Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Stay Out of the Way of the Gun Shot Devil, or: 74 & 65 Today


     
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Two songs for Jorma Kaukonen, born 74 years ago today. The above is my favorite Airplane song and favorite up of trip, trip of trip, crash of trip song ever. Still curls my toes.

Two songs for Adrian Belew, born 65 years ago today. That Talking Heads tour in bottom video, the two shows I saw, holy the fuck. That's also my favorite Talking Heads song. I'll post some Belew-era King Crimson tomorrow, or soon.




 
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2 comments:

  1. I guess I can deal with Jorma being 74. Belew being only 10 years younger? Oy, we're old. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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  2. this is the future - you got to LIVE it, LIVE WITH it, or get out of the way

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    OLD AGE Rumi

    Why does a date-palm lose its leaves in autumn?
    Why does every beautiful face grow in old age
    Wrinkled like the back of a Libyan lizard?
    Why does a full head of hair get bald?
    Why is it that the lion's strength weakens to nothing?
    The wrestler who could hold anyone down
    Is led out with two people supporting him,
    Their shoulders under his arms?

    God answers,

    “They put on borrowed robes
    And pretended they were theirs.
    I take the beautiful clothes back,
    So that you will learn the robe
    Of appearance is only a loan.”

    Your lamp was lit from another lamp.
    All God wants is your gratitude for that.

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    I was trying to think of a non-theistic way of putting Rumi's essential point here, and I guess it is basically acceptance of the Taoist perspective - that we, like all organized entities, have our beginnings, flourishings, and endings - that we are temporary subsystems within larger systems that were here before, and persist after us - although they themselves are temporary subsystems within larger contexts. As the Kansas song "Dust in the Wind" puts it, "Don't hang on - nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky" - but the earth and sky don't last forever either - they too have their beginnings and endings.

    Gustav Fechner, 19th century experimental psychophysiologist and metaphysical philosopher, said, "Of all miracles, the greatest is that anything exists at all." One can wish another sentient being, whether they have another hour, day, month, year, decade or century ahead of them, "Have a good one."

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