"Why does the world go unholy?
Why does everyone fight more and more?
Don't they know we have a savior?
All we have to do is believe and pray"
The Shaggs

I was playing chess with my cat the other day, and he said he was in the mood for jazz and roasted chicken.  We put the game on hold and went to the pollo rostizado place.  While enroute, I couldn't decide what to listen to.  Am I in the mood for self-righteous vegan punk, or Christian music performed by people who have never frowned in the presence of a camera?  I found that my artistic morals were inhibiting my ability to choose.  Shall we have cheeseburgers, or a salad?  Guitars, or muted trumpets?  Jesus, or the devil?

My cat observed my quandary with annoyance, and intervened on behalf of artless purity.  "Never mind those moralizing punks," he said.  "What we need is pure, unassuming gospel."

And he put on the purest gospel song ever written, a plate of sound completely unadulterated by pretensions or presumptions of any kind.  Just a plain declaration of spiritual potatoes, bereft of salt and butter alike.  Eaten raw, and unprepared, far beyond the presence of both condiments and time.  And surprisingly satisfying.  Because it's not gourmet.

The kind of clean and simple food that makes you smile.

While eating our pollo rostizado and listening to The Shaggs, my cat asked me what the big deal was.

"Big deal about what," I said.  He was sitting across the table, tearing into his plate of roasted song like a ravenous, culturally-interested beast.

"Christians who never listen to anything but vegetables, and vegans who only eat gospel music," he said, picking a piece of sonic cartilage from his teeth like someone tired of explaining the Dorian mode to punk-rock simpletons.

I had no answer.  I only took a year of music theory, and never got as far as modes.  I know all the notes on the guitar, and use the ones I need, is all I know about music.  I am neither a classical gourmet nor a microwaveable punk, but I am interested in many different forms and flavors, and I know what I like.

We finished our meal in silence, the cat and me.  Except, of course, for The Shaggs, and the sound of torment coming from the chickens, roasting in the ovens of the afterlife.  When the time came to leave, my cat cleansed his palate with the 14th chapter of the Book of Romans, and we bid a friendly adios to the chicken place.  We walked back to the van.  “For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself," said my cat.  I opened the door, and he leaped into the passenger seat like a simple, domesticated creature in possession of neither virtue nor of sin.  "When it comes to both music and food, mi amigo humano," he said, "Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations.  For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs."

"What are herbs," I asked, "and what is meat?  Gospel music?  Vegan punk?  Delta blues?  AI jazz?"

He ignored me.  “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him," said my cat.  He then recited the whole of Romans 14, which would have been socially awkward in any other setting, but he's my friend, so it was cool.

By the time we made it back to our house, we were reminded not to put a stumblingblock in our brother's path, and that "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”  We remembered that it is more important to "follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another," than it is to smuggle cheeseburgers into the screening of a Moby film, or listen to John Coltrane in the presence of a Christian culture vegan.

Sated by the meal, and contemplating the philosophy of the world, we started a bonfire in the backyard and burned our Punk Sinatra records. 

"Our culture has been cannibalized by vegans," lamented my cat.

I had no response.  Punk Sinatra's face bubbled and curled like the skin of a chicken in a rostizado joint.  The moon hung low like a head in a noose, and my cat and I cooked marshmallows of forgiveness in the flames of judgment rising from the cultured grave.

It's a great story, but he wasn't a real artist anyway.