RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.
I’ve only ever been able to get into like five Sun
Kil Moon songs, because that meandering story-telling lyrical style – while my
favorite type of prose to read – doesn’t always translate into good audio. You
hear it a couple times, and there’s not much going back to it you really feel
like doing. But for some reason, this particular track held my attention enough
I keep going back to it from time to time. Sad to hear that whoever the famous
dude who is Sun Kil Moon is got caught up in some of the Me Too call-outs, I guess
being another fucking creep among a million. If he ever comes out of hiding or denial
to issue an apology, I guess it’s gonna be a 13-minute song with long-winded
explanations to justify poor behavior as somehow being a victim himself, at
some point. As men, we’re taught to never be sorry, but not really taught how
to not do horribly selfish shit that we should probably end up being sorry for.
Learning to apologize is a good first step towards learning to not be a
horrible person. It’s a gateway act towards not being a shithead. Too many of
us take great pride in being absolute shitheads though.
The other night, after a day of wandering, I was
making my way home – too late, yet again, having gone too far, yet again – so stopped
in at the Sheetz to get my XL hazelnut creamer coffee boost. All the coffee
machines seemed empty, and this old white lady worker was fiddling with the couple
that had coffee, I guess trying to get caught up on making coffee. I patiently
waited, masked up, for her to move along, and filled up a cup. She was working
further down the coffee machine line, when an older black lady came in, with a
cane, and they got to talking because they knew each other. Keep in mind, we’re
all masked up, as are most people, except for some reason in this pocket of
suburban/rural grey area in northern Virginia, all these blank-eyed young white
men who refused to mask up, proudly ignorant, more than a couple of them in
freedom style shirts supporting guns and cops and eagles and shit like that.
The old white lady says to the old black lady, “how have you been?” Old black
lady goes, “Not so good. You’re never doing too good when you just been to a
funeral.” The old white lady says, “What? I couldn’t hear you,” as she keeps
making coffee, way the fuck past retirement age, making shitty Sheetz gas
station coffee (which I love) on a Saturday night in nowhere America. The black
lady is louder this time, “Not so good. You’re never doing too good when you’ve
just been at a funeral.” I’ve moved over the creamer machine, first one broke
so had to go to the second, pushing buttons for that hazelnut diabetes juice. “I’m
sorry honey, I can’t hear you,” goes the old white women. Unmasked pairs of
angry-eyed white dudes in work-ish clothes are poking at the ordering machines
nearby, and the old black lady is still leaning on her cane, masked, both the
old women overweight and not looking in prime health, out here in this suburban
Sheetz on a Saturday night. The old black lady is loud as fuck now, in that
strange way you can be loud but still friendly, going, “Not so good. You ain’t
ever doing too good when you just been to a funeral.” And the old white lady
still can’t hear her, and the old black lady is looking at her – they obviously
know each other – and I just wanna go over to her and say, “I’m sorry about
your loss,” but it would’ve been weird. And there’s all these white men walking
around with anger in their eyes, not giving a fuck, so even masked up my
bearded white man ass might not have been all that comforting.
So I got on my red square marking six feet
distance, and some unmasked meathead redneck and his dyed blonde unmasked
girlfriend get behind me, way off the next red spot, and she drops a bag of
chips right behind me. I turn around and give them the hillbilly murder eyes my
people have always been known for, and the judghead goes, “sorry, buddy” in a
way that I couldn’t tell if he was serious or condescending. I wanted to smash
him, just in case he was being a dick, but instead got a dog treat for my
girlfiend’s hound dog in the car, and after the old white lady rung me up,
having moved over the register – I guess done with the coffee machines and
hopefully having heard her old black friend finally – I stared the dude off on
my way out. He didn’t make eye contact, looked down immediately – beta broken
gaze of a faux alpha persona. And as I twisted around in the car to convince
the hound dog named Hank that the treat was okay, not poison, I thunk to myself
how the race war America might be building up to ain’t really a race war at
all, but a battle between white men like me and all those other dudes, about
whether we want to give a fuck about anything other than ourselves in life, or
not.
The
advertising dude who allegedly came up with the “yo quiero taco bell” campaign
using a chihuahua has parlayed the wealth he “earned” as a brilliant
advertising type into a role as local arts gatekeeper, who allows shit he knows
about to thrive while shit he has no clue about continues to exist in the margins.
