Jon Bailey & The Heathen Revival

We are Images of the invisible?

Is it Turtles Allllll the way down?

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but, it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds darkness has always gotten there first and waiting….”

Terry Pratchett

But We have to ask if the ocean stops waving is it still water? Did we come into or out of this universe?

In the beginning was there darkness or light?

If darkness is the absence of light, kinda like cold is the absence of heat.

Then Far before there was light there was darkness.

Happiness will not exist without sadness and light would not exist without darkness.

It’s a duality.

Without something to compare can we see things as they are?

So that would mean Light only exists in respect to the existence of darkness……

Or if there were neither lightness or darkness then there was a consciousness.

and it Can be seen as an unimaginable light or a void and at that point in space it doesn’t really matter which came first.

The Bible tells us in Genesis

“ Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.”

To me that confirms Darkness was here first.

Now, that is established.

How do we keep the candle burning?

How do we with sword and shield continue to fight back the darkness? Well to me it’s like Ray Wylie said “the days I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, well those are prettt good days…” I think he means keep getting up because you can dumbass. Keep fighting because you got it in you.

The other side to this coin I think is this.

If the knife can’t cut itself and the eye can’t see its self, then the brain can’t understand itsself.

We are literally, collectively hallucinating reality.

You create your perspective based on your very close approximation of what you mean in the scheme of it all.

Are we just images of the invisible?

What do you think we were made for?

Have you ever walked into a room and been surprised you weren’t already there?

Anyways…I don’t know dude

Men, Cowards & Andy Griffith

In every man lives a coward.
In every man is a battle to kill that coward.

Reminds me of an episode of Andy Griffith, E20 S1 to be exact.

Andy has to leave town to testify in court and leaves Barney in charge.
Barney starts arresting everyone in the town for petty crimes to assert his authority and be taken seriously. Now, when Andy returns to see the whole town locked up, he tells Barney basically that sometimes just because it’s how things are done doesn’t mean it’s the right way to do them. Thankful we had silly shows like AG to teach us these things….
A coward will see an opportunity to create drama and chaos, as to not focus on his own.A man will seek out the chaos in his own life and fix it.
A coward will blow a horn as loud as he can over all the other horn players just so he can say he was the only one playing.
A man will understand the importance of principal and respect in any situation as to know that the bridge you burn may be the one back home.

We are all just relics of who we hoped to be anyways.
Never quite living up to our own expectations but, still somehow finding our way….

Men, Cowards & Andy Griffith

So In the end what would you like to see left standing?
Your pride? Morals? Love? Legacy?

What if none of it even mattered?

What if we are all living the same quiet life of desperate suffering, bound to being consumed by we are afraid of…let it be love.

Shit I don’t know dude.

When Broken is easily fixed

Young JB

I took a deep breath, it was 3am, or at least somewhere close to it, I knew because Seinfeld was on.

It was 2007, I hated the world and was convinced the world hated me. I thought in some messed up way God created me missing something, not something you could see nor could i quite explain it but, something.

I knew I needed to get some sleep.

I knew I would be spacey without it and in a slump but, I couldn’t shake the Melodies in my mind. I just figured out how to put chords together and write my own words to it, at first it was silly love songs about silly things young people find important. This went on for a few months, writing about “recreational vehicles and elephants as big as whales...” then I wrote something a little too personal to myself on accident. i cried and cried, cussing wondering why i did this to myself.

Then it hit me. I all the sudden felt better.

I had finally got the same feeling all my heroes were somehow able to conjure up. Willie wrote about blue eyes crying in the rain. Van Zandt wrote about dead flowers and Kristofferson watched Sunday morning come down.

I never looked back. I learned how to heal myself by diving deep into my own mind, a self-awareness, wrapped cleansing. In the same way my grandma's kitchen singing would make me feel as she fried chicken.

20 years later I'm still feeding that monster, still finding ways to work through my troubles and around my fears. Growth isn't a static measurement; it's a lifetime rollercoaster ride.

Ask yourself, if you weren't you. Who the hell would you be?

Burning in water, Drowning in flame

"I have been hanging here headless, for so long

that the body has forgotten why...

or where or when it happened.

.....and the toes walk along in shoes that do not care."

As a songwriter mostly, i tend to stay trapped like a prisoner of my own thoughts and traumas...you get addicted to a sadness, it becomes the muse and ultmately the thing that swallows you whole.

they seem to play like a highlight reel,

and then my wife will walk out of the room and her smell alone wll free me.

I couldnt tell you exactly where or when i lost it but, without a few people i wouldve been taken hostage by this shit.

