1. |
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One day is so much like another
They’re so much like each other
It’s hard to tell the time.
Lock up—lock down
Mask up—in town
Slack Slack—Zoom Zoom
Rearrange—the room
Killer germs—Big fires
Bad cops—Big liars
We live—on screens
Quarantine—age dreams
The news—is bleak
Each day—each week
Write songs—write posts
Commune—with ghosts
Repeats—reruns
Small change—small fun
We gave—you took
We’ve closed—that book
Big job—ahead
Too late—for the dead
Too stressed—too tense
Peel off—defense
Relate—restart
Connect—your hearts
Failed kings—destroy
We persist—make joy
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2. |
My Own Blood
03:35
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My own blood
I have been swimming in my own blood
Since time began for me
Often I forget that oxygen leads
Breathing is not something I do
It just happens
Like my blood swims through
Carrying life force.
My thoughts never rest
Yet my critical thinking takes time out
My mind is self-aware
My heart self-motivated
Such that I am.
I am not you
Yet I function the same
In my moments
I assess my brain’s functional
My amygdala records all
Just the same
I will never forget
Nor will I remain.
We are the same
My own blood and yours
The rest is creative.
We are the same
My blood
My own blood
And your own blood
Our blood
They are the same
The rest is creative.
Make it up.
Do it.
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3. |
A Priori
02:25
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Movies and books
Figures and facts
Primary sources
Prerequisite courses
Do you know about A Priori?
Knowledge stored in libraries
Studies for test, examinees
Stretching the brain beyond belief
Magnificent documents!
The Wayback Machine!
Archive dot org!
Knowledge for beings
Tables and graphs
Divide paragraphs
Language to master
Learning it faster!
Elastic minds
Scanning the shelves
Authors reveal
Sometimes they conceal
Expanding and growing
Punctuation flowing
Grammar bestowing
Insight is glowing
Do you know about A Priori?
Knowledge stored in libraries
Studies for test, examinees
Stretching the brain beyond belief
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4. |
Children Of Technology
04:44
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Children of technology
Forever lost at sea
Everything is changing fast
Because nothing is built to last anymore
False problems with false solutions
Roadblocks and arbitrary intrusions
Today's innovations are tomorrow's trash
It's old fashioned...it's all fashion
Flash is dead
Adobe shot it in the head
And threw it all away
What can you say?
Machiavellian capitalist dreams
Destruction brings new revenue streams
Moving fast and breaking things
Can't fly into the future till you buy new wings
Disruption, corruption
Destructive editing
Here's the new thing
You can't own it
You have to rent it!
Let's invent a new stock market
Conjure wealth from mathematics
Arbitrary valuation of symbols
A new economy built on babble
(And somehow it still manages to pollute the air)
Here's a virtual bespoke object
It's a hot collector's item
You have to trust us, it's worth millions
You want to know why? Because we said so.
The future of ownership
In a world where someone else
Curates the culture you're spoonfed
Streaming is so convenient until the stream dries up, as though nothing was ever there at all
When they're digging through our ashes
Will they find any uncleared caches
There's no more memory
Nothing left of you and me at all
(Archeologist's nightmare)
The business of creating new necessities
And randomly deciding they're obsolete
Children of technology
With 50 kilobyte memories
Laser focused on the shaky now
Life is simple when you remember nothing
I still have my old machine
I'll keep it running as long as I can
If something works I'm going to keep it
I choose not to be a fickle sheep, thank you very much.
(I mean it...)
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5. |
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“That’s some catch”…“It’s the best there is”
Catch 22, It’s up for review
Damned if you don’t, Damned if you do
It’s a double-edged sword: Catch 22
Sleepy village near San Francisco
Has some catching up to do
Not that they aren’t prolific
But they’re caught up in their own Catch 22
It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere
Could be chaos, could be true
Best to open up, to glean it fair
What do you do? Can we stick like glue?
Major dramas competitive with fear
Just trampling the truth
Squandering and squeezing the life
Out of your precious golden goose
Watch cognition become superstition
And recognition trapped in pulp fiction
What to do is the deal, ‘cause we all can feel
Thanks Darwin/Einstein, ‘cause the world is not flat!
