SONG OF THE DAY: Phukeng Special

My stomach was fucked up all night last night, I think from too much old ass turmeric in the peanut noodles I made, so I called in sick to work this morning, and went back to sleep. Woke up at like 9:30, and thought, "The heater sounds funny." It wasn't the heater, it was the toilet, which didn't latch shut after an overnight flush. This happened to time perfectly with a slow drain for the whole house due to likely root in the sewer line out in the yard. Anyways, the whole downstairs bathroom and hallway was flooded, and water was dripping into the basement. Luckily this is an old house, so the basement has a dirt/gravel floor and everything is off the ground down there, and none of it was directly beneath the drips through the floorboard. I mopped up the hallway, first time in a while, so it was a reverse blessing I guess, and will figure out the rest of it outside the house. Anyways, that's how my Monday started this week, which would seemingly be a bad sign. But what can you do? A lot of things are breaking right now culturally, some by design, others from neglect. Those who can afford to fix everything want to hoard those resources only for themselves, and are getting stingier and stingier with that wealth, whether conservative or progressive. Nobody at the top of the pyramid scam, no matter how rainbow flaggy their front yard is, wants to give up their spot up high. That ain't on the ballot this year (or any year). It never will be. So the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves, more and more. It is what it is. Life is still a blessing, even if the manmade systems we have to navigate are devilish as fuck.

Haiku Spike Sale

It has come to the point that I either need to sell more art or get a second W2 job. So I've cut the price of haiku spikes (for now) to $50 each, including for custom ones. How a custom one works is generally you tell me what you're looking for, and often times I carve more than one and let you pick. Sometimes I carve more than one but one in particular feels most like it needs to go to you.

I'm offering the same sale price of $50 apiece, or 3 for $125, on all the ones I currently have as well. At one point, I was getting $125 apiece of these, but they are a hard to explain piece of three-dimensional art, and the market for weird art shit seems to have shrunk pretty badly. I don't doubt the value of these magical art objects, and know they have great metaphysical value, and will likely have a much higher material value one day, likely after I'm dead. But I'm trying to survive capitalism while I'm still alive, unfortunately. Here is the dedicated Instagram page, as well as my website page for them.

I've been making these things for many years, having written thousands and thousands of haiku as a regular meditative practice to unwind the tangles in my life. I started carving them on found railroad spikes over a decade ago, and have improved on the process over the years. Some of them are painted, some are left natural railroad spike color, all our clear coated to help preserve the finish. But they are industrial detritus, so rust and decomposition happens. Nothing is eternal.

Railroad spikes have been used in Southern magic practices for a long time, usually as a protective device for the home. I have made a number of these with intentional messages that I've driven into the ground in various places where those haiku messages are important, with the point of the railroad spike pointing in the direction I'd hope the energy of the words would flow.

Thus, you can make a request for a custom spike with this in mind. My father used to talk about "The Power" that ran through our family, which I've come to know better and better the older I get. My art has always unconsciously accessed this realm, but as I've gotten older, I've practiced consciously doing this work when necessary. So this haiku spike could be far more than a piece of art, depending on what you're requesting.

I honestly have no idea how many haiku spikes I've made. I know it's well over a couple hundred, and probably nowhere near a thousand. But I don't know for certain. I don't believe in archiving the art that comes from me. Dandelions don't count their blossoms; they just keep blossoming for as long as possible.

It's also hard to explain the haiku spikes, because they're three-dimensional art meant to be held and read all the way around, and we've mostly been trained to look for flat art to hang on walls, because we've boxed ourselves in with how we live, so that seems most obvious. These aren't flat, but brings energetic life to your space in a far different way than flat art would.

You can go to my website's haiku spike page, and most of those should be available. You can message me (ravenmack at gmail dotcom) if you are interested in one, or more.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ozali

Space synthwaves are a good example of how you can’t always be entirely grounded. I mean, you need some grounding so you don’t float away completely (although, who’s to say that’s bad?), but many of the ties we apply to our lives are tethers more than grounding ourselves. My freestyle mind hasn’t been as strong in recent years, repetitive vocabulary, redundant experiences. Saw a dude freestyling in New Orleans who blew my mind on his immediate recall factor, so I’ve been trying to freestyle a little more each day. Almost made this a “space synthwaves” sonnet off the head, but didn’t because I’m waiting on a ride and was afraid I wouldn’t finish it before they got here. Since I didn’t do it, of course I would’ve had enough time. The Universe is a trickster, always and forever, which is why you gotta balance the grounding yourself in Earth thiccness to letting yourself float off into space, chasing the stars that humans could never be, though we are their children.

SONG OF THE DAY: Fences

I have a pretty good ability to sense metaphysical fences. It’s both a blessing and a curse. The worst side of it is how easy to see throughout my life where I’m not welcome even though nobody outright says it. That shit weighs heavy on you, because outwardly identifying open-minded types that have hearts full of hate will be hating on you, and those metaphysical fences are up big time, but they’re not physical so they’ll deny them even if you try to point it out. So you gotta just abide what you know to be true, and accept they’ve kept plausible deniability in the physical realm. America’s full of that shit, metaphysical fences behind neighborhoods where you’re just walking along, saying what’s up to random people you pass by, when all of a sudden you realize you’re about a block and a half into territory some sort of security force is gonna show up and ask you what you’re up to. Fuck it. I cut holes through metaphysical fences with haiku spikes regularly. Just drive them in the ground right at a weakened edge, deep enough into the ground the grass covers the head and nobody realizes it’s there, and a hole gets ripped in the invisible walls, and next thing you know the neighborhood is ruined. It’s like reverse gentrification. I practice it a lot actually.
By the way, this is a Blue Globe Beats song my boy Boogie Brown put together off an EP full of songs where he had computer voice read blurbs from this very blog. So this song’s words are already on here somewhere or another. If there’s a track Brown hasn’t put up on Youtube that I’m supposed to write about, I usually whip up a video just like I do with the kudzu’d 45s. For this one, I found video of hedge laying back in the day, which is the old school method of cutting hawthorn to build natural walls. Video lines up pretty amazingly a few times. I consider this art, even if it’s just me throwing a bunch of various shit together. It’s a digital mosaic, and only like 19 people will ever see it. Thank you for being one of them.

