We took you to the beach yesterday
Your first time seeing the ocean
The ocean is like freedom
Like the womb of God
A place to surrender
To be baptized
To be born again
We struggle through these times to find these pockets of normalcy
To bath in the sun and heal in its light
Finding a way so that fear finds no road inland
No way to surge through our veins
Many say we are living through a war of psychology
And so the battlefields are our minds
The factors and factories which keep us sane
Become the avenues of focus
With social institutions becoming unavailable for those of us who don’t trust the jab
I fear that efforts towards psychological health need to be inflated
Proper praise to keep the demons at bay
What’s so funny is all this is framed by your arrival
You arrive like a giant dare of life
A nihilism safety net
And I don’t mean to reduce you
You are much more than that obviously
But you are also that
This life and at this stage would be so easy to give up on
If it were not for you
And not for God
And not for your mama
And the responsibility we have for each other and you
And God
To claw your way through the muck and mud
The torrents of fear
Coming from everyone and everywhere
And key into gratitude
Key into the things which bring joy and smiles
Taking you to the beach
Helping your mama get out and in the sun
Letting you stare at the ocean
With wide wild and big blue evolving eyes
Riding the train home
Filming you guys
Taking pictures of Coney Island at night
Kicking all the demons to the sideline of our minds
Hanging onto life
And saying goodbye to the city we love
I decided to make films
To make songs
To write this
I decided that the act of creation was more important than the result
And that my voice can’t be cancelled in spite of the rumors
A creative vision is something you always need to protect and defend
You could say I’ve graduated to higher levels of that particular game
Like if it was a video game
The artistic life
I’d be at the
Rimbaud selling guns and loading a mattress full of money stage
I’d be at the John hanging with Sean for five years stage
Or the Dylan
After going electric and getting booed off every stage and then not touring again for five years stage
Or the Dostoevsky out of prisons and exile about to write Crime and Punishment stage
Or the Van Gogh needing his brother to keep him sheltered and fed stage
I don’t mean we are broke
What I do mean is being an artist and working through struggle
Is same as it ever was really
And keeping that in mind is good for the mind in times like these
Why wouldn’t life be a military like struggle in these crazy ass times?
Why wouldn’t we refocus
And get up early
And keep our phones in airplane mode
When we write first thing
It’s 650 am
The apartment is rattling from the train underground
I’m on my second cup of coffee
Sitting on a throne
Writing you about the time of your second month on planet earth
We took the train to Coney Island
And then the Q to Brighton Beach
The Russian area where your mom grew up
The shops and the boardwalk have a different energy
Like they come from someplace beyond America
Because they do
Russian signs
And the strangeness of Russia framed in a New York that fell backwards to the fifties
Bits of Russian conversation whiz by you walking through the crowd
Towards the beach
The ocean here isn’t tropical or blue
But it will do and we lay on the sand
Keeping you covered
Making sure you don’t over heat
Mostly you feed and seem calm
Staring in the direction of the water
That’s the ocean I tell you in an exaggerated baby voice
Whaddya think
The water ebbs and flows
And I leave you and your mama and jump in
It’s cold but quickly warm again
The best time is the end of the summer
The water has been heating up all summer long
And from out here on the beach
Life just seems as normal as can be
People just enjoying themselves in the sun
Free from the hurricane mind of fear
Ripping their lives apart
A reprieve from madness
The ocean lapping unaware
On the way back to Brooklyn
I hold a Shaw over your mama’s breast as she feeds you
A couple times when her nipple slips from your mouth you start to scream
I remember being on the outside of screams like that
Other people’s babies
On different trains or planes in different times
But now this is my scream to contend with my mouth to feed
(Thirteen stops left til ours on the F line.)
Or to help get fed
Your mama still dedicated to breast feeding
What a challenge that is
I certainly understand why people revert to the bottle
No judgment whatsoever that way
You have been pretty much cluster feeding for your entire life so far
And you are huge and healthy because of it
I have no doubt that it will benefit you greatly in the long run
But don’t forget to take your mama out to lunch next time you see her
And tell her thanks
She has gone to bat for you unlike anything I’ve ever seen
The dedication of the mothers of the world
I bow
And become inspired to do better in the areas where the weight is mine to pick up
Child rearing is teamwork
For those single parents out there
Much respect
When we got home
We ate yogurt and honey
I obsessed about a particular crypto coin which incentivizes people to stake and hold for a long term
The realm of crypto is fascinating and I thank God for it
I’m learning and there’s something deep and reflective about it
It feels like a financial structure that mirrors an organic development
Or that you can learn about life through crypto
It’s not only what it is
But also a mirror
Or a message
It’s the universe speaking again with a different voice
And I go through these phases of tuning in
A surprising passion.
We ate yogurt and honey
I spoon feed your mama as she feeds you
It’s a circle
I went into the studio
And fired up the Moog
It was organized and cleaned up thanks to your mama
A clear path to inspiration was laid out
I made a beat
And then played some chords
Dialing in analog effects
A Song started speaking to me
A melody offered itself
Phonetic sounds coming from my mouth again
Adult baby sounds
The dawn of creation
Blowing the dust off of a vision
Reflecting on walking through crowded Russian streets in America still spinning
My voice still here
Still as strong as ever
The illusion of being cancelled kicked to the curb and bleeding
An artistic wonderland
Like Coney Island coming alive inside of me
Circus clowns and dancing girls
Coming together into firework embraces
Dancing to this new beat
The melody transcending shackles and jumping up into falsetto escapades
And places where fear can’t reach but rather only act as fuel for making a vision come to life
Music is still here
The world is still alive
You are on the couch feeding and you and your mama are the only muses I need
At that moment the world unfolds before me
And I feel like the luckiest man on earth.
Ps.
Here’s what’s good about the world breaking down
You get to a place
A wild acceptance
Where you don’t put stipulations on what is
You let the world do it’s thing
And you don’t try and change it in any unnatural way
You don’t resist change either
You don’t uncover the dead
If they wish to lay there dying
But rather you run through the city at dawn
Even if it’s dawn in the middle of the day
Or the middle of the night
You take time to be born again into everyday
And every moment unwinding
Into the infinite what is
You become the witness outside of yourself
Over and over again
Until there is no self at all
Just the witness.