Song of The Day: Before Beyond
Word of The Day: Foofaraw / 1. Excessive or flashy ornamentation. 2. A commotion or disturbance over a trifling matter; a fuss.

What a tour we just had! I know I've been a bad blogger, but I had good reason, friends. I've been travelling non-stop for the last two weeks, and only now am I starting to settle down into this week off the road. Doing some domestic things (painting parts of the studio, pullling weeds in the lawn) and also a mountain of music business stuff that piled up while I was away. I spent five days away from my daughter at the beginning of the tour, then she joined me for five days in Minneapolis, then I was away from her for five days again. It is the punishing paradox of life as a touring musician: If I travel, I'm away from my daughter. If I don't travel I can't feed, clothe, and shelter her. So it goes. I actually LOVE touring and travelling, I just would prefer to have her with me all the time. I'm working on ways to make that happen, but we'll probably have to wait another year and half.

I am now back home, typing to you from the haven of my studio, which may be my favorite room in the World. I'm listening to XTC's Wheel and The Maypole (I love when the song goes into double-time and he gets all happy and cheerful while he sings:

Maypole the ties that bind you will unwind to free me one day
and everything decays
Yes, everything decays
Forest tumbles down to make the soil
Planets fall apart
Just to feed the stars and stuff their larders
And what made me think we're any better
and what made me think we'd last forever
was I so naive?
of course it all unweaves
chorus 2
Pyramids and palaces to dust
Empires crumble in
Wedding cake begins to must and molder
And what made me think we're any better
and what made me think we'd last forever
was I so naive?
failing to perceive
Maypole (round goes the wheel)
Maypole (round goes the wheel)
Maypole (the ties that bind you will unwind to free me one day)
Maypole (if the pot won't hold our love)
et, )

...but I am not here to luxuriate in my love for all things XTC. I'm here to continue and finish up the cliff notes on the new CD (which was heavily influenced by XTC, as is pretty much everything I write, since I spent ten years devouring them like a hot baguette.

Before Beyond was a strange mixture of inspiration. I'm going to give you the story behind the first half, and leave the second half more cryptic, because of course the joy of lyromancy (divination through lyrics, yeah, I just made it up, and now its fucking REAL cuz its on the internet. Voila!) is deciphering the clues and keys for yourself. The first verse was really about the Bush election, and the whole phenomenon of proto-fascist politicians who hijack religion, disfigure it into a vehicle for hate and contraction, and then boldly use it as a centerpiece to their platform. The first lines of the song...

Turning in the Dhirga
with a Dervish
Had a vision of a viper
spinning scripture at the circus

Came from remembering how I felt when I used to practice Dhikr (pronounced Zhik-uhr) with the Sufis in California. It was an ultra lucid state, clarity induced through music and dance. An utterly unique form of intoxication, where your senses (intuition , emotion, higher cognition) were amplified and sharpened. So, the music of this song made me feel that again, and it was a nod to the Sufis. Also a nod to them (and Sheik Ragip Frager, head of that order) were the next lines, the "vision" that came through that mood, the music, which had to do with the stunning rouse that had been transacted. Nothing has ever been more clear to me than the fact that a sinister, malevolent intelligence is at the healm with the whole Christian / political enterprise. I am not trying to be inflammatory, but this is the real satanism. It's the oldest trick in the book. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and then destroy them by slowly infusing their essence with ever-increasing aberration and pathology. That, my friends is precisely what's gone on in Christianity. If anyone reading this blog thinks that Bush's religiosity, that Pat Robertson's evangelism, that Carl Rove's vision for remaking the world- has ANYTHING to do with Christianity besides its inversion and undoing, then you should step away from your computer and put your head in the freezer. Now, I'm not saying the Islam is any better. I'm not saying there are not such things as terrorists -there ARE. Hell, I'm not saying Buddhism is any better. No. Wait. Buddhism is better. You know what else is better? Judaism. How many Jewish suicide bombers have you counted in the last fifty years? Oh, zero. Hinduism? It's got some wacky shit going on, sure, but without a doubt the two most corrupted, berzerker religions on the planet are Christianity and Islam, and that is actually because they've been appropriated by adolescent simpletons, and simpletons see simple worlds, worlds of black/white, good/evil, right/wrong, holy/blasphemous, and while that has nothing whatsoever to do with what Christ lived and taught, it is indeed the toxic froth that constitutes politics and religion in America now. And it is, truly, without exaggeration, proto-fascist. So, the next lyric of the song Before Beyond are about that, the charismatic ferver whipped up from the podium, the ingenious way all proto-fascists stir the lowest common denominator in people, and hypnotize them with their own fear. They are always on the pulpit, self-ordained ministers. But it's satanism, and again, that is not hyperbole. When you take the essence of something like Christ's teaching and contort into its opposite, you have officially switched teams. But, you're still wearing a "God-Heaven-Jesus" jersey, so people go... "UHHH>>>> hey, God talks to OUR president! Wow. I guess that mean the Devil must be talking to the leaders of other nations...