SONG OF THE DAY: Killing Time

I will still listen to shit like this, and drive down back roads with the windows down, and it’s still a reckless life, but in different ways than it would’ve been thirty years ago. You gotta change, and challenge the universe is different ways, because if you were lucky enough to roll the dice certain ways and never crap out (die), you’d be pushing your luck too far to keep it up. So I’m still getting stupid (because I know how), but I try to keep it fresh. Just killing time until eventually I’m freed from this spiritual prison of a body.

Y0VTH FVLL 0F R3CKL3SS F1R3 WH1CH...

youth full of reckless fire which 
ain’t afraid to burn bright (but 
those moments leave telltale scars) 

T1M3 L4PS3S, 4ND S3D1M3NTS...

time lapses, and sediments 
of experience clog our 
brains with what we think is truth 

F34RS 0F TH1S W0RLD PR0DVC1NG...

fears of this world producing 
more problems than solutions 
forget it’s beyond our grasp 

SONG OF THE DAY: Shu Ba Da Dum Ma Ma Ma Ma (kudzu’d)

[A critical micro-analysis of the final chase scene from White Lightning, as submitted to The University of Universal Magnetics by Raven Mack, as part of my thesis on Southern Gothicc Futurism.]
White Lightning came out in the summer of 1973, and was part of a ‘70s genre of white lower class antihero movies. Burt Reynolds was in his initial wave of stardom after the success of Deliverance the year before, and played a former moonshine runner who was seeking vengeance in the murder of his brother, killed by local police. Placed alongside current politics, the movie stands in sharp contrast to today’s performative outlaw imagery that many white men have purchased as their identity, that somehow makes the dissonant alignment of “outlaw” with “backing the blue”, or supporting law enforcement. Reynolds’ character, Gator McKlusky, is a true outlaw, and has the prison record to show for it. Gator uses federal agents, under the guise of being a cooperative witness, to get a souped up Ford Custom 500, and eventually lures the corrupt sheriff, played by Ned Beatty, into a climactic car chase. Knowing every back road to the mile, despite his time away in prison, McKlusky is able to slowly lure the sheriff to going over an embankment and drowning in the river. In post-MAGA crime-fearing politics, the notion of killing a policeman would be never be seen in good light, much celebrated as a heroic victory, but White Lightning lays out the tale to our antihero’s benefit.
All media is propaganda of some sort, attuned to the creator’s biases, whether consciously or unconsciously. Rarely these days do we see underclass heroes who are positioned against corrupt authorities that are realistic and present day, thus easily translatable to real life corruption. It’s more often than not filtered through science fiction, against technological overreach or distant corrupt systems of power that are more globalized than localized. But the reality of the American experience is that those of us who suffer abuses at the hands of an ever-expanding police state do so at the localized level. It’s refreshing to see a folkloric antihero succeeding against the type of corrupt county sheriff that still very much exists in far more rural American counties than the average digitally news attuned brain could comprehend. And with local journalism pretty much gutted by venture capitalism and the movement to digital news sources over the past couple decades, any stories of local corruption are mostly word-of-mouth.
The end of White Lightning is a memorial parade for the dead sheriff, which Gator watches before driving off into the sunset. He didn’t actually cooperate with the feds, remaining true to his outlaw nature as a former moonshiner. The local people, unaware of the reality behind the scenes, still celebrated the sheriff, believing he stood for law and order in a decent way. These would be the MAGA people today, who somehow are the political marks standing alongside the parade route, waving flags for a corrupted leader, yet they believe in their minds, due to the propaganda they consume, that they are the Gator McKlusky, and antihero. It makes no logical sense. But in a world where the propaganda’s biases are far more pronounced, yet denied to an even greater extent, it’s hard to avoid. We’ve been culturally conditioned to think up is down, wrong is right, and openly corrupt leadership is a savior from corruption. We need more Gators, but all we seem to be served up are more flag-waving extras jockeying for digital position to watch the parade march by.

P3RS1ST3D D3SP1T3 W31GHT VP...

persisted despite weight up on shoulders (which I aim to lessen with each passing year) 

SONG OF THE DAY: Time To Throw Down (kudzu'd)

Old school electronic boom baptism sermons to send distraction signals to the more modern surveillance bloop blips to become confused by. Analog technology confounds artificial intelligence, committing cultural jailbreak, creating pockets of autonomous throw down, which is always temporary because the more truly free fun any cluster of humans just being have anywhere, the panopticon scanners shift to try and cover it with monetized joylessness. For as long as men have secretly stacked hoarded coins, raw human joy has been harvested and processed into wealth, removing all the fun, synthesizing raw serotonin into watered down dopamine chase, and turned too many of us into worshippers of new, mistaking it for fresh. Heavily processed new is no replacement for truly fresh, whether you speak of summer squash or simple rhymes. The new school attempts at funky freshness are full of polysaturated phats, and only clog the heart with an unexplainable sadness. But the real shit volunteers itself wherever life is a compost pile, and the artificial can’t ever stop it. It will always be time to throw down, somewhere where the mundane eyeballs ain’t been told to blandly scan yet.

