A Prayer For Music

Here's a poem I performed earlier this year. People liked it, so why not blog it?

A Prayer for Music

There was a strange feeling I had recently.
As I sat, copasetic, in the wings
I knew that nothing I can say or do could top the passion.
The beauty and lightness and flow and grace
And all of a sudden, my time had come to step forward and take my place.

I stood at the microphone and planted my feet and I reached,
Deep down, directly passed the crass wasteland in my physical and down deeper,
Deeper and deeper into the soul I creep, I find my spirit and I bring it out to my throat as the trumpet blares from behind me.

I didn’t know his face although I raced through my head to find a prayer
A poem to enlighten this lightning on the stage
A peace to bring to us all but I was caught unawares and my time had come to play.

I cracked and I creaked and my voice squeaked like a pre-pubescent adolescent male,
Health class poster boy.
My voice was weak and my vocal chords betrayed my heart and my soul
But suddenly a power was stolen from the air and it dug inside of me and I ran with it.

I ran and I ran and I ran and I began to descant and the choirs of angels stood beside me and lifted my voice to echo with the power of the trumpets at Jericho.
I sounded the coming of glory to all. And the passion and the love that a brother can feel for a brother, a sister, a mother, a father, is farther than the highest note on a page and brighter than the brightest light on the stage, it’s the rage that is colder than ice as it lights our fires ablaze with courageous words to feed on.

As the crescendo hit me like a wave of fire and brimstone
I grinned as I watched the apocalyptical trumpets sound and pound on me, on us all.
I rose as the bows and the strings seemed to ring out as I sing out with all the spirit I had,
And the guitar notes they just wrote were direct quotes from the mandate of heaven itself and the mandate that music is power and that music is goodness in the world.
Stop the suffering, my brothers and my sisters, and begin to unite in one perfect song, the song that rings out from the centers of schools out to the courtyards of churches to the altars of temples to the dank disarray of political dungeons to the bright burning grasslands of Africa. From the roots of the trees to the salts of the seas where this song can pass miraculously on the gases in the air and enlighten through despair, hatred, apathy, lack of care and this song will tear through whatever bonds may hold us, whatever chains may keep us down. This song will rise with infinitesimal decibels too irrepressible to not pay special attention to.
This song will be glory in its fullest form.

Look at me now! I say to you all, look at me now and where I stand and how my hand might quiver at the slightest touch but not so much as a tear will fall on my face and disgrace my favor to the crowds.
I say to those that weep to keep on crying until the floods are done and we can all be one people one more time. I say to those that have cheated me, forgiveness is a blessing and one that I have ignored for more time than I care to discuss. Plus, I say more to those that hate me and mock me and continually try to shock me with their muttered saying as I pass you by, let it go.

Why must we all hate and judge and discriminate and begrudge ourselves against ourselves, our brothers and sisters and, Mother, tell me
Why does this all seem to pile on my shoulders every time I speak and choke up my throat and make me weaker than I could ever be in my wildest dreams?
And why, mother, why am I forced to bear the burden of shame and guilt for things I’ve unjustifiably felt in my life, but I must feel the pain of generations before me who abhor me and the remnants of failed exterminations continue to lay waste to my name?
I am stabbed, mother; stabbed in the back by the ones I love who I believed love me who think nothing of me but as a stepping stone on which to wipe their feet on the climb to the summit.

And doesn’t it seem ironic that all this pain it never replaces itself but builds and builds and builds and burns in deeper, it brands me and it hands me over to the darkness I wish never to see but I can see it so clearly sometimes that this dark void, it blinds me and my senses are engulfed in the pulpy murky black that attacks me and continues to harass me and harass me even as I sat, me, copasetic, in the wings thinking things I never wished to think before and how horrible goodness can be, how horrid peace can be, how belligerent a life can be made to seem when twisted and soiled by the selfsame dreams that brought us into being.

And, being a selfish creature that I am, I reach for the apple from the tree and I sit and wait all too patiently for enlightenment to come up and hit me.
It does.

As I felt the rush of music pour on top of me, I looked out into the crowd.
I saw not faces and people but eyes and minds all together in one enormous, ever-morphing vessel of light and love and glory and the darkness subsided as the cymbals collided and the song burned into my vocal chords. That was the feeling I explored.

In love with music

I know I was going to finish the last blog, but chose to abandon it due to inspirational issues.

So: Music.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.
--Victor Hugo

My best friends in life are people I've never met. In some cases, I have no clue what my best friends look like. However, I know that the way that Adam Duritz talks to me about women, or the way that Ella Fitzgerald always makes me smile in awe and respect, those are things that best friends can do. Music never fails to surprise me. It grabs me by my deepest nerves and pulls me out of my body where I can dance on the exterior, bouncing off of the air molecules and clinging to sound waves that echo and boom off the walls of my room.
I love the lightness I feel when I sing, the lightness that came with "St. James Infirmary" after KOB's homily about loss and his brother. I know that the feelings I have when I sing are the closest I'll ever get to love or the Divine in my entire life. I recognize these things, and I close my eyes in ecstasy to know that I will always have this safety net to fall back into.
I spent my days as a kid drawing pictures of Philcinema, the number 1 band in the world in my mind. I would sing their songs out loud all the time, the lead singer Billy Ryland looking like a mix of Dogma-era Ben Affleck, Dave Matthews, and with prominent black mutton chops going down to his cheekbones, his black goatee shaved before it could develop into a moustache. Billy Ryland is the epitome of Rock and Roll, and his image would be burned into my mind for the idea of the musician for my entire childhood.
As I've matured in life and musical tastes, I find the blues and jazz artists of the Harlem Renaissance to be the prophets of America. I love to fall into the beautiful chords of Five For Fighting's "100 Years" and REM's "Nightswimming." I can't help but cringe in sheer joy and pleasure when I hear that guitar bend in the fifteenth or sixteenth frets, pulling my spirit up with the E string.
Nothing understands me like music does. Music provides the answers to questions that we can never truly comprehend, but music is the reassuring shoulder rub that seems to say "Don't mind all that."
There is an anonymous quote that has always filled me with contentment and reassurance, and if only the writer would have been attributed with it, I could find the legend of this person and find the music in them.

"Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us."

I don't ever want to lose the music stored within me, burned into my subconscious like a picture on a projection television of the fifties. To end, I would like to give one final quote from Hans Christian Andersen, the poet and short story author.

"Where words fail, music speaks."

Never let go of the music inside of you. Let it sound off of the hills of the world, echoing in magnificence across the globe. Much love.

With a simple gesture, I can change your life...

Human beings, as a whole, are, in my opinion, the most superficially contained animals in the world. We are, without pause, totally drawn into our own selves, no matter how "generous" and "charitable" we may seem on the surface. For example, why does one do charity? For kudos, that "warm feeling" inside, or the fact that you have nothing better to do with your time and/or money. If it didn't make us feel happy, we wouldn't do it. We're improving our own state, and that's the one thing we want. If we could feel generous by kicking the shit out of a puppy, we would. It's just the fact that we need pleasure.
But to what extent does this pleasure remain decent? Doesn't it eventually become hurtful, cruel, all in the name of pleasure? For example, many, many women -- most that I know -- receive pleasure by exposing the flaws of males. They manipulate the men into the palm of their hands, in where they are slowly crushed in a fit of dominance. Not that guys don't do this too, but I'd be willing to say that guys are more manipulative towards other guys, not towards women.
If we can reshape the lives of all those around us, surely we are being changed by everyone else's actions, correct? We, for the most part, must be at least subconsciously aware of this manipulation, and the only way to see through it is to be active in our lives, instead of floating through as many of us are accustomed to doing.
With that in mind, why is it that human beings are so shallow in their encounters with others? Without regard towards the effects of our actions, we can carelessly ruin the days of others, perhaps even years and/or lives. Frankly, the pain of rejection is something that burns and decays inside of us, shaping us into fearful organisms that learn to reap the pleasure and contentment of everyone around us. What happens when a dog is kicked by its master, doesn't it learn to bite back eventually? So why are we any different?
The fact is that we are not different in any way. Dogs learn aggression by being shown aggression, we learn pain from being hurt, and then we dish out this pain later on.
And I'm out for now...to be continued in the same vein...

Can we get past the past?

It's a cyclical moral we're always taught throughout our lives, the monotonous repetition of a net that we fall comfortably back onto whenever we refuse to accept blame: History is doomed to repeat itself. Sure, it does tend to have trends of the horrible nature of humanity, but when does history repeat itself for the better? Not really ever.
The part of history that seems to recur constantly is the hatred, the intolerance. Genocides and war are the only things that truly happen in almost the exact same way to the exact same people, over and over again. For example, the Jews have forever been blamed for the hardships faced in Europe. Even to this day with Schroder in Germany and Chirac in France, the Jews are targeted as scape goats. Also, homosexuals in this country have been blamed for many diseases and also many "plagues." Sure, AIDS was widespread among gay citizens in the 1980's and 1990's, but now that it's everywhere, we refuse to support monogamy between two men or two women, therefore having the "sanctity of marriage" ideal absolutely askew.

Where am I going, you may ask. Well, history seems to only repeat the horrors and the hatreds. And that's what we focus on in school, isn't it? My point is, what if schools focused on peace and love in history? Sure, it would create a neo-Capitalist environment amongst students, but it's better than having another Apartheid.
Another problem is that there are so FEW examples of peace and love in history, the course would take a few weeks, tops. So we, in America, use the methods of either conservative half-truths or violent exposes. The latter method is a bit dangerous, as with violence we receive a couple responses: for some, the violence shocks the students into pacifism and the search for true justice. For others, it simply dulls the shock of violence in our children. Another response could be the absolute opposite of progress: complacence through using the half-truth history of our textbooks, relying on the surfaced, censorship-riddled "facts" of our time on this planet, exploring and exploiting every resource possible.

This leads me to my next idea. With history repeating itself, why does personal history seem to repeat itself? Is it because of our attitude? Since I've been hurt so much, does my defeatism towards relationships hinder me from attracting a girl? Does the fact that a past relationship ended quickly and painfully mean that the next will end badly as well? I'm beginning to find the patterns in my life, and I don't really know whether or not coincidence is involved.

In conclusion, because shit happens -- or sh'appens, to use the parlance of our times -- we are programmed or conditioned into setting up the perfect environment necessary in which that shit can thrive. Can we ever let go of our history and start over? We see movies about computer-ruled civilization as a pure work of fantasy, but the stories about one man parting an ocean or another walking on water, those are non-fiction? THAT's history? When can we finally get away from the fiction of history and start over, ignoring the past and not learning from any mistakes, because, frankly, we haven't learned shit from them. Can we get past the past before the future is ruined, or did we waste too much time in the past looking at the past and seeing nothing but grey matter.