The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. -Douglas Adams
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. -Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I believe that there is an equality to all humanity. We all suck. -Bill Hicks
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. -Henry Miller
Song: Boogaloo Stuff Artist: Headnodic Album: Junk Drawer, Vol. 1 Label: Piecelock 70 Listen: Google Play • iTunes • AmazonMP3
Transcript of un-aired Terry Gross interview with God.
TG: I would like to welcome our guest, the divine Creator, God. God, thank-you for joining us.
G: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. This will be a good interview.
TG: Super! A good rating from the most important and omniscient critic ever! Okay, so I am going to get right down to one of the questions all my listeners want to know the answer to, and that is “Why are we here?”
G: To survive, really. That’s it. Fear, pain, consciousness… those are just tools you use to survive. Everything other than survival is first world problems and frankly, it’s academic. Love and morality is pretty cool, though. You guys should stick with all that as part of your overall survival plan. Because I said so. [Wink.]
TG: For those of you listening, God just winked at me, and it was magical. Do I taste chocolate? Wow, God winks, and you taste chocolate! That is fantastic. But what exactly do you mean by survival? Individual survival? Species survival? Or do you mean, like, our ideas?
G: I mean survival. The constant exertion of life and being. Existing rather than not, and the yearning to do so. I’m talking about that thing that makes a seedling reach toward the light and dig into the asphalt. It’s actually a force I just built in. It should work its way through your whole self, even if you’re broken. [pregnant pause] Honestly, Terry, I rather detest this line of questioning. I get that life is hard. If anyone gets it, I get it. But humans asking me “WHY?” all the time when they’re sitting in a universe that is absolutely Top Notch is downright perturbing. Don’t worry, Terry, I won’t fly off the handle here. Rumors of my temper have been greatly exaggerated. But let me tell you, it’s no walk in the park to create a universe from nothing, and one that doesn’t collapse immediately isn’t instant pudding, either. Do you know how many tries it took me to get yours just right? It’s grueling work, it is. And billions of years of development later, you humans and your “consciousness” wind up wanting to move out of the universe I made you, and into existences of your own confabulation before you’re even through with the one I made you… to answer the question why! It’s just sort of thankless, and frankly, beside the point.
TG: That’s amazing. I hadn’t really considered the question from that angle. Sorry, God! Leave it to God to come up with a new way for me to see things. Okay, next question. Isn’t it true that all religions are at least partially right, so far as they share a common theme of love and peaceful fellowship? Please elaborate in your own words.
G: It depends on what your definition of “is” is. [Wink.]
TG: Mmmm. Another wink. That time, it tasted like roast duck. Wow, I mean, that is something for us to take home… the definition of is. Okay, let me recover with a question about you. Ever been married?
G: Terry, I knew you were going to ask me that.
TG: Shut up!
G: No really, I did. Time and space are like my chest hair. This chest hair right here.
TG: God, are you flirting with me? Stick with the question, you’re not getting off that easy. I can’t believe you’re flirting with me! Your chest hair smells like a baby.
G: No, Terry, I am not married.
TG: Have you ever been? That would be, like, big news, you know, if you ever had been.
G: Sea otters.
TG: Sea otters? Say what you mean by that.
G: I speak in mysterious ways.
TG: So, is “sea otters” like a word puzzle, or a reference to a parable, or an anagram, maybe?
G: Okay, you got me. I once created a different universe, and in that universe I was married. It was a different timespace and something I don’t like to talk about in other continuums. “Sea otters” is just my safe word. I knew the producer forgot to tell you… but this is the best possible outcome for the interview, so I let the confusion stand.
TG: I am sorry I pressed you. And of course I will forgive my producer despite her grievous error. But, wow, I mean, sometimes I worry about what I am going to wear, or like, I will overthink something someone said to me. Another universe, though… That’s a lot heavier than having an ex or, you know, like, a timeshare.
G: I try to keep it real. The other universe, I mean. It’s not like there’s just a big BANG and you’re done with making a universe. It actually takes work from moment to moment to keep it real, and existing. I have to keep trying, or else it’ll sort of poof away.
TG: So, are you, like, straining right now, to keep our universe in existence?
G: No, I’m pretty used to it, but thanks for asking. That compassion part of humanity is especially cute, and almost makes up for the surly attitude the rest of the time. Keep that up. It’s nice to feel cared for. But don’t coddle me. I can take the shaking fists now and then. Shows you’re trying.
TG: Speaking of keeping things real, this body that you’re in. Do you always look like a bald, bearded, dark-skinned male human? I had sort of hoped you’d show up, you know, as a female, or maybe an inhuman orb of light emanating pure compassion. You sort of look like an old version of, like, the Shaft-era Isaac Hayes. When you can take the shape of anyone or anything, why Shaft-era Isaac Hayes?
