it is not true
it is a lie
that that would be everything
that that is salvation
that that is all there is
that that is eternal Truth
still
it is true
that you
are lonely
and worn down
by shots fired in the dark
by letters sent to the wall
by dramas staged in the nowhere in the nothing in the nohow
gets old
wears you down
wins in the end
must you lose
when it wins?
must you break apart
as it hatches?
gets old
you
all alone
no one wants to know
you don’t want them to anyway
but you try it!
you’ll see
it wears you down
it hurts right through
it kills you inside out
but
all along
there’s bigger problems
in wider skies
you must listen to the wider pain
you must hear the wider mistake
and you must reorientate yourself
before it is too late
and the game
becomes as impossible as the fools and villains pretend it is right here and now
Who’s the lazy mother fucker who never fought the war?
Who’s the shitless baby pussy face who never dodged the fire
raining across from above and all sides?
Who wandered into his forties over the corpses of young men with their dead eyes open in surprise?
Who never did anything for anyone and watched democracy die a lonely and most of all bored and half-ass death?
Who’s the criminal in the stocking cap torturing children in the early dawn?
What’s a criminal who is never caught but the nice guy next door?
But you’ve mixed up the sins, the little, the medium, and the pretty big huh
Just kids
dead for what?
And now what?
You missed the eighties
And the nineties (except?)
We met
You smiled
I fell apart all over the place like wet cardboard
In time, given the opportunity to tell you how I felt, I barfed all over your face
You left
I felt bad
I felt sick
I wanted to die
Now
I don’t know
what can I do?
Anything that would be nice?
That would make things OK between us?
If there’s anything any good I could do here, I want to do it please
We have found the ingredient
not to tell us our Truths are lies
but to show how expedients
how shortcut grabs at certainty
break mind and heart from the kind resolve
that lets all our Truths live through us all.
No one’s worldview means anything to anyone except to the degree that worldview helps them to feel/think/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind and joyfully-together.
But none of those concepts mean anything to anyone except insofar as they are illuminated by a Love that is not just “a nice idea” or “one way of looking at things”, but that is a spiritual Reality, and that can thus serve as a reliable guide in our inner quest to discover what is really going on, what really matters / what the proper use of our love really is, and how to fit ourselves into what is really going on so as to move towards what’s truly better and away from what’s truly worse.
And so we see that no one’s worldview makes any sense to anyone except insofar as that worldview helps one abide by the universal values (aware … joyfully-together) and center one’s feeling/thinking/acting around a Love that shines through all things (including each conscious moment, hence our “in”) and that Knows that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together.”
But the Truth is not our ideas and feelings about the Truth! The Truth is wider and deeper than our ideas and feelings. And so wisdom, goodness, holiness, and et cetera: these goods are not endpoints or victories, but gentle caring constant effort to better and better love ourselves, everyone else, and the boundless Love that binds us all.
And with this potion in our flask, we save ourselves and everyone else.
A further proof — in addition to the one offered in why you be blaming us — that blaming us is totes boges.
People need to stop tryin‘ to pin everything on Bartleby Willard and Amble Whistletown!
We already proved straight up no chaser once and for ever-all that each and every thing that ever was is and shall be is 100% God’s fault — either as the ultimate/external cause of all things; or, to the degree creatures are wise (centering their feeling/thinking/acting around the Pure Love shining through everything, including each conscious moment, and thus flowing off the Pure Love into life with minimal distortion) — as the proximate/interior cause (f/t/a never flows perfectly off the Godlight shining through each consciousness moment, so even when we are very wise, our actions are to some degree the fault of God-qua-ultimate-cause and never 100% the fault of God-qua-proximate-cause).
But now this time right heres and nows we prove that even setting metaphysics to one side, it’s none of it our fault, and y’all really need to step the fuck off!!
Oh but wait! We shouldn’t set the Great God — all that scrumptious Godlight — off to one side! That’s sacrilegious. Or, wait, not sure if being sacrilegious is a problem; but this here’s more fundamentally sacri-spirit, and that’s gotta be a problem! For sure. I’d think, I’d surmise I’d best-guess.
