Ain't No Thang

Ain't no nothing but a giant rattlesnake.

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...and my favorite

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Living Alongside Wildlife

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I'm starting to think a certain degree of alienation is created by our music playing devices. Not even from the plugged in tuned out sense. Last year, my main partner in crime and I trooped down through the deep south and onward to New Orleans for New Years and it was a blast. Of course, the full extent of the fun was seen afterwards in reflection (and something of the like is bound to be partaken in again to a grander extent) Lots was learned in the whole ordeal but a particular detail stuck with me afterwards. We started out the venture in hype fashion, lumping Rick Ross and chiefing something major. But as fate had it, a night of madness out on the farm resulted in losing the back window of the car. We opted to trade in the maimed Tahoe for a Buick, something all put together but blessed with a cassette player, a Van Morrison tape and nothing more. We played the life out of that tape. Being stuck with only one option left us with the choice to either like or not and we opted for the former. What is lost in our harnessing of the potential to listen to whatever and ever?  Our impulses can be immediately catered to, which could perhaps create a natural tendency towards uncomfortableness when we initially hear something brand new. Of course we mere mortals love everything thats more familiar to our hearts, ears and mind but conversely, we're always looking for something new. That leads a prevailing hyperconnected attitude that chases but never finds. The music industry only concerns itself with the next big thing, the youtube phenom, that next single instead of realizing and admitting that its Quality that truly sells, not hype, youtube hits or quantity. Who is going to be listening to Justin Beiber in fifty years? Hype these days is equivalent to a wreck on the freeway where folks slow down to watch and then forget all about it. 

Quality isn't hard to come by. You've just got to dig. Slow down and go deeper. The greatest rewards in the world can't be reaped immediately. People focus on the wrecks along the way, while folks like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails tour every major city in the nation and sell out four or five nights in a row. You'll never hear a Nine Inch Song on the radio or see it in iTunes Top 40, but hovering the art is a dedicated fan base that loves them so hard they'll eagerly scoop up every chance to indulge themselves with it while savoring every moment. I didn't mean to get on a yarn about the industry here but there you have it. My issue is with the social reaction toward new noise and the notion that the grass is not always greener on the other side. The next song in the shuffle doesn't hold the key to happiness, especially if you forgo the one playing at the moment. That's why I love minimal techno. The build up is slow and subtle, a tamborine here and hold it now wait...now the horns until shabam, the peak is reached and the great release showers on the disciples below who loves being along for the ride. Fuck barhopping, give me that on a friday night. 

I want to start a mix series on here, something that serves as a common denominator to umbrella a whole slew of sounds from all over. I wonder how much attention it would get but that's no matter, it would at least give me a chance to exercise some adjectives. This song serves as inspiration, since it first stirred the thought in my head over a year ago. DJ Mujava is from South Africa and rumor has it that he recorded this track from a mental asylum. Makes sense given the sinister vibe that oozes behind the blast of dancehall drums and the woobling bassline, which is such a great bassline. This song's great for you folks warbling around today in a postsugar stupor. 

DJ Mujava-Township Funk 

The Beat

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Good morning yall. Even though its all crisp outside with the sun and breeze, I can't help but feel fall is a little depressing. Thank God Almighty for sports. Without further to do, we folks here at Feel Good Lost try our best to keep a clear heart and an open mind about things. There's more joy in the propensity to say yes before no when approached with new stimuli of any colour. But a fine balance must be upheld. New noise is best when first given a chance, while still keeping in the back of your mind that not everything out there is worth time and attention. I'm the world's worst at this too. The needle hits the record and I'm firing all barrels, relating this sound to that one, comparing this thing to others, giving value, judging, etc. Our natural inclination to make sense of the world is through comparing and contrasting, so we really can't be faulted. True wisdom keeps this fact in mind and still remains enough aware to know when to turn it off and just fucking dance. Go out to a show in Nashville on any given night of the week and you'll find a half decent band playing their nervous hearts out in front of a scattered bunch of too polite soberlings who relinquish not even a foot tap in all their analyzing and criticizing. Where's the love?

