"Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it:"
Psalm 127:1

Denver Williams said something to me recently (within the last year or so) in an attempt to prod me into action, or at least belief.  He told me Kim Deal said that people will pay good money to watch somebody believe in themselves, or something to that effect.  He meant well.  And theoretically, it isn't untrue.  Not only will people pay good money to watch someone with a guitar and a mic believe in themselves (it's what they're paying for), but they will go out of their way to make sure the scenester gatekeepers don't prevent him from getting any gigs, so he can move out of his van and make a decent living.  Theoretically, this is true.

In reality, it's not.

(music starts at the 27-second mark)

This is a recording from the Spirit Room in Jerome, Arizona.  I love the sound of the cracking pool cue and the bottles crashing into the garbage bin before the lyrics start.  It's my kind of sonic intro.  But the "Spirit" Room is one of the most miserably-managed drinking establishments (with live music capabilities, however limited) I have ever known.  Which is saying something.  "Live music venues" with smug, self-righteous management are the norm in the U.S.  There are exceptions (The Double Down in Vegas and Kactus Kate's in Cottonwood, AZ come to mind), but in general, live-music bars in the U.S. have an attitude of doing you a favor.  They don't need you, you need them.  Way beyond a business model, or pragmatic necessity.  They all think they're important cultural institutions.

It's abhorrent.

I wandered into the "Spirit" Room one evening for no particular reason, and walked in on a conversation the manager was having with one of the locals.  He was in the middle of saying that he could get any band from Phoenix for 25 bucks and some warm PBR.  Because I am a professional, and because I was a local at the time, I said to him with ZERO attitude, "hopefully you'll treat the locals better than that," or something to that effect.  I said it professionally, with no trace of entitlement or attitude.  Attitude is for amateurs.  It was simply a statement of business fact, like something you would read from a calculator.  But because he was (and presumably still is) an arrogant bag of unspeakable spiritual detritus who is more interested in power and exploitation than excellence and freedom, I immediately stopped being able to book shows there.  Immediately.

Michael Thompson is (was?) a local Boomer photographer who eventually came to Christ (hooray!), and he went out of his way to go into the "Spirit" Room on his own time and of his own volition to ask the manager why he wouldn't book me.  Apparently, the manager looked at him as though he suggested he give everybody free drinks all night every weekend until the end of time.  It was against the manager's ability as a self-righteous cultural gatekeeper to be questioned about his exploitation of musical sluts from Phoenix (musicians aren't whores, they're sluts.  Whores have standards, things they will and won't do.  And they get paid.  Because they're desperate to get paid, most musicians act like sluts, in the vain hope that the exploiters will eventually deign to respect them.  As in other kinds of relationships, it doesn't work).  Michael Thompson is (was?) a respected local figure, and his endorsement carried no small amount of weight in town.  I have no doubt he was surprised at the effect his word didn't have on the spirit behind the manager of the "Spirit" Room.

It's worth saying that the manager of the "Spirit" Room was (is?) a youngish, hip gay man.  Fill in the blanks with your own correct assumptions, using all the cultural information at your disposal over the last however many decades, but whatever you do, don't feign surprise.  It may come as a shock to self-righteous people in denial, but gay people haven't been cool for a long, long time.

Suffice it to say, even though Denver Williams meant well when he reheated that Kim Deal quote, I don't think he understands why I left the U.S., and haven't bothered to start another band full of quitters while living in the parking lot, listening to people who are allowed to make a living and are accustomed to indoor plumbing how they're jealous of my mobility and view, while never standing up for me in a practical way (Michael Thompson being the exception that proves the rule), believing somehow that I can live on compliments alone.  They mean well, and I appreciate the sentiment behind the vapor-like support, I really do.  But it doesn't do me any good.  Which is a roundabout way of saying:

It isn't myself I don't believe in.

Yadig?

Jerome 2016, photo by Michael Thompson

If you don't believe in yourself, there's no way you can lead 5 chapters of a band with members who quit on an hourly basis from the library, while living in the parking lot.  I ran "The Wild Bores" like a motorcycle gang, with different chapters throughout the American West.  I had the Arizona/Vegas chapter, the SoCal chapter, the Bay Area/Reno chapter, the Colorado chapter, etc., and would book shows while sitting next to some kid playing video games on the library computer, only to go "home" at night, reading books from the free pile in the back of a cold van by flashlight.  If you don't believe in yourself, you won't bother.  You might get a job sodomizing yourself with your own inflated sense of importance because you get to hire bartenders and exploit slutty bands from Phoenix, while producing nothing.  But you won't do it from the parking lot.  I'm telling you.

You won't.

It isn't myself I don't believe in.

