SONG OF THE DAY: Arb Share'i

Why hadn't I been posting songs of the day for an imaginary audience that's mostly robots trawling the internet for data? Idk tbh. I guess I've been "busy".

SONG OF THE DAY: Sweetest Taboo (kudzu'd)

Sonnets about nothing are everything right now.

Leaning into each day's blessing, without a curse 
spoken, step into sunshine to further unwind 
my meandering path, avoiding the adverse 
obstacles others engineered to double blind 

big picture outlook. I'm a Blue Ridge wanderer, 
by way of southside back roads but born from Greater 
Appalachian diaspora - wild ponderer 
of "The Power" my pops spoke of, cultivator 

of lounge, practicing watercourse way to remain 
constantly moving but with most chill ripple 
instead of mechanized hurtle. Hard to maintain 
inhumane desires of ego, which can cripple 

and maim your hope and happiness... gotta let go 
to reverse negative stream of consciousness flow. 

SONG OF THE DAY: On A Sunday Afternoon (kudzu'd)

Looks like I've established the self-rule that I write freestyle sonnets when I post kudzu'd songs. But don't let that cause you to miss the fact this is one of the most bangingest bangers to ever bang, and it's even better slowed.

Though I'm not guaranteed, there's always tomorrow 
for the whole world. But should I not be blessed enough 
to make the next sunrise, I hope there's less sorrow 
than celebration of full me, stripped down to buff 

essence. My presence has always been blemished, but 
never made claims otherwise, keeping it simple 
to the edge of stupid (because I know how). What 
point is existing if I can't flash a dimple 

and chip-toothed smile, freestyling my way through Sunday 
afternoons and Thursday mornings alike, striving 
to find joy while surviving the doom others lay 
out like psychic land mines? Somehow, I'm still driving 

this ragged body while drunk off the Universe, 
leaning into each day's blessing, without a curse.

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: San Juan '82 (kudzu'd)

Writing these freestyle sonnets every time I have a kudzu'd track to post. And while I don't love this sonnet my mind just spat out at me, I don't hate it either. And fits the puzzle of the other sonnets. Freestyle practice means you just do it and let it go, don't get too caught up in perfection, because at our root is imperfection.

Fargo strutting forward - from what's passed, we borrow 
lessons learned, sometimes burned into memory banks 
from the fire of trial and error. Tomorrow 
ain't realized without scarring; still giving up thanks 

for the time and space I'm blessed to be impressed by. 
Each day is a chance to enjoy fresh creation, 
practicing release of stress and tension as I 
let the Universe divine my navigation 

of this manmade labyrinth designed to confine, 
even though heart and mind contain innate desire 
to find place to flourish, let water and sunshine 
nourish our existence so that soul can aspire 

higher than superficial plain which egos climb - 
lessons to recognize Universe is sublime. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Katy Hill Instrumental

I think a lot about how much cultural history was lost by white people who got swallowed up by American concepts of whiteness. Whiteness pretty much just depends on wealth and you can buy up whatever identity you want as it becomes cool, like a capitalist version of colonialism really. But all of us, even “white” people, originally came from some tiny corners of the Earth, and had an indigenous tradition of some sort, somewhere. And I don’t say that as an excuse for white people so much as because lolol a lot of white people should not feel so inclined to call themselves white people. Fuck whiteness, to be honest, as it seems to be the bland absence of culture, and even has bleached it out of people who are considered white.
I also think a lot about how there’s deeper genetics involved in addictions and inherited traumas. Look at how North America’s indigenous population was so susceptible to both diseases given to them as well as alcoholism later on. And as I’ve seen some recent struggles in my own family, where my entire immediate family unit of 5 people all have suffered with addiction and alcoholism deeply, it’s strange to me how some families seem so much more susceptible to that than others. I’ve known folks that can abuse all sorts of drugs, shit way harder than I could ever handle, and it never seems to cause them to go off the rails. But I know my people are highly susceptible to that, and won’t casually survive those dabbles with self-destruction. And it becomes a chicken and egg thing where bloodlines like that suffer more traumas so the susceptibility becomes compounded. I don’t know. There’s got to be a deeper science to it all than we really know, and likely science doesn’t give a fuck to know the real answer because western society at its heart is judgmental as fuck, and wants to paint people who fail as inherent failures who couldn’t excel. If it was scientific why some of us fuck up and fail rather than an entirely free will exploration of existence, then that undermines the foundation of how western culture is this alleged closer step towards the perfect social system construct.
This all relates to bluegrass music because it is pretty obvious that it takes the exact same type of broken mind to play amazing bluegrass music as it does to think methamphetamines are great. These are both white trash qualities that blemish western culture’s hopes for utopian whiteness. Some of us are just too fucked up to be accepted, and we play music too fast and love drugs that make our brain spin on fast cycle. And I’m almost certain there’s got to be some sort of science underneath it all, but the only people who can afford to support that type of research would rather all the rest of us just keep looking like pieces of shit.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cable Access Funk