The Columbus discovery metaphor of these types, who have to be exposed to good
shit, in order for good shit to have access to all the spaces they hold the
keys to, remains too true and annoying as fuck. Anyways, he recently posted a
nude selfie of himself meditating or some shit, on social media, to show you
just how easy it is, at least for an economically comfortable 50-something
white man, to remain calm in these trying and terrible times. Also, he is an
artist, the authentic kind that has access to shows (because of the
aforementioned holding of keys), so if you’re a young physically attractive
femme-appearing local artist, look out. I bet he’s got a photography project
you’d be perfect for – artistic sexy pictorials taken in his studio. One time,
I did a reading or some shit at a lady’s teaching building thing, to “expose” myself
to new people. This dude’s ex was one of the attendees, and I was supposed to
be excited to meet her, because of the opportunities such meetings opened up.
That whole method of people becoming considered valid and supported artists is
bullshit, and full of ways for those with the power (like ol’ yo quiero taco
bell dude) to exploit that power to their own benefit. So as we burn everything
down, I ask you to not just think globally, or nationally, but also burn down
bullshit locally as well. Because it’s a lot of shit local that needs some
fire.
Walking along the train tracks gets in your blood,
somehow, where you think about it all day long. Whenever my life has been my
shittiest, I’m always inclined to disappear along some tracks for a few hours,
and reclaim some sanity somehow. There’s a 69th mile marker along the James
River where I used to always wander, and I’ve often said that’s where I want my
ashes scattered when I’m dead. That’s not a lie. During my worst period, at my
most suicidal, that’s where I would’ve killed myself when I was envisioning it
then, which sort of worked into a self-check to be honest, because it’s like a
couple mile walk to get to the 69th mile marker, and after walking along
railroad tracks by the James River for a couple miles, with crows yammering at
you and the river rapids whispering prayers of lounge, who’d want to still die?
As you wander beside that many giant hulks of
steel that are the various freight cars found on 21st century tracks, it’s
impossible not to fall in love with graffiti – both the big bright spray
painted blasts most folks know as graffiti proper, but also the weird little
often single color paint stick scribbles called monikers. I never had the
patience to learn mastery of spraying paint, plus I’m more of a wordy motherfucker
anyways, so the world of monikers spoke to me, where often times simple poetic
phrases get scrawled along with a crude but sometimes elaborately beautiful
character. Not sure when I started, but I’m sure it was on those wood chip cars
by the 69th mile marker, probably some Sunday morning, that I started fucking
around with “dirtgod” as a blessed character that gets to travel places I’ve
never gone. I always say it has infinite outlook, because the glasses for eyes
on the character is always a haphazard infinity loop.
The infinity loop has a long history in monikers.
Probably my favorite living artist is buZ blurr aka the Colossus of Roads, an
old dude from rural Arkansas, who has scribbled thousands upon thousands of his
simple character with little phrasings underneath. buZ’s Colossus of Roads is –
according to buZ - homage to Bozo Texino, the old school legend of railyard
monikers, and is a character wearing a cowboy hat where the brim is an infinity
loop as well. The Colossus of Roads character is a side profile of Bozo, which
is a front on oval intersected with the infinity loop, and a dotted face with a
cigarette stick blowing a few bubbles of smoke into the æther.
Well,
recent life has gotten me battling depression, so I blew off work yesterday and
disappeared down to the end of the line somewhere in southside Virginia, at a
secretive location we don’t share because sanctuaries are easily ruined by too
many people knowing about that shit. But while walking through the scrub pines
of another southside Virginia dead end, looking at all the boxcars, with
assorted tags old and new, I got to a weirdly blue colored one, and I was about
to scribble on a blank spot when I noticed just to the left the faded remnants
of a Bozo Texino. It was the first time I’d ever seen one in the steel flesh. Wasn’t
hard to remember the old blue boxcar to check the other side on my walk back up
the other way, and there was a Bozo Texino on that side as well. A true
miraculous blessing in the middle of nowhere that made my day.
Western discourse still tends to have these man vs. nature binaries employed,
which on one end justifies rampant unchecked industrialization, and on the
other is used to suggest eco-fascism is appropriate. Man isn’t against nature;
we’re just a fucked up part of nature, that hasn’t learned to be part of it
better. I think about that a lot when walking the line by all those boxcars,
because each car itself is a giant behemoth of industry – steel melted and
shaped into a huge container far too huge for any man to lift or maneuver by
their own muscles. And we have giant strings of these containers, just hooked
up and moving around the continent. Many of them end up trickling down to these
dead end lines, sitting in the middle of nowhere, used sporadically. But there’s
also this long history of people walking by and putting their name on the
steel. My little paint stick markings on these giant hunks of industry are so
temporary, so impermanent. And yet it makes me feel seen, or known, even if
only to other societal vagrants. And honestly, there’s nowhere on Earth that
feels more peaceful to me than walking through a train yard almost always at
the edges of civilization, usually bordering nature in the form of a river or
creek or abandoned industrial edges of a city or town. It’s impossible for it
to not feel natural, completely in opposition to that man vs. nature binary.
