G0TT4 G1V3 TH3 VN1V3RS3...

gotta give the universe 
thanks for the shine it puts in 
my eyes when I'm feeling right 

34CH H0M3 B0X FVLL 0F B0D13S...

each home box full of bodies, 
each minding own universe 
of infinite potential 

N3V3R L0S3 S1GHT TH4T TH1S W0RLD...

never lose sight that this world 
hides hopeful redirections 
along even most doomed paths 

SONG OF THE DAY: Hey Leroy, Your Mama's Callin' You (kudzu'd)

By Wikipedia’s last count, Jimmy Castor has 10 grandchildren by his two sons and two daughters. I hope to all that is good and tricksterly in the Universe that one of his grandchildren is named Leroy. As far as I can tell, there are no bronze statues of Jimmy Castor on this Earth, and that seems fucked up to me. All these localized Burning Man edgy hippie dudes taking naked pictures of naive women all over the country, and running their little arts communities from executive director positions with boards made up of casual co-signers to all sorts of clueless behavior, funding stupid fuckin’ public scupltures all over the place. And nary a single statue for Jimmy Castor.

4SK1NG TH3 1NV1S1BL3...

asking the invisible 
energies which surround us 
for a beneficial wave 

R3V3L4T10NS 4PP34R T0...

revelations appear to 
those with whole universes 
hidden within their neurons 

M1CR0SC0P1C V1S10NS F41L...

microscopic visions fail 
to capture feral science 
of accidental "oh shit"s 

0R4L 4RC 0F VN1V3RS3...

oral arc of universe 
follows the trickster's forked tongue, 
full of cunning linguistics 

VN1V3RS4L P0T3NT14L...

universal potential 
is infinite when detached 
from body’s egotism 

VLT1M4T3LY, 4T TH3 H34RT...

ultimately, at the heart 
of all matter is the heart… 
our Universal essence 

STR34M 0F C0NSC10VSN3SS FL0W1NG...

streams of consciousness flowing 
through fertile crescents of raw 
creation give birth to progress 

R3G4RDL3SS 0F H0W B4R3LY...

regardless of how barely 
held together all things are, 
this Universe yields futures 

SONG OF THE DAY: Time of the Preacher

Some “tugging at the roots of family” energy swirled in today, blurring the lines of spirituality and random chance of the Universe, which isn’t really blurred at all but the exact same thing, except Earthly people have perverted spirit into dogma and ruined the power of it for folks like me. Someone in Minnesota benched an old dirtgod moniker from 4 years ago which said “Dot & Tuna’s Firstborn”, and at the same time, I’m discussing the tendrils of alcoholism with my own offspring, while also receiving a poem submission for my zine from an amazing young person in West Virginia who wrote about the “synthetic exhilaration” that certain families chase, and when this young poet read her poem in West Virginia a few weeks ago, I was sitting at a table nearby, sort of MCing the affairs at that point, and she read, “And the children? Doomed from conception,” and I wanted to cry on the spot, and then wanted to cry again when I read it today in my inbox, and it’s one of those lines of poetry that is a shovel that struck the septic tank everybody forgot where it was located, and now the shit is leaking into the yard, but it had to happen. It’s been a time of the preacher since most all our stories began, but the words have been hollowed out by blank-eyed sermonizers more worried about the weight of the collection plate than helping sinners to love themselves. When one scans the environment and sees all these people who appear doomed, and feel doomed themselves, a compassionate response would never be one of condemnation (or deportation, or denial of humanity). I hate to see the patterns repeat, and the ripples of time still rippling all around me, tossing about those I love, even if I have figured out how to halfway shimmy my own ass up on this rock and feel less susceptible to them. And from your own struggles, you know how slippery and slimy the rock is trying to crawl up out the muck, and how good the momentary exhilaration of embracing the shit show can pretend to be. And you can share the possibility of climbing up on the rocks into the sunshine, but you can’t do it for nobody else. Shit, they might get up on your rock and be mad at you because it ain’t how they hoped anyways, and then they slide back down into it all, and start bouncing around inside the chaotic ripples of the doomed, and you love them, and you want to make it all better, but you can’t. You’re just a person, not a god. “Now the preachin’ is over, and the lesson’s begun.” Hopefully.

SONG OF THE DAY: Can't Hold Back

There’s a lot of amazing 45 labels out there nowadays, putting out new stuff, not just reissues or souldies. But when it comes to vibes, nobody is creating quite their own lane as Star Creature Universal Vibrations. Probably my favorite active 45 label. They put out other stuff, too, but like an alcoholic that only drinks beer, I only buy 45s. Shrug emoji.

SONG OF THE DAY: Fairchild

Willie West’s “Fairchild” is so damn funky, a song written by the Southern Gothicc Futurist wizard Allen Toussaint, which when combined with West’s impeccably crossroads-ish smooth vocal stylings, it was an immense force, albeit not one which reached the popular masses after Josie Records released it in 1970. In fact, the hauntingly funky beat of “Fairchild” was unfairly categorized as a threat to social stability, and used to pass draconian anti-funk laws throughout the South, from eastern Texas through northern Florida, and all the way up into Central Appalachia, as far north as Kentucky and West Virginia. The government was afraid of mystical funk. Most of this was repealed and came undone, culminating in another Toussaint song channeling of the Universal Mystics, “Southern Nights”, being re-recorded in a far less metaphysical manner, and popularizing a more vanilla funk behind Glen Campbell’s cover. Once they’d added 3 tablespoons of vanilla to the raw funk, it lost enough of its drunken universal magnetics that we could all have it again. But if you put the breakbeat of “Fairchild” on loop (as much of it as you wanna consider a breakbeat) during a new moon, and light colored candles to the four directions (purple to the south, orange to the north, green to the west, and a golden one to the east), that raw funk is opened up even more than a normal ear hears. This is a version of high fidelity involving deep metaphysics, which Toussaint was a clairvoyant for, though our consumer society makes you think “high fidelity” requires expensive stereo equipment. Willie West, too, was a clairvoyant for these deep metaphysics, which is how he recorded “The Devil Gives Me Everything (Except What I Need)” later in life.

