Howl in the new year!

What I Wish We Had, Now

Here's a partial recording from a live performance at Smokin' Aces taken last night...by Phillip Smythe's Dad! The lyrics to these videos are in the descriptions on YouTube if you'd like to read them.

Hey Girl,

A) Admit that Ryan Gosling is dreamy.

B) Click this link. http://fuckyeahryangosling.tumblr.com/

C) Your argument is invalid.

iTunes, Amazon, & a bunch of other sites

My friends, you can get a special rate for a digital download or do it per song.

If you have iTunes you can listen to a 1:30 of each song while you make your decision to purchase.

Check this link out! Or search for The Freshwater, Last Year's Ghosts in your iTunes!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/last-years-ghosts/id411102082

Also, you can hear the full version of the songs, AND get a free download, by checking out this site - http://www.facebook.com/TheFreshwaterMusic

This page has a funny animation that was made for me, and will have all sorts of updates as the new year peels away new layers of creativity. I hope you enjoy it all. Good luck in all your endeavors, let 2010 be the Ghost it is.

Adieu.

Selah.

Jaba-no-batta.

Stay With Me

A little afterwork special from last night recorded by my friend Phillip Smythe.

Defeat.

Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness; You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs, And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.

Defeat, my Defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance, Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot And not to be trapped by withering laurels. And in you I have found aloneness And the joy of being shunned and scorned.

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield, In your eyes I have read That to be enthroned is to be enslaved, and to be understood is to be levelled down, And to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullness and like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.

Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion, You shall hear my songs and my cries an my silences, And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings, And urging of seas, And of mountains that burn in the night, And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.

Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage, You and I shall laugh together with the storm, And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us, And we shall stand in the sun with a will, And we shall be dangerous.

-Kahil Gibran

Lovin'

Sometime last year, in a conversation with an old friend and once roommate, I sighed the admittance to myself that I was in fact, a 'Romantic'. Why it makes me sigh is beyond me, but maybe that's just how us Romantics are.

Regardless, I am terrified of marriage due to two divorces I've seen first hand and been shrapnel in. The image of a terrific love story then is clouded by romantic comedies and some straight romantic plays and novels and various media. The latter is a terrible formation for anyone who is a romantic - ironically I'm sure both of these are what fostered the deep rooted desire for a Love, whilst simultaneously leaving me with some terrible tools to do just that.

As time goes on however, I learn and see how dastardly I've been; and not just to others, but even when considering how I allowed myself to be treated - which is really just a reflection of how I treated myself. Alas, one must truly learn to love oneself before they can adequately fulfill the commandment to "Love one another like you love yourself". Then it comes to forgiving oneself, laughing at ones attempts, and having some genuine affection for the sincere effort one put in over and over.

That being said, I am and have been for a bit over a year, learning about love - and I'm certain that this training never ends, yet is continually enriched - especially considering that as a Catholic being able to reflect the purity of God's love in my fibers is the most intelligent way to live my life. Like the end of the book, 'The Great Divorce' by CS Lewis, "Keep going further up and further in!". Here of course I am not speaking of that Love, but one aspect of that Love, which is to say, Romantic love (also 'The Four Loves' by CS Lewis is pretty worthwhile).

Here then, I will share with you something from my romantic. I came across this on my favorite blog (i check the damn thing like it's crack) - Sid Ceaser put together a short film that was screened during the previews at a movie theater which him and his now fiancée frequent. Oh, and he did it using Muppets that he custom ordered to bear resemblance to the couple. What a cool way to ask someone to hang out with you indefinitely. I love it.

Watch the preview here and see the couple below the video to see what they really look like! Cool story yeah?

Sid & Sara

The Tree of Life

- The Space Between -

Revelation.

Naked singularities are an exotic prediction of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. They start as ultra-dense fireballs thought to form when a massive dying star (four to five times heavier than our Sun) exhausts its nuclear fuel (Supernovas) and collapses under its own weight. They are so massive that neutron degeneracy cannot hold them together, and so they go beyond even being a tiny but immensely massive neutron star. They continue folding in on themselves, collapsing again and again till they are infinitely small singularities, so dense that they begin sucking in the world around them. The reason they are called Naked Singularities is because they should be able to be seen by the naked eye of any one who wants to see.

