Interesting week; at least half of it spent in a wild, feverish and headachey state.Intense dreams- i met C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther King at various stages,i'm pleased to report they are both in good shape-Lewis especially; he was in a prussian blue short sleeve shirt and says he's teaching on 'sundays'. Try and catch a lecture in the backdoor of your dreams sometime.
Funnily enough, my vacation from lifes steady road came in the middle of deep research for the next section of the year programe, 'Coyote Man and the Fox Woman'-it was a tricksterish descent into new approaches to the stories and ideas about this archaic energy we call Trickster: Raven,Hermes,Eshu,Guizer.Trying to keep to my research schedule while drifting in and out of visionary rupture was most useful-Coyotes paws bashed my slumbering brick of a brain into something a little more lucid.
I don't know if any of you caught the documentary on Joe Strummer on Channel 4 last week. Gotta love the man that he became. Oddly not 'famous Joe', the James Dean of Punk, but the Joe after 10 years without a record deal,out in the wilderness.Sweet,ferocious and musically open. His Coyote carried him away from the dead genericism that Punk had become into whole other strange areas, even though it was Coyote that stole in with Punk in the first place to scare the shit out of everyone.He stole Punk from the Gods (from hell some would say) and brought it to earth, just like he stole fire many thousands of years before.Anything that shakes, alerts or challenges the Status Quo can have a paw print or a raven feather in it.The possibility of new growth.The oldest Trickster stories show the sacrality of the context though-the school bully flushing your head down the toilet is not Trickster-but he could live in what you do with the experience.
So i love Joe for following the spirit rather than form, that's inspirational.I met him when i lived in the woods, only eight weeks before he died-he was low key, kind, funny, gypsy-like, wore biker boots and knew his Lorca-what the fuck else could you want from a man? he was ready to go and freak the gods and goddesses down there in
heaven, playing troubadour african blues to dancing Tibetans drinking Tequila.He had a tequila bar in his house, full of Mexican hats, did i mention that?
So i Love Joe, and loving Joe makes me think of some one else i love, Patti Smith.
The many tusked, moon laden underworld/ overworld beauty that she is. I saw her play in the Villa Borghese in Rome one night.5,000 lunatic Italians in an ancient park, dusk, warm, huge bunches of incense wafting out from the stage,cold beer,massive PA, introducing her with Hendix-VOODOO CHILE.She was, as the hip hoppers say-The Bomb.
I sacrificed an entire Peronni Nastro (best summer beer) to the four winds and became my 11 year old self again, down in that ancient seat of brusing alchemy-the mosh pit.Patti knows so much about Trickster her Tour T-shirts should just have a picture of Reynard the Fox and Emily Dickinson making out whilst riding an Old Truimph bike into the mouth of Allen Ginsberg. Wow. Thats a good image-we should save that for the School.
So, no myth debating this week (see Boxing with Barthes)i'm too high, but i would recommend to track down James Hillmans essay 'Peaks and Vales'-you should be able to find this in 'A Blue Fire: selected writings of...'when you find it you'll know what its about.
I'll finish with something by the Prose Poet Louis Jenkins. A great, gnarly, troubled american who dissaproves any transport but feet.
The best anyone can say about you is that you are a disappointment. We had higher expectations of you.We had hoped that you would finish your schooling.We had hoped that you would have kept your job at the plant. We had hoped you would have been a better son and a better father. We hoped and fully expected you would have finished reading Moby Dick. I wish that when i am talking to you, you would at least raise your head off the table and look at me. There are people who, without your gifts, have accomplished so much in this life. I am truly disappointed. Your parents, your wife and children, your entire family, in fact, everyone you know is dissapointed, deeply disappointed.
Sheesh, Jenkins. Do NOT let him babysit your kids.
Well this little flurry of consciousness has made me realise that Pan is still coursing my blood stream: i must take my swan feather cloak and await his shaggy instruction.
M x
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