The Great Wake 89: Everybody Else

 

Everybody else wants to get back to life.  Everybody else wants to create something. Everybody else wants to enjoy the breeze. Everybody else wants to float around.
Everybody else wants to rock out.

Everybody else wants to high five.  Everybody else wants to hit a show.  Everybody else wants to meditate.  Everybody else wants to read some Word.
Everybody else wants to ignore skin.

Everybody else wants peace and love.
Everybody else wants to go, go, go.
Everybody else wants to say whatever.
Everybody else wants to think originally.
But cry babies must cry.

The Great Wake 88: Staff Infection

 

Walk him out, he can still read the large print.  His legislative maneuvering and rules of order evoking are legendary, the leader of the minority.  The melting face of the Reds.  Supported by a fearless staff, the best proper uppers and downers around, always at the ready to break a fall.  No way they're gonna let him take another black eye.

A staff infection has taken hold, the government professional class is oozing puss and its getting all over the citizens.  Get some gauze, cover it up, get your oxygen at night, it's too gross for others to see.  Go heal, perhaps a leave of absence.  These staffs are elder exploiters, elder abusers, and basic blood sucking leeches.  The staffs have infected the entire government.

Morale is at a record low at the post office, the staff is frowning, they are moving in slow motion.  They do not care.  Everyone in line is frowning.  All the morning drivers were frowning, too.  The infection runs deep, it's in the blood, all the vital organs are impacted, the brain shuts down last.

The Great Wake 87: Tiny Chaos

 

This only ends one way, with cry babies in the streets, holding signs, holding each other.  Yelling about equity and billionaires and how so and so better keep their mouth shut (Theory Of So applies again).  Apathy is the real deal, shunning and mocking is the real way.  Leave them to their tiny chaos.  Let them cry it out, it's actually essential to develop the lungs, just keep the door closed, ignore them.

It'll be the same burning of city trash cans and masked cowards standing in line, getting up in the personal spaces of unknown enemies.  A cootie alert'll be issued by some department or organization, supply chains'll snap, China, Russia, Ukraine, my Argentina, my Mexico, Oh Canada, all the way to Japan.  Hurricanes, fires, floods, and twisters.  Mother Nature, that bitch!  Woe is me, oh woe is me, woe, woe, woe.

Go pay your bills, get a life going.  Perhaps two outlets, one creative, one active.  Move around, protesting is a waste, a net calorie disaster, especially after all the sugar drinks and afternoon snacks.  And looting's just a bad look, quit stealing shit.  Quit sucking your thumbs.

The Great Wake 86: Giddy Kids

 

The giddy kids were having a good day, they nibbled, they giggled, they snortlaughed.  Spittle is all over their camera lenses, holy guacamole, Spicoli.  Calm it down.  Perhaps it's better to get it out now, avoid a 2nd Civil War.  The duped, the manipulated, the knobs, the premature.

Tough to go out in a mocking heap of shame, but they deserve it.  The low class society, beyond no class.  This is not a monetary situation, it's more about decency.  Revenge is the conscious of envy, envy is the subconscious of guilt.  Odd, nervous laughter is the soundtrack.

Flex the union, it's more like rubber than plastic.  Time for some off roading, it can handle the rocks and canyons and rivers and gullies.  Those big shocks'll keep it going, bouncing and bumping.  Buckle up, grab a helmet, it'll be a blast.  It'll be a ride.

The Hook Of Texas 27: The Exiles Saved My Life

The Thursday night opener at Spicewood in Alpine was The Swifts, a local group with an electric folky sound, a banging cajon, and two sweet chick singers who sang about spilling wine, lost lovers, and bloody teeth.  Viva Big Bend Music Festival kicks in like a quake, people out there dance, they like to jump, twirl, scoot, slide, and sway.  I'm more of a neck nodder, a lone skeleton shaker.  Robotic movements wrapped around chaotic smooth popping, so I've been told.  Both my favorite daughters are tastefully excellent dancers, but it was too early for them to hit the floor, they were scoping out the scenery, they were watching the sun go down on the patio, they were magnetic.

Then it was off to Railroad Blues down the road for the West Texas Exiles 9 o'clock show.  This rough rocking, telecaster driving, old hat wearing group was my personal Viva '23 favorite, stomping stompers.  They seemed like the real deal, a weary musical band of woe and wild nights, of vans and swag tables, of bottles and pipes, of depression and resurrection.  Before one tune, the lead singer claimed he'd been at the lowest point in his life two weeks prior and if not for his band mates he'd be dead.  Their drummer kicked, their bassist bumped, their keys rained drops, they had a dynamite mandolin player.  The whole place rocked, it was packed, the band played and played, for 3 hours straight, they were exhausted by the end, we were exhausted by the end.

I got the shirt, I got the sticker, I got the koozie, price was no consideration, whatever the cost.  Bravo, bravo.  We come around for the landscape, we wander around for the art, we hang around til midnight for the telecaster.  After the show, I asked the lead singer if he was really at the lowest point in his life just two weeks prior.  He was surrounded by people and on his way somewhere, but he stopped, looked me in the eyes, paused, and said, "The Exiles saved my life."

The Great Wake 85: No Pills Tonight

 

No answer from the fair squad, the tables got turnt.  These interrogators are out of practice.  The news is dead.  Fools on display, they are shells, nothing but fossil fuel.  A slow, controlled burn for now, but the sparks are flying, there's oil all over the floor.

Manipulation media must be unwired and sent to detox.  Lights out at 9, no pills tonight.  Let's have a look around this dirt hole.  Hire more procecuters, clear the jails, line up the traitors, stock up on duct tape.  Surrender means nothing to us now, justice requires destruction.

The ABC's of propaganda -- A. See no evil.  B. Hear no evil.  C. Smell no evil.  Ruined minds of the crowd, thick with psycho drugs and blurbs.  They are easy, but they have no spirit, no significant intelligence.  Numb, dumb, and zero fun.  Pretenders.

The Hook Of Texas 26: Aluminum Sophistication

 

The Chinati Foundation is a trip when first encountered, I knew my daughters would catch the ride.  We turned right to start the self paced tour, despite the arrows indicating left was the correct direction.  The field blocks could wait for the end, it was approaching 90 degrees, I wanted them to see the buildings first, while their minds were cluttered.  The untitled Flavin lights, Donald Judd's two enormous converted artillery sheds of perfectly placed aluminum sophistication, the car crash sculptures, and the coolest dance floor ever installed, all surrounded by the desert dirt, scrubby bushes, stickers like razors, and big red fire ants.  They were glad they wore their western boots.

The creative gush was immediate, scenes of long hallways with diagonal fluorescent tubes of light --peach with green, yellow with blues, silloutes of dashes and lashes, then opposites, in six old converted barracks.  Then more shadows and installations and intentions along the gravel path; one building was a meticulous replica of an abandoned Soviet schoolhouse by Ilya Kabokov called School No. 6.  It was transcendent, their red patriotism, their red nostalgia, their love for their red children.  We are all uniquely, and essentially, and eventually, the same.  Just wanna learn, just wanna make something, just wanna feel good, just wanna go, just wanna rest, we walked on.

The field blocks seemed like big concrete doll boxes for some reason, the shades and shadows were alive, it was their home.  One after another, the arrangements interested us in some way, the placements, the surroundings, the sky, all working to inspire whoever or whatever, whenever.  But only there, in that place.  There is no other Chinati.  We walked 8,000 steps according to one of my favorite daughters, we were dazed and unconfused, we were hot and unbothered, shattered and uncluttered.