C0NFVS10N 0F PVRP0S3 WH3N...

confusion of purpose when demands of modern living get my heart’s intent twisted 

SONG OF THE DAY: Rush Rush (kudzu'd)

This 45 of mine has a skip at the very end, but other than that it’s perfect. In fact, the skip at the end loops part of the hook, off beat, but it’s still even more than perfect because I can just fade out on the skip and the whole song played slow, and I think that’s what trips me out about the yearning for digital perfection. It’s a flawed quest. Imperfect is always going to be better, and thus more perfect than perfect. Also, I’m a big fan of slowed disco. The beat simmers down to a more manageable flow, the percussion inside disco music is insane, and frankly, when it comes to getting into records, you gotta be into shit nobody else wants. Unfortunately, they’ve rebranded disco as “boogie” music and it’s making a comeback. It’s not unfortunate that the music is coming back necessarily, because I love that. It’s just that the cheap ass records a motherfucker like me gets left to pick through is about to lose another genre. Then again, not too many people give a fuck about 45s, so you can still find plenty of record stores that just got huge bins of cheap ass ones in good shape, because it takes too much work to go through them. I been broke lately, so ain’t had the funds to go record digging in a while. I’m starting to fiend.

R3FL3CT1NG VP0N P4TT3RNS...

reflecting upon patterns of thinking which lead me to dissatisfied conclusions 

SONG OF THE DAY: Stellar Fungk (kudzu'd)

The mental spaceship been a bit stalled here lately. All the internal streams seem to be flowing normally, maybe a little bit of back-up, but whatever main line of creative drainage this body has out unto the Universe has been clogged, so it hadn’t been flowing freely, causing that back-up, where the ideas get swirled together even when they don’t mix, and can’t be expressed fast enough to air themselves out properly. And I’m actually pretty blessed with halfway freedom enough time to try. I think constantly about all the amazing creative minds that get stifled by work in our world, who just have endlessly brilliant thoughts in their own mind, but they never get the chance to be turned into some sort of art. And I also think about all the boring artists who have every opportunity to express themselves, get to work as big as their brain desires, and have access to whatever equipment promises to make their plans easier. Art (like all things) in our culture is built on inequality, and inequity, and all them uneven surfaces we’re building everything on. I try not to let it fuck with me, and keep that spaceship perspective, too high to be bothered by this Earthly bullshit. But it does get in the way sometimes. And mostly it just makes me sad, because there ain’t no merit to it, and there’s truly brilliant people out there completely unknown, left and right, while some mediocre ass folks get propped up in local scenes as signs of brilliance, just because they got the right stack of cash nudging them along from behind. I can’t change it, can’t fix it, and probably shouldn’t think about it. But I do, which is probably why the mental spaceship is stalled. It’s good to be grounded, but the surface is full of obstacles, so sometimes you gotta go back to the clouds, to avoid the mediocrity. If you get too caught up in it, you end up the same.

SONG OF THE DAY: It Really Doesn't Matter (kudzu'd)

Every time I listen to Zapp, I think, “wow, I don’t listen to enough Zapp.” And I listen to a lot of Zapp.

SONG OF THE DAY: Jeep 'n Benzos

Loud music blaring from slow moving vehicles in an urban environment, creating ambiance of joy amidst the underbelly of chaos that civilization don’t like to admit is integral part of acting civilized. I’d rather hear loud joy than quiet despair. I’ll never understand people mad about that.

SONG OF THE DAY: Mary Jane (kudzu'd)

I grew up on raggedy ass homegrown, so new age weed with its space sciences in both growing and consuming is too much for me. It plucks at the fractures in my traumatized brain, and I end up just sitting there thinking about how much longer it's gonna be. Folks who are big ass weedheads are always like, "Oh you just gotta try this blah blah blah strain, and don't smoke it, you gotta ingest vaporized pellets" or some shit, but it never works; I just sit there cuddled into the bed like a babbling fool afraid to babble because he knows he's a fool, and self-conscious fools make for the worst internal babble. But please, if you are a user, feel free to tell me in the comments how my personal experiences are entirely wrong.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cold, Cold, Cold (kudzu'd)

Riding a train to New Orleans so this track showing up as me writing about it next on my secret list that's always too far behind but nobody sees it so it doesn't matter is just about perfect. I love trains, and looking forward to walking around an alien place not doing shit for a couple days. Keep it slow, forever. The slower you live, the more timeless you are.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Need Some Money (kudzu'd)

Oh hey, I updated the shop on my website. Check it out. Support the dirtgod arts, so I don't end up having to get a second (third) job.

SONG OF THE DAY: Red Dirt Boogie Brother

It’s easy to lament the loss of regional genres and sounds in the digital era, but the negative effect of algorithms is just going to push folks back into cross-pollinating each other IRL again. Digital adds another layer to our existence, but it’s been manipulated so heavily in recent years that it’s almost useless in actually encouraging art, as it’s all so commodity driven. Algorithms got no purpose other than to sell you shit (which includes stifling you selling your own shit so that you buy in to the algorithms, which always has limited success anyways).
And at the same time, in the old new ways, this song came into my playing by an old-fashioned download of a compilation off a music blog. I still do that. I don’t stream, and I don’t fuck with spotify. I don’t judge folks for streaming, because we all do what our generation is used to, but I do judge folks who pay for spotify. They pay Joe Rogan’s fucked up ass millions, but are cutting payments to musicians who don’t stream a high enough amount. Keep in mind, they’ll still be using those artists’ music in their system, but if you don’t reach a certain threshold, you don’t get paid. But also, all these systems we have in place, which were supposed to make everything better and more universally accessible are all getting broken, by capitalist greed. Everybody making a little bit of extra money wasn’t good enough, so they had to tinker with the shit and make it so a few people made a whole lot of extra money. That’s how it always is.
That’s the beauty of human creation, whether art or civilization… no matter how much it changes, it’s all still basically the same. People are gonna be dancing on the ashes of a lot of shit we think right now is eternal. That’s just how it is, and always will be, until it ain’t, but nobody can actually predict that.
Beyond all the shit talk by Mr. Blog Haver over here, this song fuckin’ rules. The pinnacle of my sunshine chaos was my early 20s drunken years when I had a 1981 Datsun 200SX that I paid $500 for and put like 150,000 miles on it. This is exactly the type of song I would’ve blasted, driving madly between nonsenses with a mind going 120 mph. My mind don’t like going that fast no more, but it’s okay. I’m learning to slow down and try to get further down the road than wreck into a guard rail pretending I’m still an old version of me that ain’t real no more.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Won't Love You Again

I love all songs where there’s horns that sound like summer insects, especially ones about love. I feel very disconnected from mainstream American life, with weirdly secure houses that have HVAC systems where the outside is never inside and the inside is a quarantine from nature. I like rattly windows propped open with a stick, and hearing the summer chorus of forest bugs, and being part of it all, rather than hiding from it, pretending I’m better than everything else. Humans really built some fucked up shit, didn’t we? Seems like we’ve over complicated every aspect of lounge. Oh well, fuck it. I can’t fix the world. I ain’t even fixed the leak in the roof yet. But it might not ever rain that heavy ever again.

