My dear fellow chronic masturbators… (and to those who has just recently joined my new grass roots organization “Crackheads for Clinton”!)
Aids is biological warfare with a biochemical weapon.
The price of innovation is opposition.
Being an artist in the corporate world is like being a cat burglar. Each job could be your last, and you are amazed each time you get away with another act of art. You may at any point be captured, and made to forswear your conviction as the price of avoiding theirs.
Often, asking ’why’ is the passive aggressive way of saying ‘no’.
A horse would find a jockey a handicap who continued to ask ‘why’?
The race is why, and that is all.
The deeper we feel our convictions, a less of a ‘why’ there is.
Knowing why you feel what you feel, is often a distraction from how you feel. Why is a butterfly, and comes out of a cocoon, in time. ‘What’ is the more important question to the moment, and its prerogatives.
Diplomats cannot secure a lasting peace, only warriors can.
We assume that for every question, there is an answer. In reality, there are far more questions in existence than answers. When we lose the questions, we SEE the answers, and rejoice that there are so few.
Questions consume time (though we are given the time for it to consume), the fewer the questions to answer, the more time returns to us, and the more the few necessary answers can expand, and fill your life with your hearts true worth.
When we are mad at ourselves, we bully ourselves by demanding more answers.
To live between the question and the answer (the parenthesis of life), is our daily act of faith.
Sometimes, the difference between a young man, and a mature man, is the young man looks for answers, while the mature man looks for options.
The cross is a multi purpose vehicle, with 4 th dimensional access.
This space reserved for contradiction.
In the absence of the search can be found all that is.
We are waiting for our own permission to live, if we are waiting on anything. As far as creation is concerned, that you evolved from a sperm cell, and pierced the egg, already granted you the full permit.
We are all beasts in a jungle. Know which animals you are, and be them, use them.
Naturally, even the strongest lion will come to confusion and stasis trying to conform to monkey law. The price of being a lion, is living Lion law.
Monkeys are concerned with longevity, and the lengths of their life spans. Lions are only concerned with the size of their roar.
Excerpts from the brainwave.
Soon, if they can arrange it, we’ll have to pay copyrights for the use of words. I am sure right now, someone is looking into seeing if they can purchase the alphabet. We’ll have to one day speak and write in Spanish, because it will be cheaper.
Once oxygen can be regulated and sold to us, no doubt it will be.
What happened to the American dream? It got leased out to Saudi Arabia.
The question of whether or not you can get away with murder is not whether you are black or white, but in whether or not you have a lobbyist.
The Palestinians are God’s gift to the military industrial complex. God bless them!
It is right that nature should reclaim from the earth, blood not willing to fight for its own continuance.
The value of the journey is not in whether you got to your destination, but in whether you found yourself along the way.
….finding yourself is the destination.
The hegemony of evil is maintained by imbalance.
Sometimes what we assume to be worry, is a creative plan coming together.
Tears are the infantry of joy.
What begins in tears, ends in reason.
We are grateful in time to learn that we didn’t really have nearly as many ‘problems’ as ‘issues’.
This space reserved for ‘practical analysis’.
This space leased out to field goal kickers.
The problem with most religious publications today is the lack of a centrefold.
We spend more time in looking for what we are already. We circle ourselves overhead, until we grant ourselves permission to be the self we see.
If being ourselves were easy, the assignment would have been given to everyone. Instead, it were given to us, which means that we already have the answers to the test. We just need to trust that.
Heroes cannot be heroes without tragedy. Tragedy is not a judgement upon your life, just background information to heighten your position in the story.
Nikki Giovanni! W. Yeats!
I have to give myself permission to be lazy or I am engaged in work of one stripe or another all the time. A quote from the new ‘OASIS’ box set caught my attention. “Laziness is the one divine fragment of Godlike experience left to man from paradise.” It is good to remember from time to time.
Master Sinatra was as great as musician as singer, although he chose his voice as his principal instrument. A musician is not known by their instrument as much as by their intellect and instincts. The maestro Miles was among those who recognized in Frank, a total musician and a total commitment.
A scorpion’s nature cannot be outrun by it’s tail.
Gil Scott- Heron!
Evolution is a consequence of will. What wills to evolve, does.
A canopy full of cans of peas!
This makes no sense, but it’s legal!
…and though the words flowed out of his mouth for free, he still had to pay his syntax.
2 guys walk into a bar, and blow it up. They were members of the ‘Joke Liberation Squad’.
The President replied that this was no laughing matter, that these terrorists would be brought to justice. “Here in America, said the President, we don’t just go around blowing up Punch Lines, and destroying Joke structures”.
Unofficial word is that one of the bombers concocted his explosive device from a’ whoopy’ cushion.
Controlling the ‘blessing’ requires will and determination. When the ‘blessing’ controls you, it is called ‘inspiration’.
Whom the ‘blessing’ bestows with flame
Will attempt to tempt with fam
Its terms of entitlement and a schedule
Of course, the ‘blessing’ is casual
Is sneaky, coy and gradual, but often hops
Like blades of lightening, between our laps.
And like synonyms dream, concerned that,
The ‘blessing’ not lay in time like stitches
Oozing its pus from the seams.
Whom, can therefore only wait
And if too full of themselves, masturbate.
As the ‘blessing’ flows
So does my bloody nose
I would love to punch it
But my knuckles wouldn’t
Even crunch it
Besides, it would just retreat,
Until the next time my head
Were at the top of my feet.
The ‘blessings’ pilot light never goes out
Though it ain’t always on fire either.
The more information the brain has, the more it slows it down. The less information the brain carries, the faster it can move.
Had I been attuned to this realization earlier, I might’ve summed up the essence of ‘Post Millennium Rock’ like so: Once upon moving to Europe as a much greener man, I got a hold of a rare beauty which couldn’t exist today. An album (yes, vinyl!) that on one side had Jimi Hendrix. Doing his set at Monterey, and Otis Redding on the other side, presenting his Monterey set. Explosive on both sides (and it needs to be reissued, I’d buy that on CD!), and having seared itself into the music box in my brain, had to, at some point, begin leaking out, and bastardizing itself as a pureed portion of this beast I call ‘PMR’. I figured it out a few days ago, that I was only trying to fuse in some way, the impact that record had on me. A few more salmon swim in this sea, (there are Stones and Beatle seeds and other wild root enhancements) but these two guys factor hard into the music I’m bleeding now.
