Easter
This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2005 at 2:34 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: Parallel Universe Dub / The Nothing
word of the day: Renunciation / The action of renouncing the World, the flesh. Healthy: Freedom from deluded attachment to manifestation and form, popular with Saints and Bodhisattvas, and fully human beings. Pathological: Disassociative aversion to the World, manifestation, the body, etc, resulting in an inability to work freely within it and celebrate it as the radiance of Spirit. Popular with hypocritcal traitors to all sentient beings.
worked on ‘Easter’ last night with the band, new song about pathological hyper-agentic ascension. this is the (mostly male) spiritual syndrome where practitioners have an aversion to the World, bodies, humans, relationships, mundane commitments, and the day to day embodiment of love as expressed through really showing up PRESENT on the planet, in-form. i write about it because i’ve suffered from it all my life. it’s a problem with some men in Zen, but it’s probably equally so in any of the esoteric traditions. expanding the radious of “I” is a good thing. wanting to hide in the ether to escape life as a human is a bad thing. simple bypass, simple dissociation. but spiritual practioners can be such advanced bull-shitters, we wield an incredibly elaborate language for rationalizing this adolescence, there’s this incredibly sophisticated justification for it where we not only manage to deny we’re ill, but we inflate it, saying people just don’t get how INCREDIBLE and singular our realization is. but when it comes down to it, we’re just being lazy, selfish fuckers who wanna bail out on humanity and Earth. it’s not exotic, it’s not unique. see ya’ next time around, Karma kids! Earth loves a flunkie.
lyrics to Easter:
Easter
In the midst of the perfection
this princess starts bitching
In the arms of Elijah
this infant keeps twitchin’
This master that’s teaching
is a pupil repeating
This boxer loves headlines
but he couldn’t take a punch line
Someone slap me
I can’t stop laughing
suicide is back in fashion
But all ascenders
end up sinking
it makes love wonder
what fear is thinking
while
Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
(bury that bastard)
You’re two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you’re Jesus
proving you’re Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter
Right posture, right poses
Too bad what’s under the robes is
still cross-eyed in the witness
and searching for suchness
Back home God’s diamond
puts a diaper on the daughter of
a mystical martyr
who triggered a seizure
from making believe that
his body’s a disease
He’s wishing
for a World where
his vapor would thrive
and giving up his life
(as if he were alive)
He would have his wings
if feathers came from crutches
or that cushion he clutches
Someone slap me
I can’t stop laughing
suicide is back in fashion
But all ascenders
end up sinking
it makes love wonder
what fear is thinking
while
Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
(bury that bastard)
You’re two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you’re Jesus
proving you’re Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter
In the eye of a white tornado
in the pit of a black volcano
in the palm of a human hand
there’s a grain of this quick sand
Someone slap me
I can’t stop laughing
suicide is back in fashion
But all ascenders
end up sinking
makes love wonder
what the fuck we’re thinking
Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
(bury that bastard)
You’re two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you’re Jesus
proving you’re Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter
Easter
This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2005 at 2:34 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: Parallel Universe Dub / The Nothing
word of the day: Renunciation / The action of renouncing the World, the flesh. Healthy: Freedom from deluded attachment to manifestation and form, popular with Saints and Bodhisattvas, and fully human beings. Pathological: Disassociative aversion to the World, manifestation, the body, etc, resulting in an inability to work freely within it and celebrate it as the radiance of Spirit. Popular with hypocritcal traitors to all sentient beings.
worked on ‘Easter’ last night with the band, new song about pathological hyper-agentic ascension. this is the (mostly male) spiritual syndrome where practitioners have an aversion to the World, bodies, humans, relationships, mundane commitments, and the day to day embodiment of love as expressed through really showing up PRESENT on the planet, in-form. i write about it because i’ve suffered from it all my life. it’s a problem with some men in Zen, but it’s probably equally so in any of the esoteric traditions. expanding the radious of “I” is a good thing. wanting to hide in the ether to escape life as a human is a bad thing. simple bypass, simple dissociation. but spiritual practioners can be such advanced bull-shitters, we wield an incredibly elaborate language for rationalizing this adolescence, there’s this incredibly sophisticated justification for it where we not only manage to deny we’re ill, but we inflate it, saying people just don’t get how INCREDIBLE and singular our realization is. but when it comes down to it, we’re just being lazy, selfish fuckers who wanna bail out on humanity and Earth. it’s not exotic, it’s not unique. see ya’ next time around, Karma kids! Earth loves a flunkie.