SONG OF THE DAY: What Am I To Do

Mostly listen to oldies at this point, and mostly don’t give a fuck. Thinking about forming a doo wop group if I could find four other people like myself, which can’t be easy, to be honest. I’m pretty fucked up.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sunrise (kudzu'd)

Oh look, I wrapped up the heroic crown. It ain't the greatest sonnet in the world, but it's a sonnet, and it fits the pattern and rhyme scheme and gets it done, and I did in true freestyle sonnet fashion and wrote it in about 11 minutes with my rhyming dictionary at hand.

Infinite outlook grants this grimy world more grace, 
man's vision hyperextended our reach too far 
beyond what humility should have kept in place; 
star dusted crowns got delusions of grandeur... par 

for the course when dreamers discourse with mad schemers 
who build pyramids of abstractions. These unreal 
realities start to bind, blind to redeemers 
who arrive to remind us existence is wheel 

and not a line chart. My heart yearns for sunrises 
greeted with hopeful joy, and sunsets filled with peace; 
but this compromised world the devil devises 
entraps the spirit in sadness without release. 

Nonetheless, with stealth I conceal behind this face 
planet rock mentality born from outer space. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Struggling Man (kudzu'd)

Back on that freestyle sonnet tip, so as to wrap up this heroic crown hopefully. I really need to cobble together another book of freestyle sonnet heroic crowns.

Simplifying life also amplifies the funk; 
living with spunk and zeal has popular appeal 
but is far less practiced by masses far too drunk 
off performance without basis in being real. 

Ain't no carrying the weight of world created 
by men without struggling in mind from time to time; 
this labyrinth designed to entrap those baited 
with dreams of escape is a well organized crime 

against true pursuit of happiness. All this dirt 
of metaphysical nature which stains our acts 
of building our pyramid schemes will only hurt 
ourselves when it's time to pay universal tax 

of balance restored. At war with abstract wealth chase, 
infinite outlook grants grimy world far more grace.

SONG OF THE DAY: Lookin' For A Home (kudzu'd)

This is the song I named my last book of haiku after, but slowed down. That’s a pretty great book. Feel free to buy a copy if you randomly show up here and aren’t a robot.

SONG OF THE DAY: Charlie Brown

Briefly was playing the fuck out of this song because my beloved girlfriend bought me some Charlie Brown masks made by Jimmy Valiant’s wife Angel for my birthday. This is not the cartoon character Charlie Brown, but when Jimmy Valiant had to leave town and just wrestled under a mask as Charlie Brown from outta town. The masks leave the beard area exposed, which is ideal when you have an actual beard. Unfortunately, the masks fit weird as fuck, like the eyeballs don’t line up well with my actual eyes. But I still love them very much, and we got to meet one of my childhood heroes when we picked them up at his wrestling camp. And I made him a haiku spike which he put on the wall there in the camp’s main building. The whole place is like an outsider art environment, with every available surface covered with pictures and art, and a little line of old prized vehicles out front too. In terms of rural arts compounds, it’s definitely a 5 out of 5 stars. Even had a nice little fountain, without water (probably still too close to winter).

SONG OF THE DAY: I Get High (On Your Memory)

Been in a rare period of lack of self-indulgence. There was a fairly cheap copy of this 45 on ebay, all the way up til the day of the auction ending, and I just let it go, didn’t bother. I guess I’m suffering from “economic anxiety” lol.

SONG OF THE DAY: Dirty White Boy (kudzu'd)

Thinking about growing my hair long again, and getting a perm, and just being the greasiest version of myself possible.

SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Mess With Me Baby

Abner Jay was a collection I got off a free bandcamp day from Mississippi Records, and I throw this music into my hard drive mix where I pick random selections to be included on my old iphone that works as an ipod, and the songs pretty much have to survive on their merit, according to my tastes. It’s a true meritocracy, albeit one heavily influenced by my personal biases, but it’s my music to listen to, so fuck it. In fact, all these songs of the day come from the most played songs over the course of a recent month. But I didn’t know shit about Abner Jay until digging on this music. His history is FUCKED. The grandson of a slave, learned the banjo and guitar from that grandfather, and the young Abner Jay played thoroughly in the minstrel circuit. He ran circles with Sister Rosetta Tharpe and was confidante and driver/assistant to Prophetess Dolly Lewis (who I will be researching more about shortly, I’m sure). At one point Abner Jay had a “converted mobile home that opened up into a portable stage, complete with amplification and home furnishings,” which apparently the performances included as much shit talking and side rants as music. He was living my dream! On top of this, he self-released a ton of his own recorded music, in small batches, prolifically. What we’re getting now (including the Mississippi Records collection this song is from) is just collections taken from pieces of that extensive discography. It’s very interesting to me though that the roots of rock-n-roll came from the rural South, where kooks like Abner Jay or Sister Rosetta Tharpe were sort of blurring the lines between secular and spiritual, and creating a spiritual secular form of art. I struggle a lot with sliding into normalcy (though I’m by no means living a normal life, lol). But goddamn, the world needs as many out there kooks as it can get. And I mean the esoteric kind, who know they can’t ever know, but keep grasping at any and everything and expressing themselves constantly while grasping. We’ve got far too many kooks nowadays who think they know, full of “information” that ain’t even halfway real, way too confident they got it all figured out, when that’s not even possible.
Anyways, here’s an Abner Jay song. And if you happen to be my sister, YOU’VE GOT TO GO LISTEN TO A BUNCH MORE OF THIS DUDE.