The bottom line is that it is a very fine line to walk. If you think too much about what you're hearing, synapses will connect dots at a crazy pace but meaning won't ever be assigned and awareness of the present moment will be so far gone because rampant thoughts unnecessarily abound, which is selfish. If you're solely about feeling it all, everything will be the same and you won't stand for anything because there's no differentiation between good or bad. Too tolerant means you don't stand for anything. But there's always a reason to celebrate because all this is simply steps along the way in the learning process. Folks who claim to know the Way are in truth so far from it. Trial and error is different for everyone.

So yeah, not every band wagon is worth jumping on. The one's that are should be shouted about from mountaintops. We stick pretty close to home here regarding folks we love without care or shame. It's good to love lots for long time, but very small is the number of folks that can do no wrong in their influencing. I can proudly announce that Ghostland Observatory just notched their way onto that totem pole. Queen meets Death From Above 1979. I've always regarded them halfheartedly in the past, paid attention to their albums releases but passed them up a few times mostly out of ambivalence. In a stroke of luck, they played a mild mannered festival just outside Bowling Green at the beginning of the month and honest to pops, it blew my fucking mind. Yeah the brownies were awesome and yeah the lazers beamed through me like tropical light knives but it was the experience that had me reeling. The shy Thomas Turner kept to himself leftside, twisting knobs while draped out in a Lone Star-ed dracula cape like a cosmic phantom of the opera as main man Aaron Behrans held court as a shamanic disciple of the Beat. I couldn't help but picture Native American everything in seeing the whole spectacle play out. Everyone was dancing to the heavens. Behrans paused once between songs to speak to the crowd, where he sounded exactly like a black pastor, all charisma. "Brothers and sisters, let me seeya SEEYA hands out there!" Holy smokes, I was blown away, emotionally sensually exhausted even into the next day. Their albums might not be easy to listen to all the way through, but there is no better live show in the world right now than Ghostland, plain and simple. More rock & roll than any DJ can ever be and more rave inducing than any live band. I remember they played Midnight Voyage for maybe fifteen minutes and the guitar part plus the heavy bass and shimmery chords all smangled together sounded absolutely huge that night out on the farm. Supa jealous Dallas gets them for Halloween. New album just came out too and its a doozy. Codename Rondo. The first track might be the best. Okay for now.

Ghostland Observatory-Midnight Voyage

Oh My Stars

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I'm working so I won't have to try so hard.

- The Strokes

Get outta here

Great Heights

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Holy smokes yall, this is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. 

Who woulda thought homemade space travel in the outback could be as psychedelic as Tame Impala. 

Awesome.

Good Morning

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Kings of Leon's newest leaked last night. My mind is fucking blown. 

You'll hear about it when all the pieces get wrangled up and minced back together.

Fooled

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We love the tangible, the confirmation, the palpable, the real, the visible, the concrete, the known, the seen, the vivid, the visual, the social, the embedded, the emotional laden, the salient, the stereotypical, the moving, the theatrical, the romanced, the cosmetic, the official, the scholarly-sounding verbiage (bullshit), the pompous Gaussian economist, the mathematicized crap, the pomp, the Academie Française, Harvard Business School, the Nobel Prize, dark business suits with white shirts and Ferragamo ties, the moving discourse, and the lurid. Most of all we favor the narrated.

Alas, we are not manufactured, in our current edition of the human race, to understand abstract matters — we need context. Randomness and uncertainty are abstractions. We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened. In other words, we are naturally shallow and superficial — and we do not know it. This is not a psychological problem; it comes from the main property of information. The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on the unseen is costly in both computational and mental effort.

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan 

Barbra

Duck Sauce "Barbra Streisand" from Mr Goldbar on Vimeo.

