Truth Hurts But I Be Down With That

Ahh, yeah. Heck with it—you know everybody has their thing, that they reach for whenever they need to recalibrate the system, whenever they've strayed too far from center, that thing that gets them back to true, that corrects their miscalculation and recharges their shields. So I guess then my thing is writing. Little late to play my horn, not sure I feel like exerting the effort it would take anyway to breathe from my diaphragm and really make some fully-bodied sound. So for now, my solace is words, and music pumped through my little Sennheisers. I don't know.

What does the truth matter? Well, for me it matters; a lot. I want to know what is real. I want to know what is really going on. I know that makes me threatening to many people; I know that pursuit is not looked kindly upon by the establishment. But what else can I do? Truth hurts sometimes, I know. It's what it is. Bombastic, inflammatory, invigorating, unsettling, horrifying even. Alive. Like me. So I'm drawn to it because I'm drawn to my reality, to life.

How do I know what truth is? Well, good question. I know sometimes it pisses people off when I claim that I know anything. Most times I don't know much, that's true. I know I'm not always saying the shit that people want to hear. But I try to be honest with myself and the people in my life. I don't know what else to do. I'm interested in consciousness. I'm interested in freedom. I want the realization of wholeness to sweep over me again, to come to my peers, to all my beautiful people on this Earth. Or in it...or wherever the hell we all are. We're here, anyway, and I want the immediate and intimate knowing of oneness (you know what I'm talking about, the big togetherness that is the ultimate truth—Oneness) to come to me just as I want it to come to all beings and straighten us all out. We need it band, man. This place is so broken, it's wild. Sometimes I just look around and I think about where we are and it really hits me. Shit damn balls. This place kinda sucks. But it's times like those that I try and reach out, reconnect with the Infinite, find a way beyond the despair and the dissatisfaction and the irreverence that really are the hallmarks of this life in our time. Everywhere I see people, using each other, abusing each other because they're just trying to find a way to make it through the day's worth of their spectrum of needs.

“Watch each one reach for creature comforts, for the filling of their holes.”

Thanks Peter, you said it, man. So we're messed up. I've talked about it quite a bit. We're lost. But we're always right on the edge of the most perfect truth we could ever imagine. Imagine. It's always there. It's always supporting us, encouraging us to find ourselves, encouraging us to be our highest, most compassionate, and most noble selves. Sometimes I talk to it. No, seriously. People don't understand that we are part of a living matrix of both carnal and infinite life. It's just energy. What is consciousness? It's just energy. So what are we? Right, you guessed it: same thing. We have needs. But chief among them is one need, specifically, and that is to return, to remerge with our highest selves. We do that any way we like: art, music, movement, prayer, sex, brotherhood—fraternity, love, every team, every band, every collection of bodies of anything that come together as one. Pandit Pran Nath says, “souls travel in caravans.” We've all been here before, all of us. As above, so below. Well, as below, so above, too. That means: what is seen is not all that can be seen. What is known is not all that can be known. What is felt is not all, what is shared is not all, what is kept hidden is exposed to the truth just as what is true reveals what's hidden. I'm not trying to be cute, here. I'm not going for a Tolkein-esque Gollum-riddle. Think about it, it's real. You know in your heart I speak true.

Energy is the building block of whatever this life really is. Energy, can be played with, interacted with, shaped, changed, stretched, nourished, disturbed, yes, upset, but not destroyed. Not diminished. We are that we might be what we are: a learning, loving, growing, reaching, seeking, looking, uplifting presence in a sea of turbulent and wild possibility. So yes. You can talk to that sea. And don't be too surprised when it talks back.

Where does art and vision come from, after all?

...Exactly.

So like I was saying, I guess writing is something that I do to ground myself. To remember that I am the me I know, the one with purpose. I am for a reason, and I know me, and I know the reason. I'm not here alone. I'm never, in truth, alone, no matter what happens to me. It's a very comforting thought; I invite you to try it now.

See? Not too bad.

Of course I'm still searching. Tryna find music, tryna find likenesses of myself in the Absolute, in the other people around me. Tryna express all this without using words. Tryna pay bills...harder for me to manage than I guess I imagined it would be. I don't blame anyone; I don't blame myself. I'm just the way I am, after all. I guess I'd like to try and create more opportunity for myself to play, to create, to nourish my secret self and let it out, give it a walk up onstage from time to time. I guess I wouldn't mind getting somewhere with music. I know I'm not very well understood. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be pretentious, self-serving, self-indulgent, fuckin' pedantic on everyone's ass. I know that might be how it seems sometimes. I know I don't sound like anybody else, and that that's off-putting, but I mean hey, what do I know? I just try and work hard. I try and live with intention. I try. I don't know, but the alternative strikes me as worse.

Look, I love life. That will never change. It's just I see the life I want, that could be, the experiences I might have, and I seek after them, and (at least in the current situation) I rarely if ever find them.

Everyone wonders at some time or another, who do I inspire?

Still, I don't feel, as Meshell puts it, “like God has forsaken me.” I feel it's always right there, every step in tandem, Great Spirit matching me step for step. Will you comfort me?

Yes, I will. What do you think, that I'd just leave you hangin' bro? (that's the Great Spirit talkin' now)

As I hear it, my little voice of consciousness is kind of tongue-in-cheek sometimes. And by this I know, that the Divine has a sense of humor, and I'm a part of that, so that makes me feel really good.

Look I've got my cards on the table here. I'm a young man, twenty-nine, with a purpose. I know I've been lied to. I know the reality of my world is vastly different than what I've been taught. I know I'm a minority in that regard. I know there aren't too many like me. Haven't met anyone yet, actually, and that's okay, too. What am I? Twenty-nine? Twenty-nine zillion, maybe. So, I can re-learn some patience, is my point.

Look don't start thinking I think I'm hot shit—you're probably a zillion too, ok? What I do think is I'm honored to be here. I'm humbled to play music, to write, to learn. It's humbling, to serve the Absolute. That's enough; it's wholesome. It's reverent. So yeah. I live as an outsider, as a hard dichromatic two-tone in a world of ugly gray. I try and live as though I can still see the lines, and most of the time, I can. I think I know something about what's coming to us. It's a hard road back to the truth. That's ok too.

So I'm here, doing my thing, waiting, watching, looking for love in all the wrong places, just bearing witness—yo I be a bare witness—I'm watchin' witless irreverence wit less distress than you might guess, I'm a cold-pressed arch-nemesis under duress but never confess anything less than da absolute truth that seeks to bless and caress you, fightin' hard those in the dark who suppress and confuse you, I don't wanna lose you, hear me now people I speak for the trees I'm on my knees with a rose in one hand in a strange land, stranger still I am, got a horn in the other an' I be seekin' after my brothers, they who don't settle like an' iron kettle in the ashes of many others, one after another, play my soul out the cold spout and heat the thing like a surrogate mother, wonder if I can still play for my supper, smothered in tha cold snow of ignorance an' prayin' for summer, so finally may we give thanks an' praises to music, our lover.

It's all there is—it's all I can ever be—out of nothing, sound—out of sorrow, mirth—out of suffering, gladness—out of breath, life—out of longing, a whole—out of wholeness, ourselves—out of our peace, silence—out of silence, song.

So you see, it's that simple. We'll see each other again.