When you've got the funk.

When you've got the funk, I'd say that you have it all. Some blessed soul at Westport coffeehouse just cranked up some sinfully smooth saxophones, and it's making my butt go sway*.

(*Yes, I shake my ass from time to time. What of it.)

Funk is hard to pin down. It's up-tempo in a way that makes you want to put down that old mouth-harp, quit crying over that old woman who done you wrong, and go find a new one to dance with. One clean-spit guitar riff, a horn jab or two, and I'm ready to become friends with somebody new.

Strange, isn't it, how for all the GET-ON-UP'AH! goodness that funk has given us, it's a word that we also use to talk about emotional sludge. Getting "in a funk" is apples to the whisky of "getting funky". Being depressed has nothing to do with bass saxophones.

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Much has been going on in this life of mine. Upheaval, tradgedy, suffering, stagnation and ironically, change, have been the harmony to my Monday through Sunday melody–the one that you can't put down when you turn off the amp. Music stops, but we still float forward in notes, faltering and alone no matter the symphony that we can't strike from.

My melody is asking me whether resolution ever comes. If in this life we ever feel less tossed, less prone, less subject to the whimsy of spinning galaxies of galaxies. Or the tides. Asking which came first–the questions or the answers, and wondering whether they actually come in pairs, or if one outnumbers the other.

You can stare into the looking glass as long as you like. You can refuse to meet the morning. You can stay up fighting before you even leave, and make knots of pure simplicity. You can puzzle, you can wonder–you can dichotomize and analyze and subjugate and simplify, but the ultimate conclusion always comes down from God that we just don't ever know.

We are living in mystery, the kind that only happens to everybody.

When you are eaten.

I've been wondering lately what, exactly, is so terrifying about the thought of being eaten.

People try to tell me that to be eaten would be terrible. An awful way to die. I tell them that it would be purposeful–meat recycling, if you will. People usually just look horrified when I say that kind of thing.

Through watching more horror movies these past few months than I'd seen in the cumulative 21 years beforehand, I've seen a lot of people-eating. Often, people are eaten by big things, i.e. monsters, dinosaurs, machines. Other times, it is other humans that sink their teeth into the largest untapped food source in the world.

Strangers, neighbors, priests, boyscouts, lawyers, firefighters and actuaries...walking red meat. Humanburgers. People pie. Johnny Depp did it, why shouldn't we?

But none of that is the point really. I do wonder sometimes if in survival situations I could bring myself to eat other people...to slice thick, card-sized slabs of meat from cold, dead buttocks. It's been done before. The point is, I want to know why it's so terrifying.

In reality, I imagine you would be dead for the majority of the chewing–or at least in shock and riding a tiny tidal wave of positive chemistry into the gullet of whatever (or whomever) has you caught between their teeth.

But no matter the violence or atrocity, in movies or the news–no matter if the victim is dead or alive, we cringe an extra inch at the thought of cannibalism, or being eaten alive. In reality, it'd be a really short way to go. Way shorter than cancer, or any other terminal disease. You'd live your decades strong, and end them in mere seconds of suffering. It doesn't sound so bad, really.

I think that where this fear comes from is our deep seated, nagging feeling that we might not be so special as we think. If we can be eaten, then we are no different than the cows, pigs, or chickens that we chew on a daily basis. It all comes down to the fear that maybe, just maybe, we really are just meat. And when we are eaten, we are gone. No body to show we were alive-no ashes to revere on the mantle, nothing. We've become assimilated back into the great whirlpool of nature, in recycled atoms and decomposing carbon. And there's nothing we can do about it.

We hold the image of a complete body as sacrosanct. And to watch the undead pull taffy from our guts threatens more than just our ideas of violence–it flies in the face of every person who has ever cared for their safety, or life.

Because we live in these bodies. And until we die, they are the only way we have to interact with the world.

What a shame that they are so fragile. Because we are all food for someone.

When you are tired.

The few of you who check this blog may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a while. My silence is, tangentially, related to time, but more at the heart of it is that I don't have anything to say. No deep thoughts, nothing "worth writing"–only silly little traces that I half-write and end up leaving for a day when I feel more inspired.

I have not felt more inspired.

When I moved back to Kansas City, I had a strong compass for where I was going, and at least what I thought I ought to be doing, etc.etc.etc. These last few weeks that has simply gone away, and has left me to run and tunnel deeper and deeper into absence. The absence of my heart, and my mind in my life, because it simply aches just a little too much.

My wells have run dry, and hard as I try I cannot get any more from them. So disengagement has been my passive plan. And disengaged I am.

I cannot say whether it will change...maybe the way of life is just that at some point you give up your hold on it, and it runs over you with loud clak-clak at every rail-tie year. Happy Birthday-Happy Birthday.

And I must wonder then, whether I am meant to be so disengaged. Whether this is the proper course of things, where my heavy sleep is only followed by the overcast that enveloped my slumber.

If so, my gentlemen, then this is the end of a mind. And the undead have walked from the screen, and are shuffling down the hall to the bathroom that sits cold, just outside your door.

When you are weary.

When you are weary,
like one gone far into the unknown,
the unsung–the un-gloried pitches of
black and mauve, that stick like
burrs, in the back of your arms...
Which worked so well but yesterday
before you stopped, and came home.
Sit heavy on the steps that so recently,
years ago held steady
for your bandaged feet to push and
kick, and find wandering.
So you can laugh today asking
Who of us deserves the bandages now?
but know down deep that now
you need them more than ever.
When weariness meets fleet feet
years-hardened from finding trouble-sought
everything but you seems so...
soft.
When your heart is weary,
there is no switch to turn it off.

When you are a "Gansta".

