a season starts

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love. 

~Hamilton Wright Mabie

Ute Prayer

Earth teach me stillness

as the grasses are stilled with light.

Earth teach me suffering

as the old stones suffer with memory.

Earth teach me humility

as blossoms are humble with beginning.

Earth teach me caring

as the mother who succors her young.

Earth teach me courage

as the tree which stands all alone.

Earth teach me limitation

as the ant which crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom

as the eagle which soars in the sky.

Earth teach me resignation

as the leaves which die in the fall.

Earth teach me generation

as the seed which rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself

as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness

as dry fields weep with rain.

"Crow"ing

All right, so you failed. You failed, you failed, you failed. You failed, you failed, you... You think I care about that? I understand. 

You're an artist, man.

Your job is to break through barriers. Not accept blame and bow and say: "Thank you, I'm a loser, I'll go away now." 

You still want to be great? 

(and don't think you have to be great to prove anything to me, or to them, or even yourself -- just for the thing of it, for the doing of it). 

Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling. That's true greatness to me.

But don't listen to me, I'm just [Gigi].  Your "greatness" is not why I'm here.  

I am.  

You are. 

That's all it is.  

That's the miracle.

notes from the guitar man revisited in celebration of the day he was born

notes from the guitar man

though i wear a guise of pure mayhem for the family dynamic, no one is whole and true: like Lacan surmised, we are born incomplete, many sided, in parts, and we integrate and present the part(s) that weather us through.

Ah this is a bore, huh?

so on to Gigi. I've named a guitar after you. Actually a bass. the white bass Lisa practiced on while here is refered to as George, and i've ordered on to be made for me similar; heavier wood, thinner neck for fast playing, looking almost identical to the untrained eye as the first. She'll be Gigi. George is short for Georgeous, so Gigi is a compliment to the beauty and pragmatism of the bass. i have no doubt I'll love her dearly.

of Death

And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its rest-
less tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence
shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
then shall you truly dance.


Kahill Gibran, The Prophet

Music

breaking through my stony healing

I saw your soul by Hugh Macleod

Intimacy isn’t strictly about romantic relationships, or even relations with family--sometimes it happens quickly, and often times in ways we hardly notice. I’m talking about that moment when someone allows the world to see what’s inside...what they are really about. It’s about seeing someone for who and what they are and that the glimpse was offered either voluntarily or without the person’s knowledge. This is an incredible moment where our existence suddenly makes sense and all comes together in a singular place. For those of who have experienced this, it’s something that never gets lost in memory or time. It’s like a little mirror we take out every now and then to remember a time when something so complex became so inconceivably simple. It’s pretty incredible.

All the stars in the sky say "goodbye" say "goodbye"

We were here yesterday, now you seem so far away,

We were here yesterday, I heard you saying you don't know me,

You know one side of a story, oh you don't know me.

So open wide your wounded heart, feel yourself be blown apart,

Open wide your wounded heart, it's a funny place to start.

In the light of the sun, we are found, we are undone,

In the light of the sun, we are a one.

And you don't know me, you know one side of a story,

Oh you don't know me.

All the seeds beneath the snow start to grow, start to grow.

All the seeds beneath the snow say 'Hello', say 'Hello.'

All the seeds lie below, deep in heart and what we know,

All the seeds lie below, the ones we sowed.

And you don't know me, you know one side of a story,

But if we could be free, one with all this glory,

If we could be free.

-WJ

has it ever set you free, to scream out...

In the light of the sun, we are one - one with all this glory.  We are free.

Hello

as Shel would say

free will

This is a perfect moment. It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumbsucking, dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them,
from whom the painful blessings flow,
we are waking up.
Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.
Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.
Molestations of God,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.
Their cunning commercials
and blood-sucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.
Thanks to them,
from whom the awful teachings flow,
we are waking up.

+

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul's true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge of creating a New Earth. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

+

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we cannot let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy, resist, and prevent their tragic magic; tap into our sacred rage and supercharge it.

But overthrowing the living dead is not enough. Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough. We can't afford to be consumed with our anger; can't be obsessed and possessed by their danger. Our mysterious bodies crave delight and fertility.

Our boisterous imaginations demand fresh tastes of infinity. In the New Earth we're creating, we need lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. We need radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

coolest boots ever

Worn by Julie last night at her show, and generously she shared where she'd gotten them with me... a boot Christmas for me!

Julie Fowlis - 'Biodh an Deoch' (don't forget to pause the player below)

Hugh Macleod

Mike Clark "Hey Daisy"