The Captains and the Kings

Congratulations, America. You Are...The unreal expectations that rest on the shoulders of the president -elect will wear heavily, I fear. a good, decent man with an interesting mind and creative ideas, Imagine, a president who speaks in complete, intelligible sentences! Who actually understands the rule of law and that this country must abide by them. Who hopefully will close the torture camp of Guantanamo and repeal the vile,disgusting ironically[tragically] titles"patriot ACT" which is little else but an excuse for the government to do what ever the hell it wants whenever it wants to. Appoint some federal judges who might have a casual acquaintance with the constitution and the bill of rights.{The most damaging effect of the last 28 years of conservative right wing influenza is the appointments of poorly qualified,narrow minded conservatives, many evangelicals to boot, in prominent judicial roles.} Good luck, Mr president-elect,the mess you have inherited from the coup masters BUSH_CHENEY-ROVE-Gonzalez_Myers-Rumsfeld-KIssinger[yes, Hank the knife is an honored advisor to this despicable melange`} For the fist time in almost 50 years, the world is looking, excitedly, to America for some hope. It may be our last ,best chance...

Anthony Braxton, Don Byron and not fitting stereotypes

Anthony Braxton is one of the great living composers still working today. In Japan he would be classified as a Living Treasure,though in America we have American Idol and People Magazine to suit such purposes.His Body of work is so vast and breathtaking that Stravinsky comes to mind,[also for its dissonant public reaction] as a peer. His Ghost Trance music is riveting and beautiful, and Im hoping to hear the Mosaic Box very very soon....Don Byron, though not yet in Braxtons compositional league, is on his way there. Byrons' work output is varied and lovely and new, refusing to be cornered by pre-conceptions and the status quo who dig their heels in and squeal"thats not jazz!" or some such bullshit.I would love to hear Don Byron tackle Messiaens seminal Quartet for the End of Time ,his ear is such that it would alight on new variances and nuances that I have not heard Here's to two brilliant men ,unafraid of their contemporaries squawking,who have hewed a path strewn with beauty and edge. I, for one, am most grateful...

Bob Dylan

Well, Dylan has a new album out.Time was, this was huge.For music lovers, it is still. The headline reviews are typical"Dylans Times they are a changin" " a new wind blows",etc, as if this man has not written anything since Blonde on Blonde. If you haven listened, you're missing some of the most beautiful ,vital music of the last 40 years. Love and Theft, Modern Times and now this Tell Tale Signs, which is nothing short of a history of American roots music. Everyone is shocked at Dylans' brilliance on his Theme Time Radio Hour, as though he was a typical airhead rocker. The man is a literal true autodidact genius. It comes forth on this brilliant two cd set[three if you have the $100 bucks for the deluxe version, thanks Columbia/Sony}...Mississippi is worth the price, alone. Nearly a third of the cuts are from Oh mercy, an album with which Dylan has repeatedly expressed disappointment. Included is a cut from the Civil War movie Gods and generals, and some recent live music. Every time this man puts forth a new album, it is invariably posited that "this is his best work since Blood on the Tracks." This time ,they are correct...

What I believe

....I believe in love, as trite as that sounds. I believe that Jesus of Nazareth showed everyone how to live, and serve.I believe that there is no "correct" religion, that in the end, as our friends say"There Is No God But God."I believe in laughter,music,poetry,dancing,in loud happy neon colors to celebrate this passage,that the humble devotion of anyone trumps any "priestly " pronouncements, I believe that we in the West have lost our idea of the sacred,which explains "new age" philosophies. I believe any belief system that does not lead to service and helping anyone anywhere at any time is ultimately and simply fashion.I believe that the four great things America has given the word are:Jazz,Baseball, The constitution and Alcoholics Anonymous.I believe that everyone should be treated absolutely equal, for this is how the Creator made us, and that we should leave people the hell alone. I believe the last politician worth his salt who ran for president was George McGovern,and look what happened to him. I believe that we are all children of God, and that we are all bastards and God loves us anyway. and I believe that Grace Trumps[to quote Will D Campbell}I believe that we are simply stewards of this planet, and we better get our act together, and damned quick.And, I end where I began, Love and Mercy and Compassion conquer all...

Paul Newman

There are many varieties of cool,most of them fake.Paul Newman ,though, was the real thing. Cool because he gave a damn, and then did something. Cool because he loved his wife, dearly, for half a century.Cool because in a time when small mean cowardly men talk big and do nothing, he lived what he believed. Cool because he knew that he was just one among many, and didn't take himself too seriously. Can anyone imagine an outpouring for any leading man ,today, to match his? Cool because he didn't make his death bigger than his life, nor an opera. Rest in peace, brother.

The Celebration of being both greedy and stupid as a virtue

Eschewing politics in general,less then enamored with the democrats, I am stunned speechless, by the fatuousness of the republicans. Imagine a ticket that makes the last 2 look intellectual? McCain is so desperate to be president, he can and will say or do anything, anything, to be elected. I mean anything. Palin is so vacuous and vicious in her pursuit of power,her views[when she has them or is told what to say] are simply asinine,for lack of a better word. When did this country reach for the lowest possible height in elected officials? When did being intelligent become a handicap?I WANT the smartest people available to be running the country. This anti-intellectual dumbing down bgan its fruition during the Reagan years.you know the great de-regulators .Thanks guys... I simply will not believe that the American people are this gullible or racist[if Obama were white,he would be about 15 points ahead.I know no one wants to speak about this].To quote Harry Truman"how many times do you have to get hit over the head before you realize who is hitting you?!"

