SONG OF THE DAY: Ridin' That Midnight Train

Tagging that midnight train, hoping somebody benches it in Georgia. Even wrote “El Hijo del Jim Croce” because I was thinking about that “Walkin’ Back to Georgia” song he does. One time I rode the Greyhound from Colorado to Keysville, Virginia, which was ten miles from my mom’s house. The Greyhound still went to Keysville back then. A long ass ride, and I was squeezed next to an old woman as we went from Richmond down 360 through Amelia, and I felt close to home finally. We talked about it, and she said she could see the twinkle in my eyeballs. The bus stop in Keysville was what used to be a video store/restaurant/country store/pool hall combo building, that’s now split it up into some other barely not failing businesses more appropriate for today, but there was no pay phone there, even though pay phones were still a thing back then. I walked the mile from Keysville’s Greyhound drop-off to the gas station by the building supply store, because the gas station had a pay phone. I sang, “Walkin’ Back to Georgia” the whole way, and then kept singing it after using the pay phone to call my mom’s house and use the “state your name” request to say rapidly as fuck, “It’s Raven, just got home, at the gas station in Keysville, come get me,” so that collect call said, “You have a collect call from it’s-raven-just-got-home-at-the-gas-station-in-keysville-come-get-me, do you accept?” Everybody knew not to accept and just do what the message said, because that was also a thing back then. The building supply store is now one of those temperature controlled storage unit places, and I’ll never speak to my mom again while we’re both alive. But if you see that dirtgod moniker in Georgia, and it says “El Hijo del Jim Croce”, that’s all the stream of thought that went through my mind in the twenty seconds it took me to write that on an empty grain hopper. Every single moniker is like that, an entire world of philosophy and experience and reality and subjectivity boiled down to a bare essence that gets scribbled onto the side of a train, like a message in a bottle, knowing maybe nobody will ever notice it.

TH3 W1R3S FR4Y 4T TH3 F4R 3ND...

the wires fray at the far end 
even as we continue 
running them at the future 

SONG OF THE DAY: Long As I Can See The Light (45s on 33)

I have temporarily or permanently disabled a couple of my social media accounts, and for some reason that makes people worry about me. Is that a requirement, to be as online as possible now, addicted to the dopamine of social media notifications popping up on our smart phones in our hands constantly, an umbilical cord to the digital ouroboros scroll of nothingness? I can't say I've really done anything better with my time - not outside more, still got grass to cut, haven't broken into any abandoned factories or anything. But I feel better not worrying about dumb shit like I did. I also feel that social media encourages resentment, and hatred, and is very much integral to fissuring society into these hateful little factions that we mistakenly feel are far greater and more powerful than they are in the physical world. But it also creates a way more extremely online mentality in the real physical world, so that what is real is further distorted by digital propagandas. But I don't really give a fuck. I'm just one person; I can't fix the world, and even if I tried, I'd only fuck it up in some weird other way that would be symbolic of my own failings.

Anyways, I assure you I'm okay, in fact pretty good. Real still recognizes real, except nothing is real either, so it's all fuckin' weird and dysfunctional and held together by cyber-duct tape. But if it all fell apart tomorrow, it wouldn't be nearly as bad you think, although also worse than you think, both of those at once. But it's never the end, no matter how much folks wanna believe that shit. The sun will turn the sky light again tomorrow morning, and every day I get to fuck around is a blessing, even if I don't get to do shit I want to most days. I'm still fucking around, and that in itself is the blessing.

WHY 41N'T 1 M0R3 C0NN3CT3D...

why ain’t I more connected 
to the things that matter most; 
why ain’t I outside right now 

1NDVSTR10VS 4RT1ST1C...

industrious artistic 
practices bound to go dormant 
once dirtgod heart stops bumping 

SONG OF THE DAY: Having Thangs (chopped & screwed)

Washed and cleaned the fuck out my car this afternoon, for the first time I really did it this well since I got it. A funny thing about white trash culture is you’re not supposed to have nice shit, and if you do, it somehow looks bad on you, like you think you’re too good. Can’t even count how many times I’ve said, “We can’t have nothin’ nice” non-ironically, because it was reality.

This is the only new car I’ve ever owned in my life, got as my last hand-me-down had the clutch go out plus two other things all at once, like right at the same time so that I had to catch the city bus to within half a mile of the dealer and walk the rest of the way to pick it up when I got it. Had less than 10 miles, which I’d never purchased anything with less than like 85k I don’t think (and that might be a low estimate to be honest). Family looked at me funny when I first got it, because my siblings have been in the same environment as me, so we’re not supposed to have nice shit, just broken shit that’s always breaking and we always have to fix and somehow that makes us noble. I don’t know.