SONG OF THE DAY: Computer Love (kudzu'd)

Another freestyle sonnet, written between zoom meetings this morning, connecting to the last one and (seemingly) the next one.

Lessons to recognize Universe is sublime, 
handing out blessings daily despite the crazy 
ways many minds spin. Lessons of kudzu, to climb 
towards sunshine, even when the skies are hazy 

from smoke screens; you innately know things that are true 
far beyond the red, white, and blue. Lessons from creek 
to keep internal trickle flowing, even through 
difficult obstacles, since we always must seek 

reunification with original source. 
Lessons from mycelium, keep it connected 
with whole community; this digital discourse 
designed to divide, and have data collected 

ain't respectful of essence from which we borrow; 
though I'm not guaranteed, there's always tomorrow. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Pops

Yesterday would’ve been my pop’s 68th birthday, except he died at 47. Life don’t always have storybook endings, in fact, for most folks, it rarely does. I try to remind myself there is no storybook ending, no grand culmination, and to be thankful for each day that I get, because not everybody still got it. It’s easy to get lost in the resentment and anger of what you don’t got, and how maybe your path don’t look as easy as them folks you’re looking at over there who appear to have a good level of comfort, and even sometimes might be looking back at you with an obvious amount of judgment. Fuck ‘em. Forget ‘em. Be thankful for where you’re at as much as you can. And if you’re not happy, shake shit up a little, fix what don’t feel right without screwing up what already feels pretty good. It ain’t easy when you come from “head first into the wall” types like many of us do. But if it was easy, you wouldn’t know what to do with it anyways, because you ain’t even used to that.
I’m thankful for my pops. He wasn’t perfect, and he lost the fight against his own demons. But he had a good heart for the most part, and he taught me how to talk magnificent shit with an unexplainable confidence. He also taught me about “the power” and how to get into a zone with the universe where nothing can fuck with you. It’s not easy to do that either, but I’m always thankful for those moments when I’m in that zone and can feel it coursing through my every action. That’s when I know I’m my most right I can be with everything. It hadn’t happened a lot lately, but there’s still moments where I’m on that wave. I guess that’s why storybook endings are such a lie to begin with, because it’s all ebbs and flows, and riding waves or fighting from drowning. And it’s just gonna keep on being like that, if you’re lucky enough to survive the day.

SONG OF THE DAY: Deadly Rhymes

Been listening to a lot of Roxanne Shante lately, for whatever reason. I guess it’s because I’ve been on an old school kick, and upon reflection from this current point in time (both for myself as well as hip hop, both of us allegedly being 50 years old though origins of all universal matter can’t be pinpointed to a precise birth), Roxanne Shante is pretty fuckin’ ill. Deadly Rhymes indeed.

SONG OF THE DAY: Watermelon Hangin' On The Vine

Been thinking a lot lately on how the term “survivor’s guilt” ain’t exactly right, because it’s not guilt you suffer from. It’s just all the shit you’ve seen up close that exploded those around you, and threatened to injure you – either directly or from their psychic shrapnel – it builds up and builds up, and becomes heavy. There’s a heaviness to your existence because you saw all that and are still here, and maybe even relatively unscathed if you’ve been blessed by the universe to navigate it as such. Guilt’s the wrong term because it suggests shame, or something was done wrong, and you’re not really even a survivor because you still got that heaviness on your soul, and it tinges how you think, hopefully for the better so that you try to lighten the psychic load of those closest to you. And you have to lighten it for them, or else you run the risk of accidentally laying down more of those obstacles, and perpetuating them cycles of needing to survive things that got nothing to do with breathing air or eating food or getting sleep. The older I get, the less I believe in complicated answers to things, and in fact it seems we way over-complicate everything we get to thinking too hard about (as individuals or as collective species), and that leaves so many extra steps for all psychic obstacles to get laid by bad spirits. I know I’ve got a heaviness because of the path I’ve walked in life, but that motivates me to help others feel lighter. And that helps this heaviness of mine feel easier to carry as well. Ain’t a fuckin’ ounce of guilt to that.

SONG OF THE DAY: The One Who's Hurting Is You (kudzu'd)

Looking for a home for my DJ Honeysuckle Vines cyborg resistance Southern Gothicc Futurist slowdies show. Need an in real life vibe where people are drunk off life, believe in Universal Magnetics, and are at least basically enculturated with the idea that not doing shit is a form of resistance to every human life getting mechanized by the grind until it's impossible to think of yourself as anything more than a checklist. Once I find that home (or multiple homes), we can properly begin to unlock the deeper tenets of Southern Gothicc Futurism, magnifying the Power of Lounge for more folks to realize what they already know but got buried underneath a bunch of bullshit.