It is really important for me to remember the possibilities and challenges when playing music live. The show we will be playing is at a venue that has been hassled to pay for any copyrighted music that is played within their establishment.
The people who try to collect a fee for that are probably like all people who try to collect fees, ruthless and persistant and unsympathetic.
It makes playing original music even more important, which ties back to what it is I must remember. Any public performance is an opportunity to reach out to what is sacred in those around me. Greeting others with a song, a prayer, an original greeting...and message. It is also a way to generate this positive energy with brothers and create something beyond what you would be capable of on your own.
This is what I must hold at the center. and let the rhythm flow and spill out across the whole world!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
in the beginning...
i would begin this so differently at different periods of my life...this one begins with
hunter thompson shot himself in the head...he was not a particular idol...i barely read him, although what i mostly read was his espn stuff...his ravings on sports were as insane as his ravings on politics...and i knew him better from the movie 'where the buffalo roam' which is forever connected with the sounds of neil youns mournful guitar moaning 'oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam...'
I heard gonzo hated the movie....but i loved it...and the idea of a character like hunter thompson out there in the world...back when i knew from the mainstream media and authority figures that drugs were bad, (although some of the kids i liked and got along with seemed to be sooo stoned and still trucking along) i had heard on the tv that hunter thompson, somewhere in colorado, had been arrested for an incident involving a raid on his house that confiscated large number of firearms , explosives and Lsd. it sounded like a dangerous mix, and it although it still sounds like a potentially bad mix, i no longer think of it as that weird, there are too many other increbibly 'wrong' sounding news items out there in the world..most of the most atrocious are barely heard
...and it never got weird enough for Gonzo...probably even when he fired the shot at his own head brimming with rants and raves and poetic justic that needed to be dished out to all...desperatly wealthy and atrociously poor alike..there is no time for mourning, we need to make it to the land of oz before the mokeys eat the corpses and all the evidence has been snorted up by the chorus line of wicked witches who have been sleeping with the all mighty oz to try and get him to dole out a ticket back home...and it is not like that with many people...soo much homogoized mourning long before we die...hell, as a society we mourn all the time...so i am not mourning hunter thompson...and i am not getting all fucked up to celebrate...i am doing what turns me on, when it turns me on...the amazing and beautiful lady i live with, the brothers i make music with, the kids i spend time with trying to make sense of things that just don't always make much sense them or me...and the walking contradiction i am trying to live in a world created by people who, god help us all, encourage us to shit and dump our cultures debris all over this planet that nurtures us, that has so much possibility still...
... i could mourn that, or think i might be wrong...but today, thinking of journalists trying to report on all of this, i would just think of us as the 'doomed' and not dwell on all the detail...it is mostly a nod to a character i imagine those who knew will miss a lot...and i will miss without having known him, because i knew of him...i know of others...insane poets, reckless dreamers, desperate children, frenzied artists wailing songs to the night...too many get lost in the muck and schluck of the damn media zombi meisters and the bloated politicians and the endless repitition...i wish everytime a bush quote flashed across my eyes it said 'we are doomed', it would help me rmember not to mourn that fact, but to think of you and celebrate "walk tall, kick ass, lear arabic, love music and never forget that you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriers".
hunter thompson shot himself in the head...he was not a particular idol...i barely read him, although what i mostly read was his espn stuff...his ravings on sports were as insane as his ravings on politics...and i knew him better from the movie 'where the buffalo roam' which is forever connected with the sounds of neil youns mournful guitar moaning 'oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam...'
I heard gonzo hated the movie....but i loved it...and the idea of a character like hunter thompson out there in the world...back when i knew from the mainstream media and authority figures that drugs were bad, (although some of the kids i liked and got along with seemed to be sooo stoned and still trucking along) i had heard on the tv that hunter thompson, somewhere in colorado, had been arrested for an incident involving a raid on his house that confiscated large number of firearms , explosives and Lsd. it sounded like a dangerous mix, and it although it still sounds like a potentially bad mix, i no longer think of it as that weird, there are too many other increbibly 'wrong' sounding news items out there in the world..most of the most atrocious are barely heard
...and it never got weird enough for Gonzo...probably even when he fired the shot at his own head brimming with rants and raves and poetic justic that needed to be dished out to all...desperatly wealthy and atrociously poor alike..there is no time for mourning, we need to make it to the land of oz before the mokeys eat the corpses and all the evidence has been snorted up by the chorus line of wicked witches who have been sleeping with the all mighty oz to try and get him to dole out a ticket back home...and it is not like that with many people...soo much homogoized mourning long before we die...hell, as a society we mourn all the time...so i am not mourning hunter thompson...and i am not getting all fucked up to celebrate...i am doing what turns me on, when it turns me on...the amazing and beautiful lady i live with, the brothers i make music with, the kids i spend time with trying to make sense of things that just don't always make much sense them or me...and the walking contradiction i am trying to live in a world created by people who, god help us all, encourage us to shit and dump our cultures debris all over this planet that nurtures us, that has so much possibility still...
... i could mourn that, or think i might be wrong...but today, thinking of journalists trying to report on all of this, i would just think of us as the 'doomed' and not dwell on all the detail...it is mostly a nod to a character i imagine those who knew will miss a lot...and i will miss without having known him, because i knew of him...i know of others...insane poets, reckless dreamers, desperate children, frenzied artists wailing songs to the night...too many get lost in the muck and schluck of the damn media zombi meisters and the bloated politicians and the endless repitition...i wish everytime a bush quote flashed across my eyes it said 'we are doomed', it would help me rmember not to mourn that fact, but to think of you and celebrate "walk tall, kick ass, lear arabic, love music and never forget that you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriers".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