I realized I put that out too, that my grown kid got a nice old man’s car a few months back, and it’s full of empty coffee bottles now, and my girlfriend’s vehicle is as much a farm use car as anything, so I can’t really expect that not to have hay blow into your face when you open the sunroof on the highway. But fuck man, my car – just a 2019 Corolla, base model – was brand new when I got it. There’s no need for three years worth of fried chicken crumbs to be between the driver’s seat and the center console. Why do I do this? I’d like to have nice shit. Like I dream of a nice old Cadillac sedan, big wheels, clean enough as fuck inside, riding around on a Sunday afternoon in some fucked up color block Puma tracksuit from 1994, and just vibing. That’s my ideal vibration – peak dirtgod. And yet, I become my own worst enemy towards achieving it, thinking I’m supposed to be fucked up, have rips in my shit, and dirt all over everything. I washed the car down, and it was popping though, even though there’s a scrape on one side from me running over some barbed wire clump at my girlfriend’s compound, and then scratches around the driver’s side door handle from my ex-wife’s untrained lab jumping up on that shit when I pulled up to pick up the kids. Maybe I can’t have nothing nice, I don’t know. But fuck, I’d like to before I die, even if just for a weekend, riding around feeling fly as fuck, not like a goddamned piece of shit dug out the earth to sit in front of somebody’s porch, rusting to death. Let me shine, for fuck’s sake, just let me shine a little bit before I die.

D0CVM3NT4T10N 0F MY...

documentation of my 
life will disappear after 
death… that digital decline 

L00K1NG F0RW4RD T0 S1TT1NG...

looking forward to sitting 
in the yard, not doing shit, 
no longer useful, lounging 

G4V3 VP D3LVS10NS 4B0VT...

gave up delusions about 
being the greatest; life is 
best without superlatives 

Y3ST3RD4Y'S PR0GR3SS W4S T0R3...

yesterday’s progress was tore 
down - demolished to make room 
for more of the same, but new 

M0M3NTS 0F CL4R1TY F0VND...

moments of clarity found 
in solitude, wandering 
spaces abandoned by “progress” 

F1ND MYS3LF R3P34T1NG SH1T...

find myself repeating shit 
as I get older; faded 
brain fuzzy from too much fog 

SONG OF THE DAY: The Creator Has A Master Plan

I know spirituality is frowned upon in my generation, us being more inclined towards jaded nihilism. But I’ve come to have faith in the concept of a creator as whatever made the universe be the universe, with all its repeating patterns and strange balance of positive and negative and how those things transcend humanity or what man’s made. I never loved organized religion, but to be honest I don’t love organized nothing, since all of it is organized by humans. Science has claimed dominion over the Earth in more recent times, or at least tried, but still seems to fuck up as much as it fixes. So I have quietly come to trust how my heart always felt – that there’s something bigger than me, or my species, or the Earth; and yet somehow it’s also smaller, at all times. Trust in that helps a lot of situations not be as stressful, because honestly, none of us control half the shit we think or hope we do. Even if we apply ourselves, as militantly and humanely as possible, so much shit is beyond our control. Science mistakenly seems to think it can correct the mistakes people have made, and that the entirety of existence can be broken down and entirely understood. I mean, I guess it can, but not by us. We don’t have it in us, and to think we do is just more human vanity, it’s just we replaced perverted notions of god made in our own image with perverted notions of a scientific process, entirely brainstormed by only our brains, without consideration for the rest of creation. Thus I don’t fuck with either, and believe in a creator as an entity of energies which has a basic plan for everything, but also respects the power of lounge, so that good things come around, and if you get yourself synced up with the way of things, that reflects back on you. I won’t say it “benefits” you necessarily, because there’s connotations with that word that don’t seem to fit what happens. But I also know anytime I think I got shit all figured out, something busts it up, so that I have to rethink everything to some extent. That’s natural evolution, which is constant, and yet unseen.
I had a volunteer vine climb up the front of my house, then the screen porch. It had trouble grabbing the siding above the screen but eventually jumped its way over. It tried to grab the screen door a couple times, so I had to tell it that it was okay to grow everywhere else, to see what happens, but to stay off the door. It’s mostly learned by now to do that, but it does like to drift a vine that way to high five me on my way in and out. Turns out it was a star cucumber vine, and it’s turned my entire front porch screen green on two sides – big beautiful bright leaves that glow when the sun shines on that side of the house. I’ve loved it, and I’m very thankful me and that star cucumber vine could come to a mutual agreement about how to live together this past couple months. I think about that relationship, and how many other relationships we ignore, or pretend don’t exist, or that the other biological organisms have no say compared to us. What a sad way to view the world, so dark and lonely and trapped inside the human brain’s dark cave of unenlightened reality.

