But I think, Doctor H., that this Sturgill Simpson songwriter musician guy has reminded me of something, like the psychology of an artist, the mode of you enter into to be able to make art.  He may have achieved some of his perspective through interesting means of a psychedelic nature, but he's obviously a natural at it, so good for him.  He's a solid guy.  '...all changed the way I see...  the myth that we all call space and time...'

What Jesus is talking about, to take up your cross, and lose thyself, in order to gain life, maybe that's essentially the same thing...  You get there however you can.  That's the context I'd like to see things in.

Not the 'let us all be professionals with higher degrees, wisest of the wise, cleverest of the clever' mode of this town, which I do not seem to have much ambition.  (Maybe I'm just tired after my shifts, too tired to read, dumbed down by popular habits, whatever... )  But the 'taking up the cross' as I have to, or am rather left to, define for myself...  as something having to do with art and higher thought, a better reading of people, that's what I think I'm better at.  That sort of mode, which really takes effort to sustain...  Taking up the cross, why not, if it works for you, seeing it that way.  Not for some earthly treasure of, wow, like a number one seller, but a real book, a real account, something worth reading because of its deeper bearing on the struggles a human being goes through...

That's where you can lose the courage, to get lost, to get distracted, and not properly read people's souls, the things that bug them, lead them astray, the artificial things like wealth, or prominent righteousness 'free of sins.'  Work, you get distracted.  You get pulled in too many directions.  You can't really focus on how much a guy's drinking, 'cause you're running around putting out fires, trying to serve dinner...

That's all you can do, is be pure to yourself, to not cheat yourself into believing some mainstream conventional view...   That's the best thing for your health.  You're not writing The Bartender's Guide to Dating, but something a lot deeper, and not built around a business model package sort of a thing, 'hey, I got this great idea, and it will have bullet points...'

I mean, you really have to see people in the kind of context you find in a great work of literature like The Brothers Karamazov, or The Idiot.  I do find Dostoevsky one of those points of contact between the spiritual world and the world of literature.  It's almost like he's conducting a science experiment...  The sinful old man, Dmitri the willful one, Ivan the intellectual sceptic.  Seen through the prism of the intuitive Alyosha the monk practicing under the elder mystic Zossima.  Mysticism must be a good kind of drug, and it's passed on to Alyosha as the old monk is lying in state, the dream of the wedding at Cana...

Which I once babbled on about in a misguided toast, embarrassingly enough at my brother's wedding, as it kind of was not in perfect tune with official Washington and fine weddings.  Yeah, that old Fyodor was a remarkable guy, with something that is within the realm of a good sense of humor but which is also a deep deep perspective, coming from his own lion's den.  It could all slip over into a cartoon sort of thing, like the sinner gambler drinker, the femme fatale, the skeptic, the precocious schoolboy, but he doesn't let that happen.  You keep reading...

How do you support those things, the good things you find resonating within?  You've got to be true to yourself.  That's the preaching.  That's what you have to tell the heathens.   The way to life.  Not just comfort.  The way to an artistic life pondering more than just the stuff that seeps into our day through all the cracks.  Not the stuff our minds worry over being selfish, but the deeper stuff you can't explain...  And for me the only way to grasp for such stuff is to sit down and write.  At least that facilitates it.  It's a process, one I can lose faith in from time to time if I'm not doing it.

You take up your cross and look at life nakedly, take its blows, reflect, write...  And then, I hope, all the real things open up, and you're good.

Of course, you have to make a living.  Who knows which one is a better one, musician or bartender... Musician, or lost writing flailing about, hoping to be, like, Dostoevsky in his maturity...

Not writing my thoughts down, I lose myself, I get lost, I...  I don't support myself and I fall in with the pack doing their thing which is different from my thing.

And you know as well I as I do, if you don't find support, you get depressed and then you start down that road replaying the past and wondering why all this not great stuff has happened to you when really all of it is only in your mind, exclusively, where else would it be.  Fuck it, people don't like you, don't get you, don't try to understand you, well, you move on down the line.

And I find this Sturgill Simpson guy tremendously supportive.  Turtles All The Way Down.

{I felt like singing it there in the office there in the great Tower of Babel office building, but refrained.  Nice lady, she gets it, doesn't turn on the overhead fluorescent light tubes...}

Yeah, I've been laughed at for my pursuits, my pretending to be Dostoevsky, or you know, the kind of necessary life of sin you need to sample if you're going to come out an artist.  I got real lost and confused at a certain point in my life, and it's taken me, still taking me, a long time to get it remotely together, I guess....

And this town can be so selfish, you know, I remember this guy who owns a few bars and restaurants came in back when I worked at Austin Grill, treated me like I wasn't even there, head barman, been there fifteen years and the guy sees right through me.  Then he drove off in his fancy Land Rover.  I wouldn't want to hang out in his restaurants anyway...

Here the fuck I am, in broad day light, I've heard it all, seen it all, waited on everyone from the low on up to the mighty, all with a lot of real generosity toward everyone, and I'm not a total slouch when it comes to being able to talk about things, books, movies, art, and to this fat cat important guy, big success, I'm a lackey.  Okay, buddy.  You go do your thing and I'll go do mine.

That's this town for you.

I guess it's like trying to chase something you're never going to catch.  Counterproductive...  We all think we'd like, for purposes of self-protection and social belonging and status, to be high and mighty, but once you put on those lenses, well, there's a tendency, at least, to see things wrongly and be disrespectful of humanity...   In the way a humble artist cannot be...  It's weird, but it's like a law almost, and only the most circumspect of men and women can get around that...  Like Lincoln, who had a background, who even was a tavern keeper for a short stint, long enough in some lost town... Once you measure something you've changed its value...  I look at them like, 'you've never jerked off?  well, maybe it'd be good for you...  You've never been lost, felt discouraged, poor, lazy?  Well, maybe that's missing out on the larger amount of human experience...'



I guess in the end you are your own lost sheep, the one of one hundred, your own shepherd, your own prodigal son, your own source of paternal love and wisdom.  Stories dramatize, the old ones, what goes on in the psyche, and Abraham's story of having to pledge a sacrifice of his son has the same ring to it as Jesus' words to take up the cross, prepared for sacrifice.  You find yourself, you save the best loved part of you, I guess through making art, through being kind to people along the way, to follow your sense of the illusions of space and time.