But remember, they start out exploding "Like spiders across the stars" - Kerouac. Of course they are just exploding around themselves, a relationship with a star that near by would be much different when considering the final stages of a massive stars life - or even it's daily existence - however like Jack K, we will use that quote more figuratively and for it's imagery.

The last book in the Roman Catholic Bible is called Revelation, and is also known as Apocalypse. The sky's will be aflame. Spiders across the sky. And in the end, there will simply be left another rip in space and time, a black hole - whose determined natural function is for the life and worlds around it to fall hopelessly into it in an instant, though it will seem they are forever suspended in time; in the end then, as always it is, and always it has been - it will all be an unabashedly naked singularity.

I like to read the first verse and the last verse in the Bible. Gen 1:1 and Rev. 22:21. I like to do this periodically because in a few moments I read the start and finish of everything as believed by my own faith (I'm not sure where this is placed theologically so I do not want to ascribe this thinking to the teaching of Mother Church). I see those two verses, and inevitably, I am flooded full, as if a tide has come in, with snapshots of my life from India, through the continents I've lived on, through my studies, through my friends new and old, through the dreams of my future and the confusions of my present and the perspectives on 'reality' all in an instant. It's an effort actually to try and elongate this period of rapid uncontrolled reflection - as if my own soul explodes for a moment, or begins preparing to supernova or nova one day (we can hope it is a nova so it may end as a white dwarf versus a black hole).

I then think of the world that isn't just me, which is to say, the world! Every other thing which comes to mind, till I even begin having this feeling of dancing perilously at the edge of a cliff where I begin seeing my thoughts also as not my own - but of one who I am only a part of. A part who is wholly me, yet who I am wholly not, but only a part of. It is about then that I either fall or explode or come off the edge or whatever synonym you may find most palatable. The whole story of time as perceived by humanity exists between those two verses. Everything we know, ever can know, ever will know, and whatever developments in science and math and art and argument, etc. etc. etc. fall somewhere in between those two verses; all wars, births, marriages, evils, starts and finishes, every single thing which we as humans here will ever, ever be or have been or are - falls in between those two verses.

In the end then, after everything that has happened and will happen, all our worries and triumphs - everything will become part of a naked singularity. I mean this not as theoretical astronomy, that in fact the universe will fall back into itself only to 'big-bang' again (one theory) - but rather theoretically and figuratively theologically. That in the end, as in all things in some ways - at the finish, we see nakedly what it all was singularly. Whether what we see is reality or not I will not attempt to begin discussing, because I am not arguing what reality is - rather what we see, one way or another, to bring ourselves closure on things, is with a nakedness. Often more so a nakedness of ourselves during that period of time - one may even call this humility - but that also I can not intelligently speak to here. So in the end, all of humanity, everything we are to one another, is set to be revealed so unabashedly and simply that we may call all things at once - a naked singularity. And so maybe it is said,

"The Grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen." - Revelation 22:21.

And The World, Spins Madly On

Mind Blowing

I don't like gore, I hate gore frankly - despise it. I cannot in fact say enough to express my utter distaste for it. I hate evil, I hate suffering. These are the things that make my day to day life difficult to understand. Why am I so lucky when so-and-so is dying at the hands of a cog in the wheel of capitalism? Why am I allowed to fall in love while another becomes a slave to prostitution? So on and so on.

That being said, I was quite leery of watching a show where blood is used in the marketing. As the year has progressed however, I've become more and more accustomed to a habit which started about a year ago - taking advice; and let me say more accurately, taking advice from people whose advice I trust.

But this pitch is going on too long, and isn't even that compelling frankly - my purpose is to gain your trust - and thereafter hope you will give season one of Dexter a chance. I cannot guarantee your satisfaction, but I can express my own. It's remarkable television. Some could say groundbreaking, though I don't feel comfortable giving it too many artistic titles and strokes; it's simply entertaining and really well written. Specifically Season One.

Go on, git.

"I suppose I should be upset, even feel violated, but I'm not. No, in fact, I think this is a friendly message like, "Hey, wanna play?" and yes, I want to play. I really, really do."

