It has taken me a million days to perform the simple task of posting this video because
1. I went fugue & got lost in bizarre new interests & only recently remembered who I was again.
2. We aquired a second dog- Patton- who was found wandering an intersection downtown. He appears to be a 4 month old german shepherd mix & has a lot of energy.
3. We do not have heat & the house is very cold, making it challenging to perform simple tasks, like cooking & brushing teeth. Normally I would rise to the challenge & use it as an opportunity to go full on pioneer, but something about the cold combined with the stress of the new puppy has knocked me out of orbit a little bit, and accomplishing daily tasks has taken on the feel of climbing a mountain.
None of which has anything to do with this song though. It is just me wanting to say hi.
We were sitting together on the front porch swing
You started talking about everything
Like how the white man stole your land away
And I felt in my heart like I was to blame
Like it was my fault and I felt this shame
And then I felt your feathers tickle me
We were sitting on the porch drinking lemonade
Both wearing sneakers that were Nike made
When I first felt your feathers tickle me
Well I thought it must have been the wind on my shoe
Till I first caught sight of your big canoe
Moving slowly through those waters towards me
And though I ain’t been good, I could start tomorrow
Won’t cause nobody no more sorrow
Just please, sir, take your feathers off of me
Just take that green feather off my thigh
That red feather off my eye
Just pull your yellow feather out of me
It felt like running through the woods at night
I could feel your breath but their was nothing in sight
I could feel my soul just running away to die
Your skin was sticky but it wasn’t red
Your three feathers lined up in my head
As three feather man came slowly over me
Like curdled milk in a broken vase
A dead white man without a face
I could see that crooked finger point to me
Put that green feather on my thigh
That red feather on my eye
Put that yellow feather into me
It don’t mean nothing that you spared my life
Cause it ain’t worth nothing now since that night
Cause Jesus saw your feathers touching me
Yeah God was watching from his starlit sky
Staring me down with that humongous eye
And I know God won’t be forgiving me
And I know I’ m deserving of all this and more
Dirtier than dirt more down than a floor
But Three Feather Man I’m begging you for mercy
Just take your green feather off my thigh
That red feather off my eye
Pull that yellow feather out of me
Trying to relate to the person I was when I wrote this song, a week or two ago. So much has happened since then. Do you ever feel like you know who you are, but then you realize it was never you, you were just possessed by someone else’s ghost? That is sort of what happened to me.
About a year ago, you see, I started feeling unbearably jealous around the clock. Not jealous of anything in particular, but just this endless jealous feeling would that never let up. I would just wake up feeling painfully jealous and then try to figure out who or what I was jealous of. I tried all of the classical remedies for jealousy- like carrying holly leaves in your pocket- but none of them made a dent. And the more jealous I became, the more suspicious, sly & paranoid I grew as well.
Eventually I just grew to accept that I was a supernaturally jealous person and there was nothing I could do about it.
Until a couple days ago, when I was looking at the dark green cloud covering my stomach, and realized that these actually weren’t my feelings of at all- I was just absorbing other people’s negative green feelings like a sponge. I think this is pretty common really, for people to be sponging up the negative emotions of others. Some people are more sponge-like than others though, and also specialize in sponging up different sorts of colors.
Although I am pretty far on the sponge end of the spectrum, I have met a couple people who are more spongy than me. When I am around them, I always feel better, knowing if I stand near them I will magically become poised and collected, while they will start babbling incoherently and then slip on a banana peel.
So always keep someone more spongy than yourself around, is my advice. Or if you are a man, just get married and there is an 80% chance your wife will do the trick.
Random Thought #1: I don’t know how much longer I can keep making recordings because it is so much pain just to get the most primordial recording. Technology is cold and hard. I wish there was a plastic pink recording machine made for kids that I could use with just a few chubby buttons to press and no cords.
Random Thought #2: You can never reach Truth, but the search for it causes your reality to expand. I think that is the whole purpose of truth- not to pin down reality, but to open it up. Though I don’t consider myself a virtuous person, Truth would probably be one of my favorite virtues, if I had to choose. It is always exciting and gives you little chills up and down your spine.
If I had to choose a God, I might choose the God of Truth, because I do believe truth will set us free. And the more truth we know- including dark truth- the more we realize everything is okay. Somehow, we are already living in Teddy Bear World and just don’t know it. I hope.
Random Dog Photo: Downtown with Slippers observing city life. People who go out 2 have fun at night- What do they do? we wondered. Why & how do they do it?
For me, this song captures what I see as the essence of West Virginia, which is earthiness combined with mysticism, violence combined with faith…
Fun Fact: Did you know that (in some circles) it is considered rude to refer to cats/dogs/etc as “animals” with the preferred term being “country folk?”