SONG OF THE DAY: Searching For That Lady

Was digging through records to take with me for spinning tonight at a Cuban restaurant in town, and I was missing some 45s I’d meant to spin. I figured the Record Gods were holding out on me, so I didn’t press it. But then two whole boxes of 45s, including the ones having the key Peruvian cumbia 45s I meant to have with me, showed up behind a demolition derby trophy I got at a junk store. The Record Gods teased me, but came through.
I have a sort of chaotic method to organizing my life, which is going to become annoying as I get older and forget things more rapidly. Mostly everything is sort of sorted into levels of importance or dopeness, so I know certain boxes of 45s are top notch, some are good, others are mid but might contain gems, and some are banished to the upstairs hallway and I really should get rid of them probably (although what if my tastes change and there are hidden gems?). So nothing is alphabetized, I kind of have a hip hop 45 box and a cumbia 45 box, but other than that, it’s pure chaos method, where the cream rises to the top of the box chain, and I just go with that. That leaves me always searching, because I don’t have a perfect order where I can go, “Oh, I want to find this one particular New Horizons 45,” because it’s just in the whole mass of 45s, somewhere. And for someone who desires total control and order in their world, that’s probably difficult. But I enjoy the magic, of finding lost gems, realizing I have a clean copy of something I thought was only scratchy the last time I played the other version, and just general faith that the Record Gods know I’m acting with pure heart and will always reward me because of that. But as I’ve gotten older, in fact older than I thought I’d ever live to be, I realize I love and value magic far more than order. I don’t want instability, so basic order is nice. But having everything mapped out and predicted feels very non-magical to me, and likely ain’t my metaphysical heritage anyways. So we keep it chaotic good around here, and likely always will.

SONG OF THE DAY: Rhinestone Cowboy (kudzu'd)

Authenticity in a consumer culture is always gonna be impossible to nail down. Fake ass people who practice the same persona for long enough eventually appear to be authentic as opposed to the folks they cribbed from in the first place. Nostalgia for old fabricated bullshit starts to seem more real than the current fabricated bullshit, and it all just gets all mixed up and around in the bins of shit you’re expected to sift through to consume, that authenticity is completely lost and somewhat irrelevant.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what is a person’s culture, especially in some place like America where most of the population is not from there historically. Most of us have had most of what would be our historical culture lost in the process of assimilation to American life, and few of us speak the same language as our ancestors 4 or 5 generations back. So what is our culture now? On the surface, by design, it seems to be what we buy into, or consume. American culture, on that superficial level, is big trucks, spacious houses with engineered landscapes, giving the appearance of rural but not too far off giant clusters of box stores where we can restock our identity with convenient ease. But let’s be real, that’s not a culture so much as a lack of culture. Culture is what we practice, regularly, and yeah, it can seem like by that definition, the big trucks and suburban lifestyle is still our American culture. But culture also should have some lasting value, into the future. And just buying shit has no lasting value… it’s a constant struggle against the high and low tides of economic factors to maintain that bullshit.
I’ve been thinking of culture as what I practice, but in two directions – past and future. So whatever I practice regularly is my culture, and it reverberates as far forward into the future as I practiced it regularly into the past. That means, so like I’m learning banjo now (very early stages lol). But also, I had kin who came out the mountains to Amelia County back in the 1930s or ‘40s, who brought bluegrass music with them to Southside Virginia. So it’s in my familial history. But my dad didn’t play, nor did my grandfather (who I never met). But the folks before them did, extensively, so that practice maybe echoed forward to me, maybe not. But the more I practice it, the more I can connect with that practice, and carry it forward. Maybe. It might die because I find it too frustrating, who knows?
But also with writing haiku, I’ve practiced that super extensively, on daily basis even, for upwards of at least 20 years now. That’s an extensive practice. It’s part of my being, and everywhere in my life (and mind). As an individual, that’s part of my culture, but being I’m the first in my family to do that, it’s not really my culture… yet. But the events I’ve created, and sharing my practice with others has led others to practice it as well, and it spreads that culture of writing haiku. It moves from familial cultural activity to communal one instead. But I’ve put a lot of life into that, and I’d say it’s part of my identity, at least to others. (I remember when I got to do workshops in the old Richmond City Jail, and one time I showed up and one of the women students who was incarcerated, as we all stood on the line waiting for entry into the classroom, saw me and exclaimed, “Hey! It’s Haiku Guy!” The personal practice I had shared had become my identity to her.)
I say all this, because as a kid, there was a lot of country music spinning on the turntable. But it was mostly outlaw shit, and pop country was seen as weak and not relevant to our fucked up rural life. You never would’ve heard my pops playing John Denver or Glen Campbell. But 40  years later, as rural America is more suburbanized, and Wal-Mart Supercenters touch down every 40 miles or so across the vanishing country landscape, “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” feels nostalgic, for a simpler time. Or “Rhinestone Cowboy”, seems less like the embracing of materialistic bullshit urban culture that it did when I was a kid (under the influence of paternal thinking) and almost like a cry against that very world. But also, I’m applying the filters of time on it from today. And slowing it down (as I am wont to do) just adds that extra layer of fucked – “Where hustle’s the name of the game… and nice guys get washed away like snow in the rain.”
Now, strangely enough, a rhinestone jacketed dude strumming guitar would feel more authentic than the big truck driven to Costco to fill up on La Croix 12-packs. Except the rhinestone jacketed guy might just be the young adult sign of the Costco visitor, with a scraggly fu manchu mustache, cosplaying country in a different way than his dad. It’s impossible to tell, unless you get to know somebody, to see if what they’re showing as an identity is what they’re actually practicing as a culture. I don’t necessarily have time for that all the time, so I’ve been extending benefit of the doubt a lot more often lately (no time for drama), but also, the eyes always give it away to a certain extent. You can tell how real somebody is by looking in their eyes. I think. But I could be full of shit.

