H34VY 1S TH3 H34D TH4T W34RS...

heavy is the head that wears 
expectations of others 
to be something they are not 

PR4Y3R 1S 4 R3M3MBR4NC3...

prayer is a remembrance 
of creation; creating 
is a prayer for better 

TH0S3 WH0 1NT3RTW1N3 G0D 4ND...

those who intertwine god and 
country do so without heart 
(which they long ago muted) 

SONG OF THE DAY: Evil Ways (kudzu'd)

I came upon an abandoned warehouse full of thick wood scraps, a few miles off the beaten path but still along the iron path, which don't run quite so much these days. I figured this was a sign from the church of level track, so I been making signs with them scraps. I can only haul so much off during each pilgrimage, but I been bringing 'em home, priming 'em up with scrap can paint from my Manifesting Wilderness Spirit homies, then painting Mark 10:25 on each of 'em, and nailing them to trees here or there, where it feels important to remind folks, but also where ain't nobody with a legal eyeball bearing down on me. John 3:16 gets all the roadside attention, and it's definitely a great line. But what with all the prosperity gospels proliferating like kudzu through the foundation of American institutions right now, as a society, we definitely done lost sight of Mark 10:25. And I don't wanna spell out the verse's words, make it too obvious, because really it's like a hint left for the seeker, who then searches it out and finds the ancient lesson that's always allegedly been part of our cultural foundation, but ain't nobody paid attention to this bezel of wisdom since the days of Reagan. That warehouse in the middle of nowhere ain't gonna run out of wood no time soon, and I ain't gonna run out of fingers willing to applicate paint, and inshallah I hope to scatter many many more along familiar 434 roads, and more and more in 540, 804, 276, 304, 681, 252, 301, and 336 forays, as my life conditions permit. I don't dare wander too close to the 202 heart of false idolatry; I ain't strong enough. But the more Mark 10:25 marks I can leave can hopefully cause reflection by folks headed in that direction. We all do what we can, when living right, to try and help the world be as beautiful as it is supposed to be.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Heard My Mother Call My Name In Prayer

The thing I love about music, and really all art, is this is essentially just “Mama Tried” but in the most moanful lonesome dramatic ass way possible. What a jam.

SONG OF THE DAY: Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Hard to believe looking at current politics that anybody who considers themselves actively political has any idea about the concepts behind “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Even the godly amongst us are godless nowadays. I don’t know, I don’t have high hopes for the immediate future, but I do think ultimately, people are people, and once they wake up from being zombies for political opiates, it will get better. That’s probably post-United States though. I hope I live long enough to see it.

SONG OF THE DAY: If You Believe Your God Is Dead

This is a good jam for these trying ass times.

SONG OF THE DAY: Easy Evil (kudzu'd)

“Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing until I’m done,” tattooed in cursive script on my ribcage sideways like it’s a Bible verse, which it kinda is I guess.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down

This is such a wonderful song (even if this is a cover version). It seems too simple that it got co-opted for zombie movie/show soundtracks, but that also just goes to show how entertainment lacks nuance and doesn’t really see beyond the one line of the song. Anyways, a clean copy of Brother Claude Ely’s original 45 of this is probably the highest of high on my holy grail list of 45s I hope to come across some day. But I tend to get any cover of it I can find that’s at least 20 years old. (New ironic religion lacks the holy ghost spirit.)

SONG OF THE DAY: God Only Knows

This was already a weird song, as much as any of The Beach Boys work is. But then slap it as a cover on a soul singer’s last studio album in 1975, and it takes on even weirder vibes, although musically it actually sounds fairly normal, I guess. I mean it wouldn’t seem quite as weird if I didn’t know it was a weird ass Brian Wilson song. Everett’s youth was spent in Mississippi, singing in gospel music and playing piano before moving to Chicago to chase a music career as secular soul artist in 1957. She had some hits, but by 1975 her career was on the down swing. This track recorded by a childhood gospel church singer is pretty interesting to me, as this was the last studio album she dropped, and spent her elder years back in the churches near her home in Illinois. The trajectory of young creative dreamer, from the church to the exploitative music industry, and then ultimately back to the church, with this weird ass song as a slice of that life that touches on all of it.