We’re not setting the divine mystery to one side — as if that were even possible! We’re simply demonstrating — live, for your edification, and in your face sucka! — that even were one to attempt the folly of supposing God away, one would still find no plausible argument to support the claim that Bartleby Willard — author of eternally relevant kicks and oh-so reverent giggles — and/or his editor Amble Whistletown are to blame.
Oh, Okay, then I guess, well, let’s hit ’em with the proof! Let’s knock their socks off and remind ’em who bought their fancy tennis shoes in the first blankety-blank-blank-bu-bu-blink place!
Exacts! And to wit:
The thoughts and feelings that enter a person’s conscious space — do we choose them or do they enter unbidden?
Well, gosh, I don’t rightly know. Thoughts and feelings are in there, and they all slide and jostle and squish and bleed around into each other. And in all that commotion-ating, sometimes I seem to feel myself as a will directing and selecting them. But am I existing and steering when I sense myself directing and selecting? And if so, what exactly am I steering? And how much?
Picture this — and all you haters back home, suck on this:
Your thoughts and feelings flow in and out of each other, inspiring new thoughts and feelings, and together influencing the development of the thinking/feeling within your conscious space. And at some point a feeling of “I’m going with this! Here we go!” wins out. And that’s the decision. But who chose the “I’m going with this!” feeling? That part of your conscious moment where you seem to sit and feel, and that seems to steer you conscious thought, and make decisions and take actions: does it choose feelings? Does it choose the feeling of “I’m going with this!” Does it make a choice and then the “I’m going with this!” feeling rushes in? But how would it make the choice? Wouldn’t it be via a feeling of something like “Yes, this, I’m going with this”? And so again: Did that part of you where you seem to exist as a conscious being choose that feeling of “Yes … “?
But is this not the same argument as why you be blaming us!? For if there is no Godlight shining through each conscious moment, then surely we are all just the bump and jostle of antecedent causes — be they physical, emotional, or intellectual. But add in a first-cause — an uncaused spiritual atom! — that sets everything in motion but also shines through and love-lifts everything, including each conscious moment: Well, then, in such a case, that self-caused and/or causeless spark would freely choose, and — to the degree the rest of one’s conscious space were well-organized around that Godlight — one would freely choose, rather than be just another jostle in an infinite series of jostles. But here again, we see that only God could ever choose anything, and that we would only choose to the degree we are God.
But wait! What if God made individual souls that were also first-causes, not of everything, but just of whatever vessel they inhabited?
Maybe, but those individual souls — being God’s direct creations — would be pure and good. So again, if you blame me for my dastardly deeds, then you blame not me, not my soul; but merely the mistake that my ideas and feelings have become, drifting as they have so far from my own soul. In short, you blame the happenstance, and how everything all together created a scenario in which my soul was decoupled from my mind/body. Anyway, I don’t think a created soul could be a first cause, since it was created by a greater soul. Although such questions range beyond human logic, and are thus speculative at best.
Suffice it to say, people need to stop blaming us for everything. They haven’t considered the depth of the human conscious moment — how difficult it is for one to figure out what aspect of one’s conscious moment is in any given moment steering the whole, and how impossible it is for others to assess that.
Yeah, but what is freedom? What steers?
Chance, fate, necessity, God, and in there somewhere also a spark of Godlight that is our own?
Surely not, surely all is one Godlight and we are one tapestry flowing over the Godlight, seeing It better in moments when the whole-flowing-together is wiser and worse in moments when it’s foolish-er.
Maybe. Who can know? You can’t measure this. You can’t riddle this. You can only live and die with this mystery.
Can you blame souls for not maintaining control of the conscious spaces they are in?
If so, maybe you could blame us for losing the rudder, for disengaging with the Light within and thus giving the reins of our conscious space over to the mindless bump and jostle of feeling and idea untethered from a cool clear presence in the Love that chooses everyone.
In any case, you can’t possibly know enough to blame or praise yourself, let alone Bartleby Willard and/or Amble Whistletown. So QED! So take it or leave it! So we’re outta here boyzzz
Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson
unable to write
the perfect essay
for today,
the essay
that would not only keep power
from Donald Trump and his would-be collaborators,
but would more fundamentally
move the mass of our collective feeling/thinking/acting
towards a
joyful, grateful, honest, thoughtful
reinvigoration of our shared democratic republic
and the universal values and spiritual Love underlying
the proposition
that all humans are created equal —–
unable to come up with the great essay we in great
panic and longing and fear and trembling
seek,
we began to consider Tenacious D’s tribute to the best song ever written.