SONG OF THE DAY: Bust A Move (kudzu'd)

I have the first haiku slam of the year in a few hours, and I’m horribly disorganized and unprepared, so I don’t have time to babble some writing like I normally would for these song of the day lists that I think my sister, my girlfriend, a guy in Australia, then like a rotating cast of 2 out of 9 others will see. Nonetheless, if you are currently wavering in personal decision making, let me and this song just put a mark in the affirmative column for you to bust a move.

SONG OF THE DAY: Maskeraad

Funk is Universal, and it’s in every single human soul… if allowed to flourish. The saddest thing to see is how whole segments of society have stifled their natural funk for so long that they’re not even seen culturally able to be funky. If you’re such a person, I suggest you get a big metal barrel for burning things that you put outside, and burn that fucker at least a couple times a month, preferably when the moon is bright, although to be honest, it’s just an important to soak up the new moon vibes as well, which is counterintuitive if you’re counting on light. But fire, plus lunar reflections and stardusting your crown, these are all things that help ferment the funk back in your soul. If you do it right, you should start smelling like woodsmoke half the time. If that’s a problem, well, then you are choosing whatever path of your life requires you not to stink like woodsmoke over the the path that leads you back to a natural funky nature. So at that point, you’re making the choice to not be funky. That’s sad. No amount of progress promised by civilization is worth losing our funk.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Won't Love You Again (kudzu'd)

Been playing a lot of slowed oldies lately. Like a lot. Even drifting back into the doo wop days. That shit sounds great slowed down. Civilization is coming apart at the seams so it only makes sense we’d shift space-time and jam slowed oldies around pallet fires. Seems natural.

SONG OF THE DAY: So Low (kudzu'd)

Different pattern to this one, same rhyme scheme but I made the lines more separate. Feels a little sing songy to me, which ain’t my style, but fuck it. It’s a freestyle exercise. Also, I love this fuckin’ song slowed down so much. Carried me through some introspective moments the past few months, lol. Also, in the last line, I am using "funk" as positive funk flows in your life, not the wack ass "in a funk" type of funk. Funk is good. Funk not only soothes, it removes.

Dwelling in negative light will tarnish your soul, 
and this world will create reasons to dull your shine; 
but never let another's judgments slow your roll, 
continue feeling, even if not feeling fine. 

Systems designed to engineer order surround, 
but we all got born free DNA deep inside; 
cellular memories of fingers in the ground, 
and ancestral tendencies to cross vast divide. 

Abide by heart... brain thinking's got limitations 
(like compromised morality while chasing wealth); 
people got the same hopes regardless of stations... 
a simple life of happiness, freedom, and health. 

Unneeded complications leave us feeling drunk; 
simplifying life also amplifies the funk. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Five Minutes of Funk (kudzu'd)

There’s no greater statement in favor of The Power of Lounge than the fact that if you slow down “Five Minutes of Funk”, it becomes seven minutes of funk. Everything could be so much nicer if we just stopped hustling so damn hard.

SONG OF THE DAY: We Got To Hold Ourselves

Hey man, let's keep the vibes as light as can be while this heavy ass world seems to spin further off kilter. I don't really know what to say to nobody, because though I've had shit going on, all in all life is good. And I know a whole lot of people really getting put through the ringer right now. If you have anything resembling downtime in your life, whether it's a weekend or an afternoon or you're just magically feeling better than normal for a few hours, allow yourself the space to lounge. Just because the shitstorm eases up for a few hours doesn't mean you have to rush out and try to accomplice all the undone tasks that's been building up in your head. Let yourself lounge. We wasn't made to juggle all we juggle. We was made to sit in sunshine and feel the warmth.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Just Can't Leave You Alone (kudzu'd)

Been in a down state but I think I might have pulled out. Time will tell. It always does. But I did another freestyle sonnet.

Many folks' most perfect beats are fashioned from junk; 
funk found has deeper bass than that easily made 
with the comfort of space. And yet, I can't get drunk 
off resentment for suburb punks whose parents paid 

every step of the way. We're all born without 
picking where, and all of us gotta navigate 
the same oppressive conditions, though ain't no doubt 
from different positions. Too easy to hate, 

and get full nelsoned by woe is me misery. 
I gotta find heartfelt rhythm which keeps my feet 
in motion, seeking futuristic history 
which always begins as oral tale told with sweet 

optimism and hope... the only way to roll
dwelling in negative light will tarnish your soul. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Future Lover

