Lyrics.

Over the last decade I have written some songs. I was going through my e-mail and found a folder with some old lyrics, and here are some selections.

Murder Ballad

Writing a long lost name
on a misty windowpane
Seeing a forgotten face
In a smoky exhale's trace
Feeling a piece of frightened flesh
In the wrinkled palms I press
Shadows follow me around
Whispering without a sound
All the ones who knew are gone
No-one knows just what I've done
Her frantic face sank into the moat
My twice-cursed hands around her throat

The house groans back at me
Accompanied by the hangman's tree
Which shrieks against the windowpane
That wounds me with its' precious name
Early in the morning fog
I stumble through the clutching bog
That stands beside the castle's stones
And hides my only true love's bones
Forty years of torment passed
Soon I'll have my peace, at last
My placid face sinks into the moat
My twice cursed hands around my throat

Baila De La Vida

The scene is set
a vast empty ballroom
Senora wakes and steps out of the gloom
stricken with sadness at her own recent death
claw like fingers clutch dusty castanets
graceful, with age she begins a slow dance
which begets a face
her father's warm glance
cheered by this sight, years drop from her face

Suddenly others are filling this strange place
first love of all - sharp pleasure, then tears
Behind black lace, a friend of thirty years
High pitched laughter and the sound of little feet
Her own children make everything complete
And so she learns, as all of us might
A life fully lived robs black death of it's bite.


The Jack Daniels Sutra

You know it's early in the morning
or perhaps it's late at night
That religion comes a callin'
tells me something just ain't right.
It says my mother is ashamed
and my father takes the blame.
It says I'm doomed to misery
and I'll be burning in that flame.

But I have got an answer.
For I've truly found the light.
I'm a whiskey drinking buddhist
and there's something I recite.
It's called the Old Jack Daniels Sutra
and the words don't stay the same,
but I know it deep inside me
as well as I recall my name.

I am the bottle I am the glass.
I will reincarnate at last.
Fill me up until the brim,
I believe there is no sin.
This world of misery is samsara,
Why don't you pour me another?
This Old Jack Daniels treats me right,
I reach Nirvana every night.

You know it's early in the morning.
Or perhaps it's late at night,
that the police come a callin'
and tell me something just ain't right.
They say they'll put me in the cooler
until I finally get the point.
As if I'll find some understanding
while I'm rotting in the joint.

I am the bottle.....

All I Really Need to Know I learned In...

The title of this post is usually ended with "kindergarten" and what is said in the link is quite accurate that if everyone just followed the rules a civil society would ensue. The thing is, that those things that we are taught in kindergarten are what people want us to do, but have to be taught to us because it is natural to human beings to act in such ways. If you want to know the natural state of humanity, just go to a school playground with young children on their break. There will be moments of fascination, and caring, and love, but also lots of fighting, stealing, being mean and so on. The great difficulty of childhood is that we try to teach our children to be caring, loving beings in the face of humanity, which is less idyllic, all the while regimenting their lives in an oppressive regime of control, rules and punishment. There is not one of us who would voluntarily return to the environment of childhood.

The human brain is pretty much finished its development by the end of adolescence. When we are teenagers about to go off to college the basic structure of the brain is essentially finished, with perhaps a small fraction of development possible in some of the more intellectual areas. However, essentially your brain is as capable of understanding the world around us at that age as it will be in the future. This is perhaps why teenagers seem so adamant that they know better than adults, and you know what? I think they are right.

When I was a teenager I knew some things. I knew that nobody in the world would ever really understand me, and that was to a large extent because nobody ever really is interested enough to really listen to you. People are too interested in themselves, and too annoyed by the prospects of having to subsequently care, to really pay attention to others. I knew that people generally didn't think, but just did things out of habit, and that if you challenged whether something should happen or not what it really came down to was who had the most power. I knew that people wanted to be ignorant, self-centered, clannish, interested in little more than gossip, ridicule and the latest, shiniest thing. Perhaps this was the result of my upbringing, but I think it rings pretty close to true for many teenagers.

The thing is that all of those things are demonstrably true. What being an adult largely consists of is distracting yourself from all of these unpleasant truths because they are unpleasant. To avoid the unpleasant truth we wrap ourselves up in pettiness, mistaking it for the important things. The thing is that teenagers are mostly right about things and adults are mostly wrong, but we become too cowardly to act upon it.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is a time for family, for light and warmth in the dark and cold, chestnuts and woolly sweaters, eating together and giving and receiving. Christina and I are in Texas, just the two of us, it's seventy degrees outside, so it's a bit weird. Still, this doesn't mean that I am any less sincere in my wishes of Christmas merriment to you and yours, I hope you have a great time.