lyrics to Easter:
Easter
In the midst of the perfection
this princess starts bitching
In the arms of Elijah
this infant keeps twitchin’
This master that’s teaching
is a pupil repeating
This boxer loves headlines
but he couldn’t take a punch line
Someone slap me
I can’t stop laughing
suicide is back in fashion
But all ascenders
end up sinking
it makes love wonder
what fear is thinking
while
Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
(bury that bastard)
You’re two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you’re Jesus
proving you’re Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter
Right posture, right poses
Too bad what’s under the robes is
still cross-eyed in the witness
and searching for suchness
Back home God’s diamond
puts a diaper on the daughter of
a mystical martyr
who triggered a seizure
from making believe that
his body’s a disease
He’s wishing
for a World where
his vapor would thrive
and giving up his life
(as if he were alive)
He would have his wings
if feathers came from crutches
or that cushion he clutches
Someone slap me
I can’t stop laughing
suicide is back in fashion
But all ascenders
end up sinking
it makes love wonder
what fear is thinking
while
Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
(bury that bastard)
You’re two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you’re Jesus
proving you’re Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter
In the eye of a white tornado
in the pit of a black volcano
in the palm of a human hand
there’s a grain of this quick sand
Someone slap me
I can’t stop laughing
suicide is back in fashion
But all ascenders
end up sinking
makes love wonder
what the fuck we’re thinking
Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
(bury that bastard)
You’re two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you’re Jesus
proving you’re Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter
dirty purity
This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2005 at 1:45 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: autumn leaves / Benny Golson version
word of the day: cullion 1, a testicle 2, a base despicable person 3, an orchid
Darlings! How are you? It’s a splendid day, here’s a toast wishing you and yours a healthy semblence today. Isn’t the word “cullion” curious? I love a word that has such disparate definitions, An Orchid or a testicle, or an asshole. You pick, cuz with “cullion” you get it all. I also have to mention here that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is the only one with two shits in the crowded field of dictionaries. None of the other dictionaries even listed “testicle” as one of the definitions of cullion, and their etymologies always suck. The Shorter Oxford (two volumes) is, in my experience (and I’ve snooped around a lot over the years) the only dictionary you need once you get it. I got mine for under $100 like ten years ago, you can still get it all this time later for $96.00. It has never disappointed- gives one a sense of the stunning depth of this language, a half million entries in the Shorter Oxford. That’s the SHORTER Oxford. You can get the Complete 20 Volume Oxford English Dictionary for about $900, or if you’re a big shot, go for the special >Blue Leather Edition of all 20 Volumes, it’s only $5,000.
I’ve been writing new songs of late, wrote one yesterday called ‘Dirty Purity’. It’s really quite peculiar the way inspiration works. A while back I had a conversation with Ottmar Leibert, and one of the things he said that I loved and has stuck with me was something like ‘there’s no such thing as purity, all purity is polluted, absolute purity is an illusion’. That’s not a quote, but was the direction of what he said. I really loved it. It’s so true, and even the illusion of total purity (racial, theological, philosophical, cultural) is a symptom of a pathological absolutism, it is actually a corruption, distortion, or toxicity. The natural tendency of things, whether on a Cosmic, human, or sub-atomic scale, is to intermingle and entwine in an inextricable weave of all four quadrants. Not only is it impossible to completely isolate or insulate an occasion, to do so results in sickness and imbalance. A closed system is either dead or dying. This doens’t just apply to exteriors (matter, physical objects, bodies, planets, molecules, etc) but to interiors as well (thought, emotion, psyche, spirit, etc). The individuality of a discrete entity is only possible and only sustained through an infinite set of relationships. Even the discrete entity itself, the Whole (let’s say a human being) is comprised entirely of interdependent parts (atoms in relation, molecules in relation, individuated microbioted life forms in relations, colonies of microbiotic life forms working in concert, and so on, as well as with the mind, emotion, and soul, emerging from and always abiding in the context of the collective, respirating the atmospheric conditions of its culture and intersubjective space) Ottmar’s thought reminded me of what Vidyuddeva says about clarity and confusion -we think there can only be clarity if there is the total eradication of confusion, but that is confusion. Both of these sentiments fall right in line with sense of things as a human. When we really dig in, and see things just as they are, not as we wish them to be in terms of our categories, “pure” and “dirty”, “good” and “evil” do not ultimately remain. They’re part of the flux. I know you may be saying “But aren’t the four quadrants nothing but categories, isn’t the integral model just a very sophisticated map?” Yes, it is. The crucial difference that makes the Integral Map unique is that it is a map that asks you to move beyond the maps. It points at all sorts of things, inside, outside, up, down- but it always comes back to saying that you should actually conduct the experiment. Cognitive apprehension is useful, and is part of the game, but it’s important to go beyond that. And Integral continually begs us to not take its word for anything, to not simply convert all the data into yet another elaborate system of parsing reality into bite-sized chunks. It wants us to use the map to get beyond the maps, and once we’ve done that, use them as convenient, effective tools when appropriate. Nobody denies integral is just a map, it’s just the best map I personally know of, and it’s precisely because of this unusual facet. Anywya, after Ottmar and I had chatted on the phone, he sent me this Nine Inch Nails album (I like it) and that got me in sort of gritty mood musically, and yesterday I was ruminating in my heart on this false dichotomy of pure / polluted, good / evil, and then I laughed when I started chanting “Dirty Purity”. I knew there was a song there, your basic Tantric pop song. I also had a feeling that I wanted to write a simple song with a charge. I get wary of my over-intellectualizing in songs sometimes, it has its place, but only sometimes. It’s got to resonate with the gut first. Because of that, before I started writing the song, I decided the chorus could only be two words, ‘dirty purity’. I could write verses and stuff, but I wanted the chorus to be simple guts and drive.