Could something like that work here?
Perhaps if we could write down what essay we think would help here and now — what insights and informations it would have to contain, and what impact it would have to have on individual readers and on the wider shared discourse:
Maybe, we thought, maybe
an essay about the essay that would actually help us all right here and right now:
Maybe that essay about the helpful essay
could be of some help.
ughgh! hmmph!
enough preambling,
the water is cool
the creek floor is silty soft
sink down worn creek sneakers worn because of bits of sharp steel and jagged glass here and there
sliding smooth sneaker soles over smooth water-worn algae-fringed stones
merrily chasing terrified crawdads with outstretched hand and styrofoam cup
now knowing what I know
I wish the little segmented beasties the safety of the warm mudbank.
I don’t want them trapped in the reckless hands of my foolish youth
The essay we seek will sink
all the evil
It’ll show the spirit
of democracy —
a spiritual good
that allows us all
to protect what’s
most sacred to each
by agreeing to agree
where we already agree:
aware, clear, honest,
accurate, competent,
loving-kind,
joyfully-together
we build and maintain
systems that
reward good stewardship
with temporary
shared and constrained
power
and refuse power to those
who cheat, lie, break, steal,
who would plunder
our shared government
to king themselves
and checkmate the rest of us suckers.
strange self-appointed
political gods
who trade our freedom to speak without fear
for new rules that say
might is right and We’re the might!,
that
true and false are weapons
and nothing more
so you better shut up and
get with the program
The essay we seek will show
the nation and world
what Trump has done,
what his would-be collaborators
have schemed,
and
what we risk
by handing this man with those schemes
and cronies
the keys —
what risk we run with Trump;
and how outsized it is
in comparison to the risk we run
by running from Trump,
by turning aside
his id and the attitudes and ideas
that would strengthen
the weapons that would
from the inside out
dismantle
the rules, norms, institutions, and laws
that keep the people
at the helm
of their own ship of state
The essay we seek will make
this moment clear to all
will make Bill Barr remember
will make Mike Johnson recall
will make the guy with his arm on the bench back see
that democracy is good for us all
and Trump and MAGA have harmed and
will likely endanger and exhaust
and could possibly undo
our shared democracy,
which is a spiritual good
because it allows we the people
to serve as a final check against
madness, corruption, and evil in government.
By preventing tyranny,
democracy allows leaders and citizens alike to be decent, happy, and successful all at once! —
rather than constantly forcing the corrupt land’s choice:
“You’re fealty or your success and safety, and that of your family’s!”
The essay we seek will remind
us all that the way to make
things better is not by
destroying the systems that allow
us to jointly steer our shared fate.
The way towards
better
is found by a gentle refusal
to harm what is good or denigrate what helps
us all
think and feel
together.
Within a system of
equality under the law
that
lends limited power
from the governed to their leaders
for limited times,
we citizens of this
democratic republic
can share
enough Reality
— We are all in this together; bound in and through and for the Love without which nothing is OK, and with which everything is OK; and should seek, think, feel, and act accordingly (only to the degree I follow this inward path, are any of my feelings, thoughts or actions meaningful to me; and within this path is the insight that you and I are fundamentally the same) —
&
enough reality
— let us feel/think/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving-kind, joyfully-together (only to the degree we follow these universal values are our feeling, thoughts, or actions are meaningful to any of us) —
to
meaningfully share
both conversation and government.
We cannot share the Law
by telling each other how to find our ways to the Law.
That just encourages us all to lie about the most sacred things to ourselves and to others.
We share the Law
by sharing the rules, norms, and laws
that admit that no human is the Law,
and that all humans
have a duty
and a right
to seek the Law
in ways meaningful to them,
to follow the Light
where It leads them,
to speak Love as it moves them.
This is not radical permissiveness.
It is anchored in a system that allows individuals their freedom,
but not the freedom to hurt others or the shared rules, norms, and laws that keep us all safe by keeping tyranny at bay and by selecting for honesty, clarity, competency, and good faith.
The essay we seek
oh God
where is the essay
that would right this moment?
clarify these confusions,
remove this poisoned pill
from out our collective belly?
Where????
