5 Things

I woke up two days ago with a simple revelation. It came though after months of struggling with hard issues about myself. I don't know that simplicity is quite what we think. Solomon's words were not complex but the perfect wisdom there was hard fought. I believe, a lot of the time, he was quoting his father: "My son, listen to me ..." David pleaded with his son, and the essence of it was: Do not take the path I took.

I guess it comes in waves, simple wisdom. Perhaps it skips a generation or some sound teaching falls seemingly irrelevant off the table.. I don't know. I rode hard and pushed hard and played hard and nearly killed myself some days, with hair on fire and recklessness and accidents. I feel like David maybe. I want a son. I want to tell him it can be simpler than all of that. I want to tell him about my revelation from two days ago. No, I don't have a son, so, I will tell you.

A voice woke me up after days of coming down from some intense work. It said, "Who are you?"

It bothered me at first.. more than a lot. It made me very unhappy. I didn't have an answer. I got depressed for what seemed like days but after that was over I got this gentle courage to forgive myself for not having an answer. So I asked the question aloud and rested knowing that the answer would come. It did come.
Two days later I woke with this:

"Today you are 5 things. Be all of them and one at a time. Tomorrow will be different. So tell me Joshua Payne, what are you first?"

I shot out of bed! "I am an athlete!" I said, as if some great race ensued. I don't know why I got into the shower.. that made no sense, but it was my first reaction to the statement. I don't have a swimming pool so maybe there was some need to find water after this proclamation.

So there I was in the shower, rinsing. I began to hum. And incidentally the feeling of "being" encouraged me to run a few vocal exercises. That felt good. Anyway, after rinsing off whatever it was my instincts needed to rinse, I bundled up, threw on my shoes and ran hills like an athlete until I was tired.

I came into the house exhausted and laid down on the couch to rest. The voice said, "What are you now?" I was surprised to hear it again so soon. I answered, "I am man who takes care of himself." The voice said,

"Then go do."

I made a green smoothie and put vitamins back into my body and then took a couple of hours caring for myself, making beautiful food and resting. I finished the last bite of a meal and there it was again. "What are you now?"

"I am a visual artist," I answered.

The voice said, "Pick up your work and flex those muscles until they satisfy you!"

I immediately did and came away with 7 new studies. When I closed my sketchbook the voice came again. "What are you now?" Then answers were coming easily:

"I am a writer."

"Then you best get to it," said the voice.

I sat a wrote for the better part of the day. The sun set. I closed my laptop with no handle really on the time. There was a party of friends gathering South of town and I'd committed to be among them. I dressed for the party and the voice said, "Who are you now?" Notice it didn't say "what are you?" I answered,

"WHO am I? Why, I am a friend. I've become a friend."

As I drove south I realized that without being a friend to myself, to my own nature, it was impossible to be a friend to others. I laid my head down that night excited, troubled, hopeful, fearful, expectant, joyful, sad. I slept. I woke the next day and the voice said, "Good morning. What do you want to be today." I answered,

"I want to be happy."

The voice said, "Then go.. do. Be."

Perhaps the proverb is this: My son, listen to me. BEfriend WHAT you are. Only then can you BEfriend WHO you are. And only then can you BEfriend the world. Only then can you BE happy.

jP 36.1073.3

An ear to bend..

did you ever meet someone without an opinion? wasn't it nice to be heard? wasn't it remarkable how they listened and nodded and peered deep into your sorrow and your joy? remember how you felt walking away -- lighter -- as if some great burden had been lifted and heaven and earth were again the places of dreams and kind realities? remember?
be that person for someone today. sit tight and hold dear to someone else's need for an ear to bend. resist your urge to fix or prod or advise or run. give them life and give them credit for opening up to you. turn off everything else. give them your undivided self. make no reason for regret. make no reason for them to close, and in this kindness you will contribute to a brand of karma that will utterly make you new, and allow them to completely find and embrace a much needed and long overdue release.

jP Fall 2o15

The Alpha Female

http://thebolde.com/dating-struggles-alpha-female/

It's frustrating how wrong the above article is and on so many tragic levels. But what's even more frustrating is that many of us are actually willing believe the writer Wesley's grave approach without investigation.

If you haven't read it, the link is above. Feel free and then get back to me.

Good you've read it. Welcome back.

So..

Many of you know I've spent a quarter life in human and animal behavior and it's not surprising to me that the matriarch alpha female is the chief in every in every genius and species of the animal kingdom. The human race should see it no differently but sadly.. We've lost high honor and the understanding that women, hands down, are better intuitively and with most every aspect of decision making than men, and therein lies the rub.

