Crossroads

By 1968 I had learned some folk guitar from friends. After hearing the Butterfield Blues Band I angled off towards learning to play blues guitar. I found I was more attracted to the more modern styles of Clapton, Mick Taylor and Michael Bloomfield rather than the root of blues guitar like Hooker, Albert King and Freddie King. I think it was the combination of the traditional funk combined with the modern power of new young players.
I was solid into this area when a friend urged me to go see Jimi Hendrix. I brushed him off saying with disdain that Hendrix was interesting but I was a bluesman. He persisted enough so that we finally went.
It was a huge auditorium and all I expected was to be amused and entertained. Jimi opened with Foxy Lady and Purple Haze if my memory serves me well. It was more interesting than I thought but I was still skeptical.
Then, after a slight pause, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding Jimi’s extraordinary sidemen, broke into a moderate blues shuffle, smooth and sexy. My attention picked up a bit. I knew this music. From out of the sky came the first twelve notes of Red House. I will never forget those notes. I felt as if the hand of the great blues god, Johnson, had reached out of the sky and through the roof of the arena and slapped me across the face. In those first few notes my whole understanding of the blues in particular and music in general had changed forever. It was as if I was blind and then I could see.
Jimi played on. His patterns slowly grew more complex, more sinuous. Those notes slid around you like a zoot-suited hustler sneaking around you neighborhood at night, like a midnight rambler, like a back door man. Somehow the power built even higher, farther already than anybody I had ever heard. Pentatonic arpeggios rushed forwards. It was thrilling. It was frightening. Like standing and facing the 409 hurtling full speed down the tracks in the middle of the night four feet away from your face. You wanted to pull away and run but you were mesmerized, fascinated. You legs wouldn’t move.
“There’s a red house over yonder, that’s where my baby lives”.
He did things, technically, that I couldn’t believe I had heard. He slid a note up and then sustained it as an undulating tone so loud that you thought you would lose your mind. Then, at the same time, he picked other notes to accompany it as if there were two players. At another point he sang along with his own notes. A terrific effect that many guitar players can do but then he played the same line and sang harmony to the notes on his guitar. Unbelievable. I was stunned.
He took it higher: Beethoven meets B. B. King meets Timothy Leary. Standing in the background was Robert Johnson and Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker. He took me leagues beyond where I had been before. Somewhere between a New Orleans back alley and the methane seas of Jupiter. Slinky little runs and five hundred pound notes falling like bombs. I couldn’t move. I had been slammed into the back of my seat like I was in one of those test rocket slides from the sixties, smashed by G-force and wind pressure.
When it was over, as we filed out, my friend asked me what I thought. I couldn’t speak. I was trying to process this new epiphany and it was going to take awhile. For days afterward I stared at my guitar standing in the corner sneering at me, but could not play. Finally I began to practice. I had to join this brotherhood even if, like a humbled monk, I spend the rest of my life at the foot of the mountain.

Ecce Homo (The Christians are right, you know)

The Christians are right, you know. The Bible does denounce homosexuality as a sin. It’s right there in Leviticus. Two places in fact; Lev. 18:22 and 20:13. No doubt about it; it’s a sin. Of course, if you look hard you’ll find one hundred and forty references to adultery.
So let’s see; that’s two against homosexuality and 140 against adultery. Seems a bit lopsided don’t you think. The wretched sin of sleeping with your same sex barely registers next to cheating on your wife. Shouldn’t we be railing publicly against all those adulterers and denying them “special” rights like family status or even the ability to marry again?
In fact, homosexuality didn’t even make it to the top-ten list. It even got beat out by bearing false witness, honoring thy father and mother and of course, adultery.
So it would seem that the Christian fundamentalist’s rampant fear and loathing of homosexuals is a problem more personal than Biblical. It makes you wonder why it bothers the fundamentalists so much. Me thinks thou doest protest too much.

Now, while we’re in Leviticus, let’s talk about some of the other Jewish Holy Laws. If we are to be very serious about following God’s commandments, we should not forget Lev.1:9 which gives us advice on the proper sacrificing of a bull. Let’s also keep in mind that we may keep slaves, Lev. 25:44, but only if purchased from neighboring nations. So I guess we are limited to Mexican or Canadian slaves. Don’t forget that eating shellfish is an abomination on the same level as homosexuality, Lev. 11:10. We may not approach the altar of God if we have a defect in our sight, Lev. 21:20 and trimming our hair around the temples is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27
Elsewhere, Exodus 21:7 sanctions the selling of your daughter into slavery and the stoning of your neighbor if he insists on working on the Sabbath, Exodus 35:2 which, by the way, is Saturday.
Not only has the prohibition of homosexuality been emphasized way out of proportion in terms of the Bible, it has been surgically cherry-picked from many other ancient and antiquated laws to fit the fundamentalists particular fears; fears that apparently lie very deep.