SONG OF THE DAY: Thee Prayer

Was talking about praying in space today in the ol’ dorkball groupchat. That’s the kind of times we live in.

SONG OF THE DAY: My God Has a Telephone

A gospel souldies revival song that I was briefly playing the ever-living fuck out of. Somehow I got sucked into the souldies trend. I think I follow too many vintage cholo graffiti accounts on Instagram or some shit. This, even though a recent song pretending to be an olden days song, is still the type of jam that makes you shimmy across the linoleum sort of like a hybrid Charles Bradley/Axl Rose/bantam rooster, while washing the dishes but taking a break to scratch the neck of the black cat pushing up against your leg when the shimmy pauses. Black cats always know what’s up.

PR0SP3R1TY G0SP3L F41LS...

prosperity gospel fails 
to acknowledge how a day 
of reckoning still awaits 

PR4Y1NG T0 WH4T3V3R G0DS M1GHT...

praying to whatever gods might 
pay attention to my dumb 
self-destructive ass down here 

S0M3 F0LKS' SP1R1T T4K3S S0L4C3...

some folks’ spirit takes solace 
in ancient texts; I dabble 
in babbling soul gibberish 

4NY0N3 WH0'S PR0M1S1NG...

anyone who’s promising 
salvation while still tethered 
to existence is lying 

SONG OF THE DAY: Two Wings

 

Rev. Utah Smith got the nickname “the Two Winged Preacher” because of his evangelical showmanship. He was from Shreveport, Louisiana, and became a traveling evangelist for the Church of God in Christ, holding court in tent revivals, banging out songs on an electric guitar, wearing a giant pair of angels wings, and even eventually having a bunch of ropes and pulleys hooked up so he could fly around while performing. At his peak, he did other wild shit like preaching sermons from inside a casket. Strangely though, considering he was most active in New Orleans, and from Shreveport, he had been buried in a hometown cemetery in an unmarked grave. Regional music blog dorks uncovered this information, and were shocked, so crowdfunded getting him a proper grave marker, which he now has, that says “Elder Utah Smith – Electric Guitar Evangelist”. That’s pretty nice.

I had a real formative time in my teen years, fucking around in a trailer with my dad and uncle that me and my dad shared but my uncle was always around. My uncle killed himself a couple years later, but has a drag racing-style funny car doing a burnout on his grave marker. My dad died a few years later, and he has a chainsaw on his. These were the images chosen by family members who were paying for that shit that closely identified with the spirit of them. (It should be noted, we have kept a horseshoe on top of my dad’s grave ever since too. Sometimes people move it around into a different way, leaning on some shit, or however, but any time I go there, I always make sure it’s making a ringer around the dumbass thing you put plastic flowers in. My dad would want to be throwing ringers.)

I often wonder about what people might think represented me to put on a grave marker. But I also think have it pretty much set I’m gonna get cremated and have my ashes scattered around the 69th mile marker of the Rivanna line, right by the James River. I mean, I don’t have any legal papers that say that, but I wrote a poem about it, and printed it up and made everybody who needed to know had seen it. That’s as legal as shit I’m gonna do likely will get when it comes to paperwork.

TH3 C0VNTRY CHVRCH'S ST41N3D GL4SS...

the country church’s stained glass 
is just plastic film applied 
to the cheapest textured panes 

SONG OF THE DAY: Troubles of the World

 

Neighbors on both sides pay this ol’ boy to cut their grass, and so did the people that owned this one before I got it last fall. I ain’t paying to get my grass cut, sorry, it’s not that big a yard. So I got a push mower, but I ain’t cut it all yet. Fuck it, it’s just grass. I’d rather blast funk gospel, watch the kittens dive into the air trying to catch butterflies, watch the redbuds turn pinker at the edge of the woods, and just sit there in my MY GRASS IS TALL t-shirt, stacking quartz rocks on old giant metal springs I found at the railroad tracks. As long as I keep the springs upright and the quartz above the tallest grass, I’m doing good. Who the fuck heard of having grass you pay somebody to cut instead of a bunch of junk springs with giant rocks on top? What kinda fuckin’ world is this we’ve made?

M4N1F3ST1NG SP1R1TV4L...

manifesting spiritual 
practices to make better 
sense of this chaotic world