The description of the woman in the article sounds more like a powerless desperate entitled imp in need of emotional support and likely psychotherapy. But the true matriarchal "alpha", she is much more calculated than the above description, and within her is a great war, ease and unease alike, doing fierce battle, and never is there an outward burst or the fragile abuse of power. She is clever and understands how to get what she needs and wants by allowing others to do the same. She is patient and kind and loving and long-suffering, but at the same time honorable and yes, unafraid to tell it more like it needs to be rather than telling it like it is for sheer lack of temperance.

She sees virtue as her highest mark and understands more the power in restraint. What I am describing is the Queen of Sheba, one of the most powerful women in history. She seeks wisdom above all else and knows that her life course, even if contrary to others, is her course alone, and she is comfortable enough to travel it without edge or ill-will or imposition. She is a force of nature, not a stark raving virago.

A true alpha would never "date" as the article so loosely implies. The alpha believes in something larger than herself and believes in that fate to align her with a counterpart, a help, and a love of equal power and standing. And she never "makes light" of anything! Sincerity is her fortress and setting people free IS her passion. Men and woman are both frustrated with this line of discourse only because "alpha" power takes skill, calling, discipline and the deep spirituality and knowledge that comes with the indexing of ones own soul. Instead we have traded greatness for an easier path.. insanity.

jP Fall 2o15

My Own Brother

~ my own brother ~

fall equidistance,
seeing sun bow to the moon
we now know the wind ––

the archival natures of some lover's past ––

i knew the friend in childhood
the horses and black apples
and short days after school when i refused
learning for the changing nature of things ––
of leather and latico and sweet feed.

i too enjoyed the taste of grain not knowing there was a friend born north
(from my mother's own dead ghost he was inhabited)
that would lift me up in word and in deed long before the redeeming hours
the apartments of souls learning heavy duties and pilfering to find their ways
and spiritual guides i yearned in teens to know.

when God joins the hearts of men
the spaghetti of highways leading them toward crossroads
is filtered in layers of cleaning up after ones own messes
so that he might, when in love with dear friends
take pride in accidental oopses.

it's involuntary in that great kitchen moment
when coffee or wine or stimulant or depressant
owes shame no new meaning but silence.
and when eyes meet and can,
the birthing right of some great child will not refuse his younger brother.

and this is the way villages are formed ––
great kings know this and in pledge they give gifts.

a painter loves his friend so much that absent
he yearns with each stroke to see and insure
that on revelation day, his beloved has not been left out.

his heart is simply this:

"i want so much for you to see what i am seeing."

thank you.
thank you.
thank you.

jP autumnal day 2o15 - for James

The Overinflated, Seemingly Highly Educated MD

The man stood and educated me on the virtues of pugilism in history and how fighting had made him fearless. He told me about the stances in tradition and how the ages had informed his lifetime of study. He waxed eloquent on the various styles he'd picked up traveling the globe, and then cautioned me to come no closer, that his hands were registered, deadly lethal weapons. I believed him. And then ... ? I knocked his ass out cold. I didn't know any of that shit he was talking about but I damn sure knew how to fight it.


jP (excerpt - the Salvation Plane)

#cancer #theovereducatedlie #simplicitycuresdisease #wakeupamerica

the old way – the new renaissance

the dismissal of what it took to build, to invent, to yield, to pour out, to hurt, to bleed, to die, to love, to lose, and to build again – this dismissal is what's wrong with the post-modern patron, listener, observer, critic, consumer. perhaps they don't realize that these days to "lose one's ass" is exactly what it means to be the post-modern artist. it was the same during the dark ages and then out of nowhere came salvation; came a renaissance.

to appreciate that art, to be an appreciator of art, we pre to post-moderners must realize the artist more than likely did just that: he "lost his ass" to give us what we are enjoying, identifying with or completely taking for granted. we must wise up.

art, at one time or another in the artists life, either costs or will cost him everything. if you do not read further then, in the short run, buy! no excuses. if you like it - buy it. without artists, without music, without the push toward creative eternity, we are lost in dark.

good you are still reading.

didn't you know? we are currently under siege.

we've been given games, bread and circus and told they are the standards. we are easily distracted. we'd rather watch kittens than be challenged, moved, bettered, refined (please note: i include myself in the insult). even our meals are indicative of how easily we settle. we buy food because there's a toy inside not because it's perfect and life-giving. the way we treat our fellow man on the highway or on the sidewalk or at the market - the way we talk and are profusely and proudly profane. the way we rob the earth ...

what have we become? really, what have we become? surely enlightenment started with a vision. now we hold the keys to the proverbial building known as that very renaissance. it's dark and dank, unloved and in need of repair but still so epic and beautiful, and useful and important. it serves as a reminder of who we are and sets irrefutable standards – but most us don't want reminded of that – the centuries it took to build. some of us, desperate, have sold our share and can't bear to look back. others, partners still, don't look because we want a twinkie instead of a feast. a developer in town and fellow key-holder wants to tear it all down and build condos, and most of us key-holders, koozies in hand, will trade in our keys for casts and systems without questioning it. and it's not because we are bad or stupid. it's because we don't know how to question it or even why we should. we all know something is wrong but can't put fingers on it.