The first thing that came up for me when I started writing this song was my wife. To me she is the living embodiment of ‘dirty purity’, not because of some perversion or ascetism, but because she really gets the complementary, intimate relationship between the muck and grit of incarnation, and how that is truly the Light, the Ecstatic Radiance of Love, and that only by LIVING that truth in the World does the realization grow into the spontaneous expression. it’s not merely cognitive for her. my wife has taught me by living example how baby shit in a diaper is the divine light of God. she doesn’t talk talk talk yap yap yap all goddamn day about God, Buddha, spirituality like all the blah blah blahs (hey, like what i’m doing right now!), she GETS it intellectually just fine, but that’s 2% of the practice. 98% is living as that love in the World, not to show off, not to “evolve” for your own sake. so my wife has been my biggest inspiration, because each day with her and our daughter, i’m face to face with someone who is really going way beyond all the maps, dropping all the philosophical models, and demanding that the practice include everything, especially house cleaning, screaming babies, sleep deprivation, yard work, and not as a sacrifice, as a privilege and celebration of the Mystery. and that is what hit me as Dirty Purity. you get in the fucking trenches of love. for me, that is only possible because i live with a Dakini. left to my own pathetic devices and inclinations, i would resort to the big lie of ‘purity’. it’s a disease that’s not uncommon to Zen practitioners, especially men. we try to live in the world without the messy entanglements of relationships and the messy, ridiculous challenges they bring every day. we don’t want to be encumbered, embarrassed, and anchored on Earth where there is all sorts of shitty puzzles banging on your heart and head every day, so we ensconce ourselves in a virtual “cave” and stare at the fucking wall. we say it’s for the sake of all beings everywhere, we talk a perfect game of loving and dying for the sake of the Whole, but it’s a fucking bypass. It’s the oldest trick in the transpersonal book. The last and most dangerous disguise the ego appropriates is the Trans-Egoic. And this is why I love Genpo. He works with the ego, not endlessly trying to destroy it. Cuz you know what? You can’t. Fucking forget about Ramana Maharshi, he’s literally one in 6 Billion. As long as there is a body that’s alive, there is an ego, and forever and a day now Zen and other traditions have sought to kill the ego. You can’t kill it. It will ultimately retreat to the most inner recesses of the soul itself and stay there, until the next fucking incarnation, blocking, occluding, and scrambling the important work that might otherwise be occuring in the authentic, real trans-personal domains of our Self. As with everything, it is not an either / or, this / that binary reality. It is the messy miracle of existence which is both the reality of the fucked up, grasping cluthing ego, AND the even more real existence of an awareness which is beyond that, which is not defined or characterized by its impermanent (and miraculous) qualities or characteristics. That is dirty purity to me, and that is what I see my wife unfolding every day with our daughter, our life, and the struggles of being awake in the constant, ferocious white noise of the World and the Human mind. This is why Genpo has an entirely revolutionary approach for a Zen teacher. He STARTS with the ego. He knocks on the front door of the house, and when the ego answers the door (as it always does, even when it’s not the ego answering the door, it’s STILL the ego answering the door, dressed up as some non-egoic costume called “the soul” or the “trans-temporal self” or whatever) Genpo says “Hi.” the ego says “Hi”. then, Genpo starts to ask a few questions, with respect and dignity, simply ASKING the ego if we can come into the house through the front door, and walk around a bit. can we have the ego’s permission to talk to some of the other aspects of self? the answer is always yes. if you just ASK the ego, it will allow you access to the other parts of self, moving through deeper and deeper aspects of self until finally entrance is gained to Big Heart and Big Mind, the Self which unfolds and expresses as all the other smaller selves, but is not any one of them.
it sounds simple, doesn’t it? because it is. but it’s entirely radical. Zen, and most esoteric traditions, have long regarded the ego as the enemy, as that which must be destroyed and annihilated before there can be awakening, before there can be realization. but to paraphrase Vid, seeking clarity by thinking we have to obliterate all confusion is just confusion. “the worst kind of non-duality is the non-duality that thinks it’s better than non-non-duality”. (i thought i heard Genpo say that once, but then i asked him and he said he didn’t say it, so i don’t know where i got it, maybe Vid said it?)
to me, dirty purity is the way my wife shows up in the World, it’s the way Genpo works with the human condition, it’s the way Vid teaches about confusion and clarity, and it’s what ottmar shared with me. i hate sharing lyrics without music, because it’s like watching a movie with no sound, but since i’ve talked about this song so much today, what the hell.
Dirty Purity
I’m in love
with the homeless girl
who carved a cave
into the World
She crawled out
all covered in blood
and dripped red seeds
into the mud
Filthy deity
Shut up, shut up
Shut up already
with the temple talk
you’re freaking me out
What up, what up
What up with the six-limbed Siren
beating it out
of every part of me
Dirty purity
Dirty purity
At first I bought it all
And then I fought it all
Next I forgot it all
But I’m not done
Not at all
With cryptic clarity
Would I, would I
Would I scatter if
I just admit
I’m already dead
Should it, should it
Should it matter if
my mind won’t fit
back in my head
friction is sanity is
Dirty purity
Dirty purity
Nothing moves
something switches
Question marks
and crucifixes
Odd how it was
only eyelids
kept me blinded
from the light
in open obscurity
Dirty purity
Dirty purity
dirty purity
This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2005 at 1:45 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: autumn leaves / Benny Golson version
word of the day: cullion 1, a testicle 2, a base despicable person 3, an orchid
Darlings! How are you? It’s a splendid day, here’s a toast wishing you and yours a healthy semblence today. Isn’t the word “cullion” curious? I love a word that has such disparate definitions, An Orchid or a testicle, or an asshole. You pick, cuz with “cullion” you get it all. I also have to mention here that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is the only one with two shits in the crowded field of dictionaries. None of the other dictionaries even listed “testicle” as one of the definitions of cullion, and their etymologies always suck. The Shorter Oxford (two volumes) is, in my experience (and I’ve snooped around a lot over the years) the only dictionary you need once you get it. I got mine for under $100 like ten years ago, you can still get it all this time later for $96.00. It has never disappointed- gives one a sense of the stunning depth of this language, a half million entries in the Shorter Oxford. That’s the SHORTER Oxford. You can get the Complete 20 Volume Oxford English Dictionary for about $900, or if you’re a big shot, go for the special >Blue Leather Edition of all 20 Volumes, it’s only $5,000.
