I started reading bell hook’s all about love yesterday and evidently I don’t know all the great writers in the world. For she is brilliant. I’ve only read a few chapters, but I’m captivated. That’s all I can say. I came away with one strong thought I gleaned from my limited reading: we focus a lot on being cynical and violent and not enough on love and openness and vulnerability. And we make “love” a little soft and not as hip as cynicism and violence and negativity.

These are my armchair thoughts written on an office chair with no arms.

I have to read more, but I’m so busy checking my TikTok posts, then scrolling through everyone else’s TikTok (and Instagram and Facebook) posts that I’ve only finished a few chapters in the book. Some people can read a whole book in one day. An entire tome gorged and sucked down like a python swallowing a rat. I’m more like a cat; I nibble here and there and then I get bored or my attention span gets shot to shit and I’m back on my phone, always the damn phone, scrolling and looking a pictures of Robert Plant playing soccer or Flea and his new bass or some glorious villa in Italy or some stupid cat video which I keep watching—the same stupid cat video, done up in a million different ways by a million different people—and they’re all engaging and melt my heart and fill my body and soul with LOVE and here we’re back on love again.

So I’m going to read more bell hooks today. I need more focus on love and spirit. The world has got me down; things are crazy; celebrities are going off the rails; there’s controversy with fashion brands; we’ve got a change in the government coming up; there’s still a war in Ukraine; and fast food gets more and more expensive and shitty and no one should eat that stuff on a regular basis.

And me, I sit in my armchairless office chair and observe and pontificate and drink coffee and everything’s relatively good. I have the luxury to wax poetic about the world’s ills from the relative comfort of my life. But I do ponder death too much lately. I never did before. I have to stop. The ride will end when it ends. I want to ponder and activate more love in my life. More positivity. More focus on all the great things happening in my life and in the world.

Is there still a good thing happening in the world? “Let’s rephrase that,” says my inner editor: Are there still things happening in the world that are positive and uplifting and hopeful? Is beauty still alive on the planet? Does my mind keep having to go back to extinction of armadillos, lack of clean water in major U.S. cities, global warming and global social injustices?

Aren’t there good, kind, loving people in the world doing good, kind loving things? Acts of heroism? Acts of kindness? Acts of selflessness?

Of course there are. And if we stay positive and hopeful and keep doing what we can to make this ride on this planet more enjoyable, equitable, tolerant and filled with LOVE, maybe we’ll make the ride just a little better for our fellow humans and other earthly creatures.

That’s another thing I got from the book: being more selfLESS. Less thoughts about myself and just being a force for good in the world.

Shit, I always go off the rails on these big pronouncements and concepts early in the a.m.

What else? I’m trying to reconcile the fact that there is a lot of SHIT music being pumped through the airwaves and internet and wherever else this devil shit music comes from. The production has gotten more compressed, neutered and devoid of spirit.

I don’t know if this is a conspiracy, the Illuminati, the aliens or just some money hungry producer hell-bent on making music sickly and thin and devoid of MOJO.

Are aliens making all the popular music now? Are they sitting in some giant control room up in the sky tweaking the knobs and music signals spitting forth from every computer and studio producing music for people’s consumption?

I can see them just laughing and clapping their little green alien hands as the female vocal voice gets more compressed and thin and sounding more like a skinny runway model than a big fat biscuit of vocal greatness.

What happened to drums? REAL drums? Drums that shake you to the core of your being? Drums that rattle your bones and make your body move like no electronic drum ever could do. Greasy beats topped with gravy so thick you thought you died and went to groove heaven.

Why do drumbeats in popular music have to sound more and more neutered and thin? They get into my ears and sound more like a torture device than an instrument designed to transport you to the other world and put you in a mojo-filled trance of ancient badassness.

Drum machines in the 1990’s had more mojo than the shit I hear today.

We’re obsessed with this new technology and it’s taken over music.

The drumbeats are thin. The voices are thin. The whole damn enchilada is sucked dry and cheeseless. The sauce is gone. Music used to be so damn JUICY. And REAL. And FILLED with creamy MOJO goodness. Now it just feels quantified and polished and computerized. And don’t forget AUTO-TUNED. Lest we not forget that people are not really hitting many of those notes on those songs by themselves, but are being aided by a program that more often than not leaves the voice sounding more and more INHUMAN (alien?).

It’s all being sucked through some giant evil computer mixing board and artificially-flavored and filled with artificial sweetener and bad rancid digital grease. It’s like a fast food meal that’s worse than the fast food meals from the 1970’s

It ain’t homecooked badass potatoes and whatever…

You listen to any music from the 1990’s and anything before the 90’s and then listen to music now.

Now I’m talking about what I hear. The problem is I hear a LOT of it. Music getting farther and farther away from the SOURCE. The SOURCE of life and love and happiness and big damn MOJO wheels spinning in the sky of greatness.

Filling the stores and spitting forth from people's phones and I have to believe this is the current state of most popular music. I’m sure there’s other music out there that rocks and has FORCE and FIRE and some MOJO. I just have to shut up and investigate. But I stand by my opinion and you should listen more critically now that I've spoken. For I know all, or think I do...

I want more down-to-earth fat badass music with an analog warmth and juicy as juicy can be.

I want to hear another Run DMC or James Brown or Queen or Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix. Or Marvin Gaye. Aretha Franklin. Or Public Enemy. Or Joni Mitchell. Or Neil Young. Or Janis Joplin, Etta James, The Beatles, Grateful Dead, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Willie Colon, Ohio Players, Prince, Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Nirvana.

I will stand by this. I will repeat this. I will harken back to the glory days when I was a kid and I ran free and the Ohio Players “Fire” was the biggest, baddest, juiciest, mojoest hit on the airwaves.

And you play me anything now that sounds like that.

I dare ya…

Signing out on this Sunday a.m.

I hope you all have a lovely day filled with tailgaters and holiday shoppers and lots of love and light in your eyes.

©2022 Bruce Palma. All rights reserved.

©2022 Bruce Palma. All rights reserved.