Respect your mind.
There are some cool quotes on the glamorous box set of the new Oasis project. Check it out (if so inclined towards the situation you might be).
To be stoic in the face of tragedy is noble. To be stoic in the face of laughter is farce.
Whatever your instrument, the more ‘effects’ you play with, the less effect you will have. By all means use a few necessary toys, but trust your own tone and grow used to it. Sometimes ‘effects’ cover up our natural voice. The more direct your sound from the source, the more effect it has on the human heart.
The mind doesn’t mind a few bells and whistles, a few glottal stops and tricks, but the heart prefers direct speech, and so coordinates her rhythms to it.
The mind in the space of a few blocks can already have imagined 3 affairs, while the heart is still fumbling around for a cup of coffee.
Doctor Frankenstein’s crime was not in creating his monster, but in falling in love with it.
Frankenstein’s error was in believing that we wouldn’t see past his fear of us, and take advantage of it.
The law of men is always a compromise between human reason and volatile human emotion.
A vocalizing elephant was mocked by his pachyderm peers for wanting to sing.
“Elephants don’t sing!”, spoke one triumphantly. The musical elephant ended all conversation after reminding them of the greatest singer of them all, an a beacon of hope to singing animals everywhere, ‘Elephants Gerald’. She too was once mocked for her dreams, but SHE got out!
…”She got to work with Sinatra and those guys“.
Storage for thought bubbles.
‘Nigors’ are known not by colour but by feel.
The root of all guilt is in suspecting that life is against us, and that therefore we deserve to suffer it.
The fire on the other side of the wall is your desire come to meet you.
…eventually it will consume the wall, and you and it will become again one, just as you were before the thought left your mind and went on its journey of discovery.
Our desires are our completion.
Denial is also desire, turned inward and held against the will.
More often than not, the cause that we think that we are controlling is usually controlling us.
A man not in love with his life, will not earn as much from it.
Though we may not always love our circumstances, the love of our life itself is what saves us. Properly seen, our crocodiles are not there to devour us, but to help us walk across the water, stepping on their heads for good measure. Who loves their life, changes their circumstances from life threatening to life changing. Who loves their life sees circumstance as an open door, not as a closed one. We are not in prison, our minds are.
One of the simplest and most profound forms of meditation, is being grateful for the life bestowed upon us by creation. Expressing gratitude for the sun that shines and the rain that falls (to produce greater yield) within our lives, butters the bread of grace on the right side of the grain, and produces, as the sea produces foam, luck and miracles to attend to those wise enough to realize the form of prayer that gratitude for life is. With these prayers come wings, that dance about us in anticipation of landing and lifting us towards and even greater sense of gratitude, which functions in the levels above our moping, as a higher form of freedom.
It is ok to be mad at your life. All is ok when you love it. It is your prerogative to be mad at it. Rather better to be mad with it, as life is sometimes mad too. But still love it. Love the privilege of having a life to be mad with at all. To feel our truest emotions is the greatest responsibility we have, and when it hurts (and we know that it hurts sometimes), hurt with it, and love that you are alive enough and real enough (and willing) to feel the pain, to bear a piece of the world upon your shoulders like Atlas, and pull your turn at the wheel. Our emotions are our weather, and they like clouds, pass. Sometimes the winds will batter your will, just hang on to the kite.
Much of the internal anger we carry is no one else’s fault. We come in with anger, just as we come in with joy, which is also no one else’s fault. Much of our anger is connected to having been persuaded away from the ‘one life’, in other lives and the sleep we fall into when we forget that the ‘one life’ is the brass ring. We wake up angry that we fell asleep again and let others’ common sense keep us from our own.
Who dies in his own common sense, dies young.
With what causes we struggle are not there to control us but to collaborate with us. A life is a sculpture, and friction breaks the brick. Our sandblasting is not a judgement, but a finishing touch.
They are Demons when we are fighting them, but Angels when we surrender.
Angel duty is tough. Each man assigned one will beat him until he’s bruised and coughs. Then after a while he calls the dogs off.
There is the life that is thought, and the life that is lived. We get to keep the life that was lived, though it mainly suffered the life that was thought.
In battling evil, we surrender much of our own.
We do not fight because we like to fight. We fight because we live to fight.
We are also stabilized by pain.
Being a genius is not hard. Being paid for being a genius is.
Project yourself forward. Act now, like the success you wish to achieve. Project yourself as a winner, no one is waiting to hear another loser’s story.
We, being the mammals that we are, pay most attention to those who pay the most attention to themselves. (this being but a dynamic law of energy). Keeping your attention focused on yours, increases yours. Turning your attention too much towards another’s, increases theirs. Who is willing to pay full attention to their life, pays both it’s taxes and it’s tender, it’s insurance as well as its’ bonus. Who pays attention to their life, pays the fee.
This same esteemed colleague also warned me not to place much stock in a particular period of my work, as no matter what you do, or who you are, standard whispered wisdom will still insist that all of your best work was done before the age of 35. We are not classical or jazz musicians, so it comes as no real consequence in pop (according to the ignorance which passes itself off as ‘conventional’ wisdom), to be doing great work after a certain age, and to protect the work of yours that the record label has already, it behoves them to smear any of your work which they themselves do not own.
