Moody Booty Blues

4/24/24

I released a new song today called Moody Booty Blues. It’s one of the lightest and loveliest tunes I’ve had the pleasure to write, and I hope it puts a little pep in your spring steppin’. I wrote a few thoughts about it the other night, and may try to extrapolate a little more about what this season has meant to me. Thanks for listening, please considering passing it along to someone you have a crush on or something. :)

Maybe I don’t actually want to share the process.  The magic of a song like this can’t be revealed, and besides all the good days blurred together.  I have a thigh covered in stick n pokes, each one carved in some moment that felt eternal.   Although I did 7 at once in the church lobby the day we broke up for the final time. There’s still some angst in the process don’t let the sound healer guy thing fool you.  “If there’s anything we must do, it is dance” she used to say.  And we did dance.  Our whole crazy group of friends spent a few years freely bopping around…learning to surf, working odd jobs, going to Pete’s (although I lost my appetite for alcohol two years ago by the grace of G*d).