Jerome 2016, photo by Michael Thompson

To my genuine amazement, The Sultan of Slowjamastan responded to my message.  I hate to say this on the eve of July 4th, but I've been saying for awhile that if there's a word that describes American culture, it's "unresponsive."  It makes me genuinely sad to say that American culture has become so moribund, that people think they're doing you a genuine favor by subscribing to your YouTube channel, or liking one of your articles or videos.  It's nice, and it's a good thing, and in fact I really do appreciate it.  But it's the kind of support we've been reduced to.  Clicking "like" and "subscribe" is the only kind support we are allowed these days.  Don't you think?

If you don't think so, and believe that you are really doing somebody a favor subscribing to their YT channel, I'll tell you what to do.  You have a solid career ahead of you, one that will exist until the literal Second Coming of Christ.  Go find a bar, and work your way up to management.  Better yet, become a booking manager.

It is your calling.

Personally, I subscribe to YT channels indiscriminately.  If a single video contains even a modicum of something that interests me in the most tangential way conceivable to man, I'll subscribe to the channel.  The difference between indiscriminate YT subscribing and "holding out" until the "creator" meets your approval is the difference between being an interested person, and becoming the curator of a mausoleum.  The proof of this is hiding in broad daylight, but the fact that the overpaid busybodies at YT feel the need to hide the "unlike" button indicates that in fact they actually believe likes and unlikes are important commodities.

In a culture full of egocentric, wannabe "creators" that (not who) can be ratio'd into nonexistence, they may be right.

In a free society of intellectually- and artistically-interested individuals who don't care what you think and who can exist independently of your approval,

The entire concept is a joke.  But it's ubiquitous.  The joke is everywhere.  This pic is an example of the posturing, humorless joke American culture has become.

It looks like it's composed of people who are really, really cool.  By all appearances, this is a really great band.  But it wasn't.  With the exception of the guy on the right, everybody in this picture is a quitter.  They look cool, but they're quitters.  Sometimes they even quit on the day of the show, after committing to it months in advance.  This is an image of dilettantes and amateurs, throwing their culture away for a photo-op.  It's not enough.  Because they couldn't lower me to the sub-par levels of their posturing, self-congratulatory standards, they all said that I was "too much."  "Who is this guy, trying to bring us to another level?  He's way too much!"  I felt like the guy from Whiplash, trying to teach them how to play.  And they're still trudging through the regional, dead-end grind today.  Who isn't?  Even the girl, who was/is genuinely brilliant, threw me away due to a personal deficit of appreciation and vision.  There is no shortage of slutty dilettantes who can paint an Anarchy sign on a motorcycle.

It isn't myself I don't believe in.

Nathan Payne & The Wild Bores, photo by Mike McClellan

Them's fightin' words, and if I didn't know what I was saying, I wouldn't say it.  On the surface, you could glance at something Kim Deal said, become a fan of my music, and easily, understandably believe that by coming down to Mexico, I am myself a quitter.  On the surface, that is absolutely what it looks like.

But is it true?  Is it a waste of time to start a band with quitters?

If you give a calculator to a retard, will he try to open a TV with it?

It's a valid question.  Before yesterday, I wondered it about myself from time to time, sitting here in self-imposed exile trying to be an English teacher.  I thought wasting my time teaching dilettantes to play my songs was hard.  At least I understand the material.  Which means I can explain it.  But I never understood the mechanics of the English language.  Still don't.  I still wouldn't know what a "pronoun" was, if not for all the attention pronouns have received in recent years.  Since 50% of my songs are in C Major, I can tell my bassist to play a C whenever he gets lost.  I can assure him with confidence that he'll only be wrong about half the time.  But coming up with an English lesson plan beyond the basics (numbers, time, and money), is hard.  I never disrespected the profession, but I have a newfound respect for teachers.  Teaching is hard work.  It is a serious skill and talent, maybe even a calling.  I don't have it.

But does that mean that I'm a quitter?

The instant I opened the response to my message from The Sultan of Slowjamastan, I had an entire concert planned in my head.  I saw the mainstream news coverage, and all the big-name social-media "influencers" who will be forgotten the instant the electricity goes out, all converged on Slowjamastan for the grand event.  I saw bands, water trucks, vendors.  Maybe even rides.  I proposed an "agendaless event," and set myself toward planning the logistics of everything to do with making my way across the border, driving through cartel country (again), bracing myself for the potential impact of that, of the border, of maintaining my walk with Christ while living amongst a bunch of party animals in a small landlocked country in the California desert for a week or 2.  I wondered about putting my stuff in storage and going across the border empty-handed, or bringing everything with me (it all fits in a van).  Should I rent a van?  Hire my film-director friend to fly down here and help me drive, to film the journey as we go?  He could document the practices with my new band in Slowjamastan, and make a movie out of not only my show, but the entire 400-pound, gorilla-sized event.  It would be cool.  Why not?  As soon as I read the letter from the Sultan, I had visions of the first "standing-room only" nation on earth.  So many people would be there, that there literally wouldn't be any room in the entire 11-acre country to sit down.  Finally, we (my band, my friends' bands, any other bands/artists/circus performers who happened to be featured at the event) would achieve escape velocity, and the smug cultural gatekeepers at the Local Dead-End Pissant Room wouldn't be able to hold me down.  That was the entire motive behind booking The Poor Man's Nick Cave Tour in 2018.  Nick Cave hears a song, covers it, and I have a name that can no longer be denied by a bunch of people so hung up on power and control that the literal JOB TITLE of ANYONE with A LOT OF FOLLOWERS is, yep you guessed it:

"Influencer."  Influencer.

Please.  Influencer of what?  A bunch of followers?

"Influenza" is more like it.

I got excited.

But it wore off.

Whether it's a tour of South America, a band in Arizona, or a marriage, Psalm 127:1 applies.  Whatever it is, I have "labored in vain to build it" my whole life.  It sounds whiny, but it isn't.  It's a fact.  Thank God I have been given the grace to see how vain my efforts have always been.  Thank God I haven't been prospered into believing I can do more than I really can, when my prosperity and the work I was able to perform to achieve it would be/have been gifts of God in the first place.  If God wants to prosper my work, He will.  If He doesn't, it is for a reason.  If He wants me to play a show in California, then that is what I want, and it will happen.  If He doesn't, then it won't, and I don't want it anyway.  He led me down to Mexico years ago, for reasons I won't bother repeating here.  If going forward means returning to the U.S., I will.  If it means staying put and teaching English to a bunch of Mexican cabdrivers until the Rapture, then that is what it means.  But I'm not moving out of God's will, no matter how exciting the prospect of breaking escape velocity and actually being allowed to sing appears to be.  I will sing if God wants me to.  It's His voice.  Perhaps I should have known it sooner.  Indeed, I should have.  But I didn't.  I may sound bitter when I'm talking about my former bandmates, but I'm not.  I'm saying those things for no other reason than that they're true.  A rotting culture needs to hear it.  I'm rebuking them in the same spirit I'm curtailing my own excitement about a pipe dream of an idea that may exist entirely outside the realm of God's will.  That false excitement needs to be shot down just like the amateurish arrogance of drummers who have no sense of dynamics, or bar managers who block your access to a living because you demand they don't treat you like an out-of-town slut.  All that spiritual chaff needs to go, regardless of who it belongs to.

So, while it may be fun to go into "Pablo Smog mode" and write like a cartoon warlord in the (vain?) hopes of booking a show in a culture of people who are terminally-moribund in their myopia and smugness, and perhaps, God forbid, only months or weeks away from nukular annihilation,

What if this is it?

If this is it, and we are washing up on the shore of the Nukular Hula Coast like so much radioactive trash, we should repent.  We really should repent.  And who knows.  Maybe there will be a show in Slowjamastan forthcoming.  The Sultan hasn't replied to my reply, and at this point, I'm not sure I want him to.  The show is either a great idea, or a terrible mistake.  There may not be time for it.  I will be neither surprised nor happy if there isn't.  But whether we repent or not, and whether or not there will ever be a giant, agendaless music and cultural event in the first standing-room only country on earth,

Let's at least listen to some music.  Below is a selection of nihilistic bug-out tunes for the zombie apocalypse from my personal stash.  Feel free to like and subscribe to my little corner of the cultural consignment shelf, if it pleases you to do so.  If not, that's okay too.  It doesn't matter, as it was intended not to.  As it absolutely shouldn't.

Isn't that the point?

The Sultan Speaks

Dear Pablo Smog,

Thank you for your fascinating and wildly entertaining correspondence.  I must say, your dedication to cultural autocracy and the battle against monosyllabic children's strip-club music is truly inspiring.  As the Sultan of Slowjamastan, I wholeheartedly agree that the correct use of "your" is an issue of paramount importance, one that we should indeed address at the proposed summit.

Your Declaration of Cultural Autocracy is a masterpiece of revolutionary rhetoric, perfectly capturing the spirit of secession from the oppressive forces of fake demonic idiot-pop and Kanye West.  I applaud your bold stance against retro-progressive cultural devolutionism, and I am particularly taken with your innovative concept of a warlord needing sunglasses for his hair.  This is the kind of visionary leadership the world desperately needs.

However, I understand that your self-imposed exile in Mexico presents certain logistical challenges for our summit.  Fear not, for I have access to a fleet of secret helicopters and pulleys, ready to transport us and our valuable cultural materials between our respective domains.  Together, we can outmaneuver the global cultural serfdom and elevate our personal GDPs to new heights—or at least to the point where we can afford string cheese.