For almost all artists throughout space and time, their best work (as considered by numbskulls) was naturally at that point when influences converged whereby many people were seduced by its newness. The idea of ‘creative growth’ in the industry is laughable and very discouraged. THEY are the ones who judge the work and disseminate to the rest of the industry what they are to think and say about it, and there is a strong prejudice which goes against accepting as vital, and valid, anything done AFTER they have moved on to your clones. You are placed into the ‘do not disturb old clichés’ file and quickly forgotten. The irony of course is that by the time an artist has arrived at a point of discussion with the world, no one wants to hear it, lest it drown out the new 14 year old with nothing to say but ‘I like placing my finger in my butt’. Without even hearing it, people will go into monkey brain, unthinking, ‘repeat after me’, mass hypnosis mode and claim that your stuff (your artist name here), was better when you first came through. It seems that forces wish to tempt all of society into a deadened sleep whereby they accept that only youth has the valid claim. Total and complete bullshit, but our business uses bullshit for diesel. To protect their monopoly, all music which isn’t accosted and stripped bare by their corporate filter, is rendered suspect, when by and large the truth is the total opposite. For every idiot whose ear the companies own, and brainwash, there are now 3 who are open to the music that music herself inspires her troubadors to create and share with the downtrodden.
My greatest achievement in music, was to have survived it to this point.
…. And mainly keep rules away from your mind, the thing itself is the rule.
To whomever you are, this will be brief!
One man’s graffiti is another man’s hieroglyphics.
Come back to this later, it’ll mean more. C4
The musicians that I most admire are the ones content to play for only themselves. The rest of us are mad.
Read Rilke and Yeats, they bring understanding to the soul.
Man or woman, if you love poetry, you will love Edna St. Vincent Millay. Were she a man, in this dog eat dog and then vomit dog of a man’s world, she’d rank with Whitman and Frost as our natural poet laureate. She reinvented the sonnet form for the new era. She is the bomb.
Even if you cannot endure the formality of the language of his plays, read Shakespeare’s sonnets. They are among humankind’s most magnificent achievement. They are akin to the text of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s greatest scores. All lyricists, all poets, all writers, whether of novels or ad copy, can feed like pampered pigs at the trough of fine ale by knowing when to nestle close to the master’s sonnets, and become once again, suckling.
The key to breaking down the code of Shakespeare is found in the rhythm. If you can find the rhythm, the meaning starts to become clearer.
If you saw the history of Western music as two hands on a keyboard, Bach is still the left hand. For whatever his rhythmic and harmonic innovations, he expanded the emotional space in music for both deep pathos and profound joy.
…..and all of western music’s advances have yet come upon what is still the skeleton laid down by the master Bach. Even his integration of African harmonies and rhythms has yet to be recognized as the ‘Cubist’ event of it’s era. Still today modern Rock and Funk bass have a connection to counterpoint from Bach’s left hand.
Read James Baldwin to get inside the soul of the sufferer who understands. The ‘knower’ who feels. He ranks as one of western literature’s most spirited achievements.
Todd Hayes’ Bob Dylan film was great.
In the presence of more reason, is less philosophy.
This is incredible and surreal, yet all the more beautiful as such. (Only in America). I read that Senator Obama found out on the campaign trail that no less than the uberlord of world domination, and the doyen of all secretive societies, Master of dark disaster Dick Cheney is a distant cousin!!! That, if true is absolute genius. Kind of like when Luke found out that Darth was his father ! If the young master Barack can just spend even a little time picking the ginormous brain of the most powerful Vice President in the history of the terrorized free world, he could go on to mastermind huge clandestine plots and conspiracies that no one else would believe. Of course many Americans are blooded to other races, we are after all a large bastard tribe as much as any, but the sweet irony of the contrast (at least ‘image’ wise) between these 2 American heroes is fodder for much thought. “Cousin Dick, I’m having a family barbecue on Sunday, can you come?”
Go back to C4! This is ‘déjà vu’.
Listen, I need you even if I don’t.
Were your opinion less than valid, the Universe would not have asked you to participate in the process.
Each democracy is only as vital and valid as its citizen’s participation encourages it to be. The lack of participation brings dissipation and corruption breeds best , in the dank laboratory of dissipation and it’s foot nurse, callousness. Naturally, upon awakening to feel the blanket stolen from the bed, a tug of war ensues to win it back. A government is only as strong, as it’s people’s will, and if the will of the people are weakened, so shall the backbone of the government, also too weak to support anything but it’s own security.
The last resource of a rogue government is to intimidate its people into forfeiting their will, giving it over to those who would give it back, only once they’ve figured out how to get out without losing face. A face hard to find, as it is always looking over it’s own shoulder.
Once you leave the building, don’t look back unless you plan to destroy it.
Deranged as it is, martyrs must be. Even more deranged if the cause for which they are martyred, is any but their own.
What clears the air, clears the karma.
A Zen Buddha was walking down the road, so he punched him.
We neglected to inform in our announcement newsletter that 2 songs, ‘What You’re Doing’, and ‘Angie’ were written by other young songwriters not named Maitreya. Although in our concert experience we announce the authorship, we did not wish to obscure our great debt to these 2 groups (Beatles, Stones), and their young burgeoning composers, whose work we confidently predict will be garnering attention for some years to come. We wish them well at the beginning of their journey!
‘The Strangefellows’ next release; ‘BED ME’, will be available Feb.29. More details closer to the event.
This will be brief.
Thank you for your interest in ‘Camels at the Crossroads’. Compiling is always an interesting ‘rorschach’. I can recall when, years back, the emphasis may have been on getting the best vocal with the least mistakes, or choosing which tracks were with the fewest errors. Now it is more about the overall feel and conviction, whether or not I got a part perfect or missed a lyric. Now, the moment is the thing. I am not a big fan of overdubbing live material if it can be avoided, so as to now, I avoid it. The point was to present, given what opportunities came, ‘Post Millennium Rock’ as it has been dancing and incubating in my head for years, as we waited for our cage to spring open, and our chance to strike. It is but a beginning, but one in which we are proud to have been asked to participate. Sometimes a flash goes off and for an instant, blinds you. But sometimes, the flash also finds you.
In fact, I recall a flash going off on someone’s camera right in the middle of the intro for ‘O Divina’. We kept the ‘mistake’ as this was the performance where all of the other elements sounded best. There were also performances which we felt may have been better, yet didn’t sound as good, or ‘mic’ problems at the wrong time, or the usual discrepancies which are part and parcel of a musician’s working experience. Overall we wished to produce the general feel of the reality we faced in promoting our project to those curious enough to peek into a new and adapting world.
