Categories
Earth, Pink, Mothers, Love Hurricane, West Virginia Music & Songs Purple, Magic & Sorcerers Red, Soldiers, & Fire

The Brown Library

 

He thought there must be some lines in the earth he could follow,
Hidden by snow, but he’d possibly find them in spring.
A grid made of brown that would lead to the crown of tomorrow…

Hail to the rose!
Hail to the sky!
Teach me to live;
Teach me to die.

In the snow it was cold but some hope filled his body;
Golden liquid that quickened the fire in his brain.
He had a theory the earth was surrounded by knowledge;
A shimmering library accessed by unbearable pain.

When I close my eyes- Ah!
Like a flame through my fingers it burns, like a fire through my heart.
When I close my eyes- No!
It eludes me a pain in my shoulders, a dimming echo.

Hail to the rose!
Hail to the sky!
Teach me to live,
Teach me to die.

His blue eyes scanned the skies though he knew they were empty;
Only fools look for schools where the airy birds fly.
Something told him the brown of the ground held the answers;
His desire for the fire left him willing to die.

Won’t you take me inside of your library
Prepared to hurt, lay my screams in your dirt?
Won’t you take me inside of your library
Prepared to bleed for the answers I need?

Hail to the rose!
Hail to the sky!
Teach me to live,
Teach me to die.

 

Download MP3: The Brown Library

Categories
Music & Songs Nashville Red, Soldiers, & Fire Uncategorized

Mikael

 

Mikael: Nude bald woman with sword and shield.   A song about the angel of fire…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Mikael

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

Ring of Fire

 

Nude Lady with green fire hose on red background.

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

Categories
Music & Songs Nashville Red, Soldiers, & Fire

Fuck Me All Night Long

 

Nude woman with basketball.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

Categories
Brooklyn Music & Songs

Lucky One

 

Pygmy with acanthus leaf, bones, and stars.In the movie Brooklyn’s Finest, a Brooklyn cop goes on a killing spree in order afford a safer home for his family. I can totally relate to his feelings, and yet, I kept wanting to yell at him, “Move to Indiana! Why don’t you just move to Indiana!! Don’t you realize there is cheaper housing there?!?”

Why does Brooklyn even exist- why doesn’t everyone just move to Indiana? What is the upside to Brooklyn? As far as I can tell, there isn’t more stuff to do, there isn’t greater earning potential… so, what gives?

At any rate, this is another song I wrote while struggling to keep my head above water in the belly of that concrete monster. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the hardest things to deal with was feeling deprived of all the things that make life feel happy and comfortable, like friends, nature, a happy home, a slice of pizza that hasn’t been held in a stranger’s dirty hands. My mind would spin around and around trying to think of ways I could bring this lost pastoral energy back into my life (Because somehow, just as in Brooklyn’s Finest, the idea that I could simply leave never seemed to enter my mind.)

At one point, I was convinced that the color orange was the answer. I saw Brooklyn as basically being the Kingdom of Gray, and thought orange might be the color that could cut through the thick dullness that gray represented, and bring in the energy of the Harvest, that time when all your efforts are rewarded and all the seeds you have planted come to fruition.

So, not having much money to spend on the color orange, I bought a basketball, a pair of orange high top shoes (the only orange shoes I could find for $9), plus some orange tissue paper and candles. I taped the orange paper to my wall and lit the orange candles beneath it. But when I opened my door, the paper caught fire and flew across the room like a giant orange monster, landing on the floor where I stomped it out (and then extinguished the wall). I decided to put the orange candles on my kitchen table instead, and let them burn through the night so I could wake up and enjoy my harvest in the morning. Instead, I was woken by a strange sound that turned out to be the entire surface of my kitchen table burning. The spirits of the harvest at work!

 

Download MP3: Lucky One

Categories
Blue, Black, Silver, Water, Moons, Death & Ghosts Music & Songs Nashville The Odyssey

Star of Telemachus


Painting of flame orange girl with blue eyes.

One of the last Odyssey songs… I was so enamored with fire at the time, that I would sometimes light up to 100 candles in a single room of my house. The air would get all hot and swirly and it felt like sitting in an oven. In addition, I was addicted to the fiery stimulation of performing. I couldn’t go one day without it, and if I had to, I would find some kind of trouble to get into to make up for it. Soon after writing this, I decided to move to Las Vegas so I could be free from the dampening, depressing effects of water once and for all.

But, in this song, are already the first cracks of doubt that fire is really the answer to everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Star of Telemachus

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

Shanghai Trio


Painting of Jackson Rice, John Henderson, and Julien Aklei on horse and buggy with hot air balloons.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

Categories
Earth, Pink, Mothers, Love Music & Songs New Hampshire

Home

Back in the day, there was one Greek philosopher who believed everything is made of fire, one who believed everything is made of air, one who believed everything is made of water, and one who believed everything is made of earth. The one who believed everything is made of fire also believed that change and impermanence are the true nature of life (a common belief today as well). The one who believed everything is made of earth believed that nothing ever changes and that permanence is the true nature of life.

Perhaps there is one layer of life which is constantly in flux, and perhaps this layer tends to grab our attention because of its unpredictable, dramatic, and anxiety-producing nature.   But beneath that, isn’t there also something so constant and steady, so soft and reassuring,  that it is easy for us to forget it is even there?

This song is about that realm of  comfort that lies beneath the more teetering aspects of our lives- the element of Earth!!

The Letter: To Black Hole's surprise, a mysterious letter arrives in the mail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download MP3: Home

Categories
Kentucky Minerals, Mountains, Crystals, Ice, and White Music & Songs

Ice Man

 

Another song about someone dying from hypothermia.  It was inspired by this magazine cover…

OUTSIDE MAGAZINE. Survival: Who lives, who dies, and why. Why do I like songs about people dying from hypothermia?  Because as humans, we need our world to stay just the right temperature.  We lose our ability to live if things get too hot or too cold.  Sometimes, we compensate for an excess of warmth or an excess of coldness in ways that prove detrimental to us later… for example, if our lives feel too cold we might engage in excessive risk taking or drama making, or if things feel too hot and chaotic we might isolate ourselves and hide behind a computer screen.

But, there is only so much we can compensate for, and eventually these hostile forces overtake us.  When there is not enough love and nobody seems to care about us, we can compensate for a while, but eventually the ice creeps into our soul and we lose the ability to move, to reach out, to feel, to care, and finally even the will to live is extinguished.

It makes me think of the following poem by Robert Frost:

 

 

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Download MP3: Iceman