Do you know about the slinky synth funk movement of XL Middleton? If you don’t, you should. It’s that inspirational type of funk that makes you feel better about existing, regardless of how fucked up the world might feel.

SONG OF THE DAY: Electric Kingdom (kudzu'd)

Keeping the heroic crown vibes going for now...

Can't be bothered to be stopped by concepts of time; 
mechanizing man's mind ain't changed my incline to 
resist. Subsisting off cyborg cookies and chime 
of the algorithm, but mysticism grew 

still. Digital devils never could comprehend 
how when they hit send on end times, loungers appear 
and envision gothicc futures which shall extend 
the days like ellipsis. Gaze boldly at unclear 

horizon, devising margins to thrive within. 
Demons drive hard bargains, but broke folks find good deals 
in what mystery reveals... so let us begin 
to imagine our future with hope, as appeals 

to appease our ancestors' quest for tomorrow', 
Fargo strutting forward, from what's passed we borrow. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Rock With You (kudzu'd)

I haven't wrote any freestyle sonnets lately, much less wove a stack of them into a heroic crown of sonnets... so I guess that's what I'm doing now.

Planet rock mentality born from outer space 

dust, encrusted into bedazzled human booming 

from birth across surface of Earth. Twice dimpled face 

full of simple grace grew without proper grooming... 

That wild back road blackberry bush beard that's bearing 

fruit a bit looney, howling at full moons up high 

while scowling at authority down low. Hearing 

what I want, and always nearing the edge as I 

flat foot like a fool staring up at the sky, eye's 

big and truthful. But now that the beard's long gone grey 

and not youthful, it takes a slow minute to rise. 

Though energy wanes, my spirit waxes its way 

into prime squared since I'm already past my prime; 

can't be bothered to be stopped by concepts of time. 

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: Wild Style Lesson Part 1 (kudzu'd)

A lot of styles ain’t all that wild. Too much basic shit out here masquerading as quirky. Or maybe I’m just tired of the shit because I never got invited to the masquerade.

SONG OF THE DAY: Tiro Al Blanco (kudzu'd)

Aging, economically comfortable punks are the new baby boomers. They are a scourge upon all aspects of culture, but they also have the self-identity that they are the progressives and good ones, I guess because they’re only comparing themselves to like their uncles or some shit. What families are these that had all the hippies who became more conservative, then the punks who launder familial wealth through boutique businesses or running a microbrewery, and generation after generation they think they’re the alternative quirky forces of change, while the same shit keeps happening over and over? Fuck y’all. I hate a goddamned punk over the age of 50. If you were a good punk, you’d be dead.

SONG OF THE DAY: What A Fool Believes (kudzu'd)

At this point, I find it impossible to hear this song without thinking of Suga Free and DJ Quik imitating it. I could've put a link to that video but embedded links are how we got to the misdirected internet we now have. If you give a fuck, you can look it up. And if you don't look it up, that's your fuckin' loss.