- Dexter Morgan

Play me out Dave Davies

My makeup is dry and is cracked on my chin
I'm drowning my sorrows in whisky and gin
The lion tamer's whip doesn't crack anymore
The lions they won't fight and the tigers won't roar

So let's all drink to the death of a clown
Won't someone help me to break up this crown
Let's all drink to the death of a clown
Let's all drink to the death of a clown

The old fortune teller lies dead on the floor
Nobody needs fortunes told anymore
The trainer of insects is crouched on his knees
And frantically looking for runaway fleas

Let's all drink to the death of a clown
So won't someone help me to break up this crown
Let's all drink to the death of a clown
Let's all drink to the death of a clown

I stay totally, fucking, radical.

10 years in 1:25

Just awesome.

Kind of Blue

Jazz is a very good, and an arguably important form of music which I believe one should acclimate themselves with; and Miles Davis is a nice place to start.

It's the first day of snow in Dayton Ohio!

let's celebrate

My Brother

is boss

My Brother

Rules.

Case in point

It's incredibly ambitious. We just do not see this from main stream artists. So much so that the title "artist" for the mainstream seems a ridiculous parody and slap in the face of any true artist. But here, we are proved incorrect.

A little madness goes a long way with me however, so you can make your own judgments. I am happy to give credit where I think it's due, and this qualifies...as awesome and crazy...qualifies as crazy awesome.

And to be fair, though I can appreciate it on another level, the following is crazy and awesome, but not crazy awesome. And surely not what I deem madness.

But it's hilarious.

So eccentric.

I still don't like people being made fun of though. Sometimes I suspect this type of crazy just doesn't even get it. Is genuinely void of any self-awareness. I get caught up in questions of the virtue of that kind of insanity. This is why 'madness' is my foundation, because it is opposite of this, it is self awareness without ego, it is ego without pride, it is counterintuitive and such called 'madness' by the many passers by, but surely those who sit with me, or will sit with me; those who break bread with me, make love with me, share jokes with me, they understand why it is, that The Madman Laughs at Everything

I digress, my sweetest princess.

Power Monster

I'll go ahead and say it. The new Kanye West album is good, if not great. Kanye is truly a crazy person, driven thus possibly by his overflowing talent for making a beat. Professional, begins to describe it. Really entertaining, gets close. Truly stimulating, I believe captures it.

This video, though "outdated" now, is pretty boss. It was done very well live on SNL as well.

Take a moment to see one of our contemporary mad-genius artists; appreciating it at least for what it is, versus just for one's own personal palate.

Sacren

All spaces have the potential to be made sacred. I, however, find it more accurate to say that all spaces are inherently sacred, and that we have the potential to recognize, and dwell within that newly recognized 'sacristy'.

Walking around or working; in my car or at home - wherever or whenever - life sometimes suddenly stops detracting from life, and instead, serves as a reminder of that potential for the Holy. The elevation and simultaneous grounding; pride living in an environment of humility - one outlasting the other. Like human life and planet Earth. Dust to dust, dance to dance, so on and so on.

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on" - Robert Frost

SE7EN

Hollis Brown

He lived on the outside of town

Hollis Brown

He lived on the outside of town

With his wife and five children

And his cabin brokin' down.

You looked for work and money

And you walked a rugged mile

You looked for work and money

And you walked a rugged mile

Your children are so hungry

That they don't know how to smile.

Your baby's eyes look crazy

They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve

Your baby's eyes look crazy

They're a-tuggin' at your sleeve

You walk the floor and wonder why

With every breath you breathe.

The rats have got your flour

Bad blood it got your mare

The rats have got your flour

Bad blood it got your mare

If there's anyone that knows

Is there anyone that cares ?

You prayed to the Lord above

Oh please send you a friend

You prayed to the Lord above

Oh please send you a friend

Your empty pocket tell you

That you ain't a-got no friend.

Your babies are crying louder now

It's pounding on your brain

Your babies are crying louder now

It's pounding on your brain

Your wife's screams are stabbin' you

Like the dirty drivin' rain.

Your grass is turning black

There's no water in your well

Your grass is turning black

There's no water in your well

Your spent your last lone dollar

On seven shotgun shells.

Way out in the wilderness

A cold coyote calls

Way out in the wilderness

A cold coyote calls

Your eyes fix on the shotgun

That's hangin' on the wall.

Your brain is a-bleedin'

And your legs can't seem to stand

Your brain is a-bleedin'

And your legs can't seem to stand

Your eyes fix on the shotgun

That you're holdin' in your hand.