I suppose this dovetails nicely with my last post, though that's really only coincidence talking. Driving down Broadway in North KC yesterday, I went by a car vacuum/air filling station with a big plastic-type sign that read: "WE HAVE GANSTA AIR". This is, of course, really great to know. If I'm ever feeling the need to drop my '94 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme S a few inches and sit it on "Dubs", I'll be promptly draining my tires and pushing that pile back to this place. Can't have the wrong air in there.

Shortly thereafter, at a stoplight, I watched a young man wandering back and forth in the crosswalk waving his right arm for some reason, left hand firmly clenched on the waist of his black potato-sack-wide pants. He had nice sunglasses. Kind of looked like T-Pain. But it occurred to me that for the aforementioned "GANGSTA'S", it must be very hard to get up and around, and to commit crimes and violence in that type of attire. It's a shame that gang members seem to always be getting shot, but I had to wonder if they were making it a little bit too easy. Nobody can run with their pants like that. I've watched people try.

This leaves two options. Option 1: take off the pants. Pants-less gangs. That's kind of more terrifying in a way, but with pants so loose it also wouldn't be much of a struggle to just slip them off in case of emergency. If there is one gang member who gets away in a gunfight because he dropped trou, I'm convinced this is going to catch on in a real big way.

Option 2: someone needs to design "GANGSTAPANTZ". Maybe there's some kind of internal support system. Maybe they come with suspenders. Maybe they're a sophisticated blend of hyper-breathable synthetics with spandex woven in, and a detachable velcro pocket so you can always make sure your "blue flag" is hanging correctly on the "left side".

Imagine the impact this could have on the murder rate. People, I think we have a breakthrough.

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Now, of course, I write this all in jest. Living here, from my window I hear gunshots almost every night. It's a strange feeling to be lying in bed and hear that "pop-pop-pop-pop-pop" that you wish were something else, but deep down know it wasn't. My mom asked me the other day if the cops always come when that happens and I said, "No. They never come." And sadly, it is the truth. It really makes me wonder how high and wide the disregard has run for this part of the city. It really does.

When you hold life like a bird.

When you are Rutger Hauer, you are an incomparable BADASS. At least that's what this article says, but only a few paragraphs deep, I'm deeply inclined to believe.

For starters, the name Rutger Hauer is already pretty sweet. Rutger. Name one of other college you'd rather be named after. Dartmouth? Lame. Baker? Who wants to be permanantly associated with cake and rolls. "Harvard Hauer" might as well be Roger Rabbit, and...Princeton? There's only one real Prince, and he's not even named that anymore.

(As a side note, when trying to think of cool names, I think you'll generally be fine unless you follow the lead of idiots like iamhassanjavad, who leapt to Yahoo! Answers and asked people to "Suggest some sophisticated/cool names for a college group/gang.?" Double punctuation aside, I think there might be a little more than a slight difference between "a college group" and a gang. Even if Hassan was just dying to form a gang with his whiffleball buddies, who's ever heard of a sophisticated one. I suppose they could start something totally new...big groups of angry, tatted men prowling the nighttime streets being extremely suave.)

Back to Rutger. To cut things short, I really don't need to know anything else about Mr. Hauer, because of his answer to just one question in that interview. (He's just made a comment about his strange feelings toward LA upon his first visit.)

"What's wrong with LA?
The place has a frustrated sexuality. The people there all think they should have what they want to have, and that they should be whatever they think they should be. I don't understand that, because I think that makes you very unhappy. You should never have exactly what you want. Wanting that seems so stupid to me."

That's gold in my book. I'm marking it down.

What I've been starting to realize is that feeling rejection, want, or loss, is one of the most powerful experiences a person can have. If our best laid plans always went just how we wished, life would be nothing more than a stone-carved formula. We could indefinitely plug "Action A" into "Formula A", and watch our dreams come true without the slightest hint of interest or concern. At a glance, I don't think that's something that I would want. There is some kind of wonder that comes right at the middle of the tunnel, where you realize how deeply you're buried under the immovable majesty of life. There's just something good about surrendering to that.

I'm reminded of the movie, The Greatest Game Ever Played. There's a line where Francis is learning to swing a golf club, and he's told something close to this:

"You've got to hold onto it like it's a bird. Not too tight, or you'll crush it–but not so loose that it's going to fly away."

These days, that's how I'm trying to live my life. I keep up with my day to day, but as far as making rules, or assumptions, or deciding this is how it has to be...well, that's where I've loosened up my grip. That makes your grasp of the few things you want to hold tightly so much simpler, and maybe even more complete. And strangely, untightening your grip on things brings you freedom. You start living inside of life, and you're not fighting it anymore.

So, in benediction...hold your life like a bird.

See what wonders that looseness can gather.

When you are a Songwriter.

When you are a songwriter, life looks different.

Since I was 14, writing music has been an outlet for the deepest, highest, and darkest feelings I've had in life. I write about my family, about people I love, or have loved–sometimes about people I never want to see again.

I've written love songs about girls I never loved, and even one song about a kiss that never occurred. (She was too pretentious.)

All sorts of messy stuff.

Relationships are always messy. They are particularly messy when they end, which all of mine have. But songwriters get to have things a little bit different. No matter the baggage, how messy or crazy the relationship (or individual), you usually walk away from things with a song or two. And sometimes they happen to be really, really good.

So when you date a songwriter, just remember–no matter how angry or upset you left him (or her), we always get the last word. You get the gift of being immortalized in song, and we get the gift of deciding how that will be. For every sad memory you may have, we get to write it down, and when we are feeling the whim we play your song. Revel in the brokenness of it all, or the thickness of whatever the fading feeling was, but we ultimately put the guitar away. And we can stop playing your song whenever we want, but you...you will always remember.