The child that still exists in me, never leaves me bored or without the pride and stupidity to think i can re-invent the wheel, my mind races with that familiar excitment for the future, only it isnt space travel and dinosaurs anymore...its the laughter of my family and moments of perfections i have been able to steal out of our time together.

Onward!

We are a feral bunch, in the way we react to vibrations from moments, emotions and the need for connection.

Eventually I think we get into some kind of stride and then one day we wake to realize we have been walking outside of ourselves so long we forget who we are. But the people we keep, in our pockets whether here still or not pull us back in from time to time.

They are so vital to the process of facing our own mortality.

And who we are at the end….

Are we an exact reflection or some mutation of the good and some of our own bad from something else in us?

Id like to think its the latter, Life consistently will make you a victim of yourself and the sooner you realize thats just part of the story that is being told the better.

What you search for, you will find.

you cant escape it.

so is it Faith?

Manifestation?

or are they the same damn thing?

Hell, I dont know brother i was hoping you did.

Dogtown Vs. Ben Nichols

It was 2006ish…Dogtown was alive, different than Nashville in a gritty way.

on any given day in any given room you could catch a legend whether it be at The Village, Stickyz or WWT, etc…. These places held something for artist of every caliber from Randy Rogers and across Canadian Ragweed to Taking Back Sunday and Norman Jean. It was exploding with music. The city had its own beat and if you weren’t careful, what lurked behind that beat would swallow you alive.

I was too young to be in this place but, somehow my soul old enough to fit right in. It was Smokey, Dangerous and inviting all at the same time. They called it “White Water” I was a kid, maybe 16/17 but, you couldn’t have told me that. I snuck in to test my freshly printed ID and see if I could buy a beer and catch a live band that a friend told me was closely tied to Arkansas…kind of local legends.

Lucero.

This Skinny fella with haggard tattoos all up and down his arm and a smoke hanging out his lip walked on stage. He uncomfortably strapped on a barely held together guitar that somehow still looked more held together than he did. I thought “great, it’s some acoustic show…I don’t want to hear a bunch of Springsteen covers tonight…” on and on like a staggering, teenage idiot does.

He fired up a song with these beat out chords and sang…….

“ Smoke and the wine and the whiskey don't mix

Shakin' so bad, think I'm gonna be sick

Buy 'nother scotch as I head for the door

Now it won't make me better

But I wanna make sure

Hold, me close, I love you more than you know”

It flew all over me like shrapnel from some heartbroken grenade. I sat there, song after song absolutely hanging on every single word, we all did. In a way that your grandpa is telling you a story about the war, you just listened.60-100 strangers not saying a damn word. A1, mouse fart situation.

As the night went on, for the first time in as long as I could remember I didn’t feel so damn alone. I didn’t feel so misunderstood. You can call it teenage angst and immaturity but, I had some sadness in me brother, I swear I was born with it for whatever reason. As the night went on he poured his heart out in that tavern and ours along with it. How every line seemed to barely escape his mouth without a tear chasing it. How he captured every single person in that place from the moment he spoke. How well he understood exactly how to deliver it in a way that made you feel as if you lived it too because you did.

He sang about heart break, self deprecating addiction and loss. All topics we had been served before but, only in a “tailgates and tan lines” doggy bag. I witnessed a reckoning that evening in a dog town, dive bar and it sent me on the path I’m still on today. Still chasing that wave, that song and that ability to maybe make someone else not feel alone in some smokey, dim light dive

What the hell are we doing here, Jimmy?

LET'S GET GROWING

In the midst of all the clutter and chaos that surround our lives, we scurry like little mice, looking for our next crumb. Whether it be financial freedom, enlightenment, health or just a sense of belonging, we are all a part of a race. This race in particular ends at the same finish line for us all and yet we squabble and bicker over which of us is racing the right opponent. You are racing yourself 10000% of the time.

We all have a monster we feed in an endless effort to satisfy a mysterious hunger and most of us die before its ever really satisfied. We Hold on to hope like a life rope, we forget to swim, and we get complacent in waiting for better days instead of creating them. We don't let the unknown inspire us anymore and instead we cower to the mundane and safe. All while by the time we realize just how much of thief time is, it has already robbed us blind.
Live today for today and with the utmost respect for the reality that tomorrow is fleeting already and surely isn't promised to those of us who don't seize the present.
My whole life i have felt some kind of push to search and question, I didn't find a damn thing until I stopped to look.

Stay the course, persevere and don't you dare go dark.