Song Of The Day: AC / DC
Word Of The Day: Annosity / length of life

Gang, I know I dropped off the blog radar for a few days, and I’m sorry. It was for good reason. My friend Steve Brill and I were in New York, meeting with networks about a TV show we’re developing. I can’t say too much by way of description, or MTV will swoop in like pteradactiles and prey upon our ideas like a rapper samplin’ som’un. Suffice to say, we have a killer KILLER idea for a reality TV show, and we were meeting with the appropriate people. I am happy to report it was a great trip, and we were bouyied by the meetings. Sorry to be so cryptic. Let’s just say: Watch for one more bald man on your tv. On top of it all, I got to hang out in Manhattan for three days, and Steve put me up in the Trump hotel. I’m used to Holiday Inn Express. No offense, Holiday Inn Express (love your extended check outs) but the Trump was probably the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Wait…been in. I’d say the Trump and The W in Seattle tie. I did not want to leave, and I understand now how some people go Howard Hughes on the World. I could have stayed in the Trump for decades, urinating in bottles, taping notes all over the walls in my invented script, and covering windows with cardboard and bed sheets. But I realized that was basically the same as making an album, so I released the urge and checked out.

And I’m back to the Cliff notes, second song on the new album, AC / DC. I would say this song, along with Parker Posey, is one of the “hit singles” on the album. It’s got that bubbly, happy, angular undulating fun that a marketing director might call “contagious”. Perhaps it has one foot in “infectious”, but stops shy of “tainted”. It’s communicable without being pestiferous. Vile? In a playful way. At any rate,

This song initially came to me, I must admit, when I became interested in AC / DC -the electrical variety. What the fuck is direct current, and what is alternating current? So, I started sticking household implements in sockets, which provided important empirical data…that was hard to decipher. My research cycled in this manner, putting a fork in the wall plug, passing out in a furious spell of white hot sensory overload, then waking to find my nerve endings crackling like sparklers. Once I’d exhausted this tack, I googled AC / DC, then scrolled down past the bajillion entries on the band, and there, I began to learn.

Like almost anything, my interest in the subject quickly converted (ha!) to a more metaphorical rendering. AC / DC became a koan to me. What the fuck is AC / DC trying to say to me? I mean, spiritually, what’s the message here? Alternating current, Direct current… and soon, the lyrics began to pour forth:

They bended zinc into a miniature can
put carbon rods up in the back of a man
he’s licking his prongs, it’s shocking his tongue
he wanted a charged, but it’s making him numb
he don’t know AC
from fucking DC

You get a body, but it isn’t for keeps
and every night you gotta die in your sleep
you’ll be excarnated, and still unaware
the seat of your soul is playing musical chairs
you don’t get AC
from fluxing DC

Don’t give me AC
and say it’s DC
which one will clutch me?
which will release me?
whatever AC, whatever DC
don’t let it touch me
it won’t release me

They keep sweeping the starlight
under the rugs
They keep doping the kids
with these invisible drugs
They keep pumping the mud
into the sockets and plugs
There’s a dictator born
each time a teenager shrugs

(Refrain)

What
is the sound of one hand slapping
your face before
your parents were born

You don’t AC from fucking DC

(Refrain)

And there it was, the song AC / DC. Oddly, in my Zen practice with Genpo Roshi, I haven’t been doing Koans. You do Koans in Rinzai, but not in Soto. All my life I was a Soto practitioner. Roshi is both, he was transmitted in Soto and Rinzai, and koans are something he uses with lots students. You would think I would be all into koans, since I’m a lyricist ‘n nat, but I haven’t been thus far. However, I very much experience writing songs like cracking koans. Now, I wouldn’t know, since I haven’t done Koans, but when a song like this comes along, and it’s plain that I have to “crack” the term AC / DC, and not merely write some equivalent translation or nonsensical folly. Many of you readers already know my “name” for God, for the Absolute Ground of Reality is “What”, (only to me, it’s a verb) which is also the name of this album. Part of my practice is to pick a word, a word like “What” and make it an encrypted signifier. That means, every time I hear the word “what” in every day speech, every time I read it in a magazine, web site, newspaper, everytime I hear it on TV, in a movie- I hear it in a new way. It is a secret message to me, embedded in that context, and I am to hear it in this way, I am to delve its transmission in this new setting. And lemme tell you What, this practice BLOWS your fucking mind. It has surprised me over and over, and really woken me up in totally freaking kick ass ways. Once this exercise is automatic, once you really get it imprinted and its purely reflexive, you get, like 100 surprises a day.

So, on the bridge, where I sing

What
is the sound
of one hand slapping
your face
before
your parents were born

there is a bunch of things going on. First, that word “What” is the touch stone of the whole record, of my entire linguistic enterprise. So, when it shows up, the show stops. It’s the fucking trump card, and all rational bets are off when that drunk bitch comes staggering through the door at your family reunion. Then, the lyrics “is the sound of one hand slapping”

is a play on the Zen koan “what is sound of one hand clapping.”

then, there’s another play, with “your face before your parents were born” which is from the koan “what was your face before your parents were born.”

we end up with a three-layer waffle of What, since we begin with the sacred unknowable quantity what, then it combines with the slapping (sudden awakening, sudden school of Zen) and answers two koans in one swing. what is the sound of one hand clapping? what was your face before your parents were born? That’s right. What. The VERB what. The ineffable verb WHAT is the sound of one hand…SLAPPING…your face before your parents were born. What what what what

anyway, that’s just the bridge. But jesus, I’m really not going to disect every line like that, cuz it would take the fun out of the song for you. But there is meaning and en-puzzlement built into each line of this song, I swear ya’ll. But it’s no fun if I give it away. Clues for you though: AC / DC has to do with:
#1, Wilber’s Pre / Trans Fallacy
#2, the unity of opposites, the complementarity of bifurcated WHAT

My favorite lines from this song:

“The seat of your soul is playing musical chairs”

and

“There’s a dictator born each time a teenager shrugs”.