Uncompromising and Relentless Recklessness

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Carl Jung once summarized everything he'd learned as a psychologist by saying this: Humanity tends to project its inner world onto the outer world. If you're always seeing people, lets say, as hard and demanding, chances are that you are hard and demanding on yourself and the world is hard and demanding on you. We see out there through what's already in our own minds. Given how messed up we all are in our relationships and going on's, it takes a whole lot for us to forgive ourselves instead of hating it in others. As my man behind the Future Looks says, it comes down to possessing a mentality that's all about living from the inside out rather than the outside in.

Stop judging, that you may not be judged.  For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.  Why do you notice the splinter in your brothers eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, Let me remove that splinter from you eye?  You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brothers eye.  (Matthew 7:1-5)

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I'm digging this band Warpaint. Bunch of sun lovin' gals from California that make music for mystery and romance. Midnight swooning under a monster droopy leaf in the courtyard garden. An hour long track of rain playing softly behind every song on their new album coming out in October would sound perfect. Here's Billie Holiday. 

Warpaint-Billie Holiday

Onward and Upward

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The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms.

-Lao Tzu

It's Full of Stars

Coral Fang

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I used to love the Distillers a whole lotta, but their album Coral Fang still gets played ever so often and I just love on it so hard. Today was one of those days and Hall of Mirrors got stuck on repeat at least more than four times. So fucking incredible. Listening to Brody Dalle here gives me goosebumps. It makes complete sense that she's married to the guy in Queens of the Stone Age. 

The Distillers-Hall of Mirrors

Love

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People always ask me, "What's so fucking great about dancing?"
How the fuck should I know? 

Yeah, even I can barely understand it, understand it

when the music takes control

-!!!

!!!-Me and Guiliani Down By The Schoolyard (A True Story)

No Lies Just Love

The Edge…there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. 

~Hunter S. Thompson

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Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. 

~Thomas H. Huxley

To war against the ever present stimuli that seek to push my conscious mind away from the task at hand is to flat out lose. The library is dead quiet, save for the flip of a page a few rows over and the hum of 1960's era lights that aren't going anywhere. A few asian gals a couple rows over titter over something, which is fine by me because they've earned it. Asian folks are not to be outstudied. It's incredible. I'm over here rattling my chair to kingdom, trying not to whistle and struggling to read maybe two words every sentence and three sentences per page, and they are hunkered down over yonder, copying every single word off every page of the textbook sprawled out on the table. I feel like I'm witnessing the passing of the torch here. Is the Western way of thought to be completely usurped in my lifetime? The future might not hold that drastic of a change in the span of my short life but politically who knows? What is true about the happenings by the atlases is that those folks are cutting down their risk of failing, page after page. I commend them. My unacademia smells from here to reference eight floors up and it implores the asian kids  to grip their pencils tighter and lazer in on the task at hand, because the future is a dangerous place and the library closes in only four hours.

The risk functional estimator in statistical decision theory

Of course, I'm basing all this off of the result of taking a few simple observations too far, but seriously. There is virtue to be found in taking things too far. What better way to take a definite stance against fear of the unknown, against the sops that microanalyze their hedge funds and the college students who plan on middling for the next few years out of fear of doing something stupendous. Uncertainty is everywhere in our ever changing world and the hardest place for the mind to be is simply present, conscious only of the happenings around and flying a flag of neutrality. Neutrality doesn't mean apathy but rather conscious, seeing both the good and the bad. Of course there is a time for things to be black and white, but for the most part, either/or way of thinking wrecks havoc on the world. Look at the conflict in the Middle East or tribalism in Central Africa. It's all Us vs. Them thinking. The hardest thing to fully grasp is the fact that its just Us. But I digress. 