Would-be Author of this would-be work: Bartleby Willard
His Editor: Amble Whistletown
The copyright holder: Andrew M. Watson
Their hopes: broken, flailing, tortured upon the stretching rack and the twisting wheel — oh ye old fashioned methods for proving what is True and what is Good and what is HOLY!
What a convincing proof!
Not a valid one, just a convincing one.
About
Trump
and those who would encourage his dishonest destructive politicking:
Let’s not do anything about these desperate violent overreaches
except gently remove power and sway
from visions disconnected from the
Beauty
of a nation dedicated to the proposition
that all humans
are created equal
and
in this equality
deserve to share the rights and responsibilities
of a free people
freely speaking their thoughts, electing their representative, dreaming their world up together
That’s the beauty of democracy!
Peaceful gentle transitions of power — no one above the law; no one allowed to force his will upon the wider world, but all subject to the same norms, rules, and laws:
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all humans are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including but not limited to, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That’s the Beauty
we’re seeking
alone and together
in this
funny joke
about humans
finally
building and maintaining
a system of government
based on the Truth of fundamental universal equality — the kind that could only exist if Pure Love really was God of all.
*Review
*(for we’re all always a collection of forces tumbling towards more or less wisdom — with more wisdom equalling better syncing one’s feeling/thinking/acting up with the Pure Love shining through everything, including each conscious moment)
Thank you God
that I didn’t grow up in a war tide
Thank you God
that I didn’t watch everyone die
Thank you God
that I didn’t grow up in Russia’s world
Thank you God
that I didn’t learn to fear true words
I don’t know, God
what Trump and king-us-wonks
will here sow and grow
but I’m grateful for your songs
of freedom
for a land where we did show
our hearts our ideas our dreams
What do you want, God?
now the strange promises assemble
now the dark premises congregate
how will our wisdom ever be able?
how might Goodness push at Fate?
What can we now, God?
So tired and divided
So sure and sternly decided
So ready for victory
and unready for the story
felt and held with muck and blood
so long so easy, clear of the mud
clear of everything that stings
the body and thereby wrings
the soul out of a man
out of a me
out of a would-be
out of a could-be
out of a please-be
out of where I’d stand
to be a soul
in the whirl and tussle
of the tales we told
when we were allowed
for a brief shining space
to not be broken or cowed
it’s been a nice gentle place
it’s been a nice gentle time
we’d keep it if we could
but if we must lose the sunshine
we’ll still be glad as we should
still glad for all the fun we had
way back when democracy was obvious
way back when future held all of us
way back when God was inside
not forced down from outside
way back when we were young
a nice song, glad it was sung
a nice time, hope it’s not all done
Where are you, America?
Where are you anymore?
Put your arm thing around my shoulder
by Sludge Monster
What Good am I so Terrified
We enter the album
We enter the fear
We enter the fun controlled armchair spinetingle panic
We feel the swirling guitar drum pirouette
A few up-down swing chords are the suspense of looking back into the pitch black terror
Our narrator is ashamed of his fear; he told the crowd he killed the beast.
He lied.
The album begins with fear and trembling and bad faith
All in good fun
The forgivable failings of the silver screen
Anyway, who is up for a real monster?
They test us before we’re ready
If we were ready, they wouldn’t be monsters
[Contrast Kierkegaard’s fear and trembling in good faith — a leap of faith into God with the wariness befitting a finite creature seeking connection with the infinite; and fear and trembling in bad faith — a leap of faith into some (oh so finite) narrative about how you’re an OK dude]
Bad Trip
The fear continues
The music of being chased in a movie
The little bursts of sharp notes; the worried singing forward to the instruments (white foam on forward-falling waves); the blazing chords and again little bursts, the charging whispery percussions —
and for this we hear, I don’t like what I see … your son’s a freak … I had no choice
We feel like we’re running from a werewolf, but the narrator is ruing a past evil
“I ate his bones for the memories; I thought he’d be more care free”
The bad is trip is not the fear of the monster, nor the regret of being a monster eating another perhaps monster; no, the regret is that the bones of “your son” gave me a bad trip — by eating them I got his bad memories
What kind of a story is this?