Though there are a lot of great live albums, the 2 which most inform my consensus of what it is about are; Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club’64, and the Rolling Stones’, ’Get Your Ya Ya’s Out. Whenever I master with Baglio at Nautilus in Milano, I always refer to ‘Get Your Ya’s’ as a point of reference. The rest we make up as we go.
The MC5, ‘Kick Out the Jams’ is also some pivotal live rain.
The more popular is ‘James Brown at the Apollo’, but for me the essential is ‘James Brown at the Paris Olympia Halle ’71’. If music were a crime, this whole band would be in jail for life, it is that wicked.
Yet another pivotal and formative experience for me was, while living in Germany, going to see, in Frankfurt or a neighbouring burgh, The mighty ‘Gang Of Four’. It was a concert that nearly 25 years later, I still get goose bumps thinking about. Gang Of Four’ were a great rock band.
As a child getting a rare chance to see ‘Quartet Singing’ in church, at ‘programs’, was always a delight. These groups, usually composed of 4 or 5 singers and a small rhythm section (if any), were always entertaining and intense. There is no comparable feeling to being in the middle of a church audience, as they are being ‘wrecked’ by a great gospel crew. I also grew a lot by watching my mother sing, the effect she had on the gathered as the song took effect on her.
I also learned from the church experience that, often when you have no voice is when you really learn how to sing. The church does not care as much about your voice as your heart, and can spot a fake, a mile off. This to this day is still my template, whether I sing in a concert hall or studio or dense smoky club, to sing it as if it matters, as if it is a matter of life and death itself. I know no other speed. If it isn’t real, it doesn’t count. I also rock like this. Once one has been bitten by the ‘gospel’ spirit, it is damn near impossible to shake, so you surrender to it, and just transfer it.
The ‘gospel’ spirit in essence amounts to sincerity and passion, with restraint as seasoning though not the dominant strain. It is alive in the presence of all sincere expression, whether it be transferred to whatever genre needs its fortification and encouragement, it is alive in great country, rock, jazz and blues music and those side rivers which these lakes have likewise fed. It is alive in the best of punk and is alive in the best of rap. Even sculptures and poets may be touched by the ‘gospel’ brand.
The mistakes we make are in believing that we are making ‘mistakes’, and not ‘experience’. Without experience, our wisdom can never take root. We are left as flag bearers in an uneven wind, without a strap to support us.
You will often, at least for a spell, come across those who wish to alter the face you give to your spirit, so as to give it another name. Only the God you name is yours, and though it has a thousand names, each of those names are known by you.
God assumes all of the endearments of affection aimed at him, so his many names multiply even as we ourselves speak.
Beating another man down from the pedestal of his belief robs us of our own. Better a man be hanged as his own fool, than be tripped as his own guide. A word to the wise.
The consequence of perception is that we are responsible for our own level. The consequence of compassion is that we are not alone.
As you speak of yourself, you advance your own cause, so speak well of yourself that the future greet you well upon your arrival.
Swimming in negativity is sometimes the best thing we can do to clear ourselves. As the season lasts, endure.
Intimidating a child on a mission isn’t the same as stopping them, for they won’t be stopped. Eventually, all knights of the grail, as if by design, turn around and themselves begin pursuing, those dragons which once chased them.
The marked difference between our society and lab experiments with rats, is that while in the laboratory the rat is rewarded for having had the sense to find the cheese, we hurry to beat ours who stumble upon where the cheese is, then label them ‘outcasts’.
But you must go on, or there will not be there when you get there.
Do not go back (they’ve already fumigated the room)!
…instead, just know when to rest. A young fool looks for the direction of the wind. Old fools are grateful for any wind at all.
The lucky man certain of himself, gains more time than he spends.
Logical storage space for uncertain shoes.
The only real security can only be found in life itself. The more surrender, the more security.
And from our logic comes our pains. We are grateful that from wisdom and mercy, come what gifts we embrace.
Sometimes going out of your mind is the best way to survive it.
Secure logic suggests that if the mountain will not come to you, blast it.
Your mother is so fat, the doctor made a house call and had to go to 2 different addresses.
Your sister is such a ‘ho, that she now has a draw string in her vagina.
‘Nobody’s Poster Boy’, indeed!
Chaos is born of confusion, as is often the next step.
This line represents a roller coaster for the highly stressed.
Rather die by struggle than death from inertia.
When we are ‘terrorists’ simply for modelling the wrong profile and demanding better answers, the government strengthens it’s hands while weakening it’s back.
And lo and behold, with time as our guide, we do come to find that there is a difference between looking for something and waiting on it. Who looks as often as not, misses. Who waits, finds.
If time knows our hearts (and if we do, then time does), we have only to wait. In the meantime, we prepare.
Democracy, like Janus, has two mouths. When one is fervently and ruthlessly stilled, the other as well begins to lose the taste in its mouth for its truth and grows tempered by scorn to express it. Babble becomes its language and confusion and its agents, its ‘lingua franca’, seducing the mob with its cunning linguists.
Even as time waits, the heart beats, each one a memory of a desire fulfilled, a desire denied. He fulfils his time best, who fulfils his heart, as her breast is followed, so too shall follow the archers of eternity, whose arrows aim only at the bulls-eye of posterity, yet are often tempted towards those trumpets, whose notes are laden with the sweet music of our longing, and spill out upon our lives, taking shape as miracles, signs and wonders.
As there are spirits of mischief, so too are there Angels of desire. We meet them upon supposing that we deserve to, and often in times of crisis, even when we do not.
We do know this, they get greedier, the closer to their expiration date.
Ultimately, our rest lies in our forward motion.
Sometimes, the only way to find a little more courage, is to face a little more fear.
The secret meaning of each name is ultimately, “Here I am, reporting for duty”. We all owe a karmic debt to God, which is why we are here. The highest cost is simply to go through life, claiming ourselves as we are.
Once the corporate structure has your name, you can never get it back. Then ensues a tug of war as to its meaning. What was once intimate and personal, the gift of numeric vibrations (the sum total of a name), is now property belonging to executives and the shareholders they bark for. One’s name, once a bridge to experience, then becomes a prison cell, or the spaces they keep the lions in at the zoo.
