"Everybody's got a bomb
We could all die any day
But before I'll let that happen
I'll dance my life away"
Prince
It doesn't take much to make me want to play these days. But I never do. It isn't playing I don't believe in. You don't want to know what it is I don't believe in. I don't think you can handle it. We've all gone soft with positivity. I grew up in an amusement park, and believe it's negative not to eat birthday cake 3x a day. Cotton candy for breakfast, bubblegum for lunch, and I brush my teeth with other people's approval. I distill this approval like a narcotic through my phone. I need them, whoever they are, but because I am not important, they don't need me. In this way, not only will nothing ever change, but we will all go down unchanged in flames together. We will be the candy that didn't pass the Wonka test. The girls will turn to blueberries. The men will all be torn to shreds by the high-speed bubble fan, embedded in the ceiling. Those blessed enough to possess the Divine Right of Entitlement will be swallowed by the goose-throne, in the room where the giant zoo birds lay our money.
It's weird in here, but wonderful.
At the moment, though, I'm low on positivity. Can you hook a brother up?
I am completely unaware that we all live in Wonkaland, and are constantly being tested not only for humility and virtue, but our candy-colored grit.
Is it grit I have, or Pop Rocks?
It tastes like strawberries and weakness.
Must be grit. Because I said so.
The punks wasted their moment of antisocial freedom on cheap beer and making all the misfits conform to their image of never fitting in. They were best when they were unintentional, but it's been awhile. The original Ramones were all assassinated by life, and who needs the stylized cartoon created by their successors? But why are all the hippies in denial? Is it cowardice? Self-righteousness? Money? What's positive about pretending you're going to make the world a better place, by never acknowledging the reality of anything? Is it because, like your Luciferian 3rd-eye overlords, you are in some weird way above reproach?
Do people actually believe they're going to make anything better by tie-dying their denial with the catch phrase "positive energy?"
I am relieved to not to have a clue.
Before I get distracted and derailed by those problems entirely, however, I am going to take a minute to listen to a beautiful song:
That's a beautiful piece of songwriting. The "serious" comments on Phish videos, though, are unbearable. They drive you straight into the arms of a warthog. I read them and am instantly overwhelmed with the desire to immediately die. Anything to get away from the sanctimony, the denial, the antifreeze smiles. The rich-kid insistence on improving the world with ramshackle, wannabe towns made of tripping, dirty people living in tents. I don't even drink, but give me cheap beer and menthol cigarettes any day, over that.
Regardless, this is amazing:
It's fun to watch and listen to with headphones-talented people make invisible sculptures with multicolored Play-Doh elves of sound. That song gets really interesting around the 15-minute mark.
However!
The degree to which "positive energy" becomes (or tempts) denial is the degree to which we are incapable of changing anything. Yourself most easily (and importantly) of all (and if you think it's easy, you haven't tried it). How are you going to change the world, when you make no effort whatsoever to change yourself? How are you going to effect a positive alternate reality, when you accept every desire, idea, and whim into your heart and mind without a second thought?
Are you just going to improvise another world, another universe, like Phish improvises music?
You are aware that they learned how to play, before they started making it up on the fly,
Right?
Do you have any idea how much work went into learning how to play like that? How many years of training they put their hands and mind through, so that they'd know what they are doing?
Do you think they're standing up there without reverb, practice, or compression?
Do you think there isn't an EQ anywhere in sight, on the invisible canvas of their sound? That they're just standing up there without any rehearsal, thought, or preparation?
Are they professional surfers, floating on a wave?
Or mindless alcoholics, splashing around in a kiddie pool?
They're surfing, as all musicians (and artists) should (and should be trained to).
But it took a lot of time.
A ton of work.
Are you a jerk?
Have you never made a mistake?
Never married a stripper in Tijuana, or Las Vegas?
Are you smoking bubblegum, or steroids?
Are you the dominant clown with guns?
Are you obsessed with power? Okay then.
Keep it in your pants, before you sound off about your power. Girls not excluded.
Show us how it's done. Control yourself, so I can listen.
I'd like to listen. But what would I be listening to?
A bunch of joyful bloody screaming? A mostly-peaceful knife fight?
Another happy bout of genocidal shooting?
You can't vibe your way out of something you pretend isn't there, or put in a closet of "toxic negativity," to never be addressed.
Is it negative to tell Anne Heche to maybe think about slowing down her drinking, before she ends up on a stretcher, only a week from eternity? Maybe even hell?
It's only negative if it isn't true.
And if it isn't true, it doesn't matter. Enjoy your birthday cake and Pop Rocks.
But if it is true....
Make an effort. Do it now.
Good luck.
Invisible Manifesto For a Rising Outlaw Nation (Take 1)
A waterfall of concrete, bubbles made of people, taxi horns & earrings. All my car troubles so far have been psychosomatic. I wanna know the chromosomes of the digital world, the DNA of binary code. X & Y, the boiling sky. Bums & heroes, 1's & zeros. All my frustrations come from the delusional belief that my life should have some sort of plotline. What if my life fails to depict this bowl of burning gumballs in a linear manner? Is that a watercolor, or a water cooler? The only 2 choices are life or death, which is to say there are no life & death choices, except of course the choice of life or death (there is nothing else that matters).
Is civilization a place? An entity? Or is it a process by which we are stripped of the sovereign hearts & minds that make us human (no Universal Mind for me no thankyou), while learning to pose & act in a morbid caricature of humanity, an over-rehearsed scene performed by second-rate actors destroying each other over petty disagreements about the stage directions. I AM not civilized, I HAVE BEEN civilized. & hopelessly civilized I will remain. It's when I resign myself to the process of civilization (bleak cartoon) that i turn my back on God, turn my back on life, turn my back on the invisible drums, & dreaming; turn my back on love & life (forgiveness), & spread the gospel of misery & death.
Am I a cheerleader of death?
Is that my self-own I hear ringing?
To what end have I destroyed myself?
Do I gottagit my handsdirty?
Cops, dogs, sucker outfits: Your repression gives me voice; by binding me in shackles you put me on a platform from which I can be seen & heard. What you call rotting, I call breathing. I am not a threat to you and/or your system, I'm a threat to you and/or your system. Are you reading me? Feeding me? Beating me?
Are we fighting? Am I bleeding? Is someone here at war with you? Do you think that because this is your house, the rest of us have to play by your rules? Do you think this is your house? Do you think these are your rules?
Do you wanna keep me down? Leave me alone to my fanciful imaginings. Do you want to keep your illusion of control? Then you have to let me do what I want. There are pitfalls involved in spitting spitballs at a pitbull. My brain is full of gaylords, swords & handwritten rainclouds. You can't tell me nothin'.
There is no need for civilization in the Invisible Nation, & being right about everything doesn't change anything.
There's hope you crazy punk-ass.
I'm talking to myself you know.
From Dancing on the Ceiling of My Existential Kitchen ©2012 Nathan Payne