It’s too lonely
when it unravels itself
like so many slopped-out intestines
onto this sawdusty packing house
A Dark Web
“They had a job for us; it meant a lot; I said yes; we’re on our way up”
The spare guitars and drums lead us down the dark winding staircase
Oh but no, I guess we’re outside, because we’re going to catch our death and should go back inside
Why do I in moments feel like that’s Casey on the drums and I’ve wandered back into At latl in the boxing ring?
A soft song, a soft python wrapping its gently expanding pressure all around your cute little self, so snug in the whole-embrace
Sometimes you are murdered by “a dark and terrible web” that “gained its consciousness” and “now steals identities and makes the real ones dead” — but is that so bad? Such a bad way to disappear, to be stolen and erased even as your swallowed and co-opted and misappropriated for dastardly deeds?
Maybe it is bad!
But I’m so tired, so tired by the easy going hopelessness of it all
A mouse struggles in the snake’s embrace until there’s only the peace of falling fast asleep in the forgetting land
“I am am I will I will …”
But then you just aren’t, cause you’ve caught your death and now its stealing gently gliding
The abuser and his victim
What about
An abuser who wins a nation by finding a gap in the defenses of those who’d rather not worship their own abuser
?
Off topic
To return
New Year New You
We’ve been proven cowards, and we’ve regretted sampling the dreams of our victims, and we’ve watched as a dark forced murders us as it appropriates our identities to use to further its evil rampage.
It’s only fair that we should get a little intermission music; and some peanuts.
We are overdue!
We need to be affirmed like this!
And this is reassuring, this is schmalzily reassuring music! Here’s a place where we can be hugged by the noise and accept these encouraging words!
Here we get our due!
Gross Job
Ah, but it couldn’t last
drum sticks bang together getting ready for the tumble
Choo Choo train rumble-forward-down-the-track drum and guitar
Almost like surf music, but the waves fall forward too fast — too fast to escape!
“they got one job / they come at night while you’re lazy / they crawl up in your head”
Oh, yes, those terrible monsters, those terrible little pincher-bugs, that terrible Khan, of course, the music must shove us into the hopeless confused whirl that ends in
gross
but not for us
cause now
we’ve forgotten
forgotten the very horror that rules our hearts, minds, bodies — forgotten what it was we lost when we became a desperate cockroach scurrying to simple pings of stimuli
a cockroach isn’t gross to a cockroach
Put your arm thing around my shoulder
birth of sludge monster?
I guess not; I guess just a resurrection gone wrong
like the hero of The Fly being zapped gone and then back but now not the same?
Or like a science-based resurrection — a recreation of the molecular order that had been our old friend?
Doesn’t matter the exact details
The song is so loving so poignant that it leaves the genres behind and becomes
a sad slow-melting spell
about loss
and the well-meaning attempts
to recover
life
and love
but
now
we can’t
fix it all
and sometimes
we’re left with a broken body
but still
our old friend
“welcome back my old friend / it is so good to see you again / put your arm thing around my shoulder / it takes a while to regain composure / you’ve got me for support / you’ve got me for transport / turn your head up to the sun / being alive is so much fun / feel the wind on your back / ”
And the music and electro-distorted voice so soft like gently falling rain or like a mother tugging her child into bed,
so sad
such a sad song
Does he want to be back like this?
“just different here and there / try not to stare”
Did Lazarus want to be raised from the dead?
Is it wrong to call the dead out of the land of shadows and silence?
“still a little groggy / been a while since he’s had a body”
What is the important part of your life?
If you come back as a sludge monster with sad eyes rising over a gentle green mountain stream, is it better to not come back at all?
And if Dean’s back all mangled-forms and sleepy-eyed sorrows, what are his friends to say?
But the right thing to say is always
welcome back my old friend / it is so good to see you again / put your arm thing around my shoulder
A sad song, a difficult song, for the riddle it poses forces us to admit we’re not strong enough to carry this life, and yet if we don’t say “put your arm thing around my shoulder” to everyone always, we’re just being absurdly mean and boring, so boring
Reverse Polarity Touch Mainframe
The gentle trickling stream music and the careful, persistent vocalizations, some kind of eulogy
for human fallibility?
for those moments when it seems like you must act but aren’t sure how to?
And did you have to act after all?
A slow waltz around a veteran recount his battle
“water on the circuit / any way you work it?”
“are you sure, so sure / this is right?”
