SONG OF THE DAY: Lestkal

Sadly there is no freebird synth culture to speak of, at least not yet. You’d think with our abundance of excess junk and born again thrift stores, more back roads weirdos would have taken the electronic Hasil Adkins path in life, but that does not to appear to be the case so far as I can tell. Imagine how great opioid fog greater Appalachian synth wails would be, synthgrass through the foxfire fog, demented gospel synthelations about hellfire upon earth, or just good ol’ base instinct 200 proof synthshine, autotune howling the full moon rising over the mountains like fire. There’s enough junk Honda Civics laying around these nether regions of the American wasteland that somebody’s had to think of how to turn it into a giant Sun Ra-esque Casio creation of madness. Where’s our great American degenerate ingenuity? Is everybody just scrolling memes? What the fuck is going on here?

SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Be Where You Are (Underboss Remix)

Yesterday, left work early to go walk through the yard and scribble my dumb shit into the industrial æther, performing such hits as "November in Railroad Earth", "Southern Inshallah", and "Nature Boy Whooo". After that, as the sun set, meandered in the direction of the new moon's silver sliver through the cybertron power lines carrying buzz over the Blue Ridge, and went to the nearly abandoned mall in Staunton, presumably to scope out old magazines at the junk book store that has overtaken the former J.C. Penney end, spreading into the concourse even. But they'd gotten rid of all the magazines, except for piles of National Geographics. I looked through the survivalism and art and photography sections, and almost bought a classic on ninja invisibility by Dr. Haha Lung, but chose not to, even though my girlfriend had store credit I could use. Is it true ninja invisibility to purchase a book on store credit in a dying American mall? I actually walked through, trying to find a bathroom. There was the inner side of the military surplus store, looking like it had cool shit inside but also that I might have to fight somebody for even considering to wear a mask. Not much else left in this mall other than a Jesus thrift store, cell phone shop, and the saddest Bath and Body Works I think I ever saw, like still hanging on but running with decor from four seasons ago maybe. My youngest loves that store so I've been in them way more than I care to admit, but fuck man, this one was doomed, beyond life support, just waiting for somebody to add the right function column to a spreadsheet in some far off building and go, "Wait! Why the fuck do we still have a store in Staunton?" and then it'll be gone too.
Nowhere to go, nothing to be, so I meandered my way back on 11, then 250, in the early evening winter night time, taking pictures of dying strip mall stores with bright lights but dead dreams. Stopped at the Sheetz, where of course covid doesn't exist for these rednecks, who aren't even rednecks anymore but some weird suburban wannabe hybrid that was steeped more deeply in the internet than back roads, and when their drunk uncle took them to the river to sit there and drink and get high, they must've been looking at social media more than the river, because these folks ain't rednecks, or country. But they also don't wear masks, and walk around like too many roosters in a chicken pen, so I wanna slit their throats, because that's how I was raised when there's too many useless fucking roosters strutting around the chicken pen, making things hard for everybody else.
Sadly, I'm probably wrong, and that is "country" in what this country is now - all of us penned up in our chicken runs, too many goddamned self-important roosters flapping around, making noise all the fucking time but got no real fight to them, and would die in the wild with the quickness. Me too. There's a dude living down below me by the river, and I walk past him and we go "hey!" at each other, but two or three nights down there in the cold November Blue Ridge foothills nights would destroy me. I'm too weak for this shit, to be dealing with all these dumbass roosters and dying malls and machetes that aren't sharp enough to cut through bone and winter in America.
Strangely, the military surplus store had lockers for rent on the concourse, with proceeds going to the Dolly Parton Literary Fund. It seemed interesting the store that appeared to believe antifa was a George Soros-funded militia, also supported Dolly Parton charities, but I have to remember not every living person gets feed the same digital stream of memes I do. They may not realize Dolly is a lesbian at heart, and rides rainbow candy-painted Harley Davidsons over the new moon every month. But also, who is going to use a locker at the mall? Only thing I could think of was nearly homeless people, who are likely not far from that mall, by the looks of things. I also tried to find a bathroom, which was at the far desolate end, by the movie theater I couldn't tell if it was actually operational or not, but also some claw machines, all by themselves. The bathrooms were blocked off with warning tape, and had OUT OF ORDER written on them. I started to walk away but a black dude popped out of some lavender bakery place and was like, "Oh you can use it, man. I was just trying to clean it up. It was fucked up in there." "Alright. I'll try not to mess it up," I answered. "Oh, you ain't got to worry 'bout it; you're good."
The floor was still wet, and my boots left black marks on the floor, and I felt horrible about it. He popped out as I was walking off and said, "Take it easy!" and I said thanks and also took it easy as best I could.
The whole thing was sad, because we're all out here still trying to feel good, still trying to survive, and I'm not sure where all the people who can afford things are. Downtown Staunton has become more gentrified, housing prices going up, pushing people into the suburban areas, which are spiraling downward, like that mall. Some lady was sitting at the desk and said over the PA that the mall was closing at six and to wrap up your shopping. I thought the book store was open til 8, but I also didn't want to find out if they were going to kick me out or not, because it gave me an excuse not to disappear like Dr. Haha Lung. So I did.
Also, I did not break up my conversation with the dude who cleaned the bathroom into multiple paragraphs, because it was all one conversation, and just like with malls, and American flags, and "country" people at the Sheetz, that 1950s shit doesn't apply anymore. Sorry, that's just how shit is.

4N 0V3RWH3LM1NG S4DN3SS...

an overwhelming sadness

floating through the æther, as

we navigate these hard times

SONG OF THE DAY: Legendary Member

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.

SONG OF THE DAY: H.O.O.D.

Nothing to say today, just an excuse to use ÆSTHETIC with the dope ass dipthong, which of course now has been ruined forever by Elon Musk and Grimes. Elon Musk disturbs me because he looks like a wax museum figure brought to life by robotics. Also Pops Musk ran an African mine, that’s how Elon is wealthy enough to be so goddamned progressive and know how to not only fix the fucking Earth but outer space as well. Fuck him. Now I can’t even keep using ÆSTHETIC without thinking I’m a fuckin’ Tesla truck ad. GUESS WHAT ELON MUSK? DESERT GUERRILLA FREEDOM FIGHTER TERRORISTS WILL NEVER STRAP ANTI AIRCRAFT GUNS TO YOUR PIECE OF SHIT TRUCK. And to me, honestly, that is the ultimate sign of a truck’s authenticity.

1NV1S1BL3 C0NN3CT10NS...

invisible connections

to ancestral spirits which

still occupy the æther

0VR L4NDSC4P3 0V3RSH4D0W3D...

our landscape overshadowed

by æther, but our focus

is misdirected downwards

4 F4BR1C4T3D 0RD3R...

a fabricated order

applied to our existence,

so obvious, we can't see

3CL1PS3 3XPL0S10N 0F 0DD...

eclipse explosion of odd

light nestled behind quilted

clouds - celestial trance

T3RR3STR14L S1GN4LS B0VNC3...

terrestrial signals bounce

up and down from satellites

orbiting beyond æther

S0 MVCH KN0WL3DG3 H0V3R1NG...

so much knowledge hovering

overhead - ancient wisdom

underground up to æther

M3CH4N1C4L FL1GHT B3TW33N...

mechanical flight between

two points has always felt like

epidural of travel

H0LY TR1N1TY 0F TR4CKS...

holy trinity of tracks -

æther, Earth, and underground

innerverse - lost connections