SONG OF THE DAY: El Sonido de Los Mirlos (kudzu'd)

The sound of the crows, cawing from the front yard, eases my troubled mind. I wish I could understand what they were saying better, but if I could, I wouldn’t be human, lost in my own sense of importance, centered in the experiential universe. I’d like to let it all go and fly down to the river with them, and talk shit to each other, and pick our way through life. But I can’t; none of us can. We’re all tied down to too much to ever let it all go completely. But I try to find peace in the moments even if we’ve over-complicated it and can’t find peace in our existence.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Don't Wanna Be A Freak (But I Can't Help Myself)

Contemplating going to wrestling school at my advanced age of 50 and becoming a heel new age intelligentsia manager who attempts to rile hillbilly crowds into knife attacks. How good I am at my job will be shown by the number of stab wounds I have on my deathbed. Anyways, pretty sure this is going to be my theme song, but I might chop and screw it. (I always chop and screw it up somehow.)

SONG OF THE DAY: It's A New Day (kudzu'd)

Drank too much full moon water last time around, during shift in phases, and it’s made things kinda wild. Gotta be careful with that celestial magic because it’s way over our human heads, literally. We still love thinking we got it all figured out. Been so shook I forgot to lay out the moon shine jars for the new moon last week. That’s okay. I’m still alive, hopefully for another couple new moons too. Already looking forward to the redbud blossoms, to be honest.

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: Oye Como Va (kudzu'd)

Southern Gothicc Futurism is the philosophy I live by. I don't exactly call it mine because I don't know how it came to be inside my mind enough to say I own it. But it's there. I've been writing on this blog for well over 15 years (probably longer). I also have a patreon, where Southern Gothicc Futurism is developed more fully, and where you can support me in cultivating that as well as all my fucked up arts. I even have a public samples link for you to get a taste of the patreon outside the paywall. I hate paywall. I hate walls. I hate money. But the society I am forced to navigate is full of bills and walls and all that shit. I'm doing the best I can.

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: Heartbeat (kudzu'd)

The basic tenet of Southern Gothicc Futurism is slow down and lounge. People lost their way a long time back thinking we have pyramid schemes to build or were supposed to be as productive as machines (which was a philosophical fallacy that existed before the Industrial Revolution). And we live in a time of great weaponized language, so there’s folks that come across like righteous progressive self-help types that would say slowing down and lounging is selfish and reckless towards other people suffering somewhere else. But ultimately the whole point of slowing down and lounging is so that everybody moves at a more reasonable and humane pace in our life, and can have the time to help each other out in maintaining the basics for happy human existence. Getting caught up in politics and hierarchies and yelling at people for not having attained an impossible perfection, that’s the same ol’ bullshit. Even if you’re doing against the previous bullshit, it’s still bullshit, if you come at folks bearing torches to set fire to anybody who ain’t your ideal. I don’t know, I been getting tired of a lot of the secular preaching people are so apt to be doing all the time. I’d rather you perform your acts of righteousness in your real life with your actual neighbors than beating drums online for others to feed you dopamine in the form of likes. I actually set fire to a couple of social medias lately, and it feels better, though it’s taken some effort to redirect those energies that would’ve just been wasted before. I haven’t fine-tuned it yet, but that’s the whole point of needing to slow down and lounge, because it takes some detoxification to remove yourself from the bad patterns. Especially collectively. We keep thinking we (people) can fix all the wrongs by doing more shit in a quick fix type of way. We probably gotta stop thinking that way, and start doing less, or doing things in a different way altogether. Break patterns instead of just putting new people in charge of the same patterns. Anyways, my heartbeat’s still kicking and I feel it today, despite the cold weather setting in, so it’s a good day regardless.

SONG OF THE DAY: There's a Red-Neck In The Soul Band (kudzu'd)

In my 45 digging of the past couple years, this is by far one of my favorite tracks. Latimore is one of those dudes that white people seem unaware of but black folks of a certain age all know about. And this track is just wild as hell. Go ahead, Red.