Really stretching out the “sure” into a so Sho-ore
A little one-man play about the time the space commander shorted the mainframe?
Or maybe the moment when you have to connect wire A or B to terminal C or D, and the one connection saves everyone and the other destroys everyone?
Comments Section
The music continues the sad, dripping, sliding, lamenting style of the previous two songs
And the narrator speaks of not knowing the facts “so worked up / so darn sure / close to giving up / close to shutting the door”
Another lament about certainty misplaced?
Another lament about being creatures with limited insight but who honestly feel like they should make decisions, make choices?
What is a “Comments Section”?
Like a movie comment thread?
People getting worked up in the echo chambers of fan threads?
Details aside, a song about the slow sorrow of some basic human failing showing itself, some basic sore spot worn raw and obvious once again?
Dude, Look
Steady drum
Ethereal chords misting-up and falling down around the drum
A soft, haunted, worried narration
“they’ve got magic and technology”
The dude’s an idiot because he doesn’t see that “they put on a dark ritual / it is misguided and it is spiritual”
“I don’t even care if we die / I just need to know that you rec-og-nize / there’s an ugly-eyed creature chasing you and me / this is anything but a hyperbole”
Feels political evil, feels like stating the obvious about a the authoritarian play running through the US American right
But sad more than angry; that confused exasperation of those of us who think Trump II is a crazy risk to subject our shared system to: such great risk, and for what???
Feels like political evil; could be here and now, could be on Mars with the crazed Martians preparing to feed our heroes to a giant monster in a pit for a ritual killing to make things right with a God they’re fundamentally misunderstanding
Concerns about raising the dead
A soliloquy, acted with a gentle persistent pathos, framed with spare guitars that build around gurgling base
You feel the Frankenstein’s monster tromping in the dark stone-walled and -floored castle keep
“You should try me again sometime / I’m not so far gone — no not yet”
“I can change my mind …. I must just come around”
“Folks get prickly / they don’t really like this change”
The footfalls are the mad scientists?
Guitars gushing up around the steady drum beat
what is this ending bit with the repeated guitar “waah” over the steady drums?
And then the narrator’s voice takes off with the sound, with no language
Is this really a man who can change his mind?, really a man who’s not so far gone yet?
We have our doubts
What is all the point of his great ambition?
What is the point of mad scientists and fervid politicians and everybody so sure of their calling that they allow themselves to reason away what is deeper and wiser than reason — the common faith of a gentle Love that’s infinitely greater than all our great ideas?
Angry Ghost
Catchy, makes you sway
trippy
Easy grooving
But the story of this angry ghost is a little worrisome
“and the souls of insects” has something to do with ghosts?
The ghost doesn’t seem angry; seems like one of those sad ghosts that comes back to try to connect and help their loved ones
“try not to think of their powers / can’t make sense of what they have won / try not to make sense of the towers / there is nothing that can be done”
what is weaving in and out of this narrative?
A song about letting go?
What is the mirror that can’t be cleaned?
What is dirt like you’ve never seen dirt before?
What is the stain, the sin, the sad hurt that keeps the dead tethered to this world?
The dead should move on to the infinite Love that explodes all mundanities to smithereens
Go on, sad ghost, go on, go on home — we’ll be alright here for as long as we must remain cardboard cutouts slowly turning to mulch in these rising waters
Anger Goes Away
Spacey drifting synths, like landing on Mars in a black-and-white rickety cardboard and spray paint landing craft
The narrator says “with my unpracticed powers, I will restore you”
I guess he’s going to use a carbon shifter, a guitar, lightning, and power cells
“I engage the power cells / watch the surge go down your spine / and the anger goes away”
It seems like Frankenstein jolting his monster into life, but instead of “it’s alive!” we get “and the anger goes away”
Music is laser arches and lightning bugs
I guess all is well that ends well
Live blogging the new Sludge Monster album
Put your arm thing around my shoulder
[Originally posted May 5, from about 1:30PM-2:30PM]
What Good Am I so Terrified
round round
up down
seeking
what?
“what good am I so terrified”
the narrator runs scared over the racing suspense music
we dodge and turn
through the moving pictures
the dark night
Bad Trip
“I don’t like what I see”
music still racing, worried, The Strokes a little like
We are worried we are swirling
we are not sure what is going on
the music becomes mechanical bubbles and spaces out with flutes
we are reaching with the narrator after
“visions intensified”
What does he see?