Some call it paradox, some call it insane
The choices in logic, they no longer remain
If it’s just you and me, babe, we both have to see
More than two choices dissolve duality
I reexamine my views nearly every day
And every moment I mean just what I say
360 degrees, that’s the way I see
And Catch 22, you know it can’t catch me
Where meaning making connects indefinitely
If you agree, we have a mutual reality
Where meaning making connects indefinitely
If you agree, we have a mutual reality.
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6. |
Father's Day
07:15
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Hey now, ah ah ah ah, ooh yeah (etc)
50 years ago, 50 years ago, I was in Sunday school in Freedom, California
Yes, that is really the name of the town
Now they were undergoing a change of doctrine and regime
Up to then for the last few years, it was very simple:
Be a good boy, be kind to the poor
Don’t fight with each other, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t kill
And God will like you (“God likes me!”)
Suddenly, there were all these brand new rules (Uh-oh, what rules?)
It all involved: were you believing properly?
Had you been born again? Had you taken in the spirit of the Lord?
‘Cause if you hadn’t done…if you didn’t say the magic words,
Then nothing you did would count.
Works without faith were going to send you back to Hell no matter what.
(The opposite of Catholics).
Then one man came in on that one Sunday morning and
He laid it down for the Sunday school class and he said:
“These days, fathers don’t play the proper role for their children.
They don’t give their children any guidance.
Reject that father because the real Father is in Heaven. (Spank me daddy)
And you should obey Him! (Spank me daddy)
He’s the only Father that counts!” (Spank me daddy)
Mind you (spank me daddy in Heaven!)
I did not have the greatest relationship with my dad (You and a million others)
I didn’t agree with much of what he said (Who does?)
But that day, I never felt like defending him more (What’d you say about my Dad??!)
Who the hell is this guy to tell me my father is not my real father
And I wanted a sky daddy to tell me what to do (discipline discipline) (no I don’t think so)
It was a strange thing to teach kids (no I don’t think so no I don’t think so)
Tell them their fathers are giving them too much freedom? (no I don’t think so)
Fall into line with the “real Father” in the sky? (ain’t happenin’ here)
But this is how you understand
The authoritarian mind (The cruelty is the point, the cruelty is the point)
Good is based on obedience. (The cruelty is the point, the cruelty is the point)
If you are obedient you are good (The cruelty is the point, the cruelty is the point)
And if you are not obedient you are bad. (The cruelty is the point, the cruelty is the point)
So you can put any idiot at all in power (The cruelty is the point, the cruelty is the point)
The most malicious, nasty, incompetent, incontinent, sadistic dolt
If you put him in power (The cruelty is the point, the cruelty is the point)
It is good to follow him
It is bad to rebel against him.
That’s how the authoritarian mind works
And that’s what has got us here in America (and here we are).
America, the land of the free
Where you’re free to obey the good, righteous father.
Creativity, independent thinking
Critical thinking
Understanding what’s around you
Understanding of paradox (oooh paradox)
Respect, care and attention
Respect when respect is earned
Otherwise respect someone’s humanity
But don’t give them your obedience
Don’t give them your allegiance.
Anything else but that is useless, meaningless, unconscious
Default behavior with no thinking.
Are you free? Are you free?
Or do you just use the word “free” like a magic spell?
(The ability to deal with ambiguity is a sign of mental health)
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7. |
Lizard Brain
05:28
|
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Hungry horny selfish scared
I am the lizard in the desert
I pop out of nowhere
Dry, wide-eyed, and sunbaked
With a small mind always on survival
Hungry horny selfish scared
I'm always darting
To and fro beneath the shadows
I'm in the corner
With a quick forked tongue reaction
Hungry horny selfish scared
I got no filters
I just spit and run in patterns
Still like a statue
Till it's time for a threat display
Hungry horny selfish scared
When I go out hunting
Yummy flies are in my vision
I always keep one eye turning backwards
Scanning any threat behind me
Hungry horny selfish scared
I may be old but I'm not so wise
I got no ethics in my eyes
Hungry horny selfish scared
Underneath your fur and feathers
You've got lizards in your brains
We show up when you lose your ground
Watch you snap your tails
Watch you break your chains
Hungry horny selfish scared
In your amygdalas lizards dwell
So know your lizard and train it well
'Cause he's hungry horny selfish scared...
Stay away...till I can get you.
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8. |
Talking Notes
01:24
|
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Strength and melody
And rhyme
Note by note
No reliable silence
On and after the beat
It’s fluid
One must trust the self.