There's seven breezes a-blowin'

All around the cabin door

There's seven breezes a-blowin'

All around the cabin door

Seven shots ring out

Like the ocean's pounding roar.

There's seven people dead

On a South Dakota farm

There's seven people dead

On a South Dakota farm

Somewheres in the distance

There's seven new people born.

- Bob Dylan, The Ballad of Hollis Brown

I fucking knew it.

I Am Harry Potter from Daniel Radcliffe

Sometimes, there is little else to say...

Someone told me

They tell me that our lives are not worth much
They pass in an instant as roses wither
They tell me that Time that slips by is a bastard,
That of our problems he makes coats
However, someone told me...

That you still love me
It was someone who told me that you still love me
Could it be possible then?

They tell me that destiny makes fun of us,
That it gives us nothing and promises all
It seems that happiness is within reach,
so you reach out and find yourself mad
However, someone told me...

(chorus)

But who was it who told me that you still loved me?
I don't remember, it was late at night,
I can still hear the voice, but can't see the features any more,
"He loves you, it's a secret, don't tell him I told you!"
You see, someone told me...

That you still love me. Did someone really tell me...
That you still love me, so could it really be possible?

They tell me that our lives are not worth much,
They're over in an instant, as roses wither.
Someone told me that Time that slips by is a bastard,
that from our sadnesses he makes coats.
However, someone told me...

Mmmm. One of the reasons I LOVE Astronomy!!!

The final line in this video is what I'm saying

(besides the sciencegasm)

< 3

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in
my heart) I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)

I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

-E.E. Cummings

Aquiline

I'm twenty-eight now, young, and not so young. A sophomore, a 'wise fool' by definition. Life is finally getting somewhere near something. I am doing some things, that's about all I know - and even that I do not know. Maybe some things are just happening and I am in their way? A filter of a human being for a universal mechanism to play out; a cog and a wheel, oft fancying himself driver and mechanic.

If I am my own biggest fan, then I am also my own deepest critic. So I seek one who knows my movements before I know I will make them, which is to say, an enemy. One whose movements I learn by heart, so that we may continually try and surprise one another. Not just any enemy, but my enemy, which is to say, my lover; but wherein lies my ability to battle? My vestments are loose, and armor aches to shine through it's tears. A rosary hangs like a sword, a crucifix like a bow and arrow. I, once action and reaction, have become response.

I pray to learn enjoyment in the wrestle; the inside grasping the outside - grasping the inside; both threatening to take one another down - a mixture of earth and sky - tectonic plates locked in a warriors embrace with dark and electric clouds. The ocean flows out, up through my throat. I breathe deeply now days. At times clenching my jaw to draw in more air - my eyebrows arch, my nerves focus, my cells prepare for romance, and war. Alas, one must have a good nose...

I'm pretty sure I could live a full life at the center of a book.

So I found some prime real estate prospects for myself.

You've won me over Bookmans...largest used-book retailer in Arizona you [bats lashes].

...all too human

This is just fantastic. The BBC recaps human history for us humans in one minute using stop motion, paper-craft, and clay. Enjoy.

BBC Knowledge - Honk If You're Human

Paradise, Lost

"As I bent down to look, just opposite,
A shape within the watery gleam appeared
Bending to look on me, I started back,
It started back, but pleas'd I soon returned,
Pleas'd it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love; there I had fixt
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me, What thou seest,
What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self ..."

-Milton, Paradise Lost 4:460

Looking for a love which suits you is like looking into a lake and becoming fixated on a phantom. In this scenario it is only themselves one is in love with, it is narcissism at some of it's finest - for it comes with cloak and dagger; posing as our ultimate unity with desire and truth, whilst stabbing our true paradise to death.

The only love I've witnessed which works is conscious, and does not seek it's own self. Love which is curious as a child is curious - a point which resonates like a hammer in all my thinking. It reminds me of 1Corinthians 13:5 and of Mathew 18:1-3.

"self-seeking" to be understood also as seeking the reflection of one's humor, one's interests, one's goals - one's whole self, and with this as the gauge, then surely any water would appear mildly, or grossly, polluted. "Turn and become like children" to be understood also as the acceptance of a child's love. Staggeringly free, for it doesn't even enjoy loving, it is not conscious enough of itself to think thusly.

As maturity brings awareness of self, and that awareness is informed by the circumstances a child is raised with - which is to say impacting his or her confidence, values, humor, etc. the child often becomes obscured and lost within the construct of their budding self-awareness.

