Rain, Cobain and Cocaine

Dude, you have no idea how sweet rain can be when it hasn’t rained for weeks. I was out in the world an hour ago when those first drops began to fall and the sense of relief was palpable among all the people out there. I saw a shop owner just standing out the front of his florist shop just staring up at the sky with his palms held out to catch the drops and a goofy smile on his face.I guess a florist has more to lose in a drought than most. It was like watching a piece of really good steak on a hot grille contract and then get all loose like jelly. People need this. The farmers must be hurting. My tobacco plants will be smiling like mother fuckers. It has been so bad that if one of us forgot to water them, even for just one day, there would be dust in the ground where there was life only 24 hours before. I can’t even imagine what it must be like on market gardens and farms without really good irrigation. People have been hurting and now there is a reprieve. I thought for a second that it was only going to spit and then stop, like a cosmic tease, but it has been getting heavier and heavier and now I can see, out my window, sheets of water marching across the south Waikato skies. Big sky out here, rolling pastures and in the morning the hills do that cool effect where each successive rise has a slightly different shade of blue/grey. I like it. I like it better wet. Something ODB might say…

I have a few new pieces of music to work with. The music is beginning to reflect the steady diet of Hip Hop, Trap Music and Gangster Rap (Wu Tang, NWA, P.E and Sage Francis) but it’s easy enough to write a beat and then twist the tempo down to my level once I have it banging. Even better to slow it down with pitch shifting and let it get all fat and sassy. There won’t be any to listen to for a while. I am hoping that this stuff will grow up to be ScrewJack 4, Matt is in a good space and now that the studio is working and set up… time to work. I’ve done a track with Odees vocals but I am not sure that it’s working yet. I’d give it to his family to approve before I did anything with it though, He was so funny, there are a handful of samples of the two of us just giggling.

Wow it’s really pissing down now! Yay! It is so nice just standing in it. Its that big fat driving rain but there’s an ambient temperature of about 20 degrees so its not unpleasant and you almost dry off as soon as you step out of it. I have been sleeping all through the night only waking once or twice. I wondered if it was my lot now, that I only ever have broken sleep. You have to remember that for the last year and a half I have had to share my bedroom with another human being. A living, breathing, farting, shitting, pissing human being right there… The last 3 nights have been bliss, you have no fucking idea. I am still working my way through the American Saga series. Inspiring. Urban African Americans, the ones in projects and in the real bad ass places live such shitty lives. The hoarders of power use the police like an invading army and subjugate the people, keeping them in their little niche and making sure they don’t infect the populace of, mostly, white amerikkka. That they seem to have cornered the market of culture and art only serves to show how strong and durable they are and I have mad love for them. Xxxtentacion is a good example of someone who, like many, managed to get a piece of the American dream and still fucken died as if he was back in the hood. Shot dead for a Louis Vuitton bag containing $50,000 cash. He is a fine artist and will have a legacy lasting far beyond his years but like Easy E, Jimi Hendrix, Kurdt Cobain and many many other artists it would still be way better if he were here making new art. As far as I can tell, life is pretty cheap and only seems to get cheaper. I read some stats that, yearly, more African Americans are killed on their own soil than there are casualties in all current global conflicts. Not by a small margin either.

Drugs are decimating them. Like how the Chinese were cowed with Opium back in the dark days that they do not like to discuss, African American communities are shackled with Crack Cocaine, Fentanyl, Heroin and a myriad of other nasty, cut rate shitty drugs. Where cannabis has been made available I imagine there have been gains made but mostly between the drugs, the war on them and the brutality amongst rival suppliers…. how the fuck does a community get to heal and thrive? It doesn’t and I suspect that that right there is the whole fucking idea. In countries where drugs have been decriminalised and turned into a health issue rather than a legal one there have been striking statistical shifts away from harm and marginalisation. Give people options and they will make good choices. Give them none and they will still do what the fuck they want. Not once has the illegality of drugs stopped me from using them or even thinking about not using them. I am not today but that is a choice, I have used drugs in the past, all of them, pretty much except for a handful of exotic ones it’s hard to get here. The bad ones have always led me to misery and shame. So… I don’t. If it were legal I think I’d like to smoke a little opium once in a while, drop an E or a trip once a year or so and go dancing and I do like to smoke pot but I am a true lightweight and can easily not smoke it for years without really noticing. Mushrooms I’d like to use as a micro dose to treat anxiety and depression, I know folks who do and who have been able to replace multiple pharmaceutical drugs with nasty side effects successfully. Those bad ones though, meth, hard opiates and benzo diazepines,…. Nah, I can’t fuck with them.

Please remember that this is all speculative. This is not what I do or even what I plan to do. This is what I would do if it were legal and acceptable. Which is a long long way off, probably not in my lifetime but I do hope humanity has a change of heart or at least a change of overlords.

Oh shit, it has stopped raining. That was nowhere near enough for the crops. It will be bone dry out there in half an hour. Fuck. Oh well, it was better than not raining I guess. I hope you are ok. That little rant about religion yesterday, please do not read too much into it. I feel I am basically a Buddhist, if I have to have a label, but it is such a private business and I have no judgements on anyone who has a faith. I watch a bit of Sufi and Kirtan music and those folks are deeply spiritual… they just know how to party as well and I was quite interested in the OSHO movement for a minute. I have an open mind, I guess is what I am saying.  I just resent that sometimes other folks beliefs get applied to me sometimes and it’s just wrong, I do not involve other folks in my beliefs so they could maybe return the favour? Thats all I was trying to say.

Man, sparrows are nasty little bastards aren’t they?

Have a great day.

xxxm