It was a year ago today that I put on my finest Sergio Tacchini tracksuit and went to see Thee Sacred Souls with my girlfriend. This was a couple weeks before my 50th birthday, and I’d been looking forward to it forever, setting off celebration of reaching a decade my father and grandfather never made it to. The show was wonderful. Then I had a suicidal episode right before my birthday, and it ended up not being that celebratory at all, more like figuring out support networks I never counted on before, and accepting the limitations of age. It’s all good now, but February of last year was dodgy.
Since that time, both my youngest kids (16 and 20) have had that “Could I Call You Rose?” song play on their Spotify playlists in the car, not sure where it came from. And then Thee Sacred Souls just had one of them NPR Tiny Desk concerts last week that all the normal white people who think they’re quirky absolutely love. It’s nice to see them blow up, and in fact, even see the whole souldies movement start to gain traction with the paying public. Getting back into records and limiting myself to 45s meant that there’s a long period of no releases, from the late ‘90s through the past decade, with the exception of the souldies movement, which kept 45s alive all through that time. The vinyl resurgence never happened with this realm, because vinyl never went away, and in fact, all the major label color variations of shit has clogged up the vinyl production pipeline for those who’d been using it all along.
All part of the deal in living in a society though. This particular song was part of the Pennyrose Valentine’s Day bundle last season, with Thee Sacred Souls dropping “Future Lover” as a single while they were on US tour. I slept on it at first, but upon a few more spins, this one has snuck into my regular rotation of modern souldies classics. And if you’re a 45 connoisseur like myself, this one pairs excellently with a number of Otis Redding 45s, notably “Think About It” and “You Left The Water Running”, which both got references to the physical space of a shared house, and those opening knocks of “Future Lover” just pop right on in as you fade out the Otis, and life goes on man, it always goes on, until it don’t. And when that happens, you’re not gonna be worried about your records no more anyways.
Thankful I'm still listening to records, to be honest, after the past year. Life is shorter, no need to make it shorter, and no need not to find joy in this godawful civilization we've been doomed to live inside.

SONG OF THE DAY: Baco Walk - Part I (kudzu'd)

Old Virginia soul for an old Virginia soul, but slowed down, so that I can grow older more lackadaisically. Ain't no rush.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sacalo, Sacalo (kudzu'd)

Changing my name to Sonidero Barba de Chivo and finishing building a lithium battery powered sound system to blast slowed down 45s in abandoned rail yards throughout the south all this year. I’m dropping out. Civilization is overrated anyways.

Sunday Slowdown Chapters 11 through 14

I realized I hadn’t put the last four chapters of the Sunday Slowdown series here on my long-time bloggerspot worldwebwide page. So let’s fix that issue.

SLOW ROLLAZ (chapter 014)

Sunday Slowdown chapter 014. Sometimes you gotta slow it down and cruise with a feel good heart, no matter how hard the world tries to make you. This is the Slow Rollaz mix, old school and new school rolas, off the 45 slabs, slowed to 33. Because sometimes it takes two hours to get 15 minutes away.

DOING 35 IN A 55 (chapter 013)

We slowing it down once again, doing 35 in a 55, letting the music play, with a touch of grey to the beard. Slow living is resistance against slow death, so we're riding down the purple highways way off the mainstream interstates, and take our damn time.

DECLARATION OF G.A.S.P. (chapter 012)

Chapter 012 of the Sunday Slowdown series is a Declaration of G.A.S.P. aka Greater Appalachian Space Phunk, declaring ourselves not just hillbilly banjo pickers. We got that electro funk resistance going on because it ain't 1863 no more.

ALL PRAISE DUE TO THE RECORD GODS (chapter 011)

Chapter 011 of the Sunday Slowdown series was just spinning through records from a weekend wander through parts unknown the day before, blessed by The Record Gods, but can't share the spots for fear of unloungers taking them over. We gotta respect the Power of Lounge.

SONG OF THE DAY: Some Woman's Bedroom (kudzu'd)

Been wanting to fuck strange and perhaps crazy women, just to sabotage my life. Sometimes shit gets too stable feeling and that goes against most of my early cellular memories, so I gotta fire some chaos into the mix. Used to be when I drank or got fucked up, it brought all the chaos I’d want. But now that I’ve been sober so long, and held down a job at the same place for over a decade, there’s not a lot of random chaos in my life. You’d think this is a good thing (and it is), but it still makes you (if you’re like me) feel kinda fucked up, like something’s not to be trusted, or just don’t feel right. Do they got healthy chaos? I could use some.

SONG OF THE DAY: Superjock (kudzu'd)

Eh fuck it, this sonnet is about old records, but also human existence.

Each imperfect moment is needed part of whole, 
holistic wabi-sabi like crackles and skips 
in ancient 45, accentuating soul 
sounds with warmth of natural wear and tear, round trips 

on turning tables at times unstable, slight buzz 
of poor grounding creating ever-present hum. 
I prefer the realness of blemishes because 
perfection is fool's errand, letting self become 

sum of path traveled, again like old records, which 
passed hands over decades, picking up local dust 
and accidental scratches or physical glitch 
which can't be fixed, yet learned to live with. I have trust 

in Universe to keep fool self full of fresh funk, 
many folks' most perfect beats are fashioned from junk. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Slow Coastin

I’ve been tormented by Flee Demons lately. I’ve been afflicted with them for as long as I’ve had a conscious mind, since I was little disappearing into fields behind the ragged cinderblock house my young ass folks was renting in Rice, Virginia. Flee Demons just show up in your mind, because you can’t comprehend how to possibly fix everything that’s broken in front of you, can’t possibly begin to clean up the messes piled in every direction, even outside the doors, piled up on the porches, out in the yard. Shit man, you got piles of messes at the last three places you stayed at, in other people’s basements and attics, sitting there with bad memories you left behind for somebody else. Flee Demons are pretty common amongst a lot of folks, but you don’t really see them in popular culture. Pop culture is made for those that got the ability to sit in one place and collect experiences they bought. They don’t have to actually live them all, so they consume what others make and consider it expanding their worldview.
I’d thought I’d gotten the Flee Demons under control, silenced them with a bit of stability and a big old house in the country that leaks air but seems to love me. But then the still life you’re living has some sort of perspective shift, and all of a sudden all the angles look darker and less welcoming. The good life you thought you’d achieved slips further away, without anything actually seemingly changing. But you realize all those piles from forever ago, they’re all still there, piled up in every direction, stuff you can’t throw away but can’t fix either, don’t have the skills or strength or even the desire to figure all of it out. And then the Flee Demons start piping up again, with that siren song of somewhere elseness. I’ve been feeling it heavily, because it’s cold, and I’m tired, and I don’t feel like doing the same thing next Tuesday that I did this Tuesday, so I want to set fire to the stability and run off and start over again, enjoy a brand new puzzle where there are no piles. Fucked up thing is even if I did that, once I sat still for half a year, and started putting the new puzzle together, all those piles would show back up, sitting on the porch again, stacked up beside the couch, filling every hall closet possible.
I don’t know what to do about it. If I can’t get rid of the piles, how do I learn to live with them? Can I at least recycle some of this shit? Setting fire to it never seems to get rid of it, because the ashes are changelings and rearrange the soot back into shape, slowly over time, when you ain’t watching the fire to keep it going constantly. And nobody can be that vigilant with their scorched Earth.
So I’m just sitting here looking at these piles, and hearing the sweet song of the Flee Demons again, thinking about where the westbound line stops to let a coal pass east almost every day around the same time on the weekend, and how I could just sit there and wait to see what all is on the other end of where that train goes. Been hearing that since I was little, and sometimes I wish I’d listened to it better all these years instead of trying to make sense of the senselessness.