I’ve been writing new songs of late, wrote one yesterday called ‘Dirty Purity’. It’s really quite peculiar the way inspiration works. A while back I had a conversation with Ottmar Leibert, and one of the things he said that I loved and has stuck with me was something like ‘there’s no such thing as purity, all purity is polluted, absolute purity is an illusion’. That’s not a quote, but was the direction of what he said. I really loved it. It’s so true, and even the illusion of total purity (racial, theological, philosophical, cultural) is a symptom of a pathological absolutism, it is actually a corruption, distortion, or toxicity. The natural tendency of things, whether on a Cosmic, human, or sub-atomic scale, is to intermingle and entwine in an inextricable weave of all four quadrants. Not only is it impossible to completely isolate or insulate an occasion, to do so results in sickness and imbalance. A closed system is either dead or dying. This doens’t just apply to exteriors (matter, physical objects, bodies, planets, molecules, etc) but to interiors as well (thought, emotion, psyche, spirit, etc). The individuality of a discrete entity is only possible and only sustained through an infinite set of relationships. Even the discrete entity itself, the Whole (let’s say a human being) is comprised entirely of interdependent parts (atoms in relation, molecules in relation, individuated microbioted life forms in relations, colonies of microbiotic life forms working in concert, and so on, as well as with the mind, emotion, and soul, emerging from and always abiding in the context of the collective, respirating the atmospheric conditions of its culture and intersubjective space) Ottmar’s thought reminded me of what Vidyuddeva says about clarity and confusion -we think there can only be clarity if there is the total eradication of confusion, but that is confusion. Both of these sentiments fall right in line with sense of things as a human. When we really dig in, and see things just as they are, not as we wish them to be in terms of our categories, “pure” and “dirty”, “good” and “evil” do not ultimately remain. They’re part of the flux. I know you may be saying “But aren’t the four quadrants nothing but categories, isn’t the integral model just a very sophisticated map?” Yes, it is. The crucial difference that makes the Integral Map unique is that it is a map that asks you to move beyond the maps. It points at all sorts of things, inside, outside, up, down- but it always comes back to saying that you should actually conduct the experiment. Cognitive apprehension is useful, and is part of the game, but it’s important to go beyond that. And Integral continually begs us to not take its word for anything, to not simply convert all the data into yet another elaborate system of parsing reality into bite-sized chunks. It wants us to use the map to get beyond the maps, and once we’ve done that, use them as convenient, effective tools when appropriate. Nobody denies integral is just a map, it’s just the best map I personally know of, and it’s precisely because of this unusual facet. Anywya, after Ottmar and I had chatted on the phone, he sent me this Nine Inch Nails album (I like it) and that got me in sort of gritty mood musically, and yesterday I was ruminating in my heart on this false dichotomy of pure / polluted, good / evil, and then I laughed when I started chanting “Dirty Purity”. I knew there was a song there, your basic Tantric pop song. I also had a feeling that I wanted to write a simple song with a charge. I get wary of my over-intellectualizing in songs sometimes, it has its place, but only sometimes. It’s got to resonate with the gut first. Because of that, before I started writing the song, I decided the chorus could only be two words, ‘dirty purity’. I could write verses and stuff, but I wanted the chorus to be simple guts and drive.
The first thing that came up for me when I started writing this song was my wife. To me she is the living embodiment of ‘dirty purity’, not because of some perversion or ascetism, but because she really gets the complementary, intimate relationship between the muck and grit of incarnation, and how that is truly the Light, the Ecstatic Radiance of Love, and that only by LIVING that truth in the World does the realization grow into the spontaneous expression. it’s not merely cognitive for her. my wife has taught me by living example how baby shit in a diaper is the divine light of God. she doesn’t talk talk talk yap yap yap all goddamn day about God, Buddha, spirituality like all the blah blah blahs (hey, like what i’m doing right now!), she GETS it intellectually just fine, but that’s 2% of the practice. 98% is living as that love in the World, not to show off, not to “evolve” for your own sake. so my wife has been my biggest inspiration, because each day with her and our daughter, i’m face to face with someone who is really going way beyond all the maps, dropping all the philosophical models, and demanding that the practice include everything, especially house cleaning, screaming babies, sleep deprivation, yard work, and not as a sacrifice, as a privilege and celebration of the Mystery. and that is what hit me as Dirty Purity. you get in the fucking trenches of love. for me, that is only possible because i live with a Dakini. left to my own pathetic devices and inclinations, i would resort to the big lie of ‘purity’. it’s a disease that’s not uncommon to Zen practitioners, especially men. we try to live in the world without the messy entanglements of relationships and the messy, ridiculous challenges they bring every day. we don’t want to be encumbered, embarrassed, and anchored on Earth where there is all sorts of shitty puzzles banging on your heart and head every day, so we ensconce ourselves in a virtual “cave” and stare at the fucking wall. we say it’s for the sake of all beings everywhere, we talk a perfect game of loving and dying for the sake of the Whole, but it’s a fucking bypass. It’s the oldest trick in the transpersonal book. The last and most dangerous disguise the ego appropriates is the Trans-Egoic. And this is why I love