W41T1NG F0R PVRP0S3 T0 B3...

waiting for purpose to be 
delivered, like a mark; at 
least I’m enjoying the walk 

SONG OF THE DAY: Blue Yodel #3 (Evening Sun Yodel)

No more new shit. We got enough shit already, and somehow something half-good that's new is seen as superior to some old shit just laying around that just needs a little fixing. Then again, we’ve been dependent upon new shit for so long, most new shit is so cheaply made that even old shit sucks if it’s too new. I ran by the Goodwill yesterday, and they had a whole slew of metal weights, those ones that are all metal dumbbells, all hexagonal like a robot caveman would use – 30 lbs, 20 lbs, 15 lbs, each one with a $2.49 sticker on it. I threw them all in the cart, and got a winter coat for $2.50, plus some fall knick knacks because the kids are always wanting “décor” and to go to the dollar store, but I’d rather get some hard shit from the Goodwill that might be worth putting in a box in the attic until next fall. It was right at closing, and four sweet Hispanic women, varying ages from old as fuck to about my age were checking out with cartloads of shit. One of them was wearing small jean shorts and a white t-shirt and was one of the ones around my age, carrying the extra pounds like myself, and I ain’t gonna lie, I ogled a minute. Good for her, dressing all sexy as fuck, not giving a fuck. I should do that more. Anyways, the two young women working the register spoke Spanish too, so checked the ladies out pretty fast considering they had a truck bed’s worth of stuff between the four of them. By the time I got up there, the two young women had a method of getting everybody the fuck out of there, since they were closing in about five minutes, where one read the price and the other punched the buttons. They rung up two of my Halloween knick knacks for $1.88 instead of $1, and I said something, and they were like, “Oh, okay, we’ll make it up.” Then my total was like $12, when the weights alone were more than that. “You get all these too?” I said pointing at the solid ass metal weights, just good to have laying around to stub my toe around the house to motivate me to do something with my slow death ass. “Don’t worry about it,” they giggled. “Closing time,” I thunk, when you rush everything along, and give shit away.

Some folks panic at the thought of the way of American life we’ve known the past half century (or maybe not, maybe it was a bit before my prime years) coming to an end. But don’t, it’s like closing time. Give shit away, hook folks up, rip shit off, get excited about down time. There’s no better moment in the work day than closing time. We’ll figure the rest of the shit out. People always do.

L00KING VP, 4N4LYZ1NG...

looking up, analyzing 
the clouds, asking myself was 
I meant to be here, and why 

SONG OF THE DAY: Pricetags

Money isn't everything. Economic liberation of some is not liberation of all. This should not be used an excuse to be a greedy ass in your own life, but it remains true. If we have to have it, it should be spread around. But it'd be better if we undid this bullshit, ultimately.

4T L34ST 1'V3 F1N4LLY F0VND...

at least I’ve finally found 
a place that feels like home, where 
I can smile without pretense 

C0MPVT3R C0MMVT1NG G0T...

computer commuting got 
me missing traffic clusters 
where I stare off into space 

WH4T C4M3 F1RST - TH3 G4M3C0CK 0R...

what came first - the gamecock or 
the cockfights; some of us born 
to be a goddamned problem 

N3V3R H4D N0TH1NG TH4T 1...

never had nothing that I 
couldn’t break by misusing; 
musing upon my hard ways 

N0 M4TT3R H0W H1GH W3 BV1LD...

no matter how high we build 
pedestals, celestial 
realities can’t be touched 

W4ND3R1NG H4LF-F0RG0TT3N...

wandering half-forgotten 
back roads, while solar eyes still 
keep a watch over my path 

MY 1NT3RN4L P0W3R GR1D...

my internal power grid 
requires regular recharge 
a good distance from the buzz 

H4NDS VPL1FT3D L1K3 PR4Y3R...

hands uplifted like prayer 
to protect my humane eyes 
from blindness, while the trees laugh 

R3C4L1BR4T10N 0F S3LF...

recalibration of self 
as industrial purpose 
passes me by, riverside 

SONG OF THE DAY: Country Child

I’m an old fool from the old school, who still downloads full ass albums of mp3s from random ass music blogs which still exist doing such things. I didn’t sit there spending 28 hours downloading a single Metallica mp3 back in the dark digital ages to give up having actual copies of shit, especially considering how often my kids are trying to stream a song in the car, and the song is no longer there or not downloaded to stops in the middle of our shitty cell reception region. You either got it or you don’t, fuck them fake ass clouds.

