He woke up alone this morning with his unit on
and by the time he showered it was all gone.
Ain’t no job for praying, puts his headphones on,
sits down, and closes his eyes.
The girl next door is at it again,
scratching up her arm with a big old knife.
She’s been working toward the end since it began
and they’re both just sick of life.
They got their loneliness together into a plan
and ran to the nearest holy man.
The ring was on her finger and the singer sang
Making all the love that they can.
The old ones say
just walk away
hope and pray X2
They sent him off to battle just for something to do
and took away the love that he had.
His heart it got corrupted like it's stuck in the glue
the only thing he's left is mad.
Just before the moment when he told her goodbye,
the sky grew pregnant with rain.
A lightning bolt hit her and she fell down and died.
Everything grows through pain. X2
Author’s Note:
I grew up thinking that song lyrics were poetry, especially classic Hip-Hop music, but most certainly 80s Pop and 90s Grunge. These are all the poems of my youth and I didn’t understand that poetry was so much more than rhyming song lyrics until I reached college and was told to read these words on a page that didn’t have a soundtrack to them.
And yet…
…of course they had a soundtrack! Language is a form of music and when language meets the sounds of music, there are truths conveyed that go beyond intellectual understanding. Combining images with words and the emotions that music can bring is one of the most powerful forms of art that it is possible to make (Film is the other most powerful format of artistic expression).
I make Basement Music, the kind of music that amateurs really shouldn’t be sharing out loud in a public space. They aren’t real songs in the same sense that self-published authors don't write real books. The term Basement Music comes from (of course) Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, which is the music he created when he completed murdering the first mask he wore as an artist, which was the poet-prophet savior. It was all horseshit put together by the record company and reactionary elements in the counter culture. And Dylan wasn’t having it. He revolted and changed the business of producing art in the process of his multiple costume and personality changes over the years. And a lot of the music Dylan made over the past 60 years has been songs that should have never been heard, but has. His songs are perfect because they are each of them in Dylan’s unique voice, created in unique moments.
Every song I make is a basement song that has unplanned flaws. My voice isn’t what it used to be when I could sing any Pink Floyd album, note for note, from start to finish. Back in college, I once walked into a party where a house band had no singer and they were playing Alice In Chain’s “Don’t Follow,” which is one of my absolute favorite songs of all time. And there was a band without a singer, playing my song. I picked up that microphone, rocked the house, and then walked out like I owned the place. That was a good night.
And I’ve been reading Jeff Tweedy’s book How To Write One Song, and it’s all about approaching art like work, but still getting the joy from the doing. I read this week that for the first time in polling, more people are willing to be unemployed than work at a job they hate. Isn’t that something?
Creating flawed art is the most revolutionary act an individual human being can undertake. Even if you’re not as bananas as I am for sharing it openly, and despite the inevitable flaws our artistic expressions have, making art every day is a measure you can undertake to make your life more enjoyable.
We must invite joy and then give it away or watch joy seep out of our lives like a Photoshop filter gone wrong.
I have a theory that lovers of poetry are either Walt Whitman fans or Emily Dickinson fans. Either you are someone who wants life to blast you full force in the face as Walt Whitman did (have you ever read “Song Of Myself?”).
Or you’re the kind of poetry fan that worships a comma and keeps words close in tight like cryptocurrency, hiding away in your upstairs bedroom, pining for a life the world isn’t leading; that’s the Dickinson way and it was never mine. I guess I’m too old, white, male, and American. I can’t change those physical and social attributions about myself, but I accept them with both hands open in gratitude, honoring all the diversity in humanity, and that is why I will always be a Walt Whitman guy.
🎶"Bedtime For Lawvers"