SONG OF THE DAY: Shlon

America is poison culture, so we don’t necessarily have that many good role models for men easing into middle agedom (or older) that aren’t tinged with sexually predatory behavior or abusing power which was slowly inherited as birthright. I mean, of course there’s tons of dudes who did not benefit from the institutions in place, who are localized and legendary and pretty great role models as older dudes to be. But our poison culture doesn’t elevate them as much as horribly flawed mediocre at best pieces of shit. Look at the Presidential election for example. Nonetheless, it’s okay to step outside the cultural boundaries applied to you from birth, like lines on a metaphysical map drawn by colonial overlords, which don’t necessarily fit. I am actively abandoning any delusions that anybody can be President, never taught my kids that bullshit, hell my only kid of voting age doesn’t even vote because they know it’s a scam meant to manufacture a false people’s mandate on the system itself, instead of making any actual fucking progress. But as I’m only a few years away from 50, instead of wanting to be a mediocre white man with material wealth, abusing my power and trying to harass women half my age, I’m trying to cultivate an Omar Souleyman vibe. Unfortunately I’m still far too tethered to my American conditioning, because I think ultimate dirtgod feelings would be living on the side of a mountain or near a quarry with a bunch of goats making noise, and pretty much wearing lavender jellabiya. That’s the robes popular in the Nile Valley, as well as Syria’s farmland, where Omar Souleyman is from, but not to be confused with the thawb worn by Saudi Arabian royalty types, and although the thawb is also called a “dishdash” which is a pretty great word for a full length robe a man would wear, the jellabiya is associated with rural farming types whereas the dishdash is a more cultured and moneyed robe. So here’s to hoping in the next decade I’m living on a hill with a hundred goats and rocking lavender or mint green jellabiya’s with embroidered “dirtgod” calligraphy on the back, freestyling cosmic verses over top whatever futuristic throwback synthgrass sounds Boogie Brown is dropboxing on me in that southern gothic future.