I got this one because I saw it pop up on a blog I check, and the cover met my aesthetics challenge of “does this look like a butter container design from 1974?” Then I looked up Robert Finley’s story, and dude’s an interesting fucker, definitely, so I copped it, and enjoyed it so much that he entered the realm of “if they got a bandcamp I’m gonna buy their new shit moving forward.” This song was one of my favorites, because he offers a woman that he’s not broke, got $15, and would buy her a hot dog. For some reason this reminded me of some shit my dad would say, because the small engine shop he worked at, he loved to go to Tom’s Country Store a block away and get their hot dog specials. Any time I met him for lunch, that’s what we did. At one point, he had a tiny ass Ford Courier pick-up with a grim reaper painted on the hood (that I painted actually), and he’d run up to Tom’s for hot dogs for lunch, then go eat it in the park, reading the newspaper. Later in life, when alcoholism got him too bad, he went to the liquor store instead, and would drink his Aristocrat at the park instead.

I’m first generation college graduate, not an obvious dumbass (though we all are, to one extent or another), and have exposed myself to a lot of art and creative shit. But I’m still a raggedy ass country boy to my heart, and I don’t even really understand these weird ass digital radicalized suburbanish country boys of nowadays. Nor do I relate to the petty bourgeoisie. (Yes, “petty” not “petit”.) It’s fucked up. But I can still walk in the woods and find an old bottle dump, dig ‘em out, wash ‘em up, spray paint them, and write cryptic warnings about the downfall of our ancient ways. “’Cause I’m a country boy…”

TH3 P0W3R 0F P0S1T1V3...

the power of positive 
directional energies 
push by universe unseen 

SONG OF THE DAY: Me and You

 

I was thinking about how stupid capitalism is and how streaming services switch around the shit they show so if you want to watch something you have to crack a fucking internet code to figure out if whatever of the 5 of 13 things you’re paying for has it, or you can borrow your partner’s (current or past) password for 5 of the other 8, or if it’s on one of the three streaming platforms you haven’t sexed your way into access to yet. There’s a digital campaign of some dumbass in a canoe called The Streamer where said dumbass goes to a campsite and streams a bunch of Disney shows. I keep blocking it but it keeps showing up. The concept of streaming and actual streams and rivers made me think how fucked up it would be if cool ass spots on rivers actually switched their streaming services, so like you wanted to go to this spot on the James where there was a graffiti railroad bridge and a nice swimming hole with some really amazing lounging rocks, but you mention going with your friend and they’re like, “Oh it’s too far of a drive, that spot switched to the Rappahannock River at the beginning of the month.” And then you start thinking about whether you want to drive all the fucking way to the other river, or just settle for some shit that’s not as exciting by the river you’re already at. I mean, essentially Netflix’s entire business model is built on the fact you’ll settle, because you’re already there.

Continuing the over-etymological analysis, what a thing, to “settle” for some shit you don’t really want, because it’s where you’re at. That in the context of rivers and streams and settling is even more fucked up, since I’ve been thinking about the James River basin’s initial launch of American culture at Jamestown. See how fucked up life gets when you start pulling the strings? It all comes unraveled and you have an existential crisis where you wish civilization died. It’s better just to stream fucking The Office and ignore the dystopian darkness of it, laugh at the stupid man doing stupid things, haha that’s just like my real life.

Except that’s not real life, even if you experienced it. Me and you should go to the river, the actual river, to those rocks I spoke of. They’re still there, because rivers and streams aren’t like “streaming services” and in fact THERE’S A WAR GOING ON FOR YOUR SOUL. I know a cool bottle dump I found down by the river too, the other day, walking the dog. Let’s go.

M34ND3R1NG B4CK 4ND F0RTH...

meandering back and forth 
in imperfect circular 
orbits around sense of home 

JVST 4 S1MPL3 4SS3D D1RTG0D...

just a simple assed dirtgod 
who blossomed in James River 
basin as solar stardust 

SONG OF THE DAY: Anniversary Blue Yodel (Blue Yodel #7)

Been listening to a lot more old bluegrass and blues lately. Not sure why. I have come to hate modern era hipster bluegrass. In fact, I’ve been killing newgrass musicians secretly, averaging out to about four per year for the past decade. My best year – 2016 – I got eleven, but things slowed down after experiencing the chaos of Charlottesville in August of 2017, and then my marriage fell apart. Last year, I thought I could get a lot more with the pandemic shutdown and all, like it’s easier to fly below the radar for things like that. But luckily I’m to a much better place I don’t feel like killing newgrass musicians so often. Except banjo players. Newgrass banjo players are the fucking worst, just pure suburban trash cosplaying poor white folks, full of fake soviet democratic socialist bullshit. I’ve kinda let it go with everybody else, except newgrass banjo players, who are too young, too shinefaced, not scarred enough by life to make real art, so they make performative jive art.