Where does risk come into the picture in this big old word lash? Essentially, to risk is to face truth.  Never to the point of hindering future opportunities of course, but how else can one know the extent of what they're truly capable of? Imagination, when free from external limitations, can be the source of both incredible pleasure and extreme suffering. If perception is indeed reality, then that has to be true for both. To risk is know a general idea what the outcome may be, the good and bad. But what often doesn't get taken into consideration is the gamble, the levying of chances and probabilities that tickle the populous's inhibitions into blooming towards outright fear. Fear paralyzes action which in turn prevents progress. I've heard it said that if you wait to do everything until you're sure its right, then you'll probably not do much of anything. That's absolutely right. Every action is naturally going to have an element of fear twinged into it. The best question to ask is Where does this fear come from? What is it trying to teach me? I watched Oliver Stone's biopic on Alexander the other night, which was honestly too gay for me to think much about but one quote stuck out to me. The fear of death drives all men. I got to thinking about maybe not death itself, but the death of something. For me, its the death of opportunity. In whatever the occasion, the line has to be toed, even kissed because thats where truth is to be found. And the only way to see the line in the first place is to cross over it and pay the consequences. 

I sincerely doubt that Taoism and the Middle Way are driving the tittering asian students nearby to study their brains off. I'm jealous of their terribly intent focus but then again, there is an opportunity cost to everything. They don't leave lots to chance. I believe that lashing all this out is more important than studying my notes on the Laws of Supply, which is what I came here to do. But folks done got me distracted and one thing led to another and shabam, nary a dip into the Economics realm but a whole mess of words to show for the last twenty minutes. But I'll be fine once I get to it (I'll be goooooood) and I'm going to rage on this test coming up Friday. The only mechanism that can put one at peace in the face of fear and uncertainty is faith. Not faith rooted in our own ability, because we're all fucked up, but rather faith in the Divine Order that reveals purpose to every happening Life throws at us. Faith lets us trust the heights and depths which things are taken because what's there to fear anyways? As my wise mentor Chris West once told me, high up on an abandoned building overlooking a dark grey storm surge  roll over the deep green jungle outside Uganda's capital city of Kampala, "Everything in moderation, including Moderation."

Triangulate

Where I want to be

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{The Truth about Grit | Boston Globe | Continue}

{Pitchfork and the Art of Tastemaking | Popmatters | Continue}

{How to Get Ahead in Advertising | Continue}

{Its Not God Who Needs Saving, Its Us | Continue}

Its a cloudy day outside and I'm sitting in my Physical Environments class, blazing through so many idears besides the earthquake models on the screen. The teacher is young and would be a pretty good guy to talk to outside class but all norms of casual social interaction goes out the window once class begins, which is when he turns on his Formal Teacher in Class mode and starts rambling not out of enthusiasm but rather uncertainty, just probably because he's young and feels more comfortable in front of a computer. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, but its a shame because he's doomed to never make a single thing in this class interesting. Which is exactly why I'm grinding so hard on articles here in the back. The Boston Globe has a stupendous column online called the Ideas section, where they publish all sorts of great finding in an array of different field and how they apply to everyday life. That article on Grit is a perfect example. Dig through the archives if you want to learn something. 

I've got lots of thoughts on Pitchfork. I love their colourful, no holds barred style album reviews. Most reviews you'll read will be wishy-washy, "its good, its just not for me", "the lovechild of blahblah and blahblah" nonsense that leaves a void where you want your initial opinion of an article to be. Pitchfork drives their knife deep, giving the good and bad equal respect but definitely siding with one or the other. Even for albums I love and they lambast, there is always something in the review I can agree with. When they called the Kings of Leon "Yall2" in one album review, I about died laughing. True and fucking hilarious. What I can't stand is the one thing I appreciate, which is their opinionating. They come across a little too caustic and incisive sometimes when they should give the music a chance. The great thinker Paul de Man once said "Irony is endless negativity." Critical thinking is a fantastic mechanism to have at your disposal, but don't let it lose the heart of it all. You'll never have fun at a show if you're standing back arms crossed, analyzing and criticizing the joy outta the band playing. It's not hip or retro, its fun you asshole. I mean, I love you but cmon now, shut the fuck up and dance. Jam don't stare. Check out the rest of the articles too and challenge yourself to read something deeper and longer than a fucking tweet. Class is out and I'm getting Subway. 

