Limits, Love and the Bends...

I'm in the midst of "Road Crash"...the diver's sickness of touring road musicians. Like the bends, coming up too fast from deep water, one can get sick or even die, road crash is similar, stopping too fast from a long tour, one can get sick too...a mental sickness. Depression. Noting that the mind and body affects each other, the body can follow suit with a delayed reaction as well.

In my funkiness, my mind wanders freely tripping on almost everything it sees, hears, and feels. The term "Limits" come to mind immediately. Whisked in time back to college, I think of my Calculus class. I was scared of this mysterious math until I started it, and then basked in the glorious light of it's simplicity of design and power of it's use. Damn...Newton... Anyway, limits. Limits can always be expressed, even the so called limitless ones. With us on Earth, we are bound by them. For me, limits are a freedom. With limitless possibilities I stand frozen in the choices, creativity spins its wheels grabbing on to nothing. But with limits, I can find a starting point, I must be creative to try to break my bounded glory. This is the sweet marrow of life for me!

While the idea that we are limitless is bandied around...I find this preposterous, even hurtful to us, because in a way, it cages us in. For example, Love. "We have the unlimited capacity to love." Bullshit. Yea...you can loosely say "I love all things.", "I love all people.", "I love all life."....yea....kinda. I don't know what kind of love you're talking about, because for me...I want to feel the love in every fiber of my being. Not this...vague fluffy misty notion of smiling at everyone and wishing them well. That might be more like being benevolent. Good will. I'm for these things mind you, let us just use the appropriate words here.

But love? Don't tell you love me because I just happen to be standing in front of you.

Love needs a commitment of emotional expense. There I've said it. Expense. It costs to love. Not money obviously, but feelings, emotions, mental and physical energy. Being in this world, in this body, limits are what we must deal with. Those that have happy lives have come to terms with this. Accepting our limitations is the first step. The second is pushing our limitations, expanding them to more we can imagine.

I think we need to expand love. The small, stingy idea that one or few people should be loved in a person's lifetime. Granted, it keeps things simple. But really? Deny love? Hell no! We need more love in the world not less...and no...I'm not talking about sex. I love a good fuck as much as anyone, but sex is an entirely different matter. At times, love and sex do hold hands with each other, it is sex that messes up people. Religion and societal mores have tried to bury the beast since we first got a hard on, it has never worked,  millions have died or been persecuted for it. Being homosexual, sexual deviant, or non-monogamous have kept the world spinning in fear, hate, and thrilled...like driving slowly by a car fire on the side of the road. "Is there blood?! I hope so! I mean...I hope they're okay...."

For a moment...just a moment, I'd like to take sex out of the picture. I know it's hard...ummm.... never mind...oh the double entendres. Love for love's sake. We can't invest the emotional expense of truly loving everything, but we can love a lot more than we do. We should not be scared of this. Many have a problem with this idea because sex will rear its juicy head and wham! We must stop it! We must ruin a person's reputation! It will ruin marriage! Our blessed union between two heterosexual people! These people will not only fight for what they believe, but they kill for it too. Because any shaken belief in a religion is a shaken belief of their immortality, mortality, and illusion of control.

This is not a 60's free love idea of all people fucking in the grass. I'm talking about letting yourself love more. It's okay. We can do it. We have it in us. We're limited, but not that limited. Invest a little more in the people around you and that you meet. You'll be surprised at yourself. Be warned...it can add more complications, it will cost you...but it can be a great return on what you've given. It can bring us closer to the real goal of true limitless love, that while we can't obtain here, maybe...just maybe we can possibly attain later after this world lets us go.

Super Heroes and the Straight Up Sideways Everyman...

Super heroes. Many movies and books are devoted to these characters. I like the genre. A glimpse into what we wish we could be, to dream of doing. Pure escapism and a middle finger to the nature of physics that binds us to the ground, no X-ray vision, laser beams and fire balls emanating from our eye balls or fingertips.

Thus is my point. Super heroes are not to be looked up to. In fact they are weak. We are the ones to be awed. Sure they can save the world, but can they endure it without their superpowers? Is it to be admired that Superman can fly up to Mount Everest in a single bound, or a simple man risking his very life to do it? Let us get away even from fantastic human feats. What about slugging it out in a menial job, raising a family, trying to survive, avoiding being eaten by the corporations and banks that want to enslave us? We are the real heroes.

While our super hero fetish is fun and puts a Kung Fu grip on boredom, we need to remember that what people do everyday is worth a movie. The gargantuan strength of out lasting the mundane, the levitation powers of rising above the muck and dredge of being limited, the Earth moving Will to endure a hard life and come out smiling.

These are the real heroes. Us.

One more thing. I'm not gonna put your face on my underwear or anything...just so we get that straight.

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The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass and the Poisoned Mind Part 4...

We performed at gig somewhere near Champagne, Illinois. I say somewhere because I don't know. I'm not trying to be coolly vague, just simply haven't a clue. When we arrived to our location, it was a winery. One would be quick to guess what the evening would be like and you would be most likely wrong.

First, the proprietors set us up with a campfire, with brats, picnic foods, marshmallows, chocolate bars, graham crackers... Wow. I was 12 years old again...which means I aged 4 years, because normally I feel like I'm 8 years old when I'm on tour.

