Venezuelan Jennings

MP3

I'm born a man but I was raised a child.
My faith and hope's replaced with photographs.
I used the parking brake to steer me farther.
It's like the cat who's still allergic to cats.
I've bought you gifts using money you've lent me.
My actions all reduced to adjective.
My questions match my disappointed answers.
The things I have are all inherited.

My love and hate move in the same direction.
Sarcasm shields me in the places I fear.
My years of hope were lost in minutes of failure.
I have a lust I couldn't trust even here.
I'm a gypsy that has gotten nowhere.
My world's the one that's trapped beneath the floor.
I hid from me what I'm revealing to you.
This is a fun that isn't fun anymore.

Chorus:
I've never found a way to live this lifetime
I see that now from where you are
I've never fixed what I had broken
Like nobody washes a rental car.

My fantasies of life were pure until they,
until they came upon reality.
I believe in what the saints revealed us.
But I lack what causes serendipity.
Equality is just a celebration
of a silver medal no one wants.
If life is killing you from repetition
may death awake you with it's final taunts.

Stapling Wood With An Airplane

I hate the phrase "the music business." No wonder no one listens to music anymore. If the Artists are providing that kind of shorthand, no wonder nobody trusts them. If someone talks in shorthand and in cliches like "the music business" avoid everything they produce. It gives the same shiver that the name "Bob Guccione" creates. It's a visceral shiver.

Nobody says 'the Spiritual Business.' No one shorthands it with 'the God business' or 'the civil rights business.' Everyone knows that it's crass and everyone knows that bullshit people go into business. They don't care what they're selling and if they can make money of feces, they'd try. So why pool in with them?

Nobody who listens to music thinks about it as a business, why push your toxins their way? Why transmit your poison? No wonder nobody communicates with the listener anymore. They're damaged, and nobody can hear what's being said. Shorthand is a symptom of the ailment and shorthand is also the cause of stomach illness. When I hear abbreviations and in-the-know 'knowwhatimean?' I am immediately wary.

Stop throwing in with the business people. Leave the money on the table. Connect with your listeners again, they miss you. Take the financial loss. Lose earth and gain heaven. Stop doing music for money, that's like eating the Eucharist as an afternoon snack. Stop using money for music it's like riding a sled to open walnuts. Music may get you money but money won't get you music. You're plowing the farmland with a Rubik's cube, no wonder no crops are growing.

The Zidane Principle

I was watching the World Cup finals this year, just like everyone else, and I saw what happened. I know the deal.

With like two minutes left in the whole game Zinedine Zidane head butted a guy on the Italian team and the Italian guy went down and Zidane got thrown out of the game. We all know this, I probably only have to recount this to Americans.

After the viewing audience got a realization of what was going on, the referees were at it and the teams were at it and the commentators were at it. I immediately got very agitated because I knew what was up. I got very pissy because I knew what was going to come next.

It's common in sports, but it's common in our existence as well. The Commentator. Some disembodied voice who talks over the action and frames the movements and helps us to make sense of what is happening on the playing field. We've all become very used to it. Even in life there are these disembodied voices that define what is happening. They provide wisdom and analysis and the like.

But unfortunately this Voice dovetails too strongly into the Pelvis Principle: "The more I learn the dumber I am."

In the midst of all the World Cup hubbub, I knew what was going to happen. The announcers were going to narrow the bandwidth of the incident, take it out of context, offer no context, and turn Zidane into a monster. "Zidane Snaps" "Froggy Soccer Player Assaults Innocent Civilian" "Freedom Fried Midfielder Attacks!"

I knew right away. These voices of reason were going to dumb down the incident and get the whole thing wrong. I saw the whole script ahead of me. Dumb it down, narrow the context, villify, make him one-dimensional, attack attack attack. I don't know why, I just know that it was to be.

For some reason, people love to get it wrong and invariably those same people are in positions of influence, ready to dumb down everyone in their path of influence. Newspaper editors, authors, etc etc. They may or may not do it to themselves, but they definetely love leading everyone else down the wrong road. They seek to cement their opinion in our head before we've had a chance to formulate something on our own.

There was no context to be found, no speculation on what would make a man in his last match do something so dumb, no rewinding of the tape to see what was really going on before he snapped, no understanding of the fact that something really crazy must have been happening prior to make him snap. Instead he was a one-dimensional monster who had to rational reasoning for what he did.

Look around at the public discourse and see it for yourself. Look at the lack of research and the lack of context. It's become a game of Concentration where you only see what's beneath two tiles at a time. No history, only events in their isolated form. We jump from one isolated event to another isolated event and so real understanding is allowed to occur. And we fall for it. We aren't superhuman. If you hear the message enough times you fall for it. Snap shot, snap shot, snap shot. How do these things keep happening, oh my goodness gracious.

That's where the Pelvis Principle kicks in. The more we learn, the dumber we get. If we could just take in the information alone perhaps we could digest it better. But no, someone feels the need to edit and parse and ration and analyze the information before you get to it. And so you're dumber than you were before you tried to get smarter. Watch for it...

The Biggest Smile In The Room

When the artists have become cynical, that's when you know the world is screwed.

The whole point of art is to create worlds. Not just wallow in the limitations of this world, but transcend it. When the artists stop looking forwards, what are the rest of us to do?

It kind of reminds me of those cartoons where the main character (usually a elephant or a talking bicycle or something) draws an invisible square in midair and then that square turns into a portal or a time machine and then the bike escapes to another place or another dimension or something. It's not mere escapism, it's a genuine way out.


When the Artist loses his way, loses the path to a way out, we're all in trouble. If he can't see a way out, how are we expected to? And right now, our artists don't seem focused on a way out. Maybe I can only speak on my own behalf but we've hit a glass ceiling where we complain about the human condition and yearn for a way out or get mad at our math teacher. "I want to get out of here" or "I think I'm dumb" is not quite the combination to the masterlock that keeps us imprisoned...

The Artist can go beyond "describe" and go towards "prescribe." He goes beyond map-reading and becomes the map-making. He doesn't complain about the darkness, he's too busy being the candle-maker. The artist is the biggest optimist in the room. He's the most joyous. He smelts the iron that creates the swords that will kill him some dragons/thieving politicians. The Artist knows something the rest of us do not. Find the biggest weirdo in the room with the biggest smile and ask him what his secret is. Ask him what he knows...