SONG OF THE DAY: The Model (kudzu'd)

My favorite genre of music now is traditional old-time sounds filtered through futuristic dystopian effects, like taking pills you don’t know what they are in a cavernous old tobacco warehouse in a dormant downtown, and the train horns blow by now and then, but it’s just intermodals these days, no stopping to pick up nary a passenger. This is mostly seen through cumbia, but I’d like to cultivate this sound using the old-time sounds of what they call mountain music, because that sound (as yet unheard) is way more authentic to our current living conditions than fake gangster landscaper rap. That’s where my mind is today, but I can’t make the sounds exist, and I’m having a hard time describing it to people who can.

SONG OF THE DAY: God's Goodness (kudzu'd)

My brain damaged congressman has joined some sort of reactionary “Sharia-Free America Caucus”. Little does he know (works alone as a statement, but there’s more) that Sharia Law is already recognized in the autonomous zones of the Blue Ridge Emirate. Every morel is a mosque. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

0R0G3N0VS Z0N3S VPL1FT...

orogenous zones uplift 
the Earth closer to heaven; 
within this space, spirits sage 

SONG OF THE DAY: She's Looking Like a Hobo (kudzu'd)

I love hobo songs, always have, so I’m trying to learn this old school beat on the banjo, because it’s a banger. Plus, practice the scratches with two part harmony, so one of us is doing the "ohh.... ohhh...." but a second voice chimes in on the "looking like a hobo" to give it real flair.

MY M1ND'S C0MP0S1T10N 1S

my mind’s composition is 

mountains and valleys, heavy  

with fog, and reduced vision 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mountain GOD

Poe Mack is a slept on Appalachian MC. Mountain God is a good introduction to him. So many great musicians who have built a lifetime's discography that most of us known nothing about. Actually, for all we think we know because we got these 0s and 1s in our hands, we really don't know shit still. At least back in the day we knew we didn't know shit. Now think we do but still don't. Or worse yet, know a bunch of false shit and think it's real. There's an epidemic of that right now.

MY P4RT1CVL4R BL00D L1N3...

my particular blood line 
came from same Pangean range, 
separated by ocean 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mountain Roads

Apparently all I’ve been listening to lately is imaginary wrestling entrance music for a non-existent territory called Greater Appalachian Championship Wrestling, COMING TO THE CIVIC CENTER SATURDAY NIGHT! OUR MAIN EVENT IS A STEEL CAGE GRUDGE MATCH FOR THE GREATER APPALACHIAN HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE, AS… and then you can just let your brain run from there while the song plays. Somebody’s gonna get piledrived though.

SONG OF THE DAY: 528 Hz

Some people will try to tell you that 528 Hz and other Solfeggio Frequencies don’t actually have healing properties. But those people have never done oil paintings of naked centaurs gamboling through the Central Pangean mountains, have they? So how the fuck would they know?

SONG OF THE DAY: Trains

Boogie Brown put together this Appalachian Sci-fi project a while back, and it remains one of my favorite things to have come out this year. He says on the bandcamp page that he loves and respects Americana type shit, but that’s not what Appalachia sounds like to him no more. Americana music has gotten weird, to where it’s clever quirky folks who have questionable at best connection to that true country life, who play old-timey music on old-timey instruments but with expensive tattoos and ironic mustaches and shit. I don’t know, I will never trust a dude with a cop mustache, ever, even if ironic. There’s nothing ironic about the police state, especially in places like Appalachia. That’s why I don’t like Sturgill Simpson, because he’s the son of an Appalachian narcotics officer, and has grown into an old-timey musician with a cop mustache. How’m I’m supposed to trust that shit? Fuck that, it’s music for hipster breakfast spots, not country folk.
Anyways, I digress, because the point is this whole Appalachian Sci-fi project is dope as fuck, and Boogie Brown is one of my oldest and dearest creative co-conspirators, but I also think he’s a musical genius. I don’t even think I can begin to understand how he processes the world creatively, so I’m thankful for these little pieces I do get to enjoy.

M0VNT41NS 4LW4YS B3CK0N1NG...

mountains always beckoning

as monastic escapes to

recalibrate with the clouds

N4TVR4L B0RN G04T-H34D3D...

natural born goat-headed

nature wants to climb highest

mountain and talk shit to clouds

C0MP0VND GR0WN L1K3 KVDZV V1N3...

compound grown like kudzu vine

over the decades along

the margins of the Blue Ridge

R3TR1B4L1Z3 M0N1K3R'S...

retribalize moniker's

long-running inspiration -

"sunrise over the mountain..."

freestyle sonnet #102: UPON BEING INSPIRED BY READING NAZRUL ISLAM

How to remain mystical in mechanical 

world inclined to find esoteric thought abstract 

and counter-productive? This strange tyrannical 

desire by the lords of our time to subcontract 

ev'ry minute, effort track each hour. Am I not 

still a natural being, born to imagine 

metaphysical tendrils outwards from this spot 

in space-time continuum, here to examine 

my place with inquisition? And practice jihad 

against heartless actions my brain has been trained to 

believe maintain order? This manmade order's odd 

when compared to natural fractals factored through 

math'matical outlook not trapped by base ten thought; 

over-thunk calculations always equal naught. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Bismillah

When you about to go on a trip, trek, seek, wander, or pilgrimage, you say “bismillah” as exclamation of “let’s let this all be good”, whether you walking to the corner store or walking to the Pacific Ocean or walking to the real Mecca or whatever aesthetic mecca is the mecca of your current existence, you say that “bismillah” for universal blessings. (FYI, can’t go wrong with Tinariwen playing inside your head or better yet heart or better yet both in the middle of that venn diagram of the two called mind the entire time.) To break it down in the nonsensical yet entirely logical way that folks do, it can be regarded as bi-ism-allah. Bi meaning from, or actually by, though you could make it bi as in two as well as its your relationship with the universe. Ism meaning how you break it down, as in racism is the process of breaking down races, or sexism is breaking down sexes. (Channel Live spoke up with a hot jam back in the day about alternative slang of “izm” which is also just a conduit for getting high, or further up on that universal plane, although the people who live upstairs from me got mad weed smoke blowing out the windows but don’t sound like they getting on no higher plane; just moving a lot of furniture around at 2 in the morning.) Then Allah, which islamophobes fear as some horrible version of a deity, really just means whatever god means to you, or the universe, even if that’s just scientific analysis of the universe, whatever makes up the universe and is the rules and ways by which the universe is made, that’s allah essentially. It ain’t gotta be some bearded dude trying to throw bombs at you. Anyways, believe it or not I don’t get high on izm, and yet I still think this way I’m laying out. You can break meaning out of everything – that’s the beauty of language, and also human mind, and also universe’s weird energies which are always changing yet stable in their constant excitement. So where do you wanna go? Make the pilgrimage, make that trek, walk a fuckin’ thousand steps, twenty miles, whatever man (or woman), and shout out or mumble that exclamation of “what up universe? let’s be cool” when you take that first step.

TRV3 L0VNG3RS SH4R3 SP4C3 W1TH...

true loungers share space with

goats - this has always been true,

for at least twelve centuries

1GN0R3 TH3 S1GN-SYST3M WH1CH...

"ignore the sign-system which

opposed civilization

and nature as contraries"

mystics and prophets never

make for good politicians

or presidents; too tapped in

"nothing is real, ev'rything

is permitted" chanting to

myself at Mount Alamut