THE SUN IS OUT TODAY, BOYS
A BBB podcast from a California mountain while listening to Sean’s old mix tape
We talk about magnetic tape, the fading of mixtapes, 432 Hz versus 440 Hz, energy vibrating through the body, and whether your bell is actually ringing.
The world is the instrument. Life is the prepared piano.
A random-note computer program becomes a way of thinking about music: receiving and giving, listening and responding. A guitar gets tuned on the mountaintop by feel rather than by a machine. A cassette tape plays from somewhere up the hill while the valley opens toward the ocean.
We talk about resting without actually becoming rested. About finding the places where energy flows. About drinking water from a cracked aquifer in the middle of town and coming back from a zombie state.
Then the poems come out.
A morning poem written partly in a dentist’s office. A poem about healing fighting the wounded. A poem about love that has nowhere to go. About the lies we tell when we believe something outside ourselves is necessary.
“The sun is out today, boys.”
“You want your healing to fight your wounding, not just have a conversation with it.”
“There’s no more room for songs about girls.”
“Because this love is bursting inside my chest. It has nowhere to go and nothing to do, because it is done telling lies.”
The poems wander through teeth, rivers, God, nostalgia, coral, aliens, shopping carts, DNA, shadows, music, memory, and the strange feeling that a day can become so good that language can’t quite contain it.
We talk about the redwood shadow.
We talk about the electric blue spiritual light bathing everything.
We talk about why some people move through life in long waves while others seem steady, and what it means to stay friends long enough to experience the entire roller coaster together.
“The cool thing is when you get to go for the whole ride.”
At forty, we discover that being forty doesn’t necessarily feel like being old. The youthful thing doesn’t disappear. The body changes, but something else remains awake.
“It goes on as long as you wanted it to.”
Then come aliens, reincarnation, genetic modification, extraterrestrial souls, CRISPR, UFOs, and the possibility that the aliens aren’t arriving because they’re already here.
The Earth scene is savage.
The Earth scene is hardcore.
And somehow, completely compassionate.
We talk about mystical masters, spiritual bullshit, the problem of believing too much, and the necessity of knowing when somebody doesn’t want your energy.
Sometimes you have to stop saying the thing.
Sometimes you have to meet people at their level.
“You can get in if you’re at other people’s level.”
Then the river comes up.
A storm has just passed. The water is rising. There may be a float tomorrow morning.
We talk about dancing, Goth nights, Santa Cruz, mystery, unfamiliar people, and the problem with a dance floor where everybody already knows everybody.
“I need a little mystery in my dance.”
“I need a little bit of edge.”
“A little bit of shock value.”
We talk about Morocco, thermal springs, fault lines, places that seem more alive than other places, and how sometimes you travel toward places because something in you recognizes them.
Then another poem.
A poem about forgetting to weave yourself into the story.
About electric blue spiritual light.
About everything being turquoise.
About the unspeakable.
About the dentist.
About eroticism as slowing down because everything is so good.
About the best DJs being far away from their subwoofers.
About having less teeth than piano keys.
About the possibility of respawning.
About 43 more years.
About aliens changing our DNA.
About throwing a rose instead of a stone.
And finally:
“What a gift to be surprised.”
The poem gets too long.
Then it gets better.
You lose track of wanting an explanation because it’s still happening and it still appears to fit.
Nobody wants to hear a poem. But that’s a poem I want to hear twice.
The sun is out today, boys.
