This song was inspired by the fairies of fire, and the book “Enchantment of the Faerie Realm” by Ted Andrews, a book I wish I still owned. Although many of my beliefs (like the belief that wearing designer clothes will make you rich) have changed over the years, my faith in fairies has never wavered. What else could explain the growth of plants and those tiny smiley faces you see in the sunbeams?
Download MP3: Burn Baby
I used to believe in “Silver-haired soldiers,” which is more or less the notion that older men are wiser and more benevolent than younger ones. Unfortunately, while they may be wiser, I have learned the hard way that they are by no means more benevolent. Personalities can soften and harden, hearts can open and close, but wolves never seem to turn into sheep, no matter how much time you give them.
But I do think older predators tend to take on more lofty and benevolent personas than younger ones. They are more subtle and shrewd, and very rarely seen outside of their sheep’s clothing.
As for whether or not people get wiser over time, it is hard to say. Time brings perspective and experience, but also pain and unresolved emotions which can thicken into phlegm and finally dry into a hard crust inside our hearts and brains.
But still, I do think we have faculties that continue opening up to us throughout our life, including psychic and supernatural ones, even though many of these may be outside the vision of our culture.
“Let no one beneath the age of 84 years call himself a man.” -Confucius
Download MP3: Shed Some Blood
I feel like I need to come up with a wholesome explanation for the sentiments expressed in this song, and luckily I have one. It is a song about fire. As I’ve mentioned before, I used to be very very interested in fire and the spirits of fire, despite not being a very fiery person by nature. My obsession with fire may have had a bit of Helsinki Syndrome to it, since it only began after being dominated by some extremely fiery people that I was unable to escape. Over time the obsession grew into addiction (to fire), and a compulsion to remove everything watery from my nature. The mania really only ended when the fire had nothing left to burn, when I no longer had any friends, possessions or even brain cells to call my own.
The nature of fire is to touch and consume, to tear down boundaries and remove clothes. That is what fire does, I don’t know why, and those are the sorts of images fire gives to people close to it.
Download MP3: Ring of Fire
One of my dearest wishes, at the time I wrote this song, was to be illiterate. If only I could have a clean and unconditioned mind, I felt there were so many things I could do and know… the sky would be the limit for me.
Books written by humans seemed like a distraction to me- a way of constraining my mind within a narrow bandwidth of information- when the whole world that surrounded me, with all its colors, shapes, and fragrances, was a page of a book written in the language of the angels (which I called Angelese). Angelese is a language of symbols and the senses, the notion that everything we perceive around us is deeply meaningful and that our hearts are naturally capable of discerning this meaning.
Because people lie all the time, and constantly distort the truth. But in the book of angels, the truth will always be written out, clear as day. As the pedophile walks down the street, there will be a sign, an impression somewhere, that tells you who he is.
Download MP3: Life Everlasting
I think only me and Prince know what it feels like to write a bunch of sexual-sounding songs and then become a Jehovah’s Witness (or marry one in my case). The horrors & humiliations of suddenly seeing yourself through the eyes of a librarian. Oh well. The fact is, that fire used to be my favorite element, and fire always makes things come out sounding a little sexual, regardless of how scholarly your intent is.
Download MP3: Fuck Me All Night Long
Coldness- my mortal enemy. The only good thing about cold places and cold people is that they give you some relief after being burned by hot people. Sometimes I cannot even bear the presence of my second favorite color-sky blue- because of the sad and empty feelings that can go along with it. Some cold feelings are alright, because they can easily be washed away with a hug or a shopping spree. But there is a second type of coldness that doesn’t disappear in the presence of warm things.
Download MP3: Father I’m Cold
I wrote this song while living in Los Angeles… I heard these tiny, little voices singing it in unison while I was sleeping, so I woke up & wrote it down, although it seemed like an odd little song, and not very rock n’ rolly.
Download MP3: Methodius’ Stand
Hmmm… I don’t know what to say about this song. Generally, I write down a song exactly as I hear it, without questioning it’s meaning too much, because I have a lot of faith in the images that well up from our subconscious minds. In fact, I think the symbols of our minds are generally more literal than symbolic. They are our way of registering information we are not consciously aware of.
For example, we might say “He turned green with envy” and see that as a figure of speech, but what if the person did actually- on a subtle level- turn green due to envy? Or let’s say we have a dream in which a demon is chasing us; we may conclude that the demon symbolizes our horrible boss. But what if the boss is so horrible simply because he is possessed by a demon- the exact same demon we saw in our dream?
Download MP3: Fade Away
I wrote this song while living in Nashville, where- just as in L.A.– it was a great struggle to go out and perform every night while living in the grips of extreme shyness and stage fright.
In my Nashville apartment I had two bathrooms, so one of my anti-shyness therapies involved filling one bathtub with scalding hot water and one bathtub with ice cold water and then running back and forth between the two to submerge myself. It was not fun, but as usual I was hoping that causing myself physical pain would make performing less painful by comparison.
The one “therapy” that actually worked- at least in the short term- was putting sage oil on a handkerchief and breathing through it while driving to the venue. By the time I had reached my destination, inhibitions seemed to have magically vanished, and I could walk onto the stage with only a healthy handful of butterflies..But then I read that sage oil is toxic, and that was the end of that.
Download MP3: Candy from a Baby
At the time I wrote this song, I was very into soldiers. I had recently read Gandhi’s biography, and he talked about how he thought of himself as a soldier and tried to live accordingly.
I also tried to be a soldier, and pushed myself to be brave as much as possible, which caused me to have no respect for men whose primary goal in life was to pleasure themselves.
But, being by nature shy and cowardly, it took A LOT of work to be brave, and in the end wasn’t worth it… just like a naturally plump person trying to be super thin, or a skeletal person trying to be obese, it is bound to cause some strain when you try to diverge too much from your nature.
So, I had to come up with many crutches to help me push beyond my emotional comfort zone, such as taking ice cold baths (covering my whole body, including head dunks), and eating insane amounts of ginger. I disliked ginger, but found that if I ate enough (and it took a LOT) I was no longer able to feel butterflies in my stomach, just a warm gingery sensation.
I guess the Shanghai Trio were the embodiment of who I was trying to be- three beings dressed in red, made of fire, and afraid of nothing.
Download MP3: Shanghai Trio