Genpo. He works with the ego, not endlessly trying to destroy it. Cuz you know what? You can’t. Fucking forget about Ramana Maharshi, he’s literally one in 6 Billion. As long as there is a body that’s alive, there is an ego, and forever and a day now Zen and other traditions have sought to kill the ego. You can’t kill it. It will ultimately retreat to the most inner recesses of the soul itself and stay there, until the next fucking incarnation, blocking, occluding, and scrambling the important work that might otherwise be occuring in the authentic, real trans-personal domains of our Self. As with everything, it is not an either / or, this / that binary reality. It is the messy miracle of existence which is both the reality of the fucked up, grasping cluthing ego, AND the even more real existence of an awareness which is beyond that, which is not defined or characterized by its impermanent (and miraculous) qualities or characteristics. That is dirty purity to me, and that is what I see my wife unfolding every day with our daughter, our life, and the struggles of being awake in the constant, ferocious white noise of the World and the Human mind. This is why Genpo has an entirely revolutionary approach for a Zen teacher. He STARTS with the ego. He knocks on the front door of the house, and when the ego answers the door (as it always does, even when it’s not the ego answering the door, it’s STILL the ego answering the door, dressed up as some non-egoic costume called “the soul” or the “trans-temporal self” or whatever) Genpo says “Hi.” the ego says “Hi”. then, Genpo starts to ask a few questions, with respect and dignity, simply ASKING the ego if we can come into the house through the front door, and walk around a bit. can we have the ego’s permission to talk to some of the other aspects of self? the answer is always yes. if you just ASK the ego, it will allow you access to the other parts of self, moving through deeper and deeper aspects of self until finally entrance is gained to Big Heart and Big Mind, the Self which unfolds and expresses as all the other smaller selves, but is not any one of them.
it sounds simple, doesn’t it? because it is. but it’s entirely radical. Zen, and most esoteric traditions, have long regarded the ego as the enemy, as that which must be destroyed and annihilated before there can be awakening, before there can be realization. but to paraphrase Vid, seeking clarity by thinking we have to obliterate all confusion is just confusion. “the worst kind of non-duality is the non-duality that thinks it’s better than non-non-duality”. (i thought i heard Genpo say that once, but then i asked him and he said he didn’t say it, so i don’t know where i got it, maybe Vid said it?)
to me, dirty purity is the way my wife shows up in the World, it’s the way Genpo works with the human condition, it’s the way Vid teaches about confusion and clarity, and it’s what ottmar shared with me. i hate sharing lyrics without music, because it’s like watching a movie with no sound, but since i’ve talked about this song so much today, what the hell.
Dirty Purity
I’m in love
with the homeless girl
who carved a cave
into the World
She crawled out
all covered in blood
and dripped red seeds
into the mud
Filthy deity
Shut up, shut up
Shut up already
with the temple talk
you’re freaking me out
What up, what up
What up with the six-limbed Siren
beating it out
of every part of me
Dirty purity
Dirty purity
At first I bought it all
And then I fought it all
Next I forgot it all
But I’m not done
Not at all
With cryptic clarity
Would I, would I
Would I scatter if
I just admit
I’m already dead
Should it, should it
Should it matter if
my mind won’t fit
back in my head
friction is sanity is
Dirty purity
Dirty purity
Nothing moves
something switches
Question marks
and crucifixes
Odd how it was
only eyelids
kept me blinded
from the light
in open obscurity
Dirty purity
Dirty purity
Voodoo Dolls
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2005 at 3:06 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: London Calling / The Clash
word of the day: Schwangerschaftsstreifen / german word meaning something like “stretch marks”
had a great reahearsal last night with the band. i’m not gonna tell you the names of the band members, or they’ll be drunk on the power for weeks. they need to focus, and if groupies start camping on their lawn, we’re going to see a spike in the local birth rate. not useful for rock. last night we worked on two other new songs, Voodoo Dolls and Easter. lyrics to Voodoo Dolls:
Voodoo Dolls
We’ve got a dollhouse in my family tree
people say it’s haunted
I guess we’ve toyed a bit with history
But any good Mason
starts playin’ the day he’s born
The day you get your grimoire
I ain’t a white witch, I ain’t a black witch
This ain’t a board game, this is the deep shit
A billion puppets, a bunch of cultures
I wanna watch ‘em turn into vultures
Better than that, what’s better than
Better than that, what’s better than
One-World leader putting another of needle
in the backs of people, it’s acupuncture and
One man’s torture (with a bit of the dark magic)
is another’s fortune
I’m only playin’ with the voodoo dolls
I’ve got a lot of voodoo dolls
I took an oath
back when I swore upon
a stack of thick bibles
to serve you creatures I put curses on
But listen,
what’s stuck you is just the tip
of a life-long piercing
I’ll flip your futures, tweak your features
with metal arrows I built to breach ya’
Dip in you in the boiler, shuck you like a corn cob
Get the human pretzel giving itself a rim job
Better than that, what’s better than
Better than that, what’s better than
One world leader putting another needle
in the backs of people it’s acupuncture where
One man’s torture (with a bit of the dark magic)
is another’s fortune
I’m only playing with the voodoo dolls
I’ve got a lot of voodoo dolls
How’s about an eight ball
right between the eyeballs of the Hoi Polloi
to fuzzy up your focus?
Whenever craftsmen gather at the baphomet
we all enjoy a hit of the hocus pocus
I’m floating like a magnet
up above your temples
I’m buried in your cortex
digging a maze of tunnels
One-World leader
Woo!