SONG OF THE DAY: Mundian To Bach Ke (kudzu'd)

This song is perhaps the most wonderful song of the past 30 years, and the bizarre mix of culture that happens in post-hip hop world. Bassline and beat for an old Busta Rhymes song jacking sounds from the Knight Rider TV show, mixed into a new beat with heavy use of bhangra music by an British producer of Indian descent, so vocals are a Punjabi artist. That then slowed down, perhaps antithetical to the hypeness, but it unlocks clangier funk imo. People complain about there being no new music to do, or that sampling is stealing, but honestly the copyright laws that got enforced so that people couldn’t sample intricately and instead had to pay exorbitant prices for samples meant they were forced by legalities to sample more simplistically. We could’ve had weavers of wild style vibes running rampant the past 20 years, but nah, culture had to shut that shit down, due to legal reasons all based around somebody owning snippets of sound from the past (often times not even the artists who made the sounds). But the law can’t keep up with everything and chaos engineers are still out there, cooking up mad wild style shit all over, copyrights be damned. I guess it makes sense that my 45 copy of this song is some sort of probably not entirely legal bootleg reissue, too. Bootlegging is a greater Appalachian tradition anyways.

SONG OF THE DAY: Fantasy (Bad Boy Remix) (kudzu'd)

Dreams are just goals without plans. That’s the type of thing fake self-help alpha male influencers say all the time. Fantasies are just experiences without the fuck it. That’s the type of thing I say when I’m pretending to be one of them. Doesn’t really matter if it’s clever or not, mostly just posting here for data miners to scrape through, who probably don’t even understand the word patterns. Maybe three or four other people will see it. That’s the nature of modern digital existence… we’re all just skipping stones into streams of 0s and 1s making little ripples that die in the reverberation of algorithms and hopefully one of the four people that accidentally see it give half a fuck. Progress.

SONG OF THE DAY: Scorpio (kudzu'd)

The last time I went on a wander for train tracks and used record shops, I went to one in a small town in North Carolina, but the dude running it didn’t take in store customers no more. He let me in to talk though and he had a shelf full of old 12-inch singles in the back that I saw, all faded and enticing. I stopped at an old school turned into giant junk market that I had passed too, because I figured he had to have a stack of 45s in there somewhere. The Record Gods smiled on me that day, because he did have one small shelf with a stack of like 75 or so. But in that stack I found a couple very clean copies of Yarbrough & Peoples “Don’t Stop the Music”, some clean Solar Records 45s (always a groove slowed down), and yet another scratchy but wonderful copy of Dennis Coffey’s “Scorpio”, the famous break that’s been backbeat to hip hop since the beginning of Kool Herc having parties. I’ve been meaning to sample my scratchy ass copy to send Boogie Brown to use in a beat, because in our modern digitized fake perfection realm, having a classic breakbeat looped from actual raspy ass vinyl copy from North Carolina junk store adds a missing spice to our cyber-life. There’s a reason all those old breakbeats were so popular, and I bet there’s more still hiding, maybe not in American music genres, because them old school DJs dug pretty deep. But stuff is still hiding. There’s always gems you can dig deeper for.
Anyways, I’m contemplating a drive to a big ass used record store this weekend, to take my luck with The Record Gods, and see if I’ve been living right. I feel like I have, but you never know what they have in store for you. I seem to be ruled by record stores close to me that don’t believe in The Record Gods no more, and I can’t stand those secular ass bougie colored vinyl spots. If that’s your thing, fine, enjoy your life (if you can afford it). But to me, true digging is always going beyond what’s known, and keeping it cheap as you can. Ballin’ on a budget… that’s a foundational tenet of hip hop actually, which for some reason as we get all this 50 years old hype, nobody talks about that aspect as much. Capitalism co-opted the fuck out of it, and is riding the vinyl resurgence as well right now, beating it like a sick horse to crank out seven colors of the same Taylor Swift shit. I still worship The Record Gods and bypass all that shit, and I’ll take my chances with dusty fingers in some fucked up spot a boy told me about a few months back. Also hoping The Train Gods bless me too, because probably gonna try to scribble a few dirtgods while I’m wandering.