lehmberg2002@gmail.com
www.AlienView.net
...Though the "heavens" fall...
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| Scratchin' TAP FOR THE TUNE! |
Does the reader know what an "Outsider Artist" is? This is not pretentiousness... I'm too old for pretension.
An Outsider Artist works "outside" formal institutions, has no traditional training, creates from a deeply personal... idiosyncratic vision, often ignores or is unaware of mainstream artistic trends, and produces content that feels... different... raw, original, or unfiltered. After a fashion (in a few of these "fashions," actually), I am that outsider.
The guitar, for example. I can’t play it in any conventional sense. I tried—Gawd knows I tried—though perhaps this mythic instrument and I may have negotiated an uneasy détente, of needs. The guitar agreed to tolerate me, perhaps? I certainly agreed to stop pretending I could play it like everyone else. That much will become obvious to the listener, in any case.
In truth, the guitar often ends up playing me in some manner, or we arrive at an uneasy cooperation worked out over hoary time? The listener can judge the success of that "arrangement," themselves. Decidedly, it was not an easy cooperation.
I tried hard to play the way everybody else was doing it… but right‑hand picking escaped me, and the left hand wouldn’t chord the way it was supposed to. I suspected my left‑handedness.
So, play "left‑handed" like Hendrix, reader? Well, that seemed to this person like something happening in an alternate universe where people could learn chords "backwards" when they couldn’t chord them "forwards" in the first place! Most would chalk that up to a simple lack of talent… I did. Still, I wanted to play. I aspired to play.
...That may be right up there with needing to play...
I noodled for decades, tried for leading expressions of individual notes… putting my fingers down where they could go comfortably and moving that comfortable placement up and down the fret board… but trying for original sounds that were pleasing… to me. I don't know what the chords are, I only try to remember where the fingers went when I'd chance on an expression or progression pleasing to me. That chance musical discovery is a "peak" experience, in accordance with Maslow, making the endorphins run like a bubbling torrent! Ecstasy!
Remains... a strum is what I have going... a loping strum with a palsied if percussive thumb strike... Conventional picking has ever eluded me... my hand turns into a clumsy Golem’s claw, still. Nails snag strings... or? I'll miss them altogether!
...Onward to snatch some victory from defeat's depressing jaws? That's up to the listener.
Remains. I wanted to make the music that was inside me… with a guitar. I needed that music to be as original as I could make it, even as my wholly instrumental tunes would be inspired, if not derivative, by the likes of Carol King, Tim Buckley, Joni Mitchell, and Tom Petty et al… I wanted my music to go where THEY go. ...Music that flowed compellingly and then landed conclusively, right? A musical story told to be understood and believed?!
Aspirations are nothing if they are not
lofty. So say the bards...
I don’t do any
covers of other songs because I am incapable of remotely performing them as they have
been performed. Any attempt would be, and has been, just risible. That said, it all started to
come together for me musically after I’d seen “Close Encounters of the 3rd
Kind”! I began by trying to find that ethereal five-note sequence, defining the film, on
my fret board.
Noodling around
on the neck provided ultimately that it was a D chord, notes struck 212…4, 3…
You can almost hear that musical phrase just reading it. That progression of the D chord, somehow discovered in a manner not recalled (Joni Mitchell?), was facilitated by slack-tuning the sixth string to a D... and there it was, all right there in the harmonics of the D-tuned 6th string, itself! "212…4,3" and
the best harmonics of "6…5," in answer! I was off! "D" was where my music was!
Then the "peak" experience magic happened for me! Many years ago, I heard about not tuning to 440
Hz… as I had been doing previously, but using 432 Hz, instead! The tone was now palpable! Now, I could feel the lowered frequency of those chords in my GUT, and it was like
something startlingly new was opening up in my mind!
I don’t perform, per se, but I record—little fragments minutes long, rough and earnest, the way they arrive. You hear the ones with the least amount of errors in them...
These bits and pieces, if finished songs aspiring to that “flow” and “landing” aforementioned, are on Facebook and YouTube. They are amateur and unpolished but have a sincerity of originality pleasing to this content creator, a content creator not being able to play a guitar… …but wanting to, needing to... so… finding his way.
…Some people like it. Some of it IS risible… but if I may? Much of it is not. Have a listen... ...and then restore John Ford! Read on.
| The reader can take this as they will... |
There may come to a person... THAT point, are we right?! The reader may come to know this point perhaps because they have, experientially, had “that” point already thrust upon them… We’ll take that as a given going forward!
There are many such "points," true: geopolitical, technological, historical, and philosophical. Today we will discuss that point which is, "twitchy." Well, twitchier than the others...They're all twitchy.
Most embrace the obviation of that aforementioned “point,” right? It can be a less than pleasant experience, seen, as it is, generally, and justifiably, as an unspeakable concrescence looming before them (!) …like that thing which WAS to be avoided, at all costs… but looming nonetheless… and inescapable!
Relax… We’re
not talking about mere death or even ego death… oh, likely ego death…
also unspeakable, even if necessary in the round, but that’s a good
thing! No …We won’t digress in the fourth paragraph… Digressions will provide for illustration. They’re for later.