"What is Christmas?" is a question asked at this time of year. All around me as I drive are bumper stickers pleading to "Keep the Christ in Christmas." People discuss the "War on Christmas" and every year people bemoan the commercialism at this time of year. Well, I don't care what Christmas is supposed to be. I don't care whether it is really the leftovers of a pagan festival at the winter solstice. I don't care if it's supposed to be about a religious figure in which I don't believe in. I don't care if it's commercial or if it's spiritual.

Christmas is a cultural invention. Human beings made it up and human beings change it. Christmas isn't the same now as it was before, and in the future it will be different. Each year we invent Christmas anew. I think it is a wonderful and magical thing that human beings create special times for all of us to share. So, as far as I am concerned, as long as you are enjoying Christmas, being good and kind to those around you, then your Christmas is the absolutely perfect way to have Christmas. Well done you.

In my cultural tradition of irreligious English Christmas there are really only four things that make it Christmas. It isn't Christmas for me without being around at least some family, and my wife is enough of my family to count. I have spent Christmases entirely alone before, and there is nothing more lonely for me. I won't be lonely this Christmas.
The second thing is that it isn't Christmas unless you wish someone a happy or merry Christmas. To me, communicating a sincere desire for the happiness of others is really the essence of what the holiday means.
The third thing is food. It isn't really Christmas unless you have a big meal with lots of cheer. I don't think it matters what the meal is, or even when you eat it (apparently there are millions of people who do all sorts of stuff on Christmas Eve!) but Christmas without stuffing your face is like going to a concert with earplugs in. Christmas Day is the day when Christina cooks, accompanied by delightfully colorful language.
The fourth and last thing is the giving and receiving of presents, and herein lies the difficulty. All of you are rich, rich, rich. Filthy, stinking rich. So am I. You all live thousands of miles away from me and I see any one of you less than a week a year. I don't know what you want or need, it would cost tons of money to get things to you, and if you want stuff you can get it anyway. Lastly, I really do think that it is the thought that counts.

I have already received a present from my mother, and it is the best present I could imagine. My mother bought for me food for an entire family for the year in sub-Saharan Africa. This means that for the next year, whenever I wonder about whether I'm doing well enough, if I'm being all I can be, I can remember that because of the thought of me a family is alive. That means that if I do nothing else this year that I still have served a great and noble purpose, all this a gift from my mother. If it really is the thought that counts then that is a marvelous thought.

So, after all that justification, I am telling you that you aren't going to be getting any packages from me this year. Christina and I, as we have done for a few years now, are going to donate money to charity rather than send presents. We really hope that you take this as a gift to you, for without the inspiration of our dear families, without their examples of goodness and kindness, we would not be doing this. Because we love you and we have faith in you, we believe that the best way we can show our appreciation to you is by trying to do some good in the world on your behalf.

So, which charity? There are lots of great causes out there. Feeding the hungry, freeing the oppressed, teaching the unschooled, preserving the environment, creating opportunities for the poor, and so on. I believe that all of the great works of our time are interlinked, that education leads to new technology which leads to giving voices to the oppressed, the feeding of the poor, which leads to the poor being able to be educated, which leads to a greater appreciation of the environment, which leads to new technology, and so on.

I think we all want people to be free, to have enough money to be out of poverty, to have a beautiful world to live in, to be educated and knowledgeable. I think there is a thing that links all of these things together and that is the education of women in developing nations. Educated women have fewer children, and so those children have a greater chance to receive education themselves. Fewer children mean fewer people, and fewer people require fewer resources, the root cause of environmental problems. Educated women can stand up for their rights, make better decisions, have the chance to work and therefore be free of the dependency on men. Educated women can make better health choices for themselves and their families, leading to longer and happier lives. I think by educating women, in the long run we do the most good that we can for the planet.

As we did last year we will be donating our gifts to Video Volunteers an organization that "trains marginalized communities to produce news, watch it, take action and devise solutions." The great thing about Video Volunteers is it started by asking the poorest of the poor what they wanted, and a voice is what they replied. This voice teaches, encourages, supports and empowers the poorest, mostly women, helping them to improve their lives through knowledge and education. It is doing the most good for the planet in a way that respects those it is trying to help. I can't think of a better gift for you all, and I hope you agree.

Merry Christmas indeed.

Descent Into Madness

First of all I want you to get really worried about that title. It is about me. I feel like I am going mad.

Do you feel a little thrum of panic? A moment of worry? That's good that you got it, thanks for caring, and it was designed to get you to have a little feeling of what it has been for me this week. Repeatedly I have felt like I was going mad this week, and a big part of that is the thrum of panic from considering my oncoming madness.