Oooooh.
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9. |
Time/Life
07:30
|
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Time runs its unpredictable course
Time is a finite resource
Time's expensive and free
We get one hundred years or one hour
We get no guarantees
Time sometimes speeds up and slows down
Some say it comes back around
But we're not informed
We can guess all we like but we don't know if we get reborn
I find as the hourglass is draining
My patience is waning
For any trivial crap...
Life moves and it twists and it turns
Everything grows, then it burns
On a fragile film
On the surface of one tiny planet we monkeys can't kill
Life, counting emotions and years
All our achievements and fears
Sounds and smells and tastes
If we left something awesome behind then it wasn't a waste.
When my soul has packed up its boxes
I hope to be conscious
Long enough for a laugh.
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10. |
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Overexposed reflections
Dwarfed to containment
Nuclear wastes attractions
Electrodes explode sporadically
Passionate colors,
Unplanned, vaulted
Producing, protruding
Bulgingly grotesque
Hard as glass,
Unlike any other disturbance.
See through mirrors
Two-ways or more
None that essence demands,
Commands—
Bulldozers gently floating
In a sea of salt water, rustful.
Slick, slick, sick, repulsive
Necessary stripping
Magnificent horrification, Now, Ow.
Resonation…drumming sounds
Impulsive shatterings
Rhythmic surroundings, rhythmic resoundings
Unwantedness, medicine woman.
Threading, bare strings for playing
Arthritic hands yearning,
Sculptor crippled by need
Ready and unactive.
Wave upon wave,
Re-enact re-entrance
An unrepressed will.
Shattering bullets
Chiseled of revenge
Ice splinters in the soul
Melted in tears
Wet with retouched love
Unemptied by a tender mirror
Unneeded no more.
Recovering under exposure
Rawness fakes strength.
Survival, revival
Swimming in a can of heat
Air conditioning an expense
Far beyond comfort.
A bee sting healing the soul
However resolutely, painful.
S & M
Sex and money
Sadism and masochism
Sin and madness
Sick and melancholy
Sam and Mike
Sue and Sally
Search and model.
Repulse attractions
Clever to the idiosyncratic mind
Dwelling in the house of the lord forever.
Love hate
Hate love, need abuse
Thwart use, tolerate a Muse
Ontological conundrums
Walk the dark side, crazy
Revelations, your humanity.
Increase, improve, validate, succeed
Forget, prisoners of compulsion
Remember guilt? Never enough.
Unloveable, needing me to love you first.
Love yourself…I am enslaved.
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11. |
Pissy Ants
02:24
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Touchless crawlers scurry up and down my arms
Brazen, fearless, through the house the hundreds swarm
Terro Ant Baits, Ace Ant Roach & Spider Spray
Holds them, then they're back another day
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
We hate pissy ants!
Seeking crumbs and sweet scraps humans leave behind
Sending pheromones to their collective mind
Queen is laying eggs in all the hidden places
Give that queen a nice big dose of boric acid
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
We hate pissy ants!
Through the cracks, within the walls they send their scouts
Creepy crawling up your legs and on the tables
You can slow them down but they keep coming back
How much does it cost to rent an aardvark?
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
We hate pissy ants!
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
Pissy ants
We hate pissy ants!
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12. |
Transition Fluid
03:07
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How do you know what you’re doing
When you don’t know what you’re doing
But then you do know you’re doing?
Culture is complicated
Until you realize we can be related
Are you confused? Do you feel abused?
Who is being used? Who’s not getting the clues?
Are you blowing a fuse? Are you singing the blues?
Win or lose—watching the news—you can choose
If we get through this
Let’s plant some seeds and watch them grow
Try to crack the code and only cause distress
Lighten up, let go, step out of the mess
Get away from the story—don’t rehash or justify
Be the one you want to love
Be the surprise you want to see
Be the present you want to open.
This is the moment—and so is this one
And so is this one—and so is this one
What is so is so what. So what?
In the sun, out of the sun
Relax into grace in social space
We’ll have it again—we don’t know when
If we get through this
Let’s plant some seeds and watch them grow
This whole year is sitting like heavy smoke on our shoulders
Take a bad joke and make it better
If we get through this
Let’s plant some seeds and watch them grow
Transition! (It’s fluid!)
Transition! (Just do it!)