You can fuckin’ thank me
for the acu-fuckin’-punches
One man’s torture (with a bit of the dark magic)
is another’s fortune
I’m only playing with the voodoo dolls
I’ve got a lot of voodoo dolls
Voodoo Dolls
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2005 at 3:06 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: London Calling / The Clash
word of the day: Schwangerschaftsstreifen / german word meaning something like “stretch marks”
had a great reahearsal last night with the band. i’m not gonna tell you the names of the band members, or they’ll be drunk on the power for weeks. they need to focus, and if groupies start camping on their lawn, we’re going to see a spike in the local birth rate. not useful for rock. last night we worked on two other new songs, Voodoo Dolls and Easter. lyrics to Voodoo Dolls:
Voodoo Dolls
We’ve got a dollhouse in my family tree
people say it’s haunted
I guess we’ve toyed a bit with history
But any good Mason
starts playin’ the day he’s born
The day you get your grimoire
I ain’t a white witch, I ain’t a black witch
This ain’t a board game, this is the deep shit
A billion puppets, a bunch of cultures
I wanna watch ‘em turn into vultures
Better than that, what’s better than
Better than that, what’s better than
One-World leader putting another of needle
in the backs of people, it’s acupuncture and
One man’s torture (with a bit of the dark magic)
is another’s fortune
I’m only playin’ with the voodoo dolls
I’ve got a lot of voodoo dolls
I took an oath
back when I swore upon
a stack of thick bibles
to serve you creatures I put curses on
But listen,
what’s stuck you is just the tip
of a life-long piercing
I’ll flip your futures, tweak your features
with metal arrows I built to breach ya’
Dip in you in the boiler, shuck you like a corn cob
Get the human pretzel giving itself a rim job
Better than that, what’s better than
Better than that, what’s better than
One world leader putting another needle
in the backs of people it’s acupuncture where
One man’s torture (with a bit of the dark magic)
is another’s fortune
I’m only playing with the voodoo dolls
I’ve got a lot of voodoo dolls
How’s about an eight ball
right between the eyeballs of the Hoi Polloi
to fuzzy up your focus?
Whenever craftsmen gather at the baphomet
we all enjoy a hit of the hocus pocus
I’m floating like a magnet
up above your temples
I’m buried in your cortex
digging a maze of tunnels
One-World leader
Woo!
You can fuckin’ thank me
for the acu-fuckin’-punches
One man’s torture (with a bit of the dark magic)
is another’s fortune
I’m only playing with the voodoo dolls
I’ve got a lot of voodoo dolls
it shits in the box…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 26th, 2005 at 4:03 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: hanging upside down / david byrne
word of the day: mutative / a grammatical case indicating a change of place or state
what seemed like unending work on my house has begun to subside a bit, and not a moment too soon. it’s been inconvenient. especially for my sub-personality, the Princess. she’s had some rough spots. if you’re squeemish like she is, you might want to stop reading this blog now. but i won’t respect you. you won’t respect me either, once you’ve read this blog, so either way…
when you’re renovating an historic home each room presents its own unique challenges. our house was built in 1885, but before you imagine some victorian treasure, i have to tell you it’s covered in plastic sheeting and was built by same booze addled coal miner who never met a right angle he liked. it’s sort of Fun House meets Vertigo. when we were redoing the porch, of course our kid could not go out there, because it was a lead paint removal process. when we did the den, more lead paint and our ceiling had collapses so we were roofless. building the studio i had to literally remove a mountain of junk. every room displaced you a bit while you disassemble, gut it, then build it back up.
but the bathroom is special. we only have ONE bathroom.
one of the great privilages of living in the first world is plumbing. being able to bathe, brush your teeth, do laundry, and pee or poop whenever you want- in PRIVATE- is an unbelievable liberty, and perhaps in part a source of some vanity (or vice versa?) in the post-industrial World views. unfortunately, i rediscovered my profound gratitude for this amenity in the last few months as we went through weeks and weeks of ripping out bathtubs, plumbing, and yes- toilets. i went through three toilets this winter already, thanks to defective manufacturing. like oxygen, indoor plumbing is easy to take fore-granted until one is suddenly deprived of it. oxygen, food, water, and plumbing, each of these abides invisibly in our life until interrupted- and then rockets right to the very top of the priority pyramid where it remains until things are set right. and there is just no way to gut your bathroom and not be without a toilet for a while. a few weeks ago when our floor was completely ripped up and the plumbers were at work we were better prepared, although we were put out, it was expected, it was understood we’d be making trips to the gas station and the local cafe when nature called. after 10pm, when everything in our little town closes, up, we were forced to conduct our business in the back yard- the good news is we have a fence around the entire perimeter of our back yard. the bad news is it’s chain-link. so, at midnight or one a.m. or whenever, they we were doing our best imitation of woodland creatures, on display for a half doozen houses in the neighborhood. there is a particular kind of contemplation that takes place in those moments, a uniqe type of reflection that one would never discover if not for the disruption of life, squating beneath an enormous Oak under a full moon, the chilly Rocky Mountain fresh air lightly swooshing betwixt my legs, a pair of Grey Owls over head giving an approving “Hoo- Hoo!” to the crest of my exposed bottom- all of it momentarily transported me to a romantic sense of appreciation for what it must have been like for indigineous peoples to live in close contact with the elements, so intimately aligned with the rhythyms of nature, so un-self conscious in the idyllic harmony of their communes.
