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.