Transition! Transition!
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13. |
A Posteriori
02:42
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Marbles and jacks
Bicycles and skates
Muscle memory
How to relate
A Posteriori
Everything that life has taught me
Experience and life lived well
Our own story to tell
Aquariums and zoos
Buying new shoes
Following how to’s
Creating the new
Shopping for staples
Cleaning up the stables
Riding a horse
Directing its course
A Posteriori
Everything that life has taught me
Experience and life lived well
Our own story to tell
Dancing and prancing
In ballrooms. at beaches
Keeping fresh love
Within our reaches
Self-motivation
Driving Self-Esteem
Completing our goals
Making the scene
A Posteriori
Everything that life has taught me
Experience and life lived well
Our own story to tell
Sitting for breakfast
At quarter to three
Still in our underwear
How happy are we!
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14. |
Year Of The Mask II
05:29
|
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Gales of laughter blowing through a windowless apartment filled with smoke
We would hang out there for hours, mad and young and perpetually broke
Now I smell the burning hills 100 miles away, it all comes back
I’m not in disguise as anyone but I’m still putting on my mask.
Some of us have taken care while others throw their weight around in crowds
Spitting in the face of science while globules fly around in viral clouds
You might call it natural selection but you can't rely on that
We’ve been erring on the side of caution, keep your distance, rock that mask.
Every day a crisis, every day a problem, every day a crime
If you think the whole point is to keep us all off balance I've no doubt you're right
A systematic drive to ruin everything and knock us off our tracks
And none of this is new, the only difference is they've taken off their masks
Obstacles spring up like weeds while holy men and healers lose the plot
Mainline misplaced confidence in their grasp of what is real and what is not
Skepticism turns to gullibility if you don't check your facts
Contradiction for the sake of contradiction, down the garden path
Everything we trusted and required is now designed to fall apart
No more upgrades, planned obsolescence for the human body, mind and heart
Simultaneous years of planning and neglect, oh isn't it a blast?
We reject this shoddy hateful dumbass future, now begins the task.
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15. |
Aftermath Limerick
03:35
|
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Now that we’ve passed through the worst
We find ourselves feeling the thirst
We felt all the stress
And lived under duress
Now we’re left wondering what to do first
The kingdom has lifted its cowl
Unmasking the cheek and the jowl
Now all in the head
Can be spat out and said
In triumphantly unrestrained howl
To lessen the chance of infection
We sported essential protection
Took tests now and then
To verify when
The virus can’t avoid detection. Tally ho!
Now that we’re breathing more free
We know what should not and should be
We’re done throwing up our hands
Now we’re making demands
We’re not willing to jump in the sea
'Cause the sea is on fire!
And there's smoke in there!
Hey, who took my snorkel?
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16. |
Harbin Undaunted
04:43
|
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Back to Harbin, we’ve been away so long
Sun is shining, the leaves are blowing on the trees
Blue water, makes my skin feel so sublime
Happy people, everyone is wearing a mask
Back to Harbin, the trees are sticks with vegetation growing up all around
The chaparral has taken over again
You can see gray lines of dead trees
But it’s growing back
And the mountain lions are free, and the bears
And the roofs are green, and the people are serene
(they are serene!)
Back to Harbin, the stars are big and bright
Back to Harbin, you can stay up all night
Back to Harbin, the pools close at 2 AM
They open again at 12 PM, but only on
Alligator Day, which is on Tuesday
The first Tuesday of the month
Once a month
And then the water is clean
it’s so clean!
There is a warm pool, it’s very big
But not as big as the cold swimming pool
There is a heart pool for little tykes and kids
It’s 98 degrees so no one feels a thing
Then there’s a hot pool, it’s 115 or maybe 113 degrees
And your feet have to get used to it
You have to go in 3 times up to your knees
Then you hit the cold pool and freeze!
Then you are acclimated to everything
Everything, if it’s winter, if it’s spring, if it’s summer, if it’s fall
You get your naked body through the processes
Of every pool and all
And if you reward yourself through the process
You can walk around naked even if there is snow on the ground
And even if the sun is so hot you’re sweating with a grin
Harbin, we thank you for letting us back in
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The Granite Countertops San Francisco, California
The Granite Countertops are dark, whimsical, tender existential action heroes J Neo Marvin and Davis Jones, exploring the outer limits of what a duo can create.
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