Berkshires2021!
Up in Massachusetts
Sitting on a porch
In front of a bush of purple pink flowers
Fields of green
A country highway
With cars going by sounding like tiny airplanes
Taking off into forgotten skies
To my left is a book called The Mystic Spiral
And a pamphlet for art in italy
Me you and your mama in a white country house
On a graveyard
Built for the residents of the house
Who traveled through the walls
Into eternity’s dirt
I’m feeling called to shift
To make a transition
Angling my head into thoughts of what’s ahead
Rather than the losses
Of the past
I didn’t know we were sleeping on a graveyard
But our sleep was extra restful
So we were aligned with the spirits of the field
Being an artist is a tough vocation
But if you have it in you
Burying it
Is tougher still
A dream has to be a corpse before you are ready to set it free
And many say you should be a corpse before you allow your dream to become one
I went in the house to get more coffee
A random book of blessings was on the table with a book of old Hollywood movies
And a photo book made by an old friend
Plus a book by Phillip Roth called
Paternity a true story
That’s funny I thought and opened the blessings book randomly (who couldn’t use one now and again?)
It said
When you travel
A new silence
Goes with you
And if you listen
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say
I turned it back a page
It came from a poem called
For the traveler
That’s funny
Over twenty years of touring
Of rest stops
Of being late for soundcheck
Of crappy dressing rooms
Disappointing turn outs
And then moments of being on top
Or on your way there
Epic nights
Of packed rooms
And beautiful women waiting to talk to you
It runs the gamut
But if I’m honest the roads I have been on
Have been a battle
And these times and the position I’ve taken within them
Have certainly made the road less forgiving
At least for now
But what a ride
The thousands of people
You meet
The blessings dancing tightly with the curses
Of the Miles you aim to defeat
It’s a hell of a way to make a living
But I am certainly being called to change directions
When you wake up in a graveyard
You best pay attention
The people up here are amazing
And generous with their space
They say we can stay another night
And we most likely will
Deciding how the future is gonna function
Out of the mechanics of the past
Imagine
If you just landed in your life
Every morning
A random spirit
Landing in whatever circumstances the life you lived has created
But in this thought experiment
You land there with no responsibility for the life you landed in
You simply asses the circumstances of that life
From a detached and ultimately forgiving space
Kinda like putting a quarter in a video game
Divorced from the guilt of your past regrets and bad decisions
You play this life like a game
After having lost one of your three lives
You always have a chance to reinvent
But like the cook hear said
When I walked up to him and the owner this morning
When some people hit a wall
They just keep hitting it
People fear change
We all do
But this life is shifting like a lunatic on acid
And I am being undoubtedly called into a new direction
Let go of regrets
They simply weigh this new player down
Let go of judgment
And play your circumstances
Regret and judgment are simply pitfalls
In the new game of your new life
And without the pain of realization
We could never be born again
Out of the graveyards we wake up in
kierkegaard
Says cultivating your uniqueness is like riding a wild stallion
And conforming is like a falling asleep on a moving hay wagon
Society is a religion
And if you challenge it’s prevailing ideas
No matter how wrong headed they are
You will be ostracized
Because you are causing others to challenge their belief system in such a way that is a threat to their psychological survival
For them it will feel like attempted murder
And they will react in kind
They will hate you with a fierceness of the hate you would feel for one plunging a knife into your chest
Only in this case
The only thing you are trying to murder
Is a faulty idea
Or even a dangerous one
And not only that
You’re really just trying to murder the fact that everyone must think the same
In order for society
To stay asleep on a moving hay wagon
The price of non conformity is great
As is the price of conformity
On one side you are challenged to fully blossom
And on the otherside
You simply can’t
neitzche on conformity
“A traveler who had seen many countries, peoples and several of the earth’s continents was asked what attribute he had found in men everywhere. He said: ‘They have a propensity for laziness.’ To others, it seems that he should have said: ‘They are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions.’
He blames it on laziness
And this is an accurate assessment
For when you pick up the challenge of non conformity
Much more is demanded of your survival on every front
And you can only survive it standing in the bedrock of the spirit of Christ
He is after all the ultimate non conformist
And mans reaction was to crucify him
So much pain did he cause
By revealing the absurdity of the group think of the day
Hands nailed to the cross and feet handled that same way
Man would rather murder God than confront the folly of their ways
But life is short
And to go through the labor pains
Of giving birth to your unique voice
There is no other way but to speak your unique mind
And there is no way that it will always aligned with the voice of the collective
For if it did
What kind of voice would it be at all?
The stakes are so high to express your uniqueness
But consider it a challenge from the most high
Caught between two eternal unknowns
The labor pains of your voice rising
From the darkness of the droning crowd
To make a unique sound
Which the mob looks upon with darkening eyes
Reaching for clubs
Guns and knives
What kind of weirdo says
Fuck it
Ima speak my mind?
The graveyard could be a sign to change
And a sign to keep going
One day
And one day soon
We meet our maker
There is stakes here
Of that you can be sure
You feel it in the ether
Jenny said to me last night
As I put my fingers in my ear holes
The people that hate you
The comments
It’s like you’ve killed somebody
I don’t understand it she said
The violence of the crowd is overwhelming when you challenge their ideas in times of trauma
But there is no way to defeat death
Other than lifting your heart above the ostracizing crowd
And throw it into the lap of God
As crowd turns to mob you