We all roll the dice, each roll a different number. Remember that you are both the hand and the roll.
I recall being in high school, in Florida and the prevailing musical winds one year blew our minds with 3 albums in particular that were circulating in the ‘corpus populi’. Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the key of life’, Peter Frampton’s ‘ Frampton comes alive’, and Boz Scaggs’ ‘Lowdown’. Recently out of nowhere I heard some of ‘Lowdown’ again, and had forgotten how cool it was. Where I grew up, everybody liked it, the whites and the blacks, the latins. Hats off to Boz Scaggs, his music brought people together, to mutual consensus.
…. As did Stevie’s spectacular demonstration of music allowed to be music and unapologetic about it.
I owe a great debt to Aretha Franklin and wish to say so. She moved me as much as any male singer, and from what I could successfully steal from her, I made it my business to do so.
The fastest horses are not racing the other horses, they are racing the ghosts in their minds.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Achoooo!
(I’m allergic to violets)
All cusps are also gasps.
This space reserved for The ‘Wicked’ Wilson Pickett!
I once had a music teacher so bad, she could sing nudists back into their clothes.
(Including ‘duffel’ coats and Wellingtons).
As great and seminal as the songwriters Lennon & McCartney were, it is a little easier to be grand when the drummer you share your career with was as inspiring and riveting as Ringo Starr. His technique was no greater than those other masters he ran parallel with (he too took his cues, and wisely from the grandmaster of Motown, Benny Benjamin; advertently or not, all drummers after Benny did), nor was he too intimidating to emulate. His secret was the sheer unfettered joy he took in playing his instrument, along with the knowledge that he was beating skins with the most exciting group of the age. You can hear the sound of joy when he plays, as well with little fanfare, he grooves his Liverpudlian arse off, and swings like no one quite since. His genius is that he played from his heart. You can tell, because as his heart skips, so in tandem do his rhythms.
If you were to strip off all of the instruments of the Beatle’s master tracks, and only listen to the drums, not knowing what was on top, you too would be inspired to write better songs than yesterday. Once a drummer’s feel gets into a songwriter’s head, naturally you begin to work according to the inspiration it helps to create. I’ve heard nigh blasphemies in the past from those who would have it that Ringo was simply a lucky passenger, along for a fortunate ride, and with a nice inside view. That is revisionist history at it’s most wilfully dumb. Until you have played with a Benjamin, a Watts, a Starr, such causal sparks of gleeful madness cannot be known, and indeed, though not by coincidence , only by the songwriters most willing to use what foundations they are grounded in, as enhanced form from which to create. The math is simple, the man who drove the fits of fancy of an engine which included Harrison, McCartney, Sir John, was none other than Maestro Ringo, the world’s greatest living drummer, period.
As fact, The Maestro Ringo was one of the all time few musicians, of any instrument, in any format, whose ‘personality’ forged such broad perspective, and acceptance of his playing. His persona spoke through his instrument, it even rings out.
The other version of Orpheus that we never hear about was upon returning to the upper worlds, he, without fanfare returned to the underworld. It turned out to be more real.
A shout out of love and respects to Kanye West for his loss. May the Angels of mercy attend his hours well.
A much tighter leash is put on artists so that they cannot go where the people are. The point is to bring the people to the company, to the ‘brand’. Artists, God help them, are now just (and only) salesmen and women for the ‘brand’. Should they somehow inspire more, they can expect to be chopped like liver, and then shopped.
For the brave artists still soldiering on in the industry and under those odious contracts, I salute you, you are my heroes.
Racism mutates from age to age, changing not it’s nature, but only it’s appearance, language and airs. Racism in one’s private life is one’s own affair, but as policy in the public arena, it kills and deprives a society of it’s just lights.
Whether we are ready to elect a black or woman (or a Mormon for that matter), the larger question is are we ready to drop all of our bullshit, which is now so familiar to us, we are more likely to defend it than suspend it. Right now, we are a really angry and confused tribe, and there is nothing wrong in addressing it, and by addressing it, shaping it into something useful, gainful and less volatile. As we ignore it, it only gains more volatility, more wrath, more of our twisted judgements.
One cannot get rid of one’s anger. Anger is karma. But one can get WITH one’s anger, move through it, and behold that it is also a source of miracles, a force to move mountains.
We do often waste a lot of time looking for the root cause and not the fruit itself. There is a reason for a lot of your anger, yet even more anger because we don’t often know why we are angry. We waste less time trying to justify why we are horny. We just accept that we are sometimes horny, and that is the perfect explanation. We are also sometimes angry for no other reason than it is our right to be. Angry works, unless you are working it against you. Angry is a horse to harness and not beat. Who beats angry gets beaten by angry. Who works with anger, gets moved by anger to move through and then on. Some of our anger we deserve, and some, we have earned.
My love and joy find reflection in the music. My anger finds in it a necessary hiding place, a phone booth to change shapes in. The music is where my anger goes to be transformed into caramel apples, sticky and gooey because the salt in my tears have made them so.
I am no longer content to see ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ as parallel but separate issues. Women, despite the closeness of the meditation they share with us, are a different tribe, a different ‘race’ if you will. Over time one sees this. The one side of racism is the other side of sexism, and we all, regardless of our public records and utterances, struggle with both at least from time to time. It is the big meditation that we have all agreed to take on. We are all pretty much as racist as the other. Some are simply more led by their curiosity for variance and exchange, to allow something as petty as our racism, get in the way of a good laugh.
Interracial couples are no less racist than others. They have simply turned it’s face another way. To wish to see a ‘Black’ or ‘Woman’ as President, seen truly, is just as racist and sexist. It is not racist, sexist against them however. These desires stem from wishing as ‘idealist’ to see that we have moved on from past vexations which has robbed more than restored. We shall indeed one day be a racist, and sexist society, FOR one another, proud of our other friends precisely because despite surface differences, THEY STILL WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH US! Love does not make us blind to the ugliness in our friends, it just makes us see beyond it.
