If I aspire to anything, anything at all, it is kindness. God knows I should be good at it. I've had more than my share for all of my life. It ain't rocket surgery and it requires no heavy lifting. You had it to spare as a kid. You've still got it. Sometimes you just need to be reminded.
All you need is love. They just need the same thing.
Now what? Eventually you'll just run out of dreams. Oh, I mean there's world peace and all that, I know. Practically, though, I've had it all. Jamaica and I are coasting. Sometimes I don't know whether I'm meditating or if I'm just staring at walls. Yeah, I know. Probably staring.
Does it ever sound as though I'm bragging about my failures in life? I hope not. I hoped to sell records and I would have loved to play Shea Stadium. When it comes right down to it, however, I'm grateful for a life of rock'n'roll. If I fell in love too often and too head over heels, I apologize. To them, I mean. That was the best I could do.
There are no "good" things. There are no "bad" things. Things happen. All things happen. So when idiots babble, " It is what it is," they're actually spouting wisdom. Who knew?
Teeth crack. Hearts stop.
Dang!
Stuff can be hoarded. Hoard string. Leaves. Pennies. Use love.
Music never plays in this house. Well, almost never. I have every intention of having Lady Day alternating with Grandpa Jones and Moondog as I go about my daily routine. Now that I think about it, I don't have a daily routine, either.
I walk the dog. Oh, yeah, I go to the Y.
On Friday, though, I go to the radio station to play music that I love for people that I love. With people that I love.
I guess I must be about the luckiest guy alive. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
So as the priest is rowed ashore to paradise the first thing that upsets him is titties. Say what?
The president expects our tax dollars to protect his family as they travel the world shaking down other crooks for his ultimate profit. Oh yeah, he needs softer towels on Air Force 1 while we're making America great. Again. Yet, he hasn't paid taxes in a very long time.
Thugs have controlled the music industry since I've been a part of it. I've been a part of it for a very long time. That's my side of the story. The thugs have never considered me any part of it at all. Radio. Recording. Concert promotion. Publishing.
Bob Dylan once famously wrote, "To live outside the law, you must be honest."
At every turn I find myself an outsider. It's not lonely out here. Love's gonna live here again.
Chaos, hate and xenophobia aren't just acceptable in this day and age. They're fashionable. Honestly, I'm bored wringing my hands between sentences. Yeah, I'll fight for all I'm worth for the ones that need me but I refuse to deal with half empty glasses.
Their gold won't buy joy. How would you like to wake up carrot orange with yellow floss on your head and turn on TV to find that Great Britain is debating the idea of allowing you into their country? If you want to know whether money can buy happiness, take a look at the first lady's face.
Now, if you'll pardon me, I've got coffee to drink and songs to write. I've got love to spend. Enough of that stuff will disrupt the most diabolical plot.
I've seen the things that gold can do to a man's soul. I've seen men laid too low to pray. I've held diamonds in my hand that started off as dirty coal. Flat on your back, the stars in the sky will show you the way.
Men without work and men without hope pass the reverently rich on the sidewalk every day. Their shoulders may touch but you can be sure that their eyes don't meet. Only the saints rely on the stars to show them the way.
If preachers gave away love and hope like they do bread and wine and if the meek inherit their share of the earth today and when hypocrisy fails with all it entails and gives us a sign, we'll look to the saints and rely on the stars to show us the way.
There's gold on the moon and diamonds in the sky. The streets fill with silver when the rainclouds cry. You can walk around heaven with diamond dust on your shoes but for the grace of God-the broke heart blues.
Entitlement. How very unattractive. Gurus giggle. Always a dead giveaway, isn't it? The blues have moved in with me on a regular, if unpredictable, schedule since I was a kid. I never figured it out until I was an old man.
Most of everything I've written is a product of despair.
There are no excuses for "hating back." I have to keep reminding myself when the television is on. Rock'n' roll is my mantra. I have a debt to all of the living things on the planet and the only currency is love. Oh, I know how hokey this sounds. It is. That's alright.