To truly "fall in love" then - and we may say, 'to become able' to take that fall - is to incorporate the learned behaviors of adulthood with the inherent exuberance of 'child-likeness'; which is to say, to marry one's mind with one's heart.

Dude.

Click it. Get a tea.

Click this.

Boo

I seriously have no idea how to translate what...whatever this feeling in me is.

It started, singing to Robert Devir

If you click and enlarge the image you'll see what's highlighted. I also enjoy what's directly below what is highlighted.

Getting a call from a friend following this was very cool, and it not being the first time was very cool as well. My music gives me something besides my diaries to bestow to my children and grand children - should I have them.

Letting them know, once there was a world before they ever were conscious- and further, that their father, or bald and laughing grand-father, was doing things in that world.

I love it.

Thanks Juliet.

Tune in to hear an interview, some live songs, and some songs off the album this Wednesday after 8 pm on 91.3 WYSO - to stream it out of town you may also use this link -

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wyso/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&sid=16&id=1713149&pid=25

Alma Mater

slip

Travelling across the universe, searching for those who see a bloody sun covered in dirt; he plugs in his electric guitar and the sound stings the back of every peasant's throat.

He's laughing; it sounds like he needs a haircut. He's frightening those who want his blood. He's laughing with well-fed mosquitoes.

The sounds of crows and hawks fill the hallways. One picks at an eye, the other an ear.

No one moves the laughing mouth.

Lookin' back I see a kid who was just afraid, hungry, and old before his time

When I was a younger man lookin' for my pot of gold
Everywhere I turned the doors were closin'
It took every ounce of faith I had to keep on keepin' on
And still I felt like I was only losin'

I refused then like I do now to let anybody tie me down
And I lost a few good friends along the way
I was raised up poor and I wanted more
And maybe I'm a little too proud
In lookin' back I see a kid who was just
Afraid, hungry and old before his time

Through the years I've known my share of broken hearted fools
And those who couldn't choose a path worth taking
There's nothin' in the world so sad as talking to a man
Who never knew his life was his for making

Ain't it about time you realize? It's not worth keepin' score
You win some, you lose some and you let it go
What's the use of stacking on every failure another stone
Till you find you've spent your whole damn life
Building walls, lonely and old before your time

It took so long to see
That truth was all around me

Now the wren has gone to roost and the sky is turnin' gold
And like the sky my soul is also turnin'
Turnin' from the past, at last and all I've left behind
Could it be that I am finally learnin'?

Learnin' I'm deserving of love and the peaceful heart
I won't tear myself apart no more for tryin'
I'm tired of lyin' to myself, tryin' to buy what can't be bought
It's not livin' that you're doin' if it feels like dyin
It's only cryin, growin' old before your time
It's only cryin, growin' old before your time

"Old Before Your Time"

- Ray Lamontagne, 'God Willing & The Creek Don't Rise'

Halloween Approaches!

This upcoming birthday, 28, has been significant for me since I was 15. It is like a rite of initiation is complete; as if my heart is much more free to beat, beat, beat. As with all people, many things intruded upon my person during my impressionable young years - sirens which seduced my family into inviting wolves inside; and though I have been blessed to choke many of these malicious and ignorant sirens to death or near - some of them, only Time is going to take away.

This upcoming birthday is a particularly significant sirens' death sentence. Though I tried choking her with great care and effort - she who sang revelrously whilst torturing a young mans heart till it screamed in his head - I never did kill her. Her siren voice would draw me close and then whisper a snakes threat, always shaking me till I became numb; but this Halloween my dear friends, I will watch Time draw near this particularly annoying sirens voice - and slit open her throat for me.

"There's a whole in the world like a great black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world who inhabit it - they all deserve to die!"

Rose into Silence

Turn in your books to page three-hundred and ninety-four...

Dang Potions Class (Year One)

I want to write a lot about it, however time will not allow this....which is kind of neat - almost being forced to go on the ride without being able to process it much; oh, and 'it' being school.

Between work and the overtime being required there, school and the homework mostly, I loved reading about the two feet of parchment Snape would require from his fifth years; I can't imagine what O.W.L.'s were like to take.

Further, as we all are, I'm fighting a Dark Lord as well. So put that in your Felix Felicis and drink it.