I just love writing about music so much

And talking about it, thinking about it.

Hell, sometimes, I even like listening to it.

Music was in many ways a great equalizer.

The highs, the lows, I could understand their forms.

My brain understood their forms

C F G 
D G A
E A B
F A C
G B D
A C E

Why doesn’t it start on A?

Did Bach finally even out the clavinet’s temper?

Did Chopin put in a word with Big Music Rules?

Clapton Carlin Crawdad Charlie Parker Chick Corea Crazytrain Criptonite

And that’s why I have to pursue this direction: 

Lyrics follow me around like memory

256 gigabytes stored in the cloud

An infinite history at our fingertips and yet the archives disappearing before our very eyes

Storage, everything stored, and unfiltered, unrepentant, underdeveloped and overdelivered

Everything I experience is filtered through lyrics

There’s gold in them thar hills

California You’re a Hole In My Heart

Goin to California to make a new Start

California knows how to partay

On such a Winter’s Day

Some Appalachian Band -> Led Zeppelin -> Biggie -> Mama’s and the Papa’s

I’ll never swim Kern River again

Until those bozos in the county 

open up the spout

The waters been used up

Corporate con farm men

And it’s time to wet the sand

Well I swore I’d never swim in that big mighty Kern

She used to take away men that were twice my wise

We had to jump on in from time to time

But I swore I’d never swim Kern’s ol devil tide

I’ll never swim Kern River again

Until those bozos in the county 

open up the spout

The waters been dried up by

Corporate con farm man

And it’s time to wet the sand

Tehatchapi’s got more rain in the last few years

The snowpack’s in our backyard

The spigots dull and dry 

The corn is flying high

And Kern River is a dusty riverbed

I’ll never swim Kern River again

There’s no more water in it
So I can’t give it a spin

I just crave the sounds, the sounds, the sounds. And the words that come out while the sounds are around. It’s hard to read to music. But you can write to it. You can dance to it. You can sing along. You can cry and scream and jump and yell. Music is a space where anything is possible. If you set something to music, anything is believable. Because the sheer act of experiencing music is proof in something beyond our comprehension. Music is a love letter to the eternal.

And I have prayed at the alter of G!d and the D?vil

And I have prayed for help from whatever face emerges

I have given into my better angels

And demons have left me hanging with a cigarette lolling out of my mouth

And yet, I don’t listen to music all the time. While I’m working, not too much. 

Speaking to a concern that we don’t stop spending money, that we don’t continue to experience the joy in our work, the power of our network

This is the time to be asking for help

Why the hush hush 

The Process is so much messier than you can hide within minutes and minutiae 

Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand

Everybody was playing in the Heart of Gold Band

funky samba guitar bongo bill k 

The lore is always laying buried, just below the surface

The finest coating of dust lingers on records unplayed in decades

In folders of forgotten documentaries

An absolute tidal wave of history and us
Creating! Creating! Creating! 

But can we synthesize it! Can we make sense of it all!

No! It is senseless! It is without rhyme and reason!

It is poison! It is heaven! It is Content and it is everything and nothing and the deepest expression of our innermost soul

It’s Content!

It’s not a phase Mom! I don’t want to be in some shitty emo ska band! I want to make CONTENT! For the ALGORITHM!

I will feed the ALGORITHM MY CONTENT MOM

And it will spit back Hearts and Stars! Horseshoes, mom! HORSESHOES!

a;oidfjo;fugosdfugfdofoirigjfkgklfirughghdfuighjfkgjfigjhrjgjkhhdigjfkgldjgkfgjdljldgljgdljgdkgdhkdghkgdkdkdkfkewtfwtfwtdfwtfwtfthere it goes there it goes the sound the tone the wiggle and the gam band the bandmaj thespitjam football tasty-cakes east coast toasty toasty ghosty ghastly Beetlejuice-ridden Undetectable Undigestable Detestable Distraction of Disclosure

I’m Always Playing Chess

Or Risk

Or Counterstrike

Or Starcraft

Or Backgammon

I can get lost deep in these realms of real time strategy 

Turn based strategic board games are actually something I’m quite good at

Not like the pro’s pro’s 

But enough that I can keep up

I think I just got tired of fighting my father’s wars

I’m putting down my sword and shield

From the river to the sea

I’m going to put down my sword and shield

Down by the riverside

From the river to the sea

M’yarden l’yam

M’adom l’mayim 

From the land which we tended 

And the land which bleeds with unholy war

Whose beauty begets the profane 

Under whose golden stone lie the bones of countless foe

The sort of knowledge that I have consumed 

from lost tomes, left unwritten

To the histories written in grave markers

In ironic marks and lost references

We will not last

Our words are lost in whispers

I never saw Guy Clark sing Dublin Blues

But I did see Prine do Lake Marie

And I got a glimpse of Dylan, shoulder turned into a CVS at 2am 

Another sunrise slip on the sunset strip

And I cried when Justin Townes died

And I think about John Prine a lot

And some days I’m just grateful I was too young to be anywhere the day Merle Haggard died

And some days I like seeing John Mayer do echoes of Garcia

Music and a woman and a whiskey 

is the only thing that has ever

soothed my soul

Names masqueraded in

Nom de guerre 

Nom de pen

Nom de Chomsky

Rabbits in hats

Hats on cats

Everything has gone to shit

Merde

Zut zut zut alors

Sleep in my sweet baby’s arms

Sleep in my sweet baby’s arms

Go round the back til the mail train comes back 

And sleep in my sweet baby’s arms

All of these words are trapped inside of me

Waiting for the touch of dread

The monotonous dredge of jet engines

The polyrhythm of the randomness of a hundred strangers

Just trying to outlast their intrusive thoughts

To make it from here to there

Twenty thousand feet in the air

To greet their loved ones with open arms

Or loss

Or Joy

For this era is the one in which I attend weddings

It was once in which I would attend Bar Mitzvahs

One day, I will attend many funerals

And there may be a wedding and a bar mitzvah mixed in

But all of these dear ones I’ve made

All these hearts stashed away in lockets of shared memories

Will be buried in the ground

Returned to the infinite