Why… for to make more Englishable that which was before… beyond mere “English”! The reader can dig it! …Push reluctant light where that light is loath to go. Kick over the concealing rocks of that which has been disrespecting one’s self-honesty. Englishable? …Imagine explaining a cell phone to a caveman by way of example, forgetting the explainer doesn't understand that cell phone, either. The “English” (language!) evolves… becomes a brighter light! ...Or CAN. That is what provided for the actuality of the cell phone, at all, in the first place. See that?
Remains, what is one going to do and stay honest to
self, if that’s important to them… remain honest to one’s humble and conscience-leavened (woke!) consciousness…
as ephemerally frail and as timorous as it may be at the start? …We begin.
Individual Death? Ego death? No, not even black hole death, massive asteroid death, horrific disease death, or total cessation of life “silent spring” death... all possible, still. Rather, we’re talking about that individual reader’s first cogent observation of the world’s inconsequent and wrongly assumed veneer of contrived “normalcy,” as it seems to erode… beginning to crack before our tired eyes like ancient paint on a sunbaked and forgotten Arizona grain silo! The subsequent world’s “safe and sound” abruptly becoming decidedly unsettled!
...The death of belief, reader! That's what we're on about here, and that is a
shiverer of the shorter curlies, eh? One remains conscious through that
death, see? Only, what’s on the other side of belief’s cessation?
Oh, and by the way… That one’s “normalcy” can be
unsettled means, perhaps, that it likely should be unsettled. One can only build where it's solid. This is foreshadowing
the point…
Maybe? You run your finger along these ethereal
fissures and eldritch cracks alluded to above and feel the dust of something older, stranger,
and more honest than the polished lies we’ve been fed by our too self-interested
and too well-vested governmental and religious institutions… betraying
institutions, actually (?), only trembling in their own unnecessary and unethical
shadows of self-deceit, incompetent hypocrisy… and utter complacency. These are not clearing the bars that they set for themselves. Bars set have purpose.
Precisely here is where the person honest with self, self-resolves!
It is where they must necessarily stand: not in the mythical “safe” center
(pause for squirty giggles!), but at reality’s bleeding edge where the cold cosmic
wind tastes hotly metallic, and the sky begins to be perceived as too large
for the same old stories that we’ve been told in blind rote for suffocating
centuries by men in gold-threaded dressing gowns! …These persons honest with
self are a hard sell, true enough. Their discomfort provides for
the general uncomfortable… but it remains that these persons, honest with self… are
required! Discomfiture is required of needs and for cause!
Shifting gears? See, UFOs, physical anomalies, crop-circles, and all the other uninvited guests of our collective psyche and zeitgeist… the aliens, CE3Ks, crypto-curiosities, ghosts, goblins, and even anxious water nixies—these can't be mere curiosities for the credulous idle!
Rather, these may be, perhaps, meaningful interruptions, weeping ruptures
in the polite little fictions parlayed by those same self-involved leaderships
of dismissing and dismissive yore alluded to above! You know the stories… those iterated from “conventional
wisdoms” parlayed to us from “on high” about our universe being, in the round, small,
manageable, largely understandable, and thoroughly
catalogued by the white-coated bureaucrats with cleanly branded clipboards. …But,
look!
Those same paranormalities become the glad reminders
that "reality" is not a closed system remotely
understandable by arrogant collections of talking monkeys fervently believing they write
large (more squirty giggles) and define their consequence! One can be reminded that our “finest works”
are likely regarded as “filthy rags” to "others" elsewhere in our universe… These “reminders” become
the cosmic equivalent of a knock at the door at 2 a.m.—and that knock is coming
from inside your mind! This may explain the popularity of paranormal late-night
radio…
…But what do we do with these knocks? That’s the dicey issue and the harder sell. Most people, bless their trembling and parochial (pea pickin’!) but god-fearin’ little hearts, pretend they don’t hear them!
They pull their scented blankets over their heads and mutter something about “weather balloons,” “psychological misinterpretations,” or “misleading the mislead to their mental illnesses”… as if the human mind is so fragile that it can’t distinguish between a weather balloon and an unstructured point of bright light performing right-angle turns at flesh-shredding if soundless Mach speeds… This writer has SEEN that!
These might be the same folks who laugh too loudly at
jokes they don’t understand, who cling to comfortable, even if unreliable, "consensus" like a life raft, and who will mistake easy conformity for the
contrived, so disingenuous, "comfort" of a "common wisdom." The scared are looking for any port in the storm… any
port convincing of a leveled out "status quo" of facile consolations... We suspect this might explain the
potentialities and short-term successes of fascist authoritarianisms… we
digress.
We know them. We’ve met them. We’ve endured their
damp-sleeved self-consoling and self-interested snickerings. On reflection of these "convinced"... Who has time for their
…The person honest with self does not bow to these“noisome negativists,” these self-appointed guardians of the soothing mundane.
No—the person honest with self walks passed them, over them, and through
them if necessary, because curiosity is not a sin and wonder
is not a crime! …Not yet anyway!