Nature reclaims shit pretty fast, and as it reclaims it, you can’t really say
it’s still separate. So scribbling on trains feels like solidarity with
mushrooms and kudzu, honeysuckle and mullein, saying, “I’m with y’all” to the
whole universe, and being more productive at fucking off, because men aren’t
machines. We’re just fucked up chunks of impulses and energies forgetting to
take care of ourselves, in the name of some delusional ideas of progress we
need to get to. Fuck that, for infinity.
Teaching poor children to dream is almost unethical at this
point. This wonderful era of intimidating big truck paramilitary boiz flying
Dear Leader flags, and online school where the children of those who can’t pay
attention constantly, or even have good enough internet, is going to widen the
gap that was already a pretty gaping chasm contributing to American inequality.
Oh well, hopefully there’s enough digital opiates to keep us all placated. When
the internet actually does get broken, it’s gonna get real ugly then…
45 rpm 7-inch singles slowed down to 33, with some random vocal snippet spices added while it slow simmered in purple lights on a Friday night. Here's the link on my patreon. SUPPORT YOUR BOY DIRTGOD AT HIS PATREON!
Everything I thought to write about love seemed corny as fuck so I ain’t write anything. Except this. Shout out to Boogie Brown, as always dropping the Blue Globe Beats flavors, with prolific abundance.
There’s
not a lot of desire to hear what white men say because that voice has crowded
history’s book shelves so violently the past few centuries. But I think it’s
important white men willing to grow and change and adjust share their internal
dialogues, so that everyone else can better understand where we come from. For
example, in the heart of every man, there’s a constant conversation happening,
between an inner-Joe Rogan, and an inner-Beto O’Rourke. The inner-Joe Rogan
wants to get high after work, and indulge in a digital buffet of spirituality,
awareness, and fantasy. But the inner-Beto O’Rourke wants to go out, and make
friends that aren’t just other white men, except he’s unable to do that
successfully because he only goes to a set square of exactly 36 acceptably hip
spots, and 12 times out of 10, does so in a clever t-shirt that’s actually only
clever to other white men. So the post-modern day white man struggles under the
burden of this inner dialogue, in fact argument, between the inner-Rogan
wanting to get high and look at cool shit online, and the inner-Beto wanting to
go out and be appreciated by others who are not just more white men. EVERY
WHITE MAN YOU MEET IS GOING THROUGH THIS STRUGGLE BUT WILL NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE
IT. And it is that deception of the actual conversations happening inside
themselves that makes them “white men”.
There
was an article about Ruby Ibarra being a scientist working on a Covid vaccine,
which you can easily google and find yourself, and it’s probably behind a
paywall so you’ll have to do an incognito window or some shit. Ibarra’s pretty
great, and it’s bothersome how immigrants from elsewhere that’s European get
absorbed as American but non-whites don’t get that same benefit, and will always
have this otherness still attached to them. I mean, it’s like that in European
countries as well, and I just started reading Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of
Latin America, and aside from the normal Galeano ability to have a fucking
quotable sentence on every other page that I want to scribble really high up on
the walls at my house so nobody can reach it to cover up or try to scrub away,
it also is making me want to really re-invision how I think of America, as a
pre-existent entity to the United States, and one that will likely exist long
after the United States. We get too caught up in our present reality as being
dominant throughout time, when really it’s just some shit happening right now.
Shit, the United States isn’t even that big of a presence in the history of the
Americas. But it’s certainly a problematic one now. But if you take away
thinking that shit is all-knowing omnipotent over history, you also take away
some of the hopelessness that comes with the bad side. I mean shit, people ain’t
even been speaking English all that long here, which is probably why the frogs
get quiet when I try to sing with them at the pond at night, because they’re
expecting me to be speaking Monacan, but the only Monacan words that still
exist are ones that people named places with. And the biggest one I can think
of repurposes Rassawek, the big village that existed at the confluence of the
Rivanna and the James near present-day Columbia. But the folks who did that
named their big ass winery Rassawek and host weddings there. Seems weird to
resurrect dead tongues for wedding destinations, but what do I know? I’m just a
piece of shit from nowhere shooting words into space.
Been too far into my own head lately, past present and future. Easy to get lost in there, in fact our culture by design hopes we get lost in the self-hatred and loathing of who we are despite not being able to be nobody else, because that drives us to buy good feelings, keep the abstract economy pumping with force, that which has driven the engine of progress that's gotten all of us nowhere except an entirely different part of the Earth than we would've been seven generations back. Even as the overlords talk stimulus packages, it's not because people can't afford to live safely, can't pay their rent or keep food in the kitchen; it's because it "stimulates" the economy. None of us mean shit, just numbers in a spread sheet concatenated for another's sum total benefit.