Cooking our food with metal skewers over the fire...I easily get hypnotized staring into the fire. A fire kicks T.V.'s ass. Fire was the first television and in my opinion still is one of the most powerful visuals on Earth. Throw in the ocean, the sun, the moon, trees blowing in wind, a smile, those twinkly eyes we rarely show, birds flying...fuck television. Fuck the internet. We're missing it. We're missing everything.

I'm typing all this on my phone sadly...why am I doing this? Yea...I had a lot more to ramble about, but right now...at this moment...I need to be here. Listening to the frogs and the fire tell me their secrets and sing me songs of love, death, and sex.

Yea...gotta go.

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Peat Gets Choked Out From Singing Morrisey...

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The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass and the Poisoned Mind Part 3...

The dreaded empty show. No one's showed up. Five to ten people including the workers at the club. The most important gig you can play. This is the testing point. What you really bring to the show, when nothing is given back. If you can kill this show, ALL shows will be killed. This is the goal. Why drive ten hours to be mediocre? Why sacrifice income, relationships, and sanity to just show up and get by? Hell no. Damn no. Fuck no. Not me.

I had a talk with an artist last night after a gig in Kansas City at Davy's Uptown. She asked me, what do I get from my art. Get? Wrong and dangerous question. Get? There is no "get". It's about GIVE. You give and that's it. Give the truth. The truth of the moment. Anyone using "get" as the impetus for doing art is in for a world of unhappiness with super-special-mind-fuck-sauce.

We give until we die, and even then...even then we keep on giving. Art is to remind us that we are forever connected and bound to each other. The idea that "we are alone" is a sour-faced lie. We are never alone because we are permanently connected in the fabric of life, stars, gingham table cloth, dust, universe, etc. Good art brings us together.

Oh yea...back to my point...the empty nightmare show. Give what you've got and leave nothing left inside. You will be refilled and renewed to give the next day, and if you're not, tough shit and give it all you can anyway. It's what we do.

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The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass and the Poisoned Mind Part 2...

It's a rain day. Heading across Kansas. It's quiet time in the van. Everyone catching up on emails, texts, sleep or quietly typing out tweets and blogs. The homosexual double entendre innuendos have settled down....for now. Yes...we get in touch with our feminine side in the van. I mean...no one's pitching or catching...but we'll talk about it a lot. Pushing our boundaries and laughing every moment of the way. But like I said, it's quiet time. Our six year old kids inside us have taken a nap. No potty humor or farts are wielded in expert fashion. We're all grown up. Driving a fully loaded van through a down pour is serious business.

Out the window in Kansas there seems to be a preoccupation of Fireworks and Porn shops. Perhaps this is where Perry Ferrel named his band Porno for Pyros? Hmmmm...either way porn and fireworks is not what comes to mind when one drives through Kansas on Interstate 70. In fact, nothing comes to mind. Desolate, void of distraction and visual hyperbole. A Zen master's wet dream. When there is nothing, everything appears. That's how my brain works anyway. It's how I've always been. Give me nothing and I'll get everything. Creation out of nothingness. A gift. One everyone is given, but if rarely used it can become forgotten that in our little world, we can become a God. There I said it. A God. Mmmmm...panties in twist. So many scared fragile folks out there willing to kill me to save me.

Oooh look....a break in the clouds...I did wish it so...was it me? Nah...but it does mean a small respite from the storm and a few new texts have been sent my way...it has begun again. Hello blue...I've missed you.



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The Saga of Asphalt, Green Grass, and the Poisoned Mind Part 1...

The road. I'm on it. Few can take it for long. The romantic notions of being in a car/van for weeks/months is thought dreamily to many, and to 99.9% the reality is much harsher, disorienting, confusing, even nightmarish. The idea of literally being in a different city everyday with no end in sight is not natural for people. Not knowing what day, time, or place you are when you wake up unnerves the strongest of us. To be floaty. No stability and structure. Days and events blur into what seems like a dream from a long time ago but it was only yesterday.

To the other .1% of the population... it is Heaven. This is me. I am in my "happy place". I was built for this. Ever since I was a small child being in a car driven around by my mom to all the National Parks, my family moving 13 times by the time I was 11 years old due to the Army and then job transfers my father had to say yes to. When we got in our station wagon, it was ADVENTURE! Sights of the country rolling by my window, cars filled with people and their complicated lives bustling to a far off land. When you're on the road, your life isn't complicated anymore. It comes down to this... Where are we going? What do we have to do to get there? And finally the best part... being completely open to whatever the world lays at your feet, or what slaps you in the face. Everything. Everyday awaits a chance to meet new people, new land, new hope, and deeper knowledge about yourself. It is this last attribute the scares the living hell out everyone. Our perception/outlook/philosophy is tested to the breaking point. Life at full speed! Damn I get watery-eyed just thinking about it. Chills. Child-like excitement. With the preeminent thought of... what's next _____? (fill in the blank) The word could be World, Universe, God, Fate, Will, the Great OM... whatever you lay yourself open wide to. To submit to. In submission, freedom is found. This is a strong submission, meaning... standing tall, fearless of the fall, full commitment and full knowing. There is no death-spiral, but a life flight!

Oh World/Universe/God/Fate/Will/the Great OM! I give myself the thee!
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