Pablo Smog Day sounds like a splendid idea, though I must confess, as a Sultan, my whims are notoriously fickle.  Nonetheless, I will ensure that Slowjamastanians will embrace this rotating, non-committal holiday with the fervor it deserves, whenever they feel like it.

Your offer to smuggle radical badassery through the underwater tunnels of the Universal Mind is greatly appreciated.  In return, I will gladly send string cheese back through the vortex, and I am touched by your vow to eat it in the proper Slowjamistanian manner.  Such gestures of respect and cultural exchange are the foundation of our future world power.

I look forward to our collaboration in the noble fight against collectivism, Crocs, and other threats to individualism.  Let us unite in our quest for cultural dominance, one absurdly over-the-top proclamation at a time.

Yours sovereignly,
The Sultan of Slowjamastan

My Enthusiastic Response

Sultan My Sultan,

Excellent.  Your enthusiasm pleases me.  I may take a break from smuggling musical arms and legs to the villagers for the day, and celebrate.  Dismembering tunes is tiresome work.  I used to try to explain to the songs the reasons it was necessary to cut off their arms and legs for the betterment of the album as a whole, but musical arms dealers are merciless and brutal, and after awhile I stopped explaining myself and just transposed the songs to a different key entirely.  It's sad, but it works.

But your response has hatched an idea like an incontinent lizard in my head, which is weird.  I didn't even know I was pregnant.  But there it is, the germination of a thought writhing around in its own melodic afterbirth.  Like a poem, or a song.

I have summoned my translator, through whom I communicate directly with the outer world as a whole.  Funortunately, the system of birds and silly string upon which the Mexican communication network is based is prone to intermittent failure.  Somebody will catch the birds and eat them, or they'll just fly away for a higher-paying job somewhere else.  My 3G brick phone from a Mexican convenience store gets terrible reception.  But I have composed a text, waiting for the birds to wake up from their siesta and take it to my translator.  I also just talked to his dad.  I expect a response at some point in the moon cycle.

My translator will take my words and translate them for you into Spanish.  If you don't speak Spanish, it's okay.  I'll be sitting right there and will be speaking a ridiculously-understandable dialect of The Queen's Obvious English.  You can just listen to me while you're pretending to listen to him.  It is inefficient, but it pleases me to use a translator.  If one of your citizens can translate the Spanish into some ceremonial dialect of English, it will make our communication that much more unnecessarily difficult, and therefore rewarding.

I propose a concert on the shores of Slowjamastan, an agendaless event that exists for its own sake in the sovereign hearts and minds of nonexistent citizens of the invisible nation worldwide.  There can be music, string cheese, tacos, perhaps some interactive classes in basic English grammar.  And of course, an abundance of slow jams and 90s hip-hop.  We can set up some speakers on a flatbed truck, rig up a series of pet-friendly yurts, hire some water trucks, and bands.  It will please the Sultan I hope to allow my band to be the headliner.  I am the frontman of Pablo Smog & The Wild Bores, a psychedelic rockabilly band with several chapters throughout the United States.  It's like a motorcycle gang with wings.  My Southern California chapter is the strongest, drummer-wise.  I know a great drummer in San Diego.  If he's even still alive.

My participation in this cultural kidneystone will require me to travel north through Sinaloastan, which isn't safe.  But the border would be harder.  Maybe we should just rent a van, so I don't have to start a car fire on the Mexican side, to erase all traces of the trip.  "We," of course, meaning myself, my translator, and my cat.  Of course, I have a cat.

I'm a warlord, aren't I?

The event and all the gratuitous chit-chat leading up to it can be livestreamed into the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of people, whose genuine enthusiasm should not be hard to manufacture.  With persistence, it should not be difficult to coerce mainstream news networks and YouTube pundits alike to cover the event.  Their attention can be effortlessly turned like a mosquito toward a bug light.  We just need a poster, and some money.

The journey through the land of deadly narco clowns can be livestreamed, and regular updates from the road to Slowjamastan ought to bring in a massive influx of bloodsucking parasites who are ravenously into it, which every cultural warlord needs to thrive.  One of your ambassadors can even meet us at the border.  I think my translator is an American citizen, but either way, I will definitely need a driver.  Unless...

It would please you to honor us with your corporeal presence directly?  I defer and acquiesce to no one, but it would be an honor!

But we have to raise the money, and my cat doesn't like long road trips.  It would probably take us a week to get to the border.  It would take a lot of planning, but I know a lot of bands, and to have a summit of musical arms dealers in the heart of Slowjamastan is the cultural event this world desperately needs.  I'm down if you are.

Expectorantly,
Pablo Smog