Duck Sauce

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Finally, it landed. Just try not to dance.

Duck Sauce-Barbra Streisand

Good Morning

Wayne Loves Tennis

Back to School

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Princeton era 1960 (Life)

Back to school yall. Sun's still out but the day is giving way to a whole different colour of structure. I'm not sure I'm up for it in all its splendor but what choice do I have. I hate it when people say "That's just the way it is." Don't ever believe that to be true. If school absolutely sucks at first, suffer through it and make it the best you can. Situational predicaments are never without a little good, even the worst. And the greatest good doesn't come in an instant. The best example of this is TED. The folks behind all the beautiful lectures that TED produces didn't simply become into their craft. They've dedicated years to what they love, whatever it may be and the great shit they produce eventually gets recognized. The benefits aren't immediate, but rather they slowly become. After a while, you're suddenly recognized, but only after the time and effort that got the gears of progress moving. That way of thinking can be applied to every shade of life. Accept nothing for as it is, especially if it sucks. Own up, take responsibility for whatever the matter may be and then run with it. I'm finding myself now in some deep gradoo, something the likes of which I've never come across. But I'm trying to believe that the effort will be worth it eventually, because for the next little while things might just suck. But that ain't no reason to not keep on grinning. It's college baby and you're beautiful.

Rant

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How ironic is it that material affluence creates a scarcity of non-material things. In this hyper connected world of ours, with Facebook and text messaging blowing up everyone's free time, do the most important things in the world seem to suffer? There is one person I know who's so flakey with her phone and I love her for it. She forgoes all that bullshit of what's up where are you whatcha doing for honest to goodness face to face interaction. Why isn't all this time spent all connected up being spent towards encouraging and nurturing the cornerstones of the psyche like friendship and wisdom? I saw something the other day talking about the amount of girls in the work force as it related to the amount of hours boys spent playing video games in their childhood years. All that time boys spend on video games, something like 10,000 hours before 18 years old, is automatically not being spent nurturing basic communication skills and necessary tools for the workplace. Girls steer clear of video games in their early years, which therefore translates to a better chance of excelling in the workplace environment. I believe the same sort of principles can be tied to current trends such as the rise of obesity and lack of creativity in the United States, which Time just did a great cover story on by the way. Kids don't play outside any more. Never before in the history of mankind has our modern world seen the likes of such a problem before. Not only do the fundamental tools of everyday interaction suffer, the immaterial, intangible notions of the heart and mind are taking a fatal plunge as well. Pope John Paul II said that very well when he first spoke to the United Nations. "In a culture of affluence, you will predictably see a decrease of spiritual values: time, knowledge, wisdom, love and friendship.  Those decrease almost in mathematical proportion as you move toward materialism."

Update! Read some mo wiser words than my own

{Social Relationships and Mortality Risk | Plos Medicine | Continue}

{America: Land of Loners? | Wilson Quarterly | Continue}

{Relationships in Late Capitalism | Adbusters | Continue}

Cha Cha Changes

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There is a difference between change and transformation.  Change happens when something old dies and something new begins.  I am told that planned change is as troublesome to the psyche as unplanned change, often more so.  We feel manipulated, forced, and impute it to some evil authorities, the change agents.  But change might or might not be accompanied by transformation of soul.  I'm afraid it is usually not. If change does not invite personal transformation, we lose our souls.  Such is the modern malaise.

We mass-produce neurotics and narcissists because there are so few medicine men and healing women and Spirit guides to walk us through transformation. At times of change, the agents of transformation must work overtime, even through few will hear them.  The ego would sooner play victim or too-quick victor than take the ambiguous road of transformation.  We change-agents need a simple virtue:  faith.  It still is the rarest of commodities because it feels like nothing, at least nothing that satisfies our need to know, to fix, to manage, to understand.  Faith goes against the grain.