just then my neighbor opened her the door to her back yard and stepped out on her lawn, no more than 30 feet from where i was defecating, and in a heart beat i went from Native American Medicine Man to Vicorian Princess. “FUCKING EXCUSE ME!! HELLO?? i’m going to the BATHROOM over here… GEEZ”. the inward narraration went foul. however irrational my head knew it was, emotionally i was idignant, furious with this inconsiderate bitch waltzing right in, unannounced on my vulnerable situation. my face warmed with a wave of embarassment-blood, hoping ever so much to go undetected i became as outwardly silent as possible while my eyes beamed lazer radiaton into the skull of my intruder, telepathically redirecting her to GET… BACK… IN… YOUR… HOUSE NOW! to my surprise, it worked. it must have been too cold for her, because it was certainly too cold for my balls. they had retreated into some unknown cavity of my pelvis. just where the hell do a man’s balls go when it gets cold? one minute they’re there, the next they slip a secret key into the wall of your 1st chakra and vanish. you can’t feel them, can’t detect them- it’s as though they simply jump into another dimension, one unencumbered by the fluxing demands of shifting temperatures and biological imperatives. wherever my balls went, my penis felt the loss and shriveled up like the frightened orphan it was. these distracting challenges noted, i tried my best to wrap up the job and go back inside. but everyone knows that certain body functions are beset with counter-intuitive responses, the inevitable result of crossing meat, blood, and bones with all the peculiarities of reflexive CONSCIOUSNESS. for instance the more urgent it is to evacuate quickly, the more impossible it is to do so. especially in a public context. it’s funny what makes us bashful. i’ve shoved glow sticks up my ass, wrapped my naked limbs around a pine tree and fucked it, and shaved my genitals- all on camera, and all without a hint of shame or embarassment. i’ve engaged in some very blue behaviour - sexual and otherwise- with all sort and sundry of acquaintance and stranger, and never a hint of inhibition. but the thought that my neighbor might see me pooping in my backyard in the middle of the night- positively unthinkable. i could shit on someone’s chest no problem if there were a camera filming it in the name of perverse entertainment - what real artist couldn’t?- but if someone were to observe me undergoing the same act as an innocent function of daily life, well the thought is petrifying. luckily, this scenario resolved itself without such an undoing, and no one but the 200,000 people who read this blog will ever be the wiser.
after a while our bathrooom had plumbing again, we could use the toilet again, then the shower, the washer / dryer. once it all came back on line, it didn’t take long before i became conditioned again. my old sense of entitlement came right back, like it was my birthright to go to the bathroom in private. but then the other day, a worker had to come over and spray the inside of our bathroom with a base coat of wall texture, so that we could finally paint our bathroom and wrap up the detailing. his work in there didn’t take long, only about six hours, but that was six hours i could not use our bathroom again. i’m going to cut to the chase. suddenly -very suddenly- i had to go to the bathroom, and it was, as a German pre-school teacher might say, “Numer Zwei”. this was the variety of onset that does not allow for getting in a car, or walking to a convenience store, and certainly not for knocking on your neighbors door. i would never, ever do that. at this point in the story, i’m going to leave my body and employ 3rd person. now i’m just looking at “It”, what It did, what happened to It. that’s not me down there. i’m just replaying what happened to It, It is a biological machine. It has to evacuate waste, but It can’t use Its own toilet because the construction worker has covered up that toilet and is spraying texture base on all the walls what are Its options? not many. perhaps only one. one resolution to Its conundrum, and no one’s going to swoop down and solve this colonic riddle for It. it’s up to It, and only It. It goes out to the garage. It is desperate. It feels ashamed, embarassed- feelings that usually carry a vague sexual charge. but not this time. this sensation is arousal’s antonym. It has to hurry. It is experiencing a great pressure. It grabs a mid-sized cardboard box. it grabs toilet paper. It squats in a sad, shadowy nook which will hereafter be known as The Corner of Vile Secrets. Eyes askance, lips curled inward, making sounds that prove It is still more animal than angel, It shits in the box.
it shits in the box…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 26th, 2005 at 4:03 pm by Stuart Davis
song of the day: hanging upside down / david byrne
word of the day: mutative / a grammatical case indicating a change of place or state
what seemed like unending work on my house has begun to subside a bit, and not a moment too soon. it’s been inconvenient. especially for my sub-personality, the Princess. she’s had some rough spots. if you’re squeemish like she is, you might want to stop reading this blog now. but i won’t respect you. you won’t respect me either, once you’ve read this blog, so either way…
when you’re renovating an historic home each room presents its own unique challenges. our house was built in 1885, but before you imagine some victorian treasure, i have to tell you it’s covered in plastic sheeting and was built by same booze addled coal miner who never met a right angle he liked. it’s sort of Fun House meets Vertigo. when we were redoing the porch, of course our kid could not go out there, because it was a lead paint removal process. when we did the den, more lead paint and our ceiling had collapses so we were roofless. building the studio i had to literally remove a mountain of junk. every room displaced you a bit while you disassemble, gut it, then build it back up.
but the bathroom is special. we only have ONE bathroom.