If this is what it takes to make decency and empathy fashionable, bring it on. Lack of education doesn't make a fella deplorable. It doesn't hurt, though. We've crept to the right since I was a kid. Ike was left of Barack. Yeah, he was a Republican. A war hero. He was also a studied, decent man. He ran against a brighter man, off to his left.
Now, I don't want to write about politics. I don't want to think about politics. Until we change this racket that draws the lowest form of psychopaths in search of cash and power, though, it stays on my mind. Who on earth declared these fuckwads world leaders?
Fortunately there are heroes in the streets. We're gonna have a press again. Stock prices for the soaring New York Times are doing fine, thank you.
When my check for this blog clears, I'm having a kir royale and a Cohiba. Thanks, Mr. Soros.
Surely the best religions, the finest philosophies, are the ones that explain suffering. If I can convince a wide enough swath of the populace that it's all gonna be alright, I can run my own cult. It's that pesky, so-called, science that ruins it for the less imaginative.
Well, don't worry about nothing 'cause nothing's gonna be alright. We're all gonna die. After we suffer. Dang.
My dog loves the lightning. She's scared of the thunder.
Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.
Who knew? Turns out that dumb is an admirable trait in our culture. Spend a little time on social media and you'll soon be nodding in agreement. Or you're dumb.
Oh, I'm aware just how condescending, arrogant and cruel that sounds. Worse, coming from a grown man who is captivated by the Three Stooges and thinks that those cartoons with all of the characters some form of Goofy mark the zenith of Disney and, maybe, Western civilization.
Is it because an uneducated populace is easier to manipulate and govern? Maybe.
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, better known as Stepin Fetchit, made millions in Hollywood playing a shuffling dimwit. By 1947 he was broke. His character was considered a negative stereotype for Black men. His representation had actually been of the trickster who always knew how to outwit the white guy in order to get him to do the work.
We all know that the real shuffling nitwits have always been in Washington. Most of them are white and male. The question is, and always has been, who put them there?
Who stops war? If we're the good guys and we elect representatives who profit from armaments, or "defense spending." as they prefer to call it, who has the stimulus to wage peace?
Who's going to feed the hungry, house the homeless, take care of the sick who have no access to medical care?
Government should be simple. Religious leaders don't need advanced degrees in divinity. Revolution doesn't require violence.
We don't have to rely on the best among us. We just have to stop accepting the worst.
Love is the answer. These are not rhetorical questions.
Here's what happens when you start the wine too early. Please allow me random thoughts without any attempt at sentences or grammar.
The genes that I'm proud of, the recessive ones, are almost done. I'm one of one and an artist's proof at that. Fine.
Social media is the place to remind yourself that folks like war. Well, the "good ones." They like the "good wars." Keep watching. They don't like many of Buckminster Fuller's ideas. They're suspicious of Mahatma Ghandi and Bertrand Russell, too.
Seems to me that folks, most folks, are only happy in shackles. Just don't tell them that they're in shackles.
You know, every minute that I'm not with Jamaica is a minute wasted. Every bit of love that I give her is for all of you, too. You're all my valentines. Illegal aliens, street people, prisoners, misfits and the socially awkward. Oh, I love all you others, too. Maybe not quite as much but I love you. Happy Valentine's Day.
Do you suppose that little girls keep diaries these days? Everything I've dreamed of has come my way and that's what I'm wondering about. Oh, I suppose that I think about death now and then. No more than I did thirty years ago but now we're on much closer terms.
It's hard to be honest unless you never change your mind and I change my mind more often than I do my hairdo. I've always maintained that I will tell anybody anything. I'm finding out that that's not altogether true.
Half the battle is staying awake and I'm usually about half-awake. Does that make me about a quarter alive or about three quarters dead? It's those pesky word problems that kept you out of the PhD program.