Transformation in times of change is the exception, but it is also the norm. Nothing new seems to happen except when the old dies.  But the old does not die gracefully:  It always takes hostages.

(But Does It Float)

from on Vimeo.

Healthy Relationships

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Healthy Relationships

Sometimes I'm very happy that I'm not in a secure romantic relationship. I dunno, it just seems to me that people who are in really healthy relationships are really, really boring. I mean, where's the spice in emotional security? Where's the excitement in this:

"I love you, my love."

"I love you too, my love, until our planet meets its demise at the hands of an asteroid, for as long as my body can still produce breath and excrement unaided by hospital machines, until Jesus comes back and we kill him again, I will, always love you, my love."

You see? No excitement at all. No umph. There's no jealousy, no distrust, no acerbic barbs that subtly scar two lovers until their hearts cauterize from the daily onslaught of passive-aggressive remonstrations. Now that shit, that's fun to me. Not knowing where you stand with someone, being so full of self-doubt that you question everything, believing nothing the person you're with tells you. I'm talking about the emotional equivalent of being an illiterate serf in Europe in like1204, and the bible is in fucking Latin and you can't read the gospels for shit even if it was in your language, and your priest has got you convinced that every little thing you do is gonna land you in hell. "The harvest failed this year... I'm done for." Now that's a relationship you maricóns!

{Continue Reading | Mad Decent}

Tattoo

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I stayed up nearly all night last night reading this book, had to put it down after close to four straight hours of nothing but reading because I couldn't keep my eyes open. Finished it this morning and can't wait to grab the next. It's fantastic. I've been in dire need for some great fiction recently and this held every bit of my attention for all 600 plus pages, which is a miracle in itself. Whoa. I'm in North Georgia for a few days for the grandfather's surprise birth. They live up on a mountain with a beautiful view and loads of drafty quiet rooms which are perfect for reading and detoxing, as long as the dogs don't find you. A bear wandering through the garbage last night and they killed a copperhead in the garage two days ago. I love being in the middle of nowhere. Today in between pages, we ventured out to see friends out on in the nearby county. They've got a dairy farm thats been in the family since 1840. Every weekend, trucks of folks venture up from Atlanta to buy their all naturale, dry aged, organic no nothing added pork and beef. Watched a lady get her heel stuck in the mud today. Awesome. I love time spent in the back of beyond. 

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Lots to come this next week with the meanderings of summer finally slowing down and giving way to the regiments of a unself-inflicted schedule. But man oh man, it has been a fantastic past few weeks. Loads of pointed facts,  askewed notes, colourful observations, quotes, soul wringing, thoughts, head nods, beats and buzz, bell chimes, super tunes, sprawling wordscapes, rudeness, and photos about to be dropped. Here's to catching up and not making sense. 

Neet

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This interview with Diplo about MIA's new album absolutely makes complete sense. Keep in mind the fact that Time Magazine named her in their list of the World's Top 100 Most Influential People, for having "global influence across many genres." And then she broke up with Diplo, mastermind behind Mad Decent, architect of the tropical sounds behind her first two albums and boyfriend to boot, and soon moved to California to live with Benjamin Zachary Bronfman, heir of the Bronfman liquor dynasty. Her latest album Maya has been described as a "digital ruckus" and was recorded in 18 months, entirely in her home in Los Angeles. Kala, her universally acclaimed second album, was recorded in India, Jamaica, Liberia, Trinidad and Australia. Everything you need to know about what's up with MIA right now is said right here, very tastefully by Diplo.