Be sure that ‘agitated analysis’ encourages agitated interpretation. The mood through which we receive our information is the mood through which we interpret it. If the data goes in calm, the temperament forms a more even opinion about the solution.
Master Tony Bennett’s voice is like honey pouring over a stone of granite, and reducing it to jelly. I have a 4 CD box set of the maestro’s, which came out in the mid 90’s (if I’m not mistaken), and the worth of which is likened unto a master class being taught in song by America’s male Ella Fitz’.
Categories are coffins to real musicians, who yearn to play with all forms of lightning and bark out peals of thunder. Bennett was as much a ‘Pop’ as a ‘Jazz’, as a ‘Blues’ or ‘R&B’ musician (‘vocalists’ make music just as saxophonists do, so are therefore ‘musicians’ as much as any). It spans the course of his career, the box set, and whisks you away to a time when we were proud of the rich tapestry of our American songbook and the various innovations those songs inspired. The days when, if you had a plunger, you used the plunger, it wasn’t ignored according to ‘considerations’, ‘considerations’ which predominate today and makes songwriters political by default. His voice and musicianship were from the time when our dollar was strong because our culture was. The stinginess and’ cynicalism’ which undergirds today’s modern radio sound will one day be seen in the light of the mean spirited times in which those productions were cast, times where the hand is slapped for doing beyond the bare minimum. Generosity became feared, discouraged and in many cases, punished. Master Tony’s classic’s remind of an era which ‘swung’, because it walked with a wide hipped sway, and still was capable at laughing at the sound of it’s own voice. For me personally, his tempos’ take me back to a time when music and those who spoke on it’s eternal behalf, found a comfortable place in the genetic code of our existence, when fear hadn’t yet consumed it’s flame, and as a result, the music bounced and swooned like young lovers, for their first time alone, out by the lake, as the hour approaches midnight, and the lake bathed in the white ghost dance of a full moon.
The upcoming press release by multi-platinum band ‘4out of 5 Doctors’, announces that they are splitting from their record company, BANAL/ANAL, to exclusively distribute via Mp3 and in a limited joint venture with the RELIANCE HEALTH CARE chain of ‘care centers’, where free CD’s will be given to patients undergoing ‘relevant’ surgeries. The group’s manager, Charles ‘Hostile’ Atkins, says that the boys (all actually qualified doctors or the sons of doctors), are thrilled with their new arrangement and wish to “ thank the fans for their patience”.
Again, have you heard the delicious rumour that Young Master Obama, and venerable dark Lord D. Cheney are distant family blood? Cousins! Absolutely Brill! (hhhaaaaa, hhhhaaaaaa, Luke, you must come over to the dark side hhhhaaa hhhaaaa…. Together, we can rule the powers that are!).
This space reserved for campaign contributions. It seems like the only ‘entertainers’ making money these days are those running for President.
All real rebels are rooted in authority.
..and sometimes, a boy will be sent to do a man’s job, if the right boy is willing and if there are no men willing.
I have more than paid for my manhood and what I perceive of it’s rights.
…and after the maestro Beethoven finally passed away, he could begin with his grand ideas for ‘de-composing’!
Who will not lead gets trampled if they were not meant to follow.
One cannot ‘organize’ a parade. At most , people will gather at the meeting ground and still wait to see what happens and who begins. Better to ‘begin’ a parade than ‘organize’ it. Once you begin, others will fall in line. Wait for it to begin, and you are always waiting for it to begin.
…or arguing with others as to how to begin.
‘NIGOR MORTIS’: Chapter 2 (part 1), ‘NEUTERED& SPADE’- featuring these items of song; All produced, arranged, written and performed by our erstwhile, intrepid SANANDA MAITREYA.
1: ‘WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE?’
2: ‘PRISCILLA ( Don’t let your dragons fall)’
3: ‘FAMILY REUNION’
These periodicals of soundwaves were recorded between the 21 Jan-26 Jan 08 in ‘Gran Gran studio’s. It were recorded by Enea ‘Il Conte’ Bardi, assisted and mixed/engineered by the very capable Matteo Sandri. It were mixed by the association of the 3 of us. As with the previous chapter, we shall go ‘pre-mastered’ until the whole of the ‘Nigor Mortis’experience has been exhausted, thereafter we shall do ‘the mastering thing’, and put this latest chapter in our lifespan to rest, before, with creator’s blessing, assuming some new ideas. We are grateful for your ear and had intended for the usual 5-7 song offering before a valuable and useful piece of equipment, blew up, said “I’m outta here”, and we tossed it out into the street. That is why I feel obliged creatively to continue this chapter in a part 2 at a nearing, later date. I trust these things. I’d had the old piece of equipment/gear for as far back as when the young Buddha was taking Karate lessons. ‘Vintage’? It was just ‘old’ and ready to be put out to pasture, or the junk heap, whichever is closest to it. We thank both of the young Italian gentlemen who duly attended and helped to enable these sessions. With Heaven’s light, we aim to continue, while the space yet exists and while it is still not an offence punishable by the state and the lobbyists. Thanks especially to my dear wife and friend, Franchie, for putting up with what is largely incoherence whilst I am in the midst of making these tonewave documents. Finally we would like to thank our heavenly father/mother for the sense of humour, my basic survival mechanism. I would also like to thank my guardian Angels for protecting my integrity and sheltering me from my enemies (which are many). As per usual, these songs were recorded in Milano, Italy during a harsh full moon week, and in a no nonsense neighbourhood. Respects to ‘Fausto’s Bar’, for the condiments and meals.
I promise you that ‘National Kick A Dog’ week, had nothing to do with me! I was just joking!
Gianni was pissed. He knew that in reality, there were no ‘black’ panthers, just leopards with their dense spots all connected. It was clear however that if he joined the circus that called to him, the only way they would allow his feral jungle roar to be amplified and heard was if he first allowed himself to be ‘neutered & spayed’, he’d have to agree (for the greater good he would be told) to undergo emasculation. He would be amply rewarded, no doubt, but rewarded for his docility to authority, while being groomed to hiss only towards the crowd; ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ sell more popcorn.