one of the great privilages of living in the first world is plumbing. being able to bathe, brush your teeth, do laundry, and pee or poop whenever you want- in PRIVATE- is an unbelievable liberty, and perhaps in part a source of some vanity (or vice versa?) in the post-industrial World views. unfortunately, i rediscovered my profound gratitude for this amenity in the last few months as we went through weeks and weeks of ripping out bathtubs, plumbing, and yes- toilets. i went through three toilets this winter already, thanks to defective manufacturing. like oxygen, indoor plumbing is easy to take fore-granted until one is suddenly deprived of it. oxygen, food, water, and plumbing, each of these abides invisibly in our life until interrupted- and then rockets right to the very top of the priority pyramid where it remains until things are set right. and there is just no way to gut your bathroom and not be without a toilet for a while. a few weeks ago when our floor was completely ripped up and the plumbers were at work we were better prepared, although we were put out, it was expected, it was understood we’d be making trips to the gas station and the local cafe when nature called. after 10pm, when everything in our little town closes, up, we were forced to conduct our business in the back yard- the good news is we have a fence around the entire perimeter of our back yard. the bad news is it’s chain-link. so, at midnight or one a.m. or whenever, they we were doing our best imitation of woodland creatures, on display for a half doozen houses in the neighborhood. there is a particular kind of contemplation that takes place in those moments, a uniqe type of reflection that one would never discover if not for the disruption of life, squating beneath an enormous Oak under a full moon, the chilly Rocky Mountain fresh air lightly swooshing betwixt my legs, a pair of Grey Owls over head giving an approving “Hoo- Hoo!” to the crest of my exposed bottom- all of it momentarily transported me to a romantic sense of appreciation for what it must have been like for indigineous peoples to live in close contact with the elements, so intimately aligned with the rhythyms of nature, so un-self conscious in the idyllic harmony of their communes.
just then my neighbor opened her the door to her back yard and stepped out on her lawn, no more than 30 feet from where i was defecating, and in a heart beat i went from Native American Medicine Man to Vicorian Princess. “FUCKING EXCUSE ME!! HELLO?? i’m going to the BATHROOM over here… GEEZ”. the inward narraration went foul. however irrational my head knew it was, emotionally i was idignant, furious with this inconsiderate bitch waltzing right in, unannounced on my vulnerable situation. my face warmed with a wave of embarassment-blood, hoping ever so much to go undetected i became as outwardly silent as possible while my eyes beamed lazer radiaton into the skull of my intruder, telepathically redirecting her to GET… BACK… IN… YOUR… HOUSE NOW! to my surprise, it worked. it must have been too cold for her, because it was certainly too cold for my balls. they had retreated into some unknown cavity of my pelvis. just where the hell do a man’s balls go when it gets cold? one minute they’re there, the next they slip a secret key into the wall of your 1st chakra and vanish. you can’t feel them, can’t detect them- it’s as though they simply jump into another dimension, one unencumbered by the fluxing demands of shifting temperatures and biological imperatives. wherever my balls went, my penis felt the loss and shriveled up like the frightened orphan it was. these distracting challenges noted, i tried my best to wrap up the job and go back inside. but everyone knows that certain body functions are beset with counter-intuitive responses, the inevitable result of crossing meat, blood, and bones with all the peculiarities of reflexive CONSCIOUSNESS. for instance the more urgent it is to evacuate quickly, the more impossible it is to do so. especially in a public context. it’s funny what makes us bashful. i’ve shoved glow sticks up my ass, wrapped my naked limbs around a pine tree and fucked it, and shaved my genitals- all on camera, and all without a hint of shame or embarassment. i’ve engaged in some very blue behaviour - sexual and otherwise- with all sort and sundry of acquaintance and stranger, and never a hint of inhibition. but the thought that my neighbor might see me pooping in my backyard in the middle of the night- positively unthinkable. i could shit on someone’s chest no problem if there were a camera filming it in the name of perverse entertainment - what real artist couldn’t?- but if someone were to observe me undergoing the same act as an innocent function of daily life, well the thought is petrifying. luckily, this scenario resolved itself without such an undoing, and no one but the 200,000 people who read this blog will ever be the wiser.
after a while our bathrooom had plumbing again, we could use the toilet again, then the shower, the washer / dryer. once it all came back on line, it didn’t take long before i became conditioned again. my old sense of entitlement came right back, like it was my birthright to go to the bathroom in private. but then the other day, a worker had to come over and spray the inside of our bathroom with a base coat of wall texture, so that we could finally paint our bathroom and wrap up the detailing. his work in there didn’t take long, only about six hours, but that was six hours i could not use our bathroom again. i’m going to cut to the chase. suddenly -very suddenly- i had to go to the bathroom, and it was, as a German pre-school teacher might say, “Numer Zwei”. this was the variety of onset that does not allow for getting in a car, or walking to a convenience store, and certainly not for knocking on your neighbors door. i would never, ever do that. at this point in the story, i’m going to leave my body and employ 3rd person. now i’m just looking at “It”, what It did, what happened to It. that’s not me down there. i’m just replaying what happened to It, It is a biological machine. It has to evacuate waste, but It can’t use Its own toilet because the construction worker has covered up that toilet and is spraying texture base on all the walls what are Its options? not many. perhaps only one. one resolution to Its conundrum, and no one’s going to swoop down and solve this colonic riddle for It. it’s up to It, and only It. It goes out to the garage. It is desperate. It feels ashamed, embarassed- feelings that usually carry a vague sexual charge. but not this time. this sensation is arousal’s antonym. It has to hurry. It is experiencing a great pressure. It grabs a mid-sized cardboard box. it grabs toilet paper. It squats in a sad, shadowy nook which will hereafter be known as The Corner of Vile Secrets. Eyes askance, lips curled inward, making sounds that prove It is still more animal than angel, It shits in the box.