Faith Hope and Love...an opus.

I tend to downplay my victories, and concentrate on my failures.

There is a ratio, I think of one thousand attempts for every success. Like seeds in a drought, or baby crabs, most are lost to the jaws of the sea, or the cruel façade of Ra.

And I'm cool with it, I really am. I'm not one of those people that shits gold nuggets, or spits diamonds. I like having to work for it. I think real art isn't an accident, it should never be effortless. If it is efffortless, then that artist should aspire to something higher, and blow our faces off with their creative blast furnace.

By art I mean words. I mean pictures you hang on your wall, or music. A flower arrangement, or even an arrangement of dirt. It doesn't need a frame, but if it is hard to turn away from, and it inspires you, then I'd say it's art. Monica Bellucci is art by that definition, so clearly it works well.

I have auditioned for, and been rejected by some of my favourite bands. I'd like to think it's not because I'm not good enough, but rather because we're into different things, and they feel my thing wouldn't fit well into their way of doing things. I just said "feel my thing". I guess I've been lucky just having access to these people, but no, I don't feel that way. And it's never nice to be underestimated. All art is subjective though, or should I say it isn't, but the perspectives of those that witness it are. Art is art, not subjective, objective, nouveaux, or retro-futura. Inanimate old art.

I keep having dreams of a band that will never be, of a song I won't hear outside my own mind. I know if you heard it, it would change your life, it has certainly changed mine. It's a piece that assembles players from all across time, different nationalities, altitudes, instruments. But I can't play it to you, and there's no point approximating it in my own recorded version, it's not that kind of party.

All I can do, is try to explain it.

So imagine with me, we are standing on an ice sheet.

8th August, 2000 B.C.E. We're standing on one of the last great ice sheets, far to the North, and the sky is black, but it isn't night. It's dark, and the rain is falling lightly, not hard enough to soak, but just lightly enough to make a general background sound.

This is our first element.

17th January, 1980. On a farm in rural Australia, a cattle gate is opening, and as it vibrates on its hinges, a beautiful harmonic note rings out. It's a round note- no sharp edges, no discernible point where it enters the audible spectrum, and where it exits. It lightly fades in, and after a few moments of it already being heard, you realise it's there.

This our second element.

20th November, 1982. On a secluded beach on a Pacific Island, two young people are kissing one another. They have both crept away from the tour party, and have shed all their clothes. They love each other, and for the first time they consumate that love on the edge of the water. The sound of the girls soft moan as he enters her gently breathes out, carried and phased by the breeze, processed by turbulence.

This is our third element.

Tuesday August 15th, 2000. A beat kicks in, a lonely, hollow, far off beat. The sound of the last surviving submariners from the drowning Kursk in the Barents Sea, hammering desperately on the hull of the sub, the lights out inside, slowly asphyxiating...knowing no help will ever come.

This is our fourth element.

16th March, 1978. In North America, after midnight off a highway in Texas, a trucks air brakes bellow out their protest, decelerating out on the edge of town. A young boy of eight hears the sound, faintly stirring in his half sleep, eyelids fluttering, succumbing to his heavy head and dreams.

This is our fifth element.

In an alley, running off El Tahrir Square in Downtown Cairo, an old rapist is hiding in the shadow behind a pre-war Citroen, a gift from the French, colonial refuse. It is the 12th April, 1978. He is muttering a prayer, his quiet voice high with fright. He knows he is to be imminently discovered. The soft prayer mingles with the sound of his rough hands rubbing his stubble, creating a sound like a body being dragged through the sand and underbrush.

This is our sixth element.

On the 12th September, 1928, in Robinsonville, Mississippi, a young Robert Johnson picked out the opening notes of "how long- how long blues" on his guitar, before he sold his soul to the devil, to become one of the greatest players that ever lived. The steel strings speaking in a pure voice, the last time they ever would. Next time he played those strings, the horned master of Hell would be speaking through them, with all the arrogant skill and finesse a billion burning souls can afford.

This is our seventh element.

And right now, at the Universitas Sumatera Utara in Indonesia, a gamelan musician practices his instrument alone- the Gong Ageng. He counts out the beats on his score, as any musician does, and when the time arrrives (and it arrives rarely with this gamelan instrument), he sounds his gong. His mallet hits the gong, and a second later, the gong fades in with a "wooom", then holding its note, like brown feedback, or a television stuck between channels in a river of mud.

This is our eight, and final element.

There is loneliness, hope, longing, desperation, innocence, joy, and the power of nature to this piece. And in my dreams it loops effortlessly and endlessly, breaking my heart in my sleep, and awaking me with tears...tears of hope and loss. It is a beautiful song, and a beautiful dream, all the more for the cost of some of its parts. And I wait all day, for the sun to hide, so I can fall prey to it again.

This world is a stern one, for all its subterfuge and pastoral flowers. And it is prudent to remember that it is so much more vast than the path between work, home, and the bar, or the movie theatre, or your lovers house, or the whore house, or the casino. And while it feels safe to hide in our minds, and our gated communities, or our S.U.V's, we wound ourselves by constricting the flow of fresh experience, like deep vein thrombosis for the suburban commuter.

I hope you all dream your own songs tonight, and see just how many possibilities and tales lie past the haze of streetlights from the high ground, out past the suburbs and the small towns, and the farms.

There is a world out there, and hundreds of years of recorded history. It's yours, if you want it.

I want it.


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.