What’s the thing with the demon voice?
And what was he compelled to?
And are these flutes fluttering in at the edges and into the center for a moment here and there?
A bad trip?
Drug?
Vacation turned monster movie?
Hope turned heartache?
He said he had no choice.
But that’s what people always say after its too late to choose better
Still, here we don’t know
Maybe there were real monsters, demanding real action, and even with the dust cleared, the mistakes made, and the bodies lying this way and that, we’d have to say that, to be fair, we couldn’t have handled the situation any better: a truly unusual, remarkable, difficult situation — what with the fast-approaching monsters and the quick-narrowing options and the low visibility and moral ambiguities and one tough call following another so you’ve no time to well-consider any of them
A Dark Web
Dreamy guitars, spaced drum beats
A speeding up down the channel, caught in the current
That’s no channel! It’s an irrigation ditch — you shouldn’t play there
What’s he saying?
“I am I am”
“I will I will”
“I can I can”
Groovy, but “you’re gonna catch your death” / “nowhere to hide”
fun teenage monster movie sexy fun goes gory fun
What has “gained its consciousness this dark and terrible web, and now it steals identities and makes the real ones dead; it took my best friend, a kind and trusting soul, who could read the future’s promises, and was taken by a troll … dang ”
What happened here? The web is a spider monster’s lair?
The web is itself the monster?
A monster that gobbles your body from the inside-out and inhabits your saggy flesh?
And this friend with a trust greater than his prescience, and so now just another victim in the catalog of the not-quite-main-characters
Where are we now? We are “dang”; but it’s too late to change where we’ve landed; the movie’s ended
New Year New You
Show-tuney
Bobble your head, dare to dream of a “New year, new you”
All the possibilities!
But who wants to chase geese?
Who has that on their wish-list?
Only dogs, mostly just dogs
Is a dog grinning and swaying side to side in this alt-rumba?
Gross Job
“they got one job; it’s crazy / they come at night; while you’re lazy / they crawl … up … in … your … head”
Oh not those monsters!
The ear ones! The brain stealers and melters! Gross!
And so like getting older alone in the woods or on the park bench in your boxed apartment in your sardine can
Put Your Arm Thing Around Me
Spacey, dreamy, long chords, distorted voice alien planet landing gentle and careful touchdown with wide landing feet
Some kind of love “my old friend”
What has happened? He was anti-mattered and reassembled?
“a little different here and there” / “try not to stare” “Put your arm-thing on your shoulder / it takes a while to regain composure / you’ve got me as support”
Ethereal, longing, loving, these broken pieces put back together
Oh, the beginning, was “he’s a lot like his old molecules / just different here and there” Is it like The Fly when you come back together in a way that doesn’t go well?
No, it’s just him; but “anti-matter to matter is weird”
And the music is sparse, the voice electronic and spaced, gentle, putting on a brave face, “welcome back, my old friend, it’s so good to have you back”
Oh! Why?
Why the crumpling-up of our forms, the cruelty of change, of hurt, of broken
and yet
what a friend we have in Jesus and everyone else who just says, “it is so good to see you again”, and leaves it at that — at the only thing any good
Reverse Polarity Touch Mainframe
Are we waltzing, are we twirling around the dance floor?
A few piano key-notes to walk down the wide winding stairs in our showgirl outfits with real ostrich feathers
“water in the circuit / any way you work it / how is joy so close to terror? / are you sure, so sure this is right?”
The danger of human certainty, of rash human actions, of rushed human contact
I am wondering where we are in the slow waltz down through the hall, trapped in the info world I guess in the tunnel of ideas connected to off/on impulses
Comments Section
Movie intermission
Easy going Notes zig zag up and down slow and spaced wide the cha cha beats travel up and down but we’re just waiting to hear from you
A voice finally walks in, with a motion in between speech and song “sitting back / making sense of the struggle / don’t know the facts / a little late to the ? / so what the / so darn sure / close to giving up / close to shutting the door”
And back to banging and sawing now with the guitar suggesting upward and downward What did we learn? Must we comment?
But we want to participate in the culture!