M4K1NG 4RT FR0M D3TR1TVS...

making art from detritus - 
bedazzling mundane life… that’s 
those southern gothicc futures 

SONG OF THE DAY: Had To Come Back Wet

It’s the fake American calendar end of summer and I ain’t even been in the ocean. Thought I might be middle class enough to go to the beach for a week this year, but the pandemic pushed all the beach houses into high demand, and the development of the last twenty years where it’s giant ass expensive beach houses made it so my simple ass who ain’t got no family other than children to go to a beach with can’t do it. Shit was booked the fuck up. Shit’s already booked the fuck up for next year. Of course all of this is a weak ass thing to complain about because going to the beach isn’t a right, but also, damn, why’s everything in society got to be priced so imbalanced so that only a certain segment of society can enjoy shit? Seen people on social media who act like they’re broke all the time who went to the beach for multiple weeks, and I know it’s family that probably paid for it – previous generations, but still, many of us don’t even come from that. And even more don’t even have a job as stable as mine. That’s what always fucks me up – my situation right now feels better than my situation has ever felt, my entire life. And I still can’t afford to do shit. Generational wealth and familial money is a highly underrated aspect to our existence, in all aspects. People should have to tell you how rich their parents and grandparents are, so you can make decisions accordingly, from everything to how much you want to hang out with them down to who the fuck needs to be venmoing somebody else for dinner. Anyways, here’s to hoping I somehow do something financially rewarding but illegal, and have a fat roll of $20s in my pocket to go rent a room on the beachfront with cash for a couple nights during the expanded global warming reduced rate time before the water gets too cold (which it doesn’t, ever, you just can’t stay in it as long).

M1NDS D0N'T RVST L1K3 M4CH1N3S D0...

minds don’t rust like machines do 
(but I do hack digital 
kudzu back regularly) 

S0VTH3RN G0TH1CC FVTVR1ST...

southern gothicc futurist 
saints can’t be manufactured; 
they’re born from civilized dirt 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mama He's Crazy (chopped and screwed)

At my patreon (which is like on Only Fans but about weird art shit not nudity), I try to chop and screw an old country classic from time to time. Support my patreon, and enjoy this reworking of The Judds most famous song, under my chopping and screwing name of DJ Honeysuckle Vines Growing Over the Abandoned Factory at the Edge of Town.

WH3N MY B0N3S 4R3 F0SS1L1Z3D...

when my bones are fossilized, 
hope my nonsense gibberish 
still fuels the fools amongst y’all 

SONG OF THE DAY: Fat Man in the Bathtub (live)

I really wanted to write something, maybe even specific to the actual song here, but then I just got sad the old K-Mart in Charlottesville didn’t converted into a flea market, with at least two African stalls, a Latin vegetable store (with a giant paleta cooler, but there’s probably going to be more than one paleta option if the flea market’s being done right), used power tools stand, phone jailbreak stall, and hopefully the flea market has turned the delivery bay by the old garden center into a used tire/secondhand rim shop of some sort. My old old iphone I use as an ipod is starting to turn into robot alien hieroglyphics all the time again because the battery swole up and I’m holding it together with binder clip and rubber bands, and I’ve got a new old iphone, version 6, but it’s locked behind an activation code for somebody, I don’t know who, and it’s pissing me off, and there’s no flea market that would handle this type of shit in an actual open and free society, but I’m trapped in this neoliberal hellscape where you can’t unlock an activation locked iphone because it might be stolen even though the model is so out of date I literally got given it by somebody who had it laying around after somebody else gave it to them. Y’all think everything’s got to be owned and wanted. Let people exist, please.

T33TH CR00K3D 4S 3V3R; B34RD...

teeth crooked as ever; beard 
more grey than not; but my eyes 
still got those wildfire embers 

S0VTH3RN G0TH1CC FVTVR1ST...

southern gothicc futurist 
horizons always threaten 
storms - keep a shoulder towel 

B0RN FR0M TW0 3N1GM4S, BVT...

born from two enigmas, but 
helped give birth to a trio 
of creative impulses