What the boil of daylight removes from the spade, the black of night returns. What vanity would have stripped, for gain, the dignity, through anger restores to it’s mean point. Tempting as the circus’ bath of luxury appeared, it’s pounding announcements, it’s tempered glare, Gianni understood that he could only dream of the summit of surrender, in truth, and only in truth, he existed, body and soul for the wild. Only in the wild could his blessed strength be known, only the wild could mirror his most honest face, only it’s echoes recharge his pauses and reconfirm his simple right to be. Only in the wild could he run without censure, only in the wild could the breezes he raced , be replenished by the blades of grass he passed on his way to the wind. The circus could only assign him a space. Only the wild could offer the full frame. He knew that there be nothing gained in gaining hours, but losing steps.
The panther in the cage is ‘alive’. The hunted panther is ‘living’.
The distance between being alive and living, is the distance between shadows and light.
We, are the ‘living’.
Confusion is raw new energy, coming into the mind to be digested. As chaos is the father of beauty, so is confusion the author of inspiration. This is not to be confused with those of blatant confusion referred oft by me as the ‘confusionists’, or ‘confusionista’s’. If you be between confusion and a ‘confusionist’, what should you do ? Not to worry, soon a toll free number will be made available.
There is a need to distinguish in time between useful confusion and wasteful confusion. Maturity attends this.
Nothing confuses panthers more than committees.
The farther out you are pushed, the more you get comfortable with the new space. Those who walk the edges have a lot more time to themselves and more space to think in. Only every now and then do they still send the dogs after them.
Gianni still has catnap dreams about the time he wore the circus’ diamond studded collar and it itched a lot and kept his neck from growing.
See if you can catch this sentence before it ends. Could you?
Gianni, when he dreamt, often thrashed about in his sleep. He would remember the time he was surprised and forcibly removed to the circus, the bewilderment he felt, the anger he was gripped by, the humiliation of being held hostage by these strange, arrogant beasts. Their paper and their coins symbolized freedom to them, yet they were only free to consume, all other ‘rights’ were bartered.
He’d think of the elephants and their broken spirits, the hyenas and their painted laugh, the lions amused by studded metal collars and content to be shoved dead meat. They all seemed somewhere else and knew that the jungle must have taunted them in their sleep, as it taunted him until he could take containment no longer, until even his own growl turned against him and mocked him for his indolence. With nothing to lose but one stolen life, he avoided, narrowly the bullets aimed at separating him from his yearning. What is not free cannot have peace. Perhaps elephants retire to an easier spell. Leopards, Panthers, we beasts of coiled tendons enmeshed in the tender dance of life, come to nothing in a cage but slowly rotting meat. Meat that whimpers, then gradually fades, as sand does, down a paper funnel.
Now, back in the moss fertile plains of the underbrush, Gianni cavorts his latter days through the jungle as a tenderfoot would walk across hot ashes, though at the same time amused and poised, ever alert to the highlights, keeping a cocked ear for lowlifes, light thieves, regulators and various other ‘handbook’ coordinators. This is the life, the only life. There is little time for sleep, but what sleep there is, is earthy and sweet. The humour dries a little but the laughs get deeper. The ‘game’ is seen more clearly and earlier in the ‘game’. The waters of the lapping pool stare back at him as a clock might, time not only stops, but it too, dreams.
Our dreams are where we plant our direction. Our humour is where we harvest our ‘correction’.
Where ‘erections’ are harvested, and under whose jurisdiction, I cannot say, though I can direct any possible queries to the newly formed office of ‘The Official Grand Federal Vice Harvester of Erections‘ (a division of the department of Homeland Security). I believe that their temporary offices are currently residing in the Pentagon, so send your questions there.
Gianni, whilst in brief captivity, overheard the humans who believed that human minds create poetry. All inhabitants of the jungle knew that the birds are the ones who seed the vivid air with chants, chirps and songs, that upon contact with a dancing, ovulent wind, coagulates into rhymes, and other words of fancy, to be bumped into by the head of the writer, as they are running through the fields after a lover, narrowly avoiding the cobwebs in the low slung trees.
I am not sure that ‘ovulent’ is a word. It was chosen to convey something between ‘opulent’, and ‘ovulating’, as well as ‘undulating’. Do we need to get more ‘Safire’ than this?
Will we one day have to buy our democracy back? Demo-crazy!
If I had a dime for every time I were presumed to be ‘pretentious’, I wouldn’t need to work. What that annoying word often implies, is that one isn’t fulfilling the ‘profile’, assigned by the presumptuous to one. We are clothed in many mysteries, we who project our dreams beneath the crest of starlight, we who understand that we are more, much more and are thirsty to taste it.
You ask at times what readeth I. The last books I purchased (yes, actually purchased, like old school) were a bio of one of my heroes by Philip Dwyer about ‘Napoleon’. A book by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark called; ‘Deception’- Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy’. Another book is from Robert Dallek (whose book on JFK I also have in the ‘library’) titled; ‘Nixon and Kissinger’ (my respect for Nixon and interest in him increases as I get closer to AARP), and a book by Avi Shlaim called ‘Lion of Jordan’ about the life of the late King Hussein. I have always had an abiding fascination for ‘Bonaparte’, and it is a good read.
I love great writers, they are like rock stars to me. (BTW, can I please encourage putting a stop to the ‘outsourcing’ of the phrase ‘Rock Star’, to just anyone? it has now become ‘de riguer’ to refer to politicians and other notables with ‘gleam’ as Rock Stars. I’ve even heard our erstwhile Vice- Emperor Cheney referenced in the media as a Rock Star. No, No, No, No, No! Maestro Cheney can be an overlord, he can be a dominant alpha dog killer among well hung men, he can be a superhero, but a ‘Rock Star?’ Hell no, we’ll reserve that for guys like Thom Yorke who have done the requisite ‘Rock Starring’ relevant to the title, thank you very much.). There should be an official Rock Politburo which determines who shall be allowed to wear the title of ‘Rock Star’. This is what happens to an industry which falters and forgets itself, other mediums rush in to appropriate our mantels and cover themselves in our flares. For my vote, great writers may be eligible for this, ‘Rock Star’ consideration. The rest must be strenuously viewed through the eyes of those who have paid with their blood to earn the title, now so valuable and hip, ‘Rock Star’, otherwise Eric Clapton’s life and suffering be in vain.
