Listening | Noticing | Getting Down
February 8, 2016 Leave a comment
January 31, 2016 Leave a comment
January 17, 2016 Leave a comment
January 10, 2016 Leave a comment
“Street Preacher” by Diggs Duke on BandCamp
September 24, 2015 Leave a comment
Uncle Funk made a YouTube playlist for you to slap a big high five with.
Click these words, friend. (Sorry for the ads, but they need not enslave your mind.)
1) “Sweet Salvation” by The Stepkids
2) “Peace” by Radio Citizen (N E W – R E L E A S E!)
3) “Triple Helix” by Jimi Tenor, KABU KABU
4) “Back Pocket” by Vulfpeck (N E W – R E L E A S E!)
5) “Too Fine” by Bosley
Savor & repeat.
September 10, 2015 Leave a comment
Uncle Funk, a self-made man, first faced adversity when he shot out his daddy’s tubes and had to struggle his wiggly little ass onto that elusive egg.
And if just one little wiggle hadn’t happened exactly like it did, I’d be a whole different man with entirely different words to say to himself.
Those wiggles I wiggled were the first of an infinite number of transactions that brought us to this point in the kaleidoscopic infinity of alternatives.
I’m here. You’re also here.
Hi.
You and I… well, we’re still wiggling by instinct toward some unknown end, but we wigglers are growing more scarce.
People ain’t wiggling much anymore… Like they’re not trying to get anywhere.
Adversity these days is to keep wiggling when we’re all alone, where the distance between worlds is still measured in tiny efforts.
Go on and get you somewhere. You ain’t alone.
(You’re just tiny, and going against the flow in a self-made craft, through a sea of decisions that aren’t your own, and sometimes need to be reminded you can make it.)
March 11, 2015 Leave a comment
A Tuesday, in late March…
I picked up an unusually shaped set of wind chimes, and the sound waves generated by my lifting them created a sentient being, hanging in mid-air in the garden section of Curtis Lowe’s, composed of the vapor wake interference of the perfectly woven tones. The entity glowed pinkish purple, was translucent, and vaguely humanoid in shape.
Its first words, matching the movements of changes in color I took for its mouth, but with sound coming from the chimes in my shaking hand, were, “Don’t put the chimes down!”
I froze and held the chimes a little farther away from me. The apparition smiled? My hands were shaking, and the chimes continued to vibrationally manifest an entity into existence from what was inert air before me, two feet from my face. Its mouth opened again. It said, “I’m glad you’re nervous and shaking. Keep moving the chimes. Don’t touch them. If you stop them ringing, I’ll die.”
My arm ached just at the thought of holding onto these chimes for more than a few minutes. I looked around for a place to hang the sentient chimes. The spirit’s voice quickly rung out again, through a composite voice of all the chimes at once, “Don’t hang the chimes. Carry me. I need you… father.”
I dramatically arched a single eyebrow. The right one. I said, “What are you, anyway?”
The chimes said, “I am a new creature that never existed before you picked up the set of chimes you’re holding. But I intuit that I can exist only in relatively still air. So the chimes are likely only strong enough for me to exist indoors. Otherwise, even a weak wind would break up the tiny changes in air pressure that compose my internal machinations. I would like to be named ‘Gene Dudley.’”
I said, “So you exist solely in the ringing sounds of wind chimes that can’t be in the wind?”
Gene Dudley’s ghostly head drooped toward the floor, and he said in his beautiful, unearthly voice, “Yes.”
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being father to sentient wind chimes. Gene was pretty smart for just being around 20 seconds old. But my arm was shaking, and I am not a strong person. I didn’t consider, in those moments we had together, creating some type of automated chime shaker. I just felt the pain growing in my arm, like a porcupine baby in a womb. I said, “Wind chimes that can’t be in the wind, but can’t be quiet. Are you just trying to teach me a lesson?”
Gene Dudley said, “Look at the label on the chimes. What does it say? Where did I come from, father?”
I pulled the chimes closer to my face, careful not to touch any of the magical singing tubes. The label on the chimes, just above the barcode, read, “SKU76319 $179.99.”
I was like, “$179.99. No way.” Maybe if I had had a gift card. I set the protesting $180 Gene Dudley down gently, and snuffed his existence like a hemorrhoid pad putting out a lit match.
I went into the store for a rake, anyway.
