I was done, and I was okay with it, but then my friends reached out to me from Indiana, even though they're from Louisiana, and I met them in Mexico.  It made my day, so I said okay.  But since it's only been a day or 2 since my last email, I'm only going to send this out to everybody.  I wrote a poem based on a typo in the subtitles of a video by an African guy talking about an atheist who went to hell.  He said, "where your treasure is, there will your art be also."

So here's a poem inspired by that amusing turn of phrase, and the Cat Power kick the YT algorithm put me on today.  Moon Pix was a beautiful album to listen to while driving around stoned with love in your heart, back in the day.  An interesting narcotic cocktail, love and weed.  I was also inspired to write to make myself feel better after listening to some guy advertising his book, titled The Lie of Christian Rock & Roll.  I figured, if your treasure is in idolizing a trade by believing it to be an inherent act of worship, then... there your art will be also.  Meaning, your art is going to suck.  Which of course it does.  But instead of writing a lengthy, tiresome response with a divisive, misanthropic title, followed by a 500-word subtitle that would be unlikely to be considered gracious, I wrote the poem.  I was going to write it in Braille, but I figured English is a form of Braille, in that it has become the language of the blind, so what difference does it make.

I say without any of the manufactured social guilts of any kind.  Speaking English is an exquisite, luxurious pleasure.  I have a bottle of English stashed in the walls, like the murder victims of a drug cartel, or the undeclared donations of a megachurch.  It's a good vintage.  Some California valleyspeak with a slight 80s mallrat bouquet and a piquant King James aftertaste followed by a smooth, refreshing finish of Brooklyn yo's and Texas y'alls.  Eloquent, yet baked.  Classical, but fried.  Barbequed, yet ambulatory.  I walk and talk as one who has been cooked, and yet the ability to perambulate, persists.

But it's as though it's impossible to quit smoking weed and NOT have an anti-weed opinion, or realize your own sin nature and need for forgiveness WITHOUT feeling the need to never listen to music made by people who don't share your opinions or faith, ever again.  How abhorrent.  The moralizing libertine who seeks to be free of laws in his or her own life by imposing all of them on everybody else is just as much of a nauseating paradox as the idolatrous Christian who believes art is sacred and therefore can only ever be a form of worship, while not holding ANY other trade up to that self-righteous, impossible standard.  Because of this unbearable, self-cancellating force of hypocrisy and idolatrous anti-culture, which is exactly the same while simultaneously being at odds with itself... well, nevermind.  The force of etcetera is overwhelming.  What difference does it make.

If I didn't know that the culture war was spiritual, and that the parallax view of the paradox is part of the preparation of a soul for paradise, I'd go back to smoking weed.  It is a gift from God, after all.  Allow me to suggest thanking Him for it, next time you engage in a rapid series of mad bong rips, unto the salvation of your vibe.

Here's the poem.  Thanks for glistening,
N

p.s.  Among many other places on this blog, the article Without Ketchup There Can Be No Righteousness gets into the "music as an idol" issue in more depth.  And the video of the atheist doctor going to hell won't embed, but is worth checking out as well.  Watch it HERE.

Thanks again.