G: Sea otters.
TG: Okay, next question. Can you tell me if humanity will ever conquer its selfish nature and put an end to war as we know it?
G: Good question. [Wink.]
TG: Mmmm. Wow, I felt that one all over. Strawberries and cream. You know, God, you just have a way of saying things. And God, I want to thank you so much for your time, and well, for everything! … Oh, God, you just turned into a beautiful blond woman!
G: Terry, I am embedding a hidden message inside three musical pieces by the artist RJD2. Don’t over-analyze it, but it’s important. And the message is hidden in a set of instrumentals, so you sort of have to figure it out on your own and apply your own meaning. The album is called More Is Than Isn’t, which may or may not also hold a hidden meaning. NPR won’t air this. In fact, this interview will exist solely in the form of an imagined transcript published on an obscure blog with a pitiful following and very few will ever know anything like the truth about anything. I work in ways mysterious.
Enjoy it.
Songs: Suite 1, Suite 2, Suite 3 Artist: RJD2 Album: More Is Than Isn’t Label: RJ’s Electrical Connections Buy: Amazon | iTunes Listen: Spotify | YouTube
I swoop, slash, and drive your dull gullet far away from the nectar that fortifies these sweet pectorals. I am so badass.
Driven by an intimidating, inborn sense of style, I fly casually by your punk, low-nectar self, sitting on “your” feeder, and I taunt you. I show you how easy I think it is to take your juice, and, of course, you are afraid. I swoop, with a threat to bite the scruff on your neck, but infinitely more likely, you will take off when you see the flash of my plumage, the look in my eye, and the furious beat of my wind kickers.
As likely so, that later, when the sky quakes, and rain chases you beneath the cover of leaf, that the rumble of my wings will sound through the nightmares of your buzzing mind.
(
But now I pause in mid-air,
to share with you, bird to human,
an important fact I will divulge to no other like myself…
I am backed into a corner, and living every moment in fear it’s my last.
I make myself every minute of every day.
And I don’t remember anything before I became this way.
It’s exhausting work, but I rule with the ladies, and my DNA will march like a stallion across the fields of time.
)
The wrinkles in your pride, my fellow birds, diminish you, and I remain.
I am the steel arm of sunrise and sunset,
Come to sweep away the malefactions of your inferiority.
I will suck on the sweet, floral nipples of your desire, egg up your ladies, and I will do it for a prolonged, humiliating period.
For the stallion rides.
~~
Lack of Afro (a Brit named Adam Gibbons) makes sounds with his monkey wings, just taunting you to come at him, bro. Here is “One For The Trouble” from his 2014 release Music For Adverts.
Take some nectar, and enjoy your nervous flight along the edge of existence.
Artist: Lack of Afro Album: Music for Adverts Label: Freestyle Records Buy from: Freestyle Records Listen: YouTube
My shorts are plaid and my legs are thin. My glasses are seven years old, and I know the Latin names of dozens of species. I am a Pisces and I enjoy taking long walks in other people’s shoes.
I wonder openly and often what cavemen would think about things today.
I listen to music like “Black Jesus” by 9 Lazy 9, from Paradise Blown (2003). 9 Lazy 9, an Italian-based group, sounds, smells, looks, and tastes like Ninja Tunes. I dig that secret agent sound.
And if you like the picture I’m painting, we should meet up somewhere tonight. We just need to sync up our lucid dream cycles to astrally connect. I’ll shoot for 3.37am. I will be the one wearing tassels and an ornate codpiece, and I’ll be yelling your name loudly.
Find a quiet spot without any obvious distractions, free of precariously positioned buckets of water, and for the love of chakra, no bubblewrap.
Clear your mind. Focus on your breathing and picture a single image in your mind, like the flame of a candle but not the itch on your nose, or the fact that little bugs live in your eyelashes. Block that out.
No, you can’t force your mind to clarity. You must let serenity happen to you. It is okay for other thoughts to come up. Be aware of those thoughts and then let them pass. Feel yourself letting thoughts into your awareness and out of your awareness. Yes, it’s easy to get caught up in an infinity loop with the whole thinking about what you’re thinking about thing. But let that pass, too. Then let letting things pass pass, and so on, thereby creating an infinity loop of letting go to cancel out the infinity loop of awareness.
Be super careful not to mess it up at this point. If you were to think about whether you paid your light bill or a random stupid thing you said a week ago to somebody, you would totally lose the enlightenment value of the whole shebang and you might as well go eat an animal as sit here and waste time.
Anyway, when you’re floating on the current of being in a bubble of serene oneness with creation, picture something really important to you like your favorite finger food, or the spot where you like to sit on the couch. You know, the stuff that matters. It’ll feel like banging an emotional prayer gong in the middle of your soul.
Yet you’re still at peace and clear-minded and all at this point, and when you’re really like “whoa” on a level you’ve never been so like “whoa” before, then you know you just totally meditated.
You could also spend some minutes of your transit down the current of being listening to “Ain’t He Heavy, He’s My Brother” by Wagon Christ, theistic alias for Luke Vibert, a British artist/producer who gots chops like farmers.
A young American talks with his grandfather, a veteran of the second World War, a self-made man, a leader in his community. They have a somber exchange, after a hearty meal of meat, potatoes, and maize on the cob. The grandfather says to his progeny,
“Grandson, there are two wolves living inside the heart of every man.
“One of the wolves is sustained by feelings of joy, peace, love, hope, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, and compassion.
“The second wolf thrives on fear, jealousy, anger, bitterness, and basically the second wolf is a huge d-bag. Like a Totes-McGoats-Gertrude-Huffernuffer. For izzies, dropping major slog right on the trail where all the other metaphor wolves walk, and this sack of fur won’t even fight the good wolf directly, because this second wolf claims ‘the situation is much more nuanced than good and evil’ and that it ‘just has bouts of depression’ and ‘doesn’t want to be the bad wolf, anymore’ and all types of such nonsense.
“These two wolves continuously fight a battle every day inside each of us.”
The young American stares wide-eyed at his grandfather, “Grandpa? Which wolf wins?”
Grandpa looks his descendant in the face, and says “March of the Dirty Razors” by Big Ass Truck, from Who Let You In Here? (1998). It was a band formed in Memphis in the 19 and 90’s and its members continue to create new music to this day.
The boy says, “I don’t get it. Is that a song? There is a band called Big Gas Truck? The quotes weren’t proper and your words became unfastened. Grandpa, are you all right?”
Grandpa starts to dissolve and swirl like an expensive video editing plug-in effect, and says, as he spins into a syrup of 10 million fading pixels, “Just enjoy the music, kid. I’m off…
Song: March of the Dirty Razors Artist: Big Ass Truck Album: Who Let You In Here? Label: Terminus Records Buy from: Amazon | iTunes Listen: MOG | Spotify
Uncle Funk presents… Simon Cowell presents… Labrinth, and “Express Yourself” (2012).
A very merry unbirthday to all of us. I was skeptical of deeply enjoying music Simon Cowell would choose for me, but then I remembered that America’s Funniest Videos is one of my favorite television shows, and that I would also milk a goat, under proper circumstances. Some people wouldn’t, but milking a goat doesn’t bother me.
I first heard the song on a Windows 8 commercial, and so I think I’ll invite Bill Gates over for brunch after all.
Labrinth has little discography to speak of at this point in history, but if this track is exemplary, I will put money in Simon Cowell’s big machine to keep the juice coming out.
Song: Every Ghetto, Every City Artist: Lauryn Hill Album: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill Label: RUFFHOUSE Buy from: Amazon | iTunes Listen: MOG | Spotify Watch: YouTube
You get nailed doing 117 mph in a 35. You pull over quickly. After all, it’s the polite thing to do. A cop is just another cat trying to make a life worth living.
But get this, playa: The cop is a lady. And she is hot. Smoking. Whatcha gone do now?
To set the scene… You’re watching her in your side view mirror. She strolls up with caution, hand conspicuously resting on her pistol as she approaches (you’re dangerous!). But you notice that her booty got that perfectly balanced swing, like a cat walking on a fence. And you also see that those fingers on the pistol are relaxed… Queue the music!!
Lil Wayne is the artiste. “Mrs. Officer” is the love song for the hot cop. Lil Wayne also runs a flower shop and hydrocarbon repurposing facility in New Orleans. He raps simply to progress the art form and to bolster the spiritual treasures awaiting him in heaven.
For legal clarity, I do not endorse the practice of making moves on lady cops… while they’re in uniform. After they take it off, treat them like every other law breaker you know.
Enjoy the song. Enjoy your freedom. And love the police.
Song: Mrs. Officer Artist: Lil Wayne Album: Tha Carter III Label: Cash Money Buy from: Amazon | iTunes Listen: MOG | Spotify Watch: YouTube
RT @primawesome: Let's have a race. You try to get an appointment with a licensed mental health professional and I'll try to get a gun. Rea… 6 years ago
How to (totally) meditate:
Uncle Funk's Catalogue 