all ecstatic, wrapped in sequines
blowing kisses to bleachers
when the Witches struck matches
to the pyrotechnics
of the charismatics
all the children twitched in seizure

Then chorus of the song, flips back to a much higher order of magnification. It spends the first verse looking at those details, then the chorus does what in Zen they call the "backward step" and it tumbles into Void-Enigma:

Before a shining
Before a shadow
Before and beyond
Beyond a window
Beyond a mirror
Before and...
Just before the love that spit you
into all the love that gets to
pin you down and show you how to suffer

Now, here's what's funny. That whole chorus actually was inspired by one word in the language of IS (see earlier blogs for details on this language I'm constructing). There is a word in IS which is "oh-ROIhP-ahr-oop-oh" which has no equivalent translation in English, but roughly converted means something like "do you know what it DOESN'T mean?" its the inversion of another word (oh-poo-RHA-PhOIR-oh) which is a word that points out teleology, synchornicity, design of higher invisible order operating in all conditions at all times. the inversion -and the word that inspired the chorus to this song- is oh-ROIhP-ahr-oop-oh, and it means something like "yeah, there is design, teleology, synchronicity, but that is still at the level of perceptual location. In order to see that, you have to identify with some form of identity, preferences, you must maintain a partiality of some form, and that is still not the DEEP. This word means take the backward step, fall off that ledge, and drop into the Void Enigma of not-something, not-nothing. What is it that is before any shining (holiness), before any shadow (corruption, evil), what is beyond any window (a view, a perspective) what is beyond any mirror (reflection, exchange)? THAT is the VERB of oh-ROIhP-ahr-oop-oh. Only after submersion in that which HAS no "after" or "before" the placeless place, the stateless state are we ready to become the love that spits you, the love that gets to pint you down and show you how to suffer, etc. So, the chorus of the song was actually delivered to me from my Master, the voice which my ZEn teacher Genpo Roshi speaks to in Big Mind which is the Master. The Zen Master, the spiritual master. When I was writing the song, I was getting all whipped up in my fury over the way the religious fundamentalists have taken hold of so much of social, political arena, and then out of nowhere, the Master was like "HEY!! oh-ROIhP-ahr-oop-oh! And then I had to laugh. And the chorus popped out. After that, the song switched, and became about my wife and the birth of our daughter, which I am singing to her, telling her the story of how she came into this world: It parallels the first verse in form and word, but its shifted, now everything is illuminated and I remember that these seemingly two opposite verses are actually a unified complimentarity. The proto-fascists of the first verse are the Mystery dancing every bit as much as my daughter and wife are the Mystery dancing. The moonlight referred to is also a link to the moonlight in the song Glass. SO I sing to my daughter:

Bathing
in the river
of a light around your mother
figures at the bottom of the water
all ecstatic, wrapped in secrets
blowing kisses to a teacher
There was a rupture
in the moonlight
then a fracture in a sky light
I woke up with a baby
laying at the bed side

Before a shining
Before a shadow
Before and beyond
Beyond a window
Beyond a mirror
Before and
Just before the love that spit you
into all the love that gets to
pin you down and show you how to suffer

Just before the empty shattered
and beyond the face it scattered
You were You before and beyond

And the cause of all confusion
is the clues are all arrows
in the quiver of a question (¿)