The Truth (but you won't like it)

OK, I know. Thousands of gurus, avatars, prophets, academics and regular people have offered their version of the meaning of life, the answer to the universe, our reason for being and so on. It’s like the old saying, “Opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one.” But this is really it. I mean it. And when you read it, you will agree for about a half second. Then you will reject it because it doesn’t fit your comfortable little take on things. So here goes:

In his seminal book, The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, the author discusses that the prime directive of all life in the form of genes, those little amazing blueprints for all life, is to replicate themselves. That’s it. They are driven to reproduce themselves and will, by trial and error, find the best way to do so.
If that means that the best way to do this is in the form of pond scum, then fine. Pond scum has been very successful. If giant cactuses work, then good. And if a good way to continue the scheme is by way of bipedal hominoids that walk upright, discussing important plays, building models of the sphinx out of toothpicks and passing bad tax laws, then let’s go with that. Whatever moves the game along.

But in the glaring light of reality, after we have reproduced a few times and then finished with that phase, we are done.
Now, if the whole point of our existence is reproduction, and we have finished that by one method or another, choosing not to create more offspring , we are then basically useless. In other words, if you are not humping and making more babies, you are just using up space, air, water and food.
And please, if your children have left the nest, don’t tell me that they or even your grandchildren need you. They don’t.
So all of these things we do like impressing others with your wit or concerning yourself with upcoming elections or picking out just the right pair of socks, etc., etc., etc. are actually just filling in the blanks until you finally die and get out of the way. You are just useless protoplasm wasting everybody’s time and energy.
Have a nice day.

The Game Show

The Game Show

We are led through a series of nondescript doors and passageways; down, then up echoey stairwells, through a curtain and finally to a line of people; a very long line. As we inch forward the deep resonant tones of a professional announcer rumbles back to us. The pace and tone sounds upbeat and even exciting even if the words are indistinguishable from this distance. The people immediately around me are mumbling questions to each other, wondering what this is all about, what’s going on?
Finally I move through velvet ropes into a cavernous arena where a cheering and laughing audience fills thousands of seats. All lights and eyes are on the huge stage area where our line is filing up stairs to a gaudy, flashing set complete with blinking lights, silver sequins and waving flags. My fear was soothed a bit by the huge, boisterous almost celebratory affair. Maybe this will be fun, like a circus.
The smarmy voice was booming now, apparently announcing the name of each person as they moved in front of him. The central figure was clothed in a dazzling, somewhat garish suit with silver and metallic diagonal stripes that reflected the spotlights back to the crowd in shafts of white light that made it difficult to view him directly. Through the flashes I made out a white-blond pompadour piled up to a ridiculous height of six or seven inches. I could see no evidence of a microphone and yet the powerful voice seemed to clearly project to all reaches of the room. He had all the trappings of a daytime game show host guiding people along and advancing the proceedings in a smooth efficient manner. He was a pro.
When finally I stepped in front of him I was dazzled by his presence. Whatever bearing and confidence I had before melted away by his dazzling smile and piercing eyes. It was almost unbearable. I found myself stunned like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi-truck.
He announced my name to the mass of humanity without reading from a card or teleprompter.
He returned his gaze to me and said in deep, warm tones, “Hello, how are you James. I am God and I am hosting today’s game.”
He motioned towards a game wheel that stood 30 feet tall next to him.
“Jim,” He continued, “I want you to spin the wheel and try to win the game. It will be great fun.”
I couldn’t quite process whether I had caught his name correctly. I looked at the wheel directly for the first time. The enormous wheel had thousand of pegs evenly spaced around it. Beside each peg was a small window with a few words in each. I leaned forward a little to read a few at a quick glance: “Zoroaster’s, Philadelphia Evangelist Church, The Jains, Shintoism; middle period, Coptics.” , and so on.
“Ah, you’re wondering what the game is.” He said before I could ask.
“Well, you have one spin of the wheel and if by chance you land on the One Correct Religion, then you will abide with me in Heaven for eternity.”
“And if I don’t?” I said unable to hide the disbelief in my voice.
He leaned forward slightly and still smiling, spoke in low, friendly tones, “If you get a wrong one, any on of the thousands of wrong ones, you will immediately drop through the floor, fall for miles and miles to the infamous burning Hell where perfectly horrible little demons will begin to pull your skin off with red-hot pliers. Molten lead will be poured into your anus and large rusty nails will be pounded into your head for all eternity. And you know what? They are really good at their job. Ready to spin?”
The world began to close in on me. The room was listing back and forth. I could hear the crowd chanting “Spin, spin, spin!’
I gasped, “But that’s not fair.”
God leaned forward again and whispered in a smooth voice, “True. It’s not fair. But always remember, I love you.”