Ghost Lion

I was talking to my cousin, Katrina, tonight and when I asked her if she was going to Charlie’s Halloween party, she said she wasn’t going because she didn’t want to celebrate “a day of death.”  I thought she was joking at first but given her religious beliefs,  I figured there was a chance she was serious.

“Are you serious?  You’re not gonna go?,” I said.

She said she didn’t want to be a part of a day that was rooted in pagan rituals and possible satan worship.  Which I understand — I’m not into rituals either. . . or routines of any kind for that matter, and I’m certainly not into worshiping someone who – from what I’ve seen in movies and cartoons – has had it out for mankind for centuries.

But if we’re going to take a historical perspective on current holidays, December 25th was also a pagan celebration in which the sun god was worshiped.  That was until Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380AD, turning the pagan temples into churches and December 25th into Jesus’ birthday.

But that’s not the point.  The point is that Katrina (oh yeah, this is not her real name by the way.  her name has been changed to protect her identity and to make sure she will still babysit Magu every once in a while when we leave town) So what I was saying was. . . Katrina was seeing cookie dough when she could have seen cookies.  Everything has different forms and the world and how we perceive it is, for a lack of a more cliche phrase, “what you make of it.”

My case study being Johnny Cash.  In the last years of his life, Mr. Cash recorded many covers.  But the ones that stick out to me are his recordings of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” and Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.”  With “Hurt,” Mr. Cash changes the phrase, “I wear this crown of shit” into “I wear this crown of thorns.”  A subtle replacement but powerful in its inherent meaning.  In his rendition of “Personal Jesus,” a song that originally seems to mock faith and its devotees’ need for a mental crutch, Mr. Cash baptizes and converts the tune into a sincere, personal statement of faith — with no lyric changes whatsoever.  But the intent changed.  The tone changed.  And that was enough to transform everything.

And maybe that’s the point.  If we wanted to find faults in anything all the time, we could.  But as artists and creative minds, we have a chance to make anything our own.  We can make cookie cough into cookies or cookies with a donut hole in the middle or square cookies or whatever.  As artists, we are called to challenge the culture, not retreat from it.

-Bla[ke]

“In the absence of light, darkness prevails.” – Hellboy, 2004

Johnny Cash – American IV: The Man Comes Around

I started working a new job this week and now there’s not enough time.  Even before I started this job, there wasn’t enough time.  Not enough time to write songs.  Not enough time to exercise, surf, or finish reading Chuck Klosterman’s book that’s somewhat about dead rockstars but not really.  Or read every article in Psychology Today — the only magazine I subscribe to.  Not enough time to take my dog out for a walk.  Not enough time to love someone else, help someone else.  But I realize the problem: a propulsion to do it all but no schedule to effectively accomplish it all.  So maybe there is enough time but not enough structure.

So I’m writing now to myself.  Because driving home from work today, caught in traffic, I starting thinking about how I could live life in a 9 to 5  (9:36 to 6:14 to be exact) environment in a way that made a difference, in a way that stood out, in a way that at my funeral, maybe someone will say something good about me that’s not bullshit.  So I came up with a solution: set a schedule for the week.  Hghhh. . . but it’s tough to even continue writing because of how rigid that sounds.  Well, I’m not promising anything yet, other than that I’m thinking.  And that I’m asking but not really asking to be kept accountable.  I guess I haven’t come to terms with a structured life yet.  But to get what I want, maybe I need to.

To be continued. . .

Bla[ke]

“We’ve been running a little behind schedule. But only by about 15 years or so.” – Matt Groening

Comic strip by Maggie Stiefvater 2008

Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman

These paintings by Justin Aerni are realistic portraits of my brain right now.  This coding stuff is not for me.  Some people are geared for certain talents and for me, I’m not geared for web programming but ghostlion.com must get done and I have no extra loot to pay a programmer, who could do what would take me a couple days in a couple hours.  Don’t we all wish we could just work at what we love and nothing else?  This is delusional thinking though, right?  Every pizza comes with a crust.  Actually, now that I’m thinking I’m about it, they don’t.  You can get thin crust. . . but thin crust doesn’t have the reward that regular does.  As for me, I’m a big fan of crust so this metaphor was probably one of my top 5 worst.  This kind of vomit thinking is what coding has done to me.  A square peg in 0′s and 1′s.

You can check more of Justin’s “cartoon surrealism” and “abstract expressionism,” here or here

Bla[ke]

Thanks for coming to check us out.  As you can see, we are undergoing a lot of construction at ghostlion.com and you’ll see a lot of changes happening and possibly (most definitely) many glitches; hopefully that’s not the case but I’m  leaving room for error because so far in my life, I’ve made a lot of them.  So because I’m doing most of the coding myself with every now and then instruction from my ex-ADD cousin, Kent, please be patient and check back with us soon.

For now, grab a free download of our first EP, Junk Food For Thoughts.

Good things to come,

Blake