***

On what went wrong with MAYA: “I think she’s a really controversial artist and she’s one of the most important people doing music right now, because people expect a lot. And I think that the record was like—she didn’t care about it. I was in the studio with her, she didn’t write anything. The one good review is that, at least people—she’s on the defensive for the whole record, and that doesn’t sound very authentic. Me and Switch tried our best to be quality control of the record and she didn’t want that. She kind of went on her own way. I was like, Look, nobody in your crew—we were the only people she could trust, and our asses were on the line too. We got here because of working with people like her. We care about the way things sound, and when the people that she works with don’t, then it’s fucked up. She’s got a talent in every aspect. She’s got ideas bigger than any artist I’ve ever met and she’s someone to fuckin’ make that happen. All she has is a bunch of yes men around her and they kinda suck.”

On ever working with her again: “I burned like twenty bridges with her. I build my own bridges, it doesn’t matter. I’m honest. As soon as she comes to terms with what she does then we can work again. One of us has to be like, We fucked up, and then we can do it again.”

On the backlash: “I am surprised by it. She like, retired because she married a dude and she didn’t care about music. She only did it again because “Paper Planes” did blow up in the end. It gave her a second wind, but she didn’t have any hunger anymore. She already got a full table.”

On her future: “But besides that I think she’s amazing and she’ll put another record out that’s going to be fuckin’ sick because I think she needs to get grounded at some point.”

***

{Black Book | Continue Reading}

Big Ideas

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The mezzanine level of my home someday. 

(Mezzanine!)

Duck Sauce

I love Duck Sauce and my song of the summer will be Barbra Streisand when it touches down sometime.

Summer

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I'm a man in the wild and the wild is the best. 

My intentions all summer have certainly been this. 

-Kid Cudi

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This is the second year of Converse's 3 Artists 1 Song series and they've struck gold the second time around. While last year's lineup of Santigold, Pharrell and Julian Casablancas from the Strokes  might have looked more stellar on paper, the song itself didn't live up to the storm that the lineup unintentionally built up. Google it to find out for yourself but I'm just saying don't bother, this song right here is truly something else and that's not just my love for Kid Cudi coming on strong. BUT he does rise this song above from being just another hazy lo fi cute kid lost his glasses at the beach sounding romp that Pitchfork nuts all over. While Pitchfork uses words and explanations to try and wrangle out the true meaning out of moments that touch the Heart & Mind with, the most enlightening experiences are always a feeling and that involves no thinking at all. No calculating, comparing, contrasting, competing, analyzing or summarizing anything at all. It's just about simply Being. Cudi always tries his best to translate that feel right there across in his music and I absolutely love it. Don't jump all over me for this but on a very related note, do drugs always have to be in the picture when speaking of feeling Life's truly important moments? Not at all. Let's be real clear: by themselves, not ever no never. Are drugs way more often than not used as an attempt to touch something real? Absolutely. But what if in conjunction with glimpsing something truly of beauty and not as an end to itself? That's up for you to decide. While considering the fact that everything less than best detracts, all you have to do is think of the moments that you would most want to be taken above and beyond yourself, overwhelmed by joy? Watching your favorite song being played? A roof top terrace overlooking the Mediterranean? Seeing the sun set behind a sand dune? Mountain peaks? Peering off the top of the Hilton Chicago at the world below? Strange places with the best of friends? Cudi's on a beach with his newest best friends and loving it and summer and all its splendor. Love is being overstimulated in joy, whatever the means. Immerse yourself in love. Best give the song a play too, no doubt about it. 

Kid Cudi + Rostam Batmanglij + Best Coast- All Summer

Time To Get Away

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!!!-AM/FM

Let your head swim. 

Word

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"GNP measures everything in short except that what makes Life worthwhile."

-Robert Kennedy

Locals Only

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The sun doesn't set on the truly important things in Life and true wisdom sees that a slice of summer should never die in anyone, only encouraged. Think about what could true if that was a priority for everybody. There would be no "us and them" way of thinking. 

It would just be us.

Kinfolk.

Locals at the beach, all under the very same sun.

(pics via Rockers NYC)