M4NVF4CTVR3D D1V1S10NS...

manufactured divisions 
easily poison weak brains, 
so seek out the true-hearted 

0VR CVLTVR3 1S 4 L4CK 0F...

our culture is a lack of 
culture… identities bought 
and sold with a heartless ease 

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: Paradise

Bambu is one of the best MCs out there in my opinion. I look forward to whatever new shit he ever drops. And if he don’t drop nothing new, I can keep enjoying the body of work he already created. It’s dudes like this that I wish got paid enough to survive capitalism more easily in our fucked up poison culture. But of course you don’t get paid for telling real shit, unless your realness is fake shit that the Think They’re Reals gobble up like candy corn in the feedlot. And honestly, I truly just appreciate Bambu for being dope as fuck. I wish all of us survived capitalism, and in fact wish the whole fuckin’ thing just got cancelled and we could have a more direct line to happiness, instead of this Rube Goldberg ass contraption called western culture pursuit of happiness if you wasn’t born rich.

SONG OF THE DAY: To The Beat Y'all

Lady B got a whole notebook full of women’s phone numbers, casually, on an old school song back in the early days of hip hop, and nobody even thought to question that shit. I think regular folks are far more tolerant than the culture wars brainwashes people into thinking (otherwise). Anyways, I got this shit on 45 out of a small old school box set that came out a while back, so I play it slow sometimes. It is the rare example of a song that I prefer regular speed, maybe… for now.

R3S3NTM3NT 4ND FRVSTR4T10N...

resentment and frustration 
becomes a poison inside… 
exorcise all your demons 

M3T4ST4T1C P0ST-M0D3RN...

metastatic post-modern 
American existence 
ain’t gonna kill me today 

SONG OF THE DAY: Sassy Lady (kudzu'd)

I didn't watch much Star Wars shit as a kid, but whatever that one scene is where they're in a garbage pit and the walls are squeezing in, I'm glad I at least saw that one, because that's scene definitely embodies existence.

SONG OF THE DAY: Freight Train Blues

Not gonna lie, I listen to some really stupid shit sometimes. We all do though. Or at least you should. This notion that our existence is supposed to be the curation of the highest culture possible is all kinda ridiculous. Like Humpty Hump said, "do whatcha like!"

W4YS 0F L1V1NG S0 T0X1C...

ways of living so toxic 
we struggle to figure out 
how to contain it safely 

PR4CT1C1NG H4TR3D C0NSVM3S...

practicing hatred consumes 
your insides with tumorous 
growths of not giving a shit 

4 PR3D4T0RY CVLTVR3...

a predatory culture 
needs you to exist in fear; 
most the time, I think “fuck it” 

PR4CT1C1NG L0V1NG MYS3LF...

practicing loving myself 
as revolutionary 
act against poison culture 

CVLT1V4T3D C0NN3CT10NS...

cultivated connections 
which poison far more than they 
fuel… unsustainable ways 

SONG OF THE DAY: Let The Music Play

Not gonna lie, I listen to some dumb shit sometimes. That's okay. This isn't a test as to how to best consume the best culture, which is a subjective criteria anyways. Ain't nobody gonna be mad at me in the afterlife because I was rocking out to Shannon's greatest hit and never even bothered to know a white guitar rock band after the year of 1992. I'll be alright.

P13C3M34L S4LV4T10N BVT MY...

piecemeal salvation but my 
culture is lack of culture - 
our identities purchased 

P01S0NS FR0M 3XP3R13NC3...

poisons from experience 
can be processed with patient 
effort, deliver future 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mawwal

I’ll be honest… really hoping that in the next decade of my life I move far deeper into cultivating an Omar Souleyman-level æsthetic. Shit, he’s only about 8 years older than me, and has been a singer and farmer most his adult life, having released over 500 albums under his name, many of which are just ones he made at weddings and gave to the married couple, but then got bootlegged and sold at music kiosks throughout the Arabian Peninsula. His rise in international notoriety has coincided with him living in exile in Turkey since 2011 as his native Syria has been in a state of conflict, specifically his home of Tell Tamer aka Tal Tamr aka “the hill of dates”. I almost bought 11 lbs of dates on ebay in the middle of the night the other evening, because fuck man, dates are some wonderful shit, especially when you haven’t eaten all day, whether fasting or by accident, and you pop one in your mouth and it’s an explosion of natural sweetness. Globalism as a means for corporate sterilization of the Earth, where everybody anywhere can eat a fucking piece of shit Big Mac, that’s some gross shit. But the ability to appreciate things outside your local microcosmic existence, for me as a rural southerner by birth, so that I can love on some dates and listen to Omar Souleyman, I appreciate that at least. But the globalism of the powerful is about business, not culture, and that’s why you got dumbasses out here being engineered by the interent to protest for re-opening normal ass basic ass boring as fuck businesses and acting like that’s an act of freedom or liberation. Americans are so goddamned lost. We buy iPhone cases at kiosks in nearly abandoned malls as opposed to wedding singer mixtapes at kiosks in open air clusterfucks of humanity booming with life (and business). Business without culture will always die, and the further we get into our culture of America just being consuming shit, the easier it will be for it all to just turn into rubble. Fuck it. I can’t wait to stack rubble into a mixtape kiosk, tarp stretched over top for shade, nice pallet table, my overstock limited but stored in three milk crates easily hauled on my old Corolla chassis pulled by goats. Shit’s gonna be dope. I hope to have really nice chrome wheels on my goat-pulled Corolla chassis wagon too. The future’s gonna be great, despite what anybody tries to make you worry. You just gotta envision that good shit.

WH4T'S R3FL3CT3D B4CK D0WN FR0M...

what's reflected back down from

heaven ain't always seen, blocked

by our own fears' pollutions

M41NT41N1NG 4PP34R4NC3S...

maintaining appearances

while realizing our culture

is nothing but sand castles