"Beware the average man, the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average...

But there is genius in their hatred"
Charles Bukowski

I've met at least 100 master chess players in my life who are forced by circumstance to play Tiddlywinks instead of chess.  Singers, songwriters, musicians, and performers with the heart, soul, and skill of a master chess player, who have been sitting Indian-style on the carpeted floor of the excellence rehab center Western society has become, playing children's games with glib, dismissive moral cowards on a power trip for decades.  Master chess players who have resisted the temptation to detox from excellence, and who have been looking for a way to get off the Tiddlywinks circuit for years.

The Tiddlywinks players all think chess and excellence are hateful constructs designed to keep mediocrity and lack of commitment down.  Which is funny, cuz those things can't get up on their own, and need no help staying down.  You'd think the Tiddlywinks players would be happy just being great at Tiddlywinks.

But they're not.

The true, false heart of a Tiddlywinks player has rejected its own excellence, and therefore hates excellence in others.  In fact, the Tiddlywinks Grandmaster believes excellence is toxic.  Instead of becoming an eagle in his or her own right, and excelling at his or her own God-given gifts, the grandstanding moral coward turns himself into a crow, and pretends to be satisfied marching down the street in an eagle costume, feigning the excellence of others.  The only pleasure to be gleaned from such a disingenuous display is that of being drunk off one's own ass.  Whether on money, alcohol, or power, doesn't matter.  Any moral compromise will suffice.  In order for an eagle to be satisfied playing games designed for children and homicidal simpletons, it is necessary to deplete one's brain-cell count until the bar of one's own soul has been lowered to the point that it can be vaulted by a sleeping earthworm.

“The eagle never lost so much time as when
he submitted to learn of the crow”
William Blake

Bukowski did it, presumably as a survival mechanism and/or as a way to cope and compensate for years of abuse.  Perhaps the mediocrity of the game of Tiddlywinks unfolding all around him drove him to the bottle, because he could see no way around it.  The writing of William Blake himself was rife with contradictions, declaring from on high that the eagle ought not waste his time "submitting" to learn from the crow, and then making the transparently-ridiculous claim that “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”  I couldn't agree less.  Clearly, the road of excess leads to an endless game of Tiddlywinks, played with madmen on a carpet of worms and burning sulfur.  When did the world become the waiting room of a Medieval children's hospital, a torture chamber for anyone who strives for excellence, or who dares to be bored in a society dominated by cosplay birds of prey?  How long shall we pretend to celebrate the aerodynamic prowess of the chicken, falling like a feathered bowling ball from the heights in which the eagles soar?

If you are a postmodern social-engineering project, you have been trained to believe it's hateful to presume to be an eagle, or to soar.  Your controllers have told you that excellence is toxic, and that it is your duty as an unthinking pawn in the loathsome, frustrating Tiddlywinks game of life to detox the world from this brilliant, would-be poison.  But you forget that excellence is remarkably diverse, and that everyone possesses it.  To deny your own excellence so you can put on someone else's is an act of faux-humility that soars with worms of pride, in stratospheres of dirt, caked like a drunken compromise on the soles of the boots of your actual oppressor.  It's a dead-end path.

Get off it.

"The movie business is very difficult, but
the music business is just impossible."
Jeremy Renner

The idea for American Migrant was borne of hope, impatience, and a question:  What if the world doesn't actually end before November?  Considering the world-class game of high-stakes Tiddlywinks going on in the American political realm, I think the chances are strong that the world might very well come to a screeching, ridiculous halt before election day.  I'm certainly not going back to a country that actually pretends to be run by a Tiddlywinks hire like Kamala Harris.  People who are hung up on mandated mediocrity have thrown their souls away; a culture that actually believes taking a hint (such as the hint smuggled under the border wall of your misplaced faith by the Biden administration) is a sign of paranoid, conspiratorial thinking, is a culture full of myopic Tiddlywinks generals flaunting their cowardice and mediocrity on the highway to stupidity, and hell.  The chances that this condition is terminal are high.

But if it isn't...

I would be beyond remiss in my duties as a songbird of prey not to tell you that I think our days are seriously numbered.  The idea for American Migrant has illuminated all the doubts instilled in me by years of trying to play chess on a padded Tiddlywinks board.  Which is to say, the local scene, including but not limited to the local "Christian community" that idolizes my trade at least as much as the pagans.  Decades of haranguing about how I'm not glorifying God with my lyrics by people who send their kids to non-Christian universities to use their talents playing on non-Christian sportsball teams full of fornicating drunkards have taken their bitter toll, no less than the pagans who exclude me from their scene for being "too Christian."  The self-righteous paradox is too much to bear.  The hope the American Migrant idea gave me was instantly assailed by abusive, songbird-beating husbands, overpaid pillars of a Tiddlywinks culture that seem to genuinely believe their ability to make a living with their apparently-secular talents is not only a gift of God, but has been tested by how they've treated the angry, dope-addicted eagles drawing rollercoasters in the sky with nothing more substantial than a song.  Is it a cloud, or Mozart's Requiem?

