Today's "behind the music"... my daughter's favorite... "Lazy Fox" from the album "Realities of Grandeur": music.youtube.com/watch?v=X1… John Fahey's "The New Possibility" is probably my favorite Christmas album... And it doesn't feel weird listening to it year round. He plays in an open tuning, which is really fun and has a distinct sound. I was playing around in that tuning and thinking of Fahey's Christmas album one day, and the components of "Lazy Fox" came out. As I was playing it, the title for the song popped into my head and felt right... but I didn't have any lyrics. I played it around the house for a couple months, and one day just decided to sing the two words that I knew ("lazy fox") and the fable just told itself from there. Kind of a melancholy variation on Aesop with (honestly) some self rebuke embedded in it. The end.

I get notifications every week from streaming services about what songs of mine people are listening to. So I thought maybe I would post a little something about the songs periodically. This week: "Evinrude" music.youtube.com/watch?v=D1… I wrote this song in a cabin at a summer camp I was playing music at. I started playing the verse guitar part on my bunk and it just came out in one go. The next time through I thought I'd try singing along. I have no idea why, the word that came out of my mouth was "Evinrude"... As in the outboard motor brand... Or the animated dragonfly from the movie "The Rescuers". And that was it. I just sang the whole song as-is without stopping. That's only happened to me a few times, but this was one of them. So I have to interpret the lyrics as an outsider just like everybody else, since I didn't "think" about them at all. The name seems to have triggered thoughts about ego and tyranny. It obviously references Marie Antoinette's famous quote, but it's not a political song or political statement. I think it's about internal tyranny. I brought it to The Invasion when I got back from the camp and they Pink Floyd-ed the crap out of it right out of the gate, and I loved it.

I don't know what it's like for other people, but... When I'm mixing a song that I wrote and recorded... Every even listen I think, "This is the greatest song ever" And every odd listen I almost delete it because it's so stupid and so bad. And then I just smoke my pipe and eat some delicious paint.

It's annoying how much better I can see with my glasses on. We all see the world through a narrative lens... Our story about what the world's like, how it got that way, what should be done about it, and by whom. Our narrative lens inevitably becomes warped as we confront tragedy and malevolence... Or warped another way if we avoid them. The good news is a corrective lens exists.

Some ways of being tend toward life... The more they feed back on themselves... The more they spread... Such that we can see hints of Everlasting Life. - Given Agency within a constrained existence, what greater Purpose is there than to voluntarily learn and practice (not merely assent to) those sustainable ways of being?

For a being capable of Wondering at their own being... Of what Good is... What their Purpose might be... A good place to start might be To embrace the significance of Everything their being depends upon And consider that Inherent Meaning Points to Inherent Purpose.

Some people say free will is an illusion. Maybe it is. But living that way is surely a copout. If it turns out that it's not been an illusion... Isn't it incumbent upon us to wrestle with the purpose of such agency? And then (and only then) to test its limits?

Most of existence is not up to us The atomic forces, magnetism, gravity Matter & its various properties & states Biology, chemistry, history Your very conception & birth But some things do appear to be up to us Given those constraints And that agency What should we do?

I don't have "followers" (here or anywhere)... But I'm going try using X to micro-journal each day... Hopefully thoughts that are positive & meaningful. (We seem to have enough of the opposite.)

I'm going to try something new here on X starting tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.

Everything's cool... I'm calm and collected... Between tasks at work... Hey! Let's login to Twitter and see what's happening...

Hey @elonmusk if you wanna dabble in A.I. on X... How about you start by auto-blocking / deleting the bots? If your A. has any I. whatsoever, those should be easy to spot...