The universe is just too vast, too wild, and too uncooperative
to be contained by the timid, captured in its arrogant test tube, or cowed by the too-willing imbecilic "doin' God's work"… to be forever put
off by their ready, practiced, and complacent cowardices.
…And so, persons honest with self? They ask questions. Dangerous questions. Questions that peel back the wallpaper of consensus reality to reveal the pipes and wires and dim crawlspaces beneath. Questions that make polite society shift uncomfortably in seats thought comfortable as the seat, itself, becomes decidedly uncomfortable. ...But we must buckle into that seat, regardless! It’s what we do when we want to ascend and elevate as a far-reaching species. …More Star Trek. Less Star Wars.
We’ll die if we stop growing, if we don’t aspire to our
ascension. Our complacency regarding these matters is our death…
Consider! What if the phenomena we dismiss are not contrived aberrations like the gods we invent, but invitations? What if the unknown is not a threat, but a
cosmic funhouse mirror? What if the universe has been "speaking" to us all along,
but we’ve been too busy arguing about parking spaces and those manufactured gods to listen
attentively?
Sure! These questions offend some. They shock others. They
shame a few. But beyond the offense may lie more clarity! Beyond the shock
perhaps lies real exhilaration! Beyond the shame could lie newfound
fellowship—that quiet nod between those who have dared to look up instead
of down. Look in AND out... Look upon and not merely passed…
These are persons honest with themselves… and having humility, too. Remember what was said about talking monkeys! That's who we are. We earn our humility!
The person honest with self knows that institutions—governments,
churches, and scientific bodies—behave, often enough, like aging
monarchies: defensive, brittle, but terrified of losing the control
of their purloined high grounds, high grounds thought secure. They hide behind their jargons,
behind their “peer reviews,” behind their classified “stamps” and their redacted
“pages.” They propound to us that the world perceived is stable, predictable,
and fully understood… enough! It’s not… not remotely.
They make pronouncements of "fact" sans all investigation! They proclaim
in the round to us that anomalies are “errors,” that witnesses are “confused,”
and that history is “tidy.” …Only, they begin to understand how fragile
it all is AND hanging by a thread, reader! …Why we, indeed, need to celebrate
every second!
The person honest with self feels that our conventional wisdom, ironically untried yet thought true, just cannot BE entirely true. See? Their “enough” is
not, and has never been, enough! The only thing immutable
about all this is its lack of real immutability! We could have made better
choices! We still can…
Observe that the person honest with self has read the
footnotes. The person honest with self has listened to the whistleblowers, the
pilots, the radar operators, the archaeologists who found something they
weren’t supposed to find, and then wanted to talk openly about it and were
besmeared. The person honest with self has seen the patterns, the correlations,
and the synchronicities that the mainstream refuses to acknowledge. Persons like Rupert Sheldrake, Graham Hancock, and Jeremy Vaeni spring to mind!
…And so the person honest with self asks again: If “the
truth will set you free,” why hide it? The person honest with self suspects that that may be precisely why! General Freedom has always been
uncomfortable (unprofitable!) to the cat-birders!
If the phenomena are “nonsense,” why study them, then? The
person honest with self observes that these “phenomena” remain in spite
of their classification as “nonsense”! If the witnesses are deluded, why ridicule
them and not pity them? Why, indeed.
The canned answers from officiality, when they come, are invariably
unsatisfying. They are evasions wrapped in euphemisms and larded in deflections.
They are “explanations” explaining nothing. They are the bureaucratic
equivalent of a dismissive shrug and a blank stare.
…But the person honest with self is not deterred. The person
honest with self persists because the pursuit itself is a kind of liberation!
To question is to breathe. To doubt is to sharpen the mind. To explore is to
reclaim the birthright of a species that once looked at the stars and felt awe
instead of fear… or worse, indifference. To protest ignorance (any ignorance!) is rightful.
And yes—there is risk. There is always "risk." Perspicacious inquiry into the "twitchy" is
not a safe hobby. It can cost you friends, jobs, and reputations. It can make
you the subject of whispers. It can place you outside the warm glow of "consensus" and into the cold air of forced independence. It can cancel you.
…But the person honest with self accepts this. They have
seen what others cheer and are revalidated by their every baseless dismissal! The person honest
with self embraces it, even. …Because the alternative—the slow suffocation by
unexamined belief—is much, much worse... to them at any rate.
…So here we stand, at the threshold of the unsaid, the
unacknowledged, and the uninvited. The sky is wide. The questions are many. The
answers, when they come, will not be gentle. Level-ups must be earned or be
worthless.
…But they will be true. They will be instructive. They will be,
it is the intuition of this writer, our ascension.
It will be true, though, however sharp, and is that not always
preferable to the padded cell of even comfortable lies… and, if it’s told or
communicated to be understood, can it not be believed? Revealed! There can be
no real bliss in our ignorance. Don't be ignorant of that.
Restore John Ford. Read on.
. . . I 'm logging in a sky-watch for the " stuff " one finds up there; I won't pretend what I have found— report what is...