What's the difference?

Can you dig?

"No matter how much hate
you manufacture in my heart
for my body, for my art,
I will never love you."
Dust on a Rainbow

In a word, I'm a wreck.  I am alone upon this rainbow, this colorful, sequined staircase of Mexican children and police, I am climbing toward the Heavens.  I can move forward with the movie and tour idea in a vacuum (it wouldn't be the first time), but I must have been wearing the Tiddlywinks scars on my sleeve, because the grandfather at the water machine told his grandkids to give me a hug today.  I pulled up with all my disjointed, empty gringo energy, and the old man was filling his garrafón at the machine, and the kids were helping him.  They were friendly.  The older kid (less than 12) looked up at me with a cautious, existential query.  "Is he friendly, or a monster?  Does the gringo bear the armor of love, or the stench of cowardice and death?"  I love kids, so I smiled at him in spite of the hollow volcano in my heart.  The weird angelic janitor in charge of sweeping up the spiritual lava on the floor of the volcano was scouring the inside of the mountain for a non-destructive feeling, and he found it.  I smiled at him, and the kid smiled back.

The grandfather said something, but I couldn't understand it.  I told him that "español es un gran palabra de agua," Spanish is a great word of water, and that talking to Mexicans is like talking to a river.  He laughed.  He told his kids to give me some abrazos, which I did understand.  A hug?  Here?  In the heart of the volcano?  Really?

And the kids gave me a hug.  I hugged them back, and thanked them with a sense of overwhelming gratitude, I barely could contain.  It was divine intervention.  An embrace from God Himself.  They left.  Emotions rose like an embarrassing flower in my soul, but since nobody was there, I allowed myself to break down, just a little.  Peace and love filled my soul as the machine filled my garrafón with water.  I wept like a desert.  There were clouds of joy, but no tears.  It was a short, blissful storm.  I had forgotten I was loved.  By God, if no one else.

Thank you, God.

Thank You.

I put my garrafones in the van, and drove back through the speedbumps and the mules, past the roadside drug and donut dealers, the armored pickup trucks full of military police, and found myself at the foot of the neverending rainbow to Heaven.  I had forgotten it was there.  Someone I didn't want to see happened to be walking by at precisely the instant I didn't want to see him, but it didn't matter.  Whether we soar high above the Tiddlywinks board in the Rapture, or a movie, we will be leaving soon.  In fact I'm already packed.  The rainbow may be dusty, due to lack of traffic, but it's there.  I'm on it.  And if I'm not, I want to be.  I'm outta here.  One way or the other.  Outta here.

Are you?

Dust on a Rainbow

I'm sitting on the hood
of my pickup truck in the desert
an extremely fragile sip I take
of coffee in the mouse-breeze
an army clad in ghosts
weaponizing milkshakes
if God will steer my life,
the golden thorns can't hurt me
the mountains in the distance
are dissolving into car parts

     Mr. President,
     don't lecture me
     about responsibility
     don't say to me
     a child is beautiful
     but it has no soul
     if total control
     is your only goal
     and to your money
     always dutiful
     well I say to you,
     your money has no soul
     and it isn't even
     beautiful

And even if I close my eyes
and the camera never lies
and the blood never dries
on the invisible hand of fate
and no matter how much hate
you manufacture in my heart
for my body, for my art
I will never love you

     I'm still sitting on the hood
     in the parking lot of a roadside casino near Vegas
     an extremely fragile sip I take
     of coffee in the mouse-breeze
     an army clad in ghosts
     weaponizing milkshakes
     if God will steer my life,
     the golden thorns can't hurt me
     the mountains in the distance
     are dissolving into car parts

If the Lord has set me free
what can you force me to do?
I'm free at last
from this condemned nation
I'm free
of you
free of your laws
and the farce of your force
because your force is subject
to a much greater power
over which you not only
have no control whatsoever
but to which you someday
will be forced to answer
for all your transgressions
in action
and thought
whether you like it,
or believe it,
or not

     Now I'm standing on the roof
     the devil is a con man,
     and I got the proof!
     So if you want freedom
     and independence
     list the devil himself
     as one of your dependents
     remember, you got the power
     when the hours look grim
     the devil needs you more than you need him

And it looks like we're home free
we're no longer burdened
with whether or not we agree
we all take to the air
on a brand-new pair
of shining,
diamond wings
and everybody sings

     Flyswatter, flyswatter
     get your hands off my daughter
     go fetch me my rifle
     and a gallon of water
     gonna catch me a train
     goin' all the way to Fresno
     gonna leave my tracks
     in the dust on a rainbow

©2009 Nathan Payne