analysis of how bad everything is. I'd probably even get a little cynical from it, I'd feel all powerless and whatnot. In my self-analysis, maybe that's the point. Paralysis of the good people. Instead of living my life, I'm watching the world's soap opera. And it IS one or the other, there's only 24 hours in a day.

It almost seems like if you ignore what is going on in the world and focus on doing (and on doing good) then that will make up for the appearance of apathy. Like "sorry I'm not concerned about how bad things are in _____, I'm too busy doing good things here." I don't think the paralysis of concern translates into the "I've Done Good" column. I'm working on this one...

Are You The Car Or Are You The Road

MP3

are you the car or are you the road?
will you slow down or will you explode?

be smart, be fast, be first and stay uncomfortable
a bubble of nitrogen to keep their stories full.
if you are not the hand, you're just a glove for it
and this would be your ass in someone else's shit.

are you the car or are you the road?
will you slow down or will you explode?

are you building walls on a mother's womb?
and are you a passenger in someone else's tomb?
undermine the clash, question the ramones.
criticize the beatles and deny the stones.

if the pipes are right then your water's new
but if your water's old then the pipes are too.
there is no reward when a man behaves
because lincoln's not the one who freed the slaves.

are you the car or are you the road?
will you slow down or will you explode?

I AM A RADIO

I think what's been bothering me is the myopia of the 20th and 21st centuries. I'm malnourished from my blindness, two metaphors in one.

Whether myopia pertains to distance or to panorama, I've got it. We've got it. (Heck, he she they have it.) We've got it and it's made everything ring so hollow. Everything. We could have been attuning ourselves to heaven all this time and all we've been doing is tidying up the waiting room. We've been trying to improve our lot here, toward it's own end. The humanism of it all, the materialism of it all is so stunted. We've turned antennas into pieces of sculpture. The sculpture is beautiful but it's not transmitting anything.

Music isn't just entertainment, education isn't just job training, human rights and freedom aren't just end unto themselves. You can do something with them. A radio is just a paperweight if it's not transmitting anything. Music is just busywork if it's not receiving and sending out any signal. A radio is still a radio if the power is turned off, yes. But a radio is fulfilling it's essence when it's powered up, receiving and sending something beyond it. The same can be said for everything here.

To extend the metaphor, I think my malaise has come from all the radios we've built that aren't transmitting a signal. Every victory has been hollow. We've built up humanity but towards no end but itself. We've worked for education and freedom and human rights - but then we've stopped there. Metaphorically, we've obsessed over building the best radios we can but without turning the power on, without them transmitting anything.

I think my malnourishment comes from the material humanism of it all. The catholic church is focused on 'gonadal politics,' our form of government has moved away from the social contract and towards a check cashing place for rich people, the universities are now just a glorified Apex Tech. Our universe is geocentric all over again.

It's all so material, as if things can only exist in three dimensions, not the four to seventeen dimensions originally intended for us. Heck, we occupy two dimensions a good 89% of the time. Music is about feeling good, record sales, chasing the blues away. It's like a handi-wipe you take out of a package when you have mexican food on your fingers. The material world is bringing me down.

Listen, Don't Speak. Ask, Don't Answer.

(PREFACE: Most of what I say probably ultimately reflects my own inner world than something out there in the outer world. So when I say things like "rock'n'roll is stunted" then what I probably mean is "the version of rock'n'roll languishing in my head is stunted." FYI)

Rock'n'roll is stunted. At it's very foundation it has taken a right turn away from anything purposefully transcendent and towards the Material, the Limited, the Transitory, towards the Finite. Atheists can't make four dimensional music and so there's gonna be a problem. "Four dimensional" and "music" are ultimately redundant.

When you move away from r'n'r in time and in space you realize how stunted it is or at least has been. When you see the music of elsewhere and of other times, you get A) the full panorama of what has been done elsewhere and where it can reach and B) the perspective of low limited r'n'r is and has been.

A steady diet of rock'n'roll is delicious. There's no reason to listen to anything else and you're full anyway from the r'n'r food you're eating as it is. But like those IMAX movies that start all small and then burst forth onto the full IMAX screen for maximum effect, when something in your brain clicks ("click") then something in your brain explodes (herefore known as "explodes").

