Perspective Check

Nothing you can play or sing or do can ever be good, and you can never play a single good note--unless you have lots of love in your heart. And love for things that are pure and beautiful. I mean, even if you aren't a guy who is pure and beautiful himself or a girl who isn't pure and beautiful herself, or maybe if you've done some things so that your soul isn't as happy as it should be, if you keep a love in your heart for things that are righteous and true, then you can be can still be a great musician, writer, pharmacist, mathematician, engineer, businessman, friend, person. But unless you're all those things and have love in your heart, you can't.

T Bone Jackson, the great trombonist, once said that the word we all have to remember is "generosity". And even if you're great at something or you're really bitchin' at being the best theoretical physicist in the world, it means next to nothing--or it could mean so much more if you're able to get together and do it and share with other people. But you can never go into a laboratory or band or choir or church or gym and expect to achieve the next degree of spiritual, musical, professional or scientific enlightenment unless you love those people you're with. Unless you have really true, sincere love. Because you can never even have true anger if you don't have true love, and neither of them will ever have their full impact if they're not realized with one another.

And if someone says something to you or you find yourself in a situation where you don't feel like yourself, then just don't deal with it. Just be yourself as hard as you can, and be true to yourself the best you can. If you want to be pretty and pink like the softest rose growing in the spring time, then be that as pretty and beautiful and slippery as you can. And if you want to be the ugliest monster, then do that as best you can. Or if you want to be as free as the spirits of those who left--I'm talking Malcolm, Coltrane, and my man, Yousef--then I guess you, me and Common both have the same dream. But the most important thing is to always be true to yourself. And care. If you really care, you'll get somewhere.

So that's the deal with that.

Nothing like the smiling fucking face of mediocrity.

let a man be lost
for once in his lifetime
to live out his whole life
all in a night's time
to sit in his own mind
stare out at the skyline
to know that he's got plenty of time
left in his lifeline.
.

Fish Vol. I

(click to enlarge)







We are all connected.
.

Meet Fish

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Vonnegut used the written word. Marvin Gaye used rhythm and blues. But I don't think anyone has ever used a fish to express social commentary, daily observations or just personal insight. Enter Fish. More to come (hopefully) soon.
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I Pity the Heirs and Heiresses of Huge Fortunes.

After all,

what does someone,

who has nothing to do,

do?

The Great Wave at Kanagawa

"The Great Wave" by Katsushika Hokusai is one of my all-time favorite paintings and there is so much to be said about it. One could make the comparison of how ruthless and menacing the wave looks against the stillness and tranquility of the distant mountain. Or notice the wave that is directly beneath the larger one which is covering the boat closest to the observer. Its small bump and angled peak instantly reminds any native of Mount Fuji which is a timeless symbol of Japanese culture. It's almost like a subliminal joke that Hokusai carved in (it is a woodblock painting). But I'm no art history major nor am I pretending to be anyone other than someone who looked up all these facts on Google.

What I first noticed when I came across "The Great Wave" was how claw-like and threatening the wave looked especially in the face of these waif-like boats. Imagine how it must look from the sailor's perspective! But as the snow line on the distant mountain indicates, the painting takes place during springtime and specifically during the first harvest of the "Benito"--special tuna that will fetch half a years worth of a commoner's salary from royalty who will buy this delicacy as a sign of prominence.

So as much as these fishermen are going "oh shit" in the face of such chaos, each one of them knows that they have half a years salary worth of "Benito" in their cargo and no wave of any stature is going to stop them from getting to the marketplace.

Everybody's trying to figure out where their problems lie in the overall continuum from bad to good, right? And whether they're big or small..although, we don't have that perspective. All problems feel the same--like things we have to get over or around or through or across. Who knows what the next "Great Wave" in my life will be or how many times I'll go "oh shit." But you know what...I have my own damn "Benito".

Cheers, mate. Happy 2010!