we grew up in think tanks that weren't think tanks at all. the opinions of our fathers gave us only bottom lines. we grew not knowing anything about spirit and truth and thus the artisans and masters of the ages in medicine, law, philosophy, architecture and design were discarded because of the inability to replicate the finery for lack of understanding. the arts were lost because the learning was no longer passed down and we babes grew fat without challenge and no longer cared for the disciplines in the warm light of entitlement and easy living.

we know also that to appreciate means to connect, and to connect one must invest, and if one invests he must look in the mirror, and if the entitled generational mask is all he sees, one will never identify with what it cost to make such a marvelous structure – one will never identify with the coldest days of dark ages and war – and so the anthem of the day will sing.. "money is easy, let's print more, let's tear it down and start a war. we last forever, we proud elite. the gods bow down, on bended knees."

today we exist with the dying relics – a group of leaders with no understanding of how to "stand in the old way and to know it is a good path.." they are lost. art is lost. the art of medicine succumbs to the art of making money, and the art of people is to make them slaves to that same dollar and system. and so with a lack of foundational art – all of it perishes. and with them, we also are lost.

one might ask, "why buy a print of an artists work, or an original that moves me, or give money to a pastor that poured his heart out, or to a musician that gave his life to bleed into the microphone when i've got the internets and can access it all for free?" suddenly he knows the answer and perhaps now is asking himself, "why did i just ask such a stupid question?"

if we buy, support, we rebuild. but with that comes great responsibility. take a look at notre dame and the sistine or castles on the rhine, or even the nations capital – or was the renaissance all for nothing? have we really lost our connection with the divine?

if you build it, build it fine. buy it fine. built it right. buy it only if it can be right. music, art, medicine, structure, design, life, family, meal, quiet time, family time. re-build it all in mirrored renaissance – beautiful and perfect. erect it to God and if nothing is wrong with it, don't build it at all. support your craftsmen and tradesmen and artisans and workers and musicians and teachers and poets. cast out the dr's of money and the artisans of distraction. give wine to the broken-hearted. look at the curvy uneven walls of your downtown condo and refuse to buy this shit. hold everything in the light of that great renaissance, even your own work, and if it's not that good, refuse it. break the mold and start again.

the decline of art is the saturation of a world of so called artisans breeding monetary filth in every doctoral discipline and field. but the saturation of a world demanding quality and paying for it, is a world of inspired workers no longer getting their means by selling lies and miracle elixirs. yes, many of those working artisans will fall away and for a time they will struggle and morn without identity. but when the spiritually elite again find their place, the world will restore and enlighten all by itself. we will build less and better. we will refine. we will come to community castles to hear the latest and greatest outpourings by the worlds premier artists on instruments that must be paid for with huge endowments. medicine will finally heal us. structures will never fall. food will do its work. the soil will be restored. disease will flee before us and pestilence become a thing of the dark ages.

but …

in the meantime, in the world of goods and trade and refining art – if it moves you – patron, listener, observer, critic, consumer – you can afford it even if you can't afford to own it, and you can own it even if you can't afford it. give to it's cause, it's creator some fond tangible token. it isn't yours to like or claim until you've done so. you defile it's temple if you refuse. you've merely stolen it. yes yes you are right. you want it. you need it. you can't afford not to have it. 10,000 keen glances, 10,000 listens in a lifetime, your favorite works … yes, yes, your life, my life, his life, her life, our lives depend upon it. and at last, when the aristocracy again employs the artist, it's because the patron is revived, he dances the waltz, and enlightened, he knows he will die without the artist and his renaissance.

joshua payne 281.22.y2

i got an email from cdbaby that said: "words you never want to hear when it comes to your music: 'i tried to add your music to a spotify playlist and it wasn't there.'"

if you know where i'm going with this you can stop reading now.

i love it when people hear me speak of "ordered steps" and belief systems and 9 times out of ten they always say, "oh where do you go to church?" and i get a tremendous amount of glee in my own response, "i don't go." a.k.a. did you just lock the bird of heaven in a cage of gold?

and so with spotify. let me say that those words: "i tried to add your new music to a spotify playlist and it wasn't there." this makes me happier than most things. this is music to my ears. and with tremendous amounts of glee i simply and exuberantly reply, "Wonderful!"

dear spotify and the so called big four advocates of performance royalty licensing who sold us out in D.C. a couple years ago so you could get into bed with the streaming triangle,
kindly piss off.

JOSHUA PAYNE