We want to push back on the stimuli! We want purchase on this shared dreamscape! We want to be heard
We want to sound like somebody
no, we just want, to not be so alone, so much like fodder for losing, maybe better to shut the door, maybe better to make like a snail and slime back inside
Dude, Look
“Du du dude, you are an idiot / du du du why don’t you see that?”
“They’ve got toxic sludge and radioactivity / there’s an ?ugly-A? creature chasing you and me”
“du du dude, you drive me wild / du du du you are a child”
What is going on here?
The music is stalking the listener
What is the “dark ritual” they’re putting on?
“I don’t care if we die / I just want you to recognize / there’s an ?evil-eyed? creature chasing you and me”
Well, for those of us who wake up at four am worried about the United States sleepwalking into a Trump-centered, but willing-wonks-organized dictatorship; this song feels like our last many years, like, “COME ON! WILL YOU OPEN YOUR EYES!”,
but I mean, it’s also a common lament of monster movie watchers — the fools not realizing that the monster is stalking them, that the creatures are coming for them, so obvious to us with our popcorn and soda with our arm around our girl or just on the empty ragged sofa where nothing ever happens
Well, America, some people fight in the mud for democracy and freedom and not having to be afraid of government reprisals if you speak out against your government; all you’re being asked to do is pay attention, be honest, avoid obvious errors, push away from thugocracy and related incompetencies (you’re good at what you prioritize: thugocracies prioritize holding power, and shoving everybody who disagrees down into the dirt deeper and deeper past the point of pain deep into dying alone and broken) and chose the imperfect-but-workable over grand schemes of infinite perfections and grand pouts of “it’s all the same / nobody loves ME good enough anyway”; that’s all you’re being asked to do — please do it
Concerns About Raising the Dead
A high lamenting voice falling down onto the steady rocks of base and drum
“You should try me again sometime / I might just come around / I’m not so far gone, no not yet / I might just come around / I can change my mind”
This is the rat-maze-looping thought of a mad scientist This is the dark jagged walls hanging at odd angles to frame his desperate seeking after that great victory science for infinity’s sake
Who raises the dead? only “the almighty”?
Or can a human with a clear hand restart a life lost? Is death but an interruption that doesn’t ever end? And might we crunch courageously to a reopening of the eyes and mind?
Angry Ghost
“I’ve seen hurt like this before / can’t get this mirror clean / there is an angry ghost making your ears bleed many times”
How is this ghost “in the shower”, “on the pillow”, “traveling on his commute” “between breathing and the floating air and the souls of insects” ?
“I am one of those sensitive dance kids helping a mom and dad remembering what they had”
“I’m ready to be buried deep in the garden”
The words drop like slow molasses
The music goes round and round like a witch’s cauldron is stirred “confused by it / abused by it”
What is going on? How can a banshee move so gently and softly like this song flows, as it circles in eddies, and then breaks free to go easily carefully forward “hurt feet / sunburned head / look of despair / look of despite / and the ways they lie / the ways they lie / my knees feel weak / my heart feels funny / when you give love / when you …”
He “can’t get this mirror clean”
He’s not “seen dirt like this before”
The ghost and his musical home feel more sad than angry
But sorrow has a way of lashing out, especially if one’s audience can only see you as ugly, as drifting, as tatters, as cruel rags
Anger Goes Away
Merry go round? Quiet siren? Sad siren?
“Dusting off my carbon shifter, I pick up my guitar / and I’m connecting the lightning; I feel the charge shock my lips / I engage the power cells / watch the surge go down your spine / and the anger goes away / and the anger goes away”
Does it, though?
If it drifts away and dissipates like this wide-spreading music, does that mean that the anger is gone? Or has it just grown tired and quiet, temporarily forgetful of itself but not gone away?
What healing magic can we expect from the electrical reanimation of a stitched together mess of corpses?
I don’t know, but we don’t disbelieve the narrator, we don’t dispute his claim that the anger goes away, that the mad scientist and his mad creature have resurrected one another into the gentle joyful fold of sentient sympathy of aware eye-in-eye insight into the Love within each one
We think, OK, sure, sounds good, the anger, okay, sure, it can go away, the monster and his creator don’t have to be sharp edges dangerous jags crooked lines, they could be happy, calm, gentle, abiding in the Love that makes life Real
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Copyright: Andy Watson