If politicians can be called ‘Rock Stars’, then where does that place Keith? We’d have to pervert it again, and call him rightfully, a ‘Rock Tsar’! Otherwise Mick and Charlie and the gang pissed up against that wall years ago, and were arrested for nothing.
Of greater historic value will be when we are ready to elect a President who admits that they partied just as hard as we did, and enjoyed it.
Who parties hard is blessed to remember and equally blessed to forget.
If Robert Frost were alive today, he’d probably be too old to read this.
If Malcolm X had had a junior, would he have been Malcolm XJR? Or Malcolm XX? (Malcolm X1X?)
Have you hugged your pharmacist today?
We are given Angels so that we know that there are times when it is OK to be a fool. To ‘Be’ a fool. To ‘ Play’ a fool is another calling altogether.
… in conclusion, What would YOU Like from the People Today?
BTW, next week is ‘Sananda endorses Adult Burping’ week. Don’t be shy. Grab a favourite one, place them on your lap, and proceed to burp them. You will make a new friend, I promise!
What do you call a dyslexic prostitute? ‘Dekcuf’!
To the best of my conscious knowledge this material is original, unless otherwise indicated. We quote the appropriate names where warranted, lest we otherwise mislead. Though I cannot attest to how ‘inspired’ the material is, I can vouch for its’ ‘relative originality’, as all valid inspirations have already been expressed. The wave that washes today’s beach is still the motion of the very first wave which kissed it millions of years ago, thus the newest inspired thought is yesterday’s inspiration reborn, rekindled, rediscovered and maybe just a little re-mixed.
Gianni realized that his greatest enemy was not the hunter, the fur trader, but boredom. The circus ‘habitues’ were damped down with boredom. Boredom defeats the soul and the jungle, by it’s mercy, left no real room for being bored. Being bored leads to sleep and the jungle can only sanction so much sleep. Enough replenishes where too much steals. Too much sleep and the cobras are upon you with their hypnosis, too much, and the zebras will dump on your turf. Too much sleep invites disrespect, too much disrespect destabilizes the natural order. No, the jungle is too ruthless for too much sleep, and its’ trapdoor, boredom. There are only ‘pauses’ in the jungle, never but ever is there ‘rest’.
Gianni was no circus beast
Panthers had too much stretch
Too much pride and no tendencies
To endure expensive games of ‘fetch’
Just to think of it made him wretch
His collar would remain untamed
All nature was his feast, he would
Play no hoops with rings of fire,
Would not be blamed, at least
While dancing with shadows
And butterflies, the ‘Monarch’s
That he’d catch.
The essence of a rose is the scent of an angel.
The gleam of a diamond is the wink of an angel’s eye.
Our greatest inheritance is our intuition. No 2 are alike, as are no 2 snowflakes. It is Ok if your intuition does not match ‘consensus’. In a multiple universe, how could it be otherwise?
If you are an ‘odd number’, a great waste of time (though educational) will ensue trying to be an ‘even number’. Odd numbers are no accident and verily must be, or the whole system of unison comes crashing down like a stockmarket. When ‘odds’ and ‘evens’ are not judging one another, they make great teams.
As evolution in action provides, now it isn’t as shocking to be a mutli-instrumentalist as once upon a time it were. As we monkeys are by design emulatory, it would be natural to see more self sufficient musicians evolve out of the pasts’ examples. When this condition was still as rare as truthful royalty statements, Todd Rundgren was laying down the foundation of a whole new tribe, who would see in him the evolution of the cause, a fresh wizard to digest. He played all of the ‘basic food group’ instruments (Drums, Bass, Keyboards, Guitars, and by extension if you can play drums, you can usually handle a little ‘percussion’), wrote like a great, sang well, and was as innovative a producer as his time could absorb. In fact, if his time were honest, it feared his skill set and the blinding intellect with which it duetted. The history of American Rock culture is not honest nor complete, without a greater assessment of Master Todd’s contribution. He put a foot in it’s ass and should be more fondly remembered. He even foresaw years before years ago where the music was headed and the technology that would be friendly to it. Google some of his scene.
As much as anyone, Todd was a model for me. As baseball players yearn to be a 5 tool player (Hit for power, speed, hit for high average, strong accurate throwing arm, great defense), as basketball players wanted to be like Mike, guys wanted to be like Rundgren, masters of their own sound, inventors in their laboratories cooking up sonic feasts. Better learners of their instrument and better controllers of their time. I guess this is called ‘Hero Worship’. So be it.
Now Beethoven, He was a ‘Rock Star’. He wrote with bass clefs stolen from thunder.
Don’t be lame, check out Todd Rundgren’s, ‘A Wizard, A True Star’. He was right on both counts. Holler back at me later.
I also idolized Marc Bolan of T-Rex growing up. He had a kind of natural swampy groove that rocked, he was weird and mostly he was a poet of uncommon beauty, vulnerability and quirkiness. One of my all-time favourite rhymes comes courtesy of Master Bolan: ‘I drive a Rolls Royce, because it is good for my voice’. Absolute genius!
All songwriters have a list of songs and lines in songs that they wished they had written, it goes with the turf. That line of Bolan’s is timeless, and is on my list.
I dedicate these musings to you. Thank you for not smoking (don’t forget to pick up your trash on the way out).
If honest, the thing which I am most jealous about concerning the startlingly gifted Senator Obama, is that he is but one year older than I, and is considered young and fresh for his profession, whereas, I am considered old and tired in mine. I too would consider running one day for office, but I inhaled, and inhaled a lot.
Much love to the you and yours. All praises be to your ‘vices’, and sweet kisses to your ‘virtues’.
I was always told by my culture as a child that chronic masturbation could lead to blindness. Since I was a huge fan of Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and José Feliciano, this was never a big deterrent!
COPYRIGHT SANANDA MAITREYA
MILANO 18th FEBRUARY 2008
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INTELLECTUAL COPYRIGHT PROTECTED