SONG OF THE DAY: Saturday Night Fish Fry

I got a fish fryer out in the shed, that had lived in the camper behind the old house when I was still married. I ain’t used that thing nearly enough. Might have to bust it out for my birthday next month. Winter birthdays are tough because it ain’t cookout weather, and you can’t properly celebrate a birthday unless you’re in the yard with a speaker dragged through a window somewhere blasting music. I do got a burn barrel though, which is the winter equivalent to a yard speaker I guess. Anyways, I need to fry some fish.

SONG OF THE DAY: Love Come Down (kudzu'd)

Had to practice some self-love recently, because I'm not sure if you noticed, but the world is FUCKED.

Stay focused on infinity but take it slow. 
Embrace the darkness rather than getting too lost 
in "woe is me" psychology; maintain the flow 
of energy. Stagnant patterns of thinking cost 

chances to scatter experiential phases 
into spaces where your ultimate place is. Stay 
true to heart without succumbing to brain crazes. 
Nowadays is engineered chaos meant to stray 

and lead wayward. Study the celestial maps 
overhead a couple nights a week while seeking 
answers to questions you can't speak. No one unwraps 
this gift of existence completely, so freaking 

out at times is key piece of cultivating soul; 
each imperfect moment is needed part of whole. 

Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse - Winter 2024

So if you are the type to fuck around on youtube, or care about the political discourse (or I guess, not care), then I was commanded to begin another 7-week series of The Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse for Winter 2024. Last week was Week 1 of the 7-week series. Tonight at 10 pm EST will be week 2. Plugging it here because I know everybody goes different places to see different things, and I'm a force of chaotic good who always forgets to scatter his nonsense in all four directions. This may end up being the last season because it's not clear if this stupid game is going to work on my computer anymore in two months (part of the side effects of using obsolete machinery beyond its intended lack of usage).

SONG OF THE DAY: Def Fresh Crew

You can't make a song like this in 2024, because Biz Markie is gone (may his memory be a blessing). If any tech lord tries to AI together a holograph Biz Markie, I hope they get haunted into mysterious car accident. If any tech lord reads this, please use your momey to get those 7-inch Technics tables to drop instead.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Give You Everything You Want (kudzu'd)

Freestyled this one three different ways before I felt okay with it. Alternate versions available in the multiverse.

Another inhumane day, for better or worse, 
juggling the bills while struggling to chill, mean mugging 
the world with chip-toothed dimpled grill; the universe 
sometimes feels a little bit crooked and bugging. 

It is what it is, as they say, this frustrating  
nature of living inside gridlock which divides 
and conquers weakened spirits. No time for hating... 
just showing and proving upon my short Earth rides 

around the sun. Full-blown Aquarius at heart, 
keep it light despite nefarious nature folks 
inclined to cultivate and claim's parcel and part 
of civilization since start, devilish hoax 

meant to keep people's hopes depressed and spirits low; 
stay focused on infinity but take it slow. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Going Down to the River (kudzu'd)

Been a while since I wrote one of these, since I'm doing them for the slowed down 45s I post and nothing else. I don't love this one, but I also don't hate it, but also it mostly make me wish I was sitting in the river, or at least dipping in it right quick to let the cold blast shock me to my better senses. Shit, I should've made that part of the sonnet.

To reverse negative stream of consciousness flow, 
occasionally boom baptize the flesh in fresh 
river water, to let the mind's dirt and grime go. 
No body resists immense threat of life's immesh 

amidst the tangles of physical existence... 
our nature is complicated (yet simply so). 
The tumbleweed of perceived traumas' insistence 
snarls thinking up in squiggly lines, which seems to grow 

as our dreams let go. But the river carries hope 
in constant trickle which cuts through the thickest rock. 
This superficial life becomes too hard to cope 
with, but dips in Rockfish and James maintains my cock 

surety to survive uncertain universe
another inhumane day, for better or worse. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Shady Blues

Been writing the same intro to a new zine over and over and never quite getting it to feel right. Been slogging through the fog mostly, and it never quite does feel right, but thus far I’ve gotten through the daze. Been maintaining some daily practices, and been letting a few others fall to the wayside temporarily. Been trying to envision the future I want while also tending to a present I don’t feel completely immersed in all the time. Got the mud brain, which can be a negative if you’re trying to maintain industrialized mindframe schedules, so I’ve gotta come to terms with that. But a mud brain is a blessing as well, if you use it right, because it puts you closer to the primordial essence of all things, human and other wise. So that’s what I’m trying to do, shifting the stacks of oppressive stuff around, and finding reason to set fire to enough of it that I got more room to breathe and am able to dust off cobwebs that’s been hiding out for a long minute. It’s that internal jihad of positive and negative at atomic level, that manifest into physical jihad between motion and stagnancy.

SONG OF THE DAY: The 900 Number

Time is a social construct, designed to imprison you behind anxieties over what ain't got done yet. It also increases your fear of natural mortality. You ain't got to do nothing but live. Dial my 900 number for more affirmations of fuck it like this. RIP 45 King.