Jesus was a Capricorn, He ate organic foods.
January 11th 2017
Disclaimer: I feel like its worth pointing out at this point in my sharing that I am terribly uncomfortable with the idea that any of my writing comes off as preachy or as if I am trying to provide the right way to do things or the right way to think. And lastly, I am not at all under any delusion that I am positing anything new or fresh. It’s just what’s going on in my noggin’ today, yesterday or whenever I write. All I know after 31 years is that my best bet is to be malleable so that the people I trust and the trust that I have in myself might help guide me to living the best way I can. I fall short of the expectations I set for myself pretty often but I know that the more I write about life and how I feel about it, the more likely I am to pay closer attention to the way I am living it and thus perhaps more likely to make positive changes in time.
When it comes to music, I have such very strong convictions about what is good and what is crap. I have always made snap judgments about people based on their musical taste. For example, despite having been raised in Georgia, and being introduced to people like Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson at an early age, and even enjoying them at that time, I pretty quickly grew out of that and then thought that country music and anyone that listened to it probably sucked. I went on believing that for years. It wasn’t until I was introduced to Sturgill Simpson in 2014 that I decided that maybe not all country music was so bad. Ever since my introduction to Sturgill, I have been on a journey back in time to explore the country giants that helped influence him. While there’s no doubt Waylon, Willie, Kris Kristofferson and the rest of those mad outlaws left some sort of imprint on his artistic mind, it turns out that he cites Al Green as being his biggest influence. This really comes through in his most recent offering, ‘A Sailor’s Guide to Earth’- A soulful and moving tribute to his firstborn son.
He, like so many other artists right now, are in the business of bending genres and flipping and smashing what was once electronic music, country music, rock n’ roll etc. in to some amorphous style that is best left uncategorized. If you asked me to tell you what Toro y Moi, Jungle, Glass Animals, Chet Faker and others’ music sounds like, I would likely start listing some pretentious adjectives, some of which I don’t really know the meaning of, until I catch myself and just say, “I don’t fucking know, you tell me!”
Sturgill’s second album, “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music”, was the one that really got me hooked- the one that led me to a long and wondrous journey of searching through the history of old country. One of the first people I wanted to listen to was Kris Kristofferson. I had read a Rolling Stone article about him a while back, or at least looked at some of the pictures, and found him to be fascinating. He was a Rhodes Scholar, a Captain in the US Army and a helicopter pilot. He was a Golden Gloves boxer, an actor and a damn fine musician. He was, so far as I can tell, the original article. A real American hero.
With more than a few albums to choose from, I wasn’t really sure where to start but then I found one called “Jesus was a Capricorn” and that made the decision much easier- me being such a big fan of astrology and all. I relate to his music because while he clearly doesn’t take himself too seriously, there is honesty in his lyrics. I’m trying to replicate those same qualities in my writing. It’s always nice to have goals, no matter just how lofty they may be.
Some lyrics from the song “Jesus was a Capricorn”
’Cause everybody needs somebody to look down on
Prove they can be better than at any time they choose
Someone doin’ somethin’ dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can’t find nobody else, then help yourself to me.
Eggheads fussin’, rednecks cussin’
Hippies for their hair
Others laugh at straights who laugh at
freaks who laugh at squares
Some folks hate the whites
who hate the black who hate the klan
Most of us hate anything
that we don’t understand
This has always resonated with me. I wish it didn’t. I wish I lived in a world where I looked at everyone as my equal. Unfortunately, for a long time I have found that I view most people in my life as either being less than or better than me- that is, until they become my friend. And sadly, even in that case, I have found myself doing the same thing, just not quite as often. I can tell by how I am able to speak with people whether or not I view them as being less than or better than me. I feel uncomfortable and anxious around people I perceive to be “better” than me. To the 6 of you that might read this and think, “well hey wait a minute, we hit it off right away! So what, you think I’m less than you?”, don’t worry, I’m talking about the other people. And to those that sense my timidity when we speak, fuck you...fucking homeowner.
This is all so silly. I’m a decent enough person that I should feel comfortable with the person I am. I should be comfortable enough to speak to anyone with confidence but there are still those that make me feel, through no actions of their own, that I am not on their level. I should say, I’ve gotten a lot better at suspending my default-setting of judging people and categorizing them in to one of these groupings. It happens less and less everyday as I have worked to view everyone as my equal. It has taken time and I am definitely not there yet but being conscious and aware of my natural tendencies is the only way to not let them dictate how I view the world and its miserable and beautiful inhabitants.
Self-righteousness is about as strong as heroin. It gets you high. The feelings that swell up inside us when we look at others and judge the way they live, the views they have, their clothes or whatever else, are strong and addictive. I’m so sure that Trump and his supporters are shitty people and when I think about him and them, I just feel sooooo good, because I’m not them.
Jermaine Cole in his song, GOMD says:
I know the reason you feel the way
I know just who you wan’ be
So everyday I thank the man upstairs
That I ain’t you and you ain’t me.
I feel him. And I’m grateful for the person I am but it is a bit arrogant to just assume I know. In the past I’ve gotten it in my head that I am so much better. And in the case of Trump and his supporters, damn, I don’t know, I might be right (No, no, no… ). But that’s no way to go around thinking. You can create a lonely little island for yourself when you’re better than everyone else. At the same time, if it just gives you a little bump in self-esteem, then why not? For me, it’s because that bump is just that, a bump. An emotional lift that lasts about as long as a bump of coke and leaves you feeling just as… well ok, you don’t feel that bad afterwards but there’s no denying that when you put that negative energy in to the universe, it finds its way back to you one way or another. Making a concerted effort to change the way I view people and the way they think and act to be more benefit-of-the-doubt-giving seems like a healthy alternative to just walking around so completely sure that I and my thoughts and my opinions are the right ones.
This reminds me of something that David Foster Wallace said about all of us having a choice in what we believe. Fuck. I stole his “default-setting”.
DFW says
If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important — if you want to operate on your default-setting — then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren’t pointless and annoying. But if you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff’s necessarily true: The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it.
He’s right. We ultimately have a choice of how we are going to try and interpret a situation or a person, so why not choose something a little less cynical? I hate that we lost DFW so young. He was such a force. His writing was also genre-bending. I guess he did write articles for the New Yorker and novels and short stories and they’re likely to be quite different but within his writing, no matter the medium, I always find myself asking, what is this?
I guess the mainest thing is, it doesn’t matter one shit of a bit. I don’t need to know- just like I don’t need to know how in the hell to describe Thundercat’s music. It just is. Just like people. They just are.
Regina Spektor’s, Ghost of Corporate Future.
And people are just people
They shouldn’t make you nervous
the world is everlasting
It’s coming and it’s going.
Being that our existence on this earth is so brief, there is not enough time to let our heads be filled with fear of people, self-aggrandizing behavior or judgment. Love. Love is the commonality that binds every single culture together. So I am not better than or less than anyone. I am simply love with skin and flesh, that sometimes makes fun of Chinese tourists wearing matching outfits.