To somebody reading this, this may all seem so elementary, but nobody's gonna read this so I don't have to answer to you anymore. Just be quiet and pretend like I'm a little baby, seeing and doing things for the firts time. Oh look how cute, baby's breathing oxygen! Oh look, baby's invented the wheel! Cute little baby!

Rock'n'roll took the sounds of gospel ('spiritual music') and added secular themes ('secular music.') Spiritual love become human love. Instead of a communion with and of saints we've gotten to the point where R Kelly doesn't see anything wrong with a little bump and grind. Nothing! Bump. Grind. R will tolerate it.

If you live in a three dimensional world this is probably a-ok. But if "four dimensional" and "music" are redundant, then you see the problem. R'n'R is stunted. Music is a portal, an antennae. It feels a little strange sitting here at a computer getting all up in it but hell, a computer is a portal too. Literally. When I say "a computer is a portal" you would agree. When I say "music can be a portal" it's the same. I mean literally too, not even metaphorically. Music is literally a portal.

Maybe I'll leave the fourth dimension out of this for now. We're talking about three dimensions right now. Ray Charles is my arch-nemesis. His secular humanism has set us back, Jack. He is largely credited with taking Gospel music and talking about low down dirty human love with it. People got all mad at him. He turned it profane. Not to pick on him, he seemed nice, but alls I'm saying is that the atomic clock on rock'n'roll music started right then. (Either it's atomic clock or it's carbon half-life, I can never remember which is which. But I don't have to, no one will hold my feet to the coals on this one.) It's my opinion that such a severed music is a doomed music.

Now all we hear about is record sales and third quarter earnings, and fame and drugs. Actually drugs has suffered the same fate. Instead of being for mind expansion, drugs have become recreational fun for frat boys. It's almost like eating Eucharist as a healthy snack between meals. Hell, food has suffered the same fate, instead of being a form of nourishment and medicine it too has become a mere snack between meals...

So all these things have been cut off from their spiritual echo. The shadows of the kabuki theater are living without their source. By being too close to something for too long, we've forgotten their essense. (I've forgotten.) So a form of the Ugly American has sprung alive again, and the myopia of humanism and materialism has allowed for this. We've become near-sighted and all we can see are ourselves. But other times and other places have seen some stuff and we need to get those glasses...

A Love Undiagnosed

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Your shoulders hurt, your fingers have withered away
Your movements fade, your circulation has strayed
It's not what you meant but now the damage is permanent
Oh you've lost what matters most
Oh it's a love undiagnosed

You atrophied, you've lost the skin from your toes
Your body feels the only symptom it knows
You didn't know but what you hide still has to show
Oh you waited for a ghost
Oh it's a love undiagnosed

you hid from what you couldn't have
but you hid too long
now all you have are just the scars

You used to think that we were able to fly
We lost that gift so you let the possible die:
To understand, to feel a touch from someone's hand
Oh and now it's done what it's supposed
Oh it's a love undiagnosed

Seventeen Minutes Please

Is jazz a sound or a concept? (And when I say jazz for God's sakes I don't mean the sound. I don't really like the sound of jazz just yet.) Is it possible to be a jazz band in concept without people getting confused? Is the linguistics of things messing up what it's pointing towards?

If I said "we're a jazz band" can't I be allowed to mean that conceptually? The desire to improvise, not the desire to move my hands back and forth, aka 'jazz hands.' The desire for 17 minute songs, the desire to subvert expectations, whatever the tones created.

(For some people this may be such a elementary concept and conversation, but you know what, I'm tired of apologizing for having to play catch-up. In a quest to catch-up to everybody else you skip over the fundamentals, you skip over your foundations, you skip over playing the blues scales and then you have nothing. When you skip over the blues scales, you don't even have the blues scales in you repetoire. You have to go THROUGH something in order to get past it.)

So anyway, being way behind schedule aside, I want what I want. My eyes are being opened to what music is supposed to do here on the planet, and I would like to do my part to help that along. I understand it better, and now I'd like to execute it better...