That's what they say, right? Only two kinds of people in this world- Christians, Muslims, Jews and heathens. Oh, wait. That can't be right. Short ones, tall ones, skinny ones, fat ones. No, that's not it.
Well, sir, it seems that scientists have discovered an "empathy gene." Some of us have it. Some of us don't. Insert your own Democrat/Republican joke if you're so inclined. At least we're down to the "two kinds" question.
Don't go studying up on psychopathy or narcissistic personality disorder. It will only make you sad. A good psychopath, contradiction in terms intended, thinks you're just like him. He thinks he's just better at it.
All my life I've been surrounded by the right kind. I don't know if I've lived my life for the rock'n'roll or if rock'n'roll has given me life. Who knows? Who cares?
Call me lucky. 4/4 heartbeat and rose-colored glasses. Pucker up, Gift Horse, show me what you've got. When the going gets tough I doze off. All those weddings and I don't have a fondue pot. Man! Is it cold in here or is it just me?
Some of us have to work with the world from the outside. That's alright. I'm more comfortable out here. I've been dragged in a few times. I didn't much like it and they didn't either.
Poor old Jack- he was happy when he was one of the "poor in spirit." His really was the kingdom of heaven. He longed for recognition, though. He needed legitimacy. The kind that only comes with sales. Chart action. Critical acclaim. On The Road changed everything.
Be careful what you wish for. He was forty seven when he died in St. Pete. Fat. Broke. Unhappy. Unable to write.
Oh, I've longed for success and I have cursed the business. All the while I have clung stubbornly to my poor spirit and I have known the kingdom of heaven.
Laissez les bons temps rouler.
Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war.
Well sir, maybe the haints will run me off. These are the most exciting days of my life. I always marveled that my grandmother, Lottie, was born just three years after the first automobile and lived to ride in my hot rods. She was four years old when Wilbur Wright flew at Kitty Hawk and eighty when a man named Armstrong walked on the moon.
Me? I shook hands with the King of the Cowboys and I saw Brigitte Bardot take off her clothes on the movie screen. I watched Don Garlits go 186 miles per hour and held up Jimi Hendrix's amps.
As I look around at couples I seem to detect some desperate attempts to avoid being lonely. Surely going through life with someone whose snoring keeps you awake or a person who loads the dishwasher all wrong beats a table for one at the diner. Right?
While I've whined for a decade about the demise of rock'n'roll, Western civilization has been been eroding before our eyes. Similar story lines. Psychopaths seeking power take over the institutions. Clive Davis, Mitch McConnell- what's the difference? Who cares?
The first time I ever played in New York I was a nervous wreck. Surely the truly hip would recognize us as hillbilly posers and reject us. When they seemed to like us I sighed with a sense of relief that has lasted fifty years or so.
Rock'n'roll has had problems as it grew up and grew old. Who don't? The governments of the West have struggled, too. Inevitable problems are easily held up as diversions by despots and charlatans who want more than their share of the pie.
There really is one of us born every minute.
My advice? Love. Resist. Drag your feet and keep an eye out for karma.
It's all trash waiting to be put on the heap, isn't it? We're all dust held together with some water. Worms lick their lips when we walk by. Now go meditate.
My problem, if I have a problem, is that I've let other folks define my joy. Life's short. It's really all about dogs and cats and babies. Oh, and Little Richard records.
Before I let my list get out of hand I should just get to love. Nothing else matters. Nothing.
Keep that in mind while you're trying to make sense out of the news today. Look! The emperor has no clothes. I love that.
Boy, oh boy- ain't life grand. I have memories that take me around the world. I've heard the sweetest music ever made. It doesn't take much to bring tears to these old cataract-riddled orbs. As long as babies laugh at dogs and cats jump at the sight of zucchini on YouTube, I'll get by.
Oh, I know there's loss ahead. There always is. It's way too late for me to be unlucky, though. Way too late. I've had it all.
I hope that all of you know the love that I've known. Pay attention to all those t shirts and bumper stickers. All you'll ever need is love.