I think my intellectual faculties are still fine, I'm not going mad from obvious delusion. I am going mad because of feelings. I have too many feelings, and many of them are too strong. It has been difficult to do anything, or more accurately I am protecting myself from myself by not doing anything difficult. On different nights over the last week I have slept four hours or twelve hours, depending on my mood. I have choked down tears while doing dishes and stalked through blustery winds with my mind racing through vast fields of thought, the very image of a madman.

The great concern of course is whether this will stop, will it worsen. Almost everyone at some point uses the words, "I think I'm going crazy" but most people are talking about something else. They are talking about the strain of their mind when faced with difficulty. I have basically no difficulty but I can sit here and watch my mind doing strange things. Why am I sometimes frightened of people in a general sense so that going outside to get the garbage can feels like something illicit, and then whenever I actually talk to people it is easy? The impression of everything is so much harder than the reality of it.

I don't know how much of this shows up. My wife has said that home is a nice place to be, and that I am a good husband, so either she is being fantastically nice during a very hard time, or it's true. It's probably true that for most of us our internal world seems much more frayed and difficult than our outside appearance suggests. In the end this isn't really very much different than being seventeen again, but I already managed to get over the fact that no-one will ever really understand me once in my life, twice seems so unfair (ah, the wail of a teenager again).

Of course, the ironic thing is that by the end of the writing of this post my mood has changed from worry and concern into a desire to giggle at the humor of it all.

A Tough Day

This last weekend Christina and I went to Austin, TX. This is the state capitol and a college town, notoriously left wing for Texas. It's between a two and three hour drive, a long journey in England but a brief jaunt in the USA. The place would be familiar to most of you, 100 year old brick buildings interlaced with skyscrapers, with sidewalks to walk around, restaurants and a surprising wealth of Irish pubs. We had a very good time, relaxed and without pressure, comfortable in our surroundings. We walked around the streets without more of a goal than to eat when hungry and drink when inclined. We had several delightful conversations with local people of a wide range of ages, from college students to a grizzled flutist.

The morning of the last day I woke up with mania, something that I suppose has happened to me all my life but now I am more aware of it, and I think also the symptoms are more severe now than they have ever been. I was more aware of noise, easily startled, unable to keep still, and everything upon which my attention landed felt like the most important thing in the world. Extremely stressful. Still, my wife was wonderful, calm and understanding, we returned to Portland and she went to bed at 8pm exhausted by the weekend and I stayed up until 1pm before lying down for a restless night of turning over and over. As a result I am tired today.

So that's where I am, the context for what has been a tough day. The return from Austin has highlighted certain aspects of my situation, and I am emotionally and physically tired. I sit here realizing that I am largely helpless to change much of my situation. I have no friends to talk to, and Austin showed me that I still can have easy conversations even with absolute strangers in a companionable way. Social interactions in the suburbs of Houston are based on work, children, and religion, three opportunities that I do not have. Today I reached the abject stage of looking on-line for some group that I could be a part of in order to have some social interaction. The results were a humanist lecture in ten days and possibly a soccer league in February. Today I am a little lonely.

One thing that had kept me going were the possibilities of an exit from the area, but these seem to be fading. The most likely scenario is that I will be here for another year, at the minimum. I think with Christmas coming and the idea of it being just the same as any other day I am somewhat disheartened. With the addition of a ridiculously sized bill from the homeowners association, an organization I would probably pay to not be in, and the constant decline that happens to any building (one of the great disadvantages to living in a nice house is that any change to it makes it worse, resulting in constant battle. I much prefer shabby.) that had me thinking about paying for more things didn't help.

So, I am lonely in a place that I don't like very much with essentially no prospects of anything changing in the next year. I have suffered over the last few days with a mental illness that comes and goes in a manner I cannot predict. I'm tired. It's a tough day.

However, I am also someone who has grown and learned through the years. I know that just a couple of days ago I was having a grand old time. I know good things will happen again. I know that this is just something that happens sometimes. I know enough to be grateful that my tough day is happening with a full larder, in a house I own, protected by a bank account that is filled by someone other than myself. I know that I am loved and someone lets me love them. I have always believed that I am a lucky person, that I have a lot, that the circumstances of my life have been excellent. This isn't a tough life, or a tough year, or a tough month. This is simply a tough day, and writing this had made it less so.

Good news

There is a lot of bad news almost everywhere you look. Many people believe that things are getting worse and to such an extent that the world is on the point of collapse. The video is a very watchable examination of what has happened within the world over the last fifty years. I really hope that not only do you watch it, but that you absorb the information and feel warmed and encouraged by the actual facts of what is happening. It is good news.

Good News

I tried and failed to embed the video, but the link is to a safe place, the video is twenty minutes long.