DAMN EVERYTHING BUT THE CIRCUS

Damn everything but the circus!

...damn everything that is grim, dull,
motionless, unrisking, inward turning,
damn everything that won't get into the
circle, that won't enjoy, that won't throw
its heart into the tension, surprise, fear
and delight of the circus, the round
world, the full existence...

— e.e. cummings

BEST THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Crunch time

The financial markets are crashing down like so many blocks in a kindergarten play area. The de-regulators, awash with pride from the early 1980's on, now look to be the thieves we all thought them . Working folk, losing their homes,jobs life savings 401 K's will of course bear the brunt of this unfettered sociopath-like greed . Consider this:in 2001, there was a budget surplus of 3 TRILLION dollars.The new deficit after bailing out these bank robbers, will be 11.3 TRILLION. GWB and his crooks have done this is less than eight years! And people still want to vote for that party?...some favorite poets: Hafez, TAGORE,Whitman, Hughes,Du Fu, StoneHouse,Emily,Neruda,Richard Wright[his haiku are amazing] Rumi, Sa'di,Ferlinghetti,Han Shan,St.John Perse, Hopkins, the author of the Psalms,Dylan Thomas, Wilfred Owen,Martin Espada`,Niki Giovanni , Ginsberg, Snyder,Kyger,Ryokan,Homer,Wang Wei, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan,Eleytis,Paul Celan, Mahmoud Darwish, Seamus Heaney...

The Forever war

The sky was green

Neon

Flashes illuminating

Smoke

Fog

Gas dust

As he fell

He turned his head

Slightly

To the left

Thought

How

The fog looked

Bathed in green

like the lights

of the high school

football field

He didn’t feel the hard

Cold ground

Didn’t feel the

Hole

The viscous

liquid

Oozing out

Mixing with sand

Dirt

Dew

He smelled

Something

Familiar

And thought

Is this what I smelled

When I was born

The blood

Earth

Sweat

Fear

Shit

and longed

For his mother

Her smell

Her warmth

any warmth

He was cold

the desert night

seemed eternal

It was borne

Within

A cold that was vast

without

Any light

or end

He saw faces

Lips moving

He couldn’t hear them

They became

Enshrouded

In the gauze of fog

As he sighed
one final time

...Copyright 2008 by The Jesus Sufi

William Blake

William Blake, the wonderful poet-mystic-genius that blessed London and the world, was the closest thing I have seen to a western Sufi. With his ecstatic poetry,his complete dismissal of ecclesiastical authority and boundaries, his celebration of life as a gift of his Creator,his defense of the downtrodden and women and children,Blake acted for all intents and purposes as a Sufi.Of course, none of this would be remembered if he didn't write some of the most beautifully moving and
STRANGE poetry in the Western canon.His apocalyptic visions were frightful and strangely beautiful, and his artwork , which is an entire other subject[and post] only adds to the haunting, hallucinatory quality of Blake's work. From apparently simple children's poems of Innocence to mystical treatises ,Blake 's vision talent and courage continues to fill me with wonder and awe.Perhaps he simply [or not so simply]saw things in another dimension,from an angle that most of us don't bother looking . Either way, his gift to the world is as valuable and soul filling as Hafez or Rumi or G.M Hopkins. And I am so very grateful for it...

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen, one of the true visionaries of music to have lived in recent memory, is celebrating his centennial .[well. posthumously] Messiaen, who was blessed with a form of synesthesia [which meant for him certain chords were actual colors, sort of like what was experienced during a Jerry Garcia solo during a Dead concert, as it were}Recently, his only opera, St Francis of Assisi was performed in London.Checking in at over 5 hours, it is not for the safe or non-adventurous. Messiaen, a noted ornithologist threw everything he had into this opera, and it rewards the patient with something that borders on the ecstatic. Messiaen, who for some reason was never adopted by the youthful avant-garde quite the way Stravinsky was {and later Stockhausen},perhaps due to his devout Roman Catholicism, was as wild and experimental, while still making beautiful music ,as anyone. I always, I know oddly, thought that the Grateful Dead were a neat match for Messiaen[though he abhored rock and jazz,sadly for him] Getting back to St Francis, Messiaen used elements of Hindu Raga,birdsong and often single string instruments to bring a vision of the saint alive. It is a singularly profound musical expierence,one that, yes, can actually be transcendental. Not often you can say that,sober, anyway.

Well Now

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. Gandhi
Absent from this "political "debate, between those who have a lot and those who want even more, is/are any mention of the poor, the sick the suffering.Occasionally the democrats toss a bone as it were, in that direction, and both parties go on quoting Jesus[who must be sobbing in agony at their behavior],yet doing nothing.I know I know, 8 years of George Bush blah blah blah.Would the world be discernibly better for the people living on the margins of the margins with a Democrat?I will simply ask what anyone in either party would do for the least among us, for the families who can't survive, for the man working two wal mart type jobs to make 1/3 what he did before companies moved their labor abroad to make even greater profits, for all the kids in inner cities with asthma and , almost unbelievably, TB?TB in 2008?sigh...I think the only answer is in doing whatever is directly in front of you, loving and caring for what you see right in front of your eyes.You will not have to look far.Smile.Pick up some litter.Offer the not-so beautiful woman a hand with her packages.Check on the old folks on the block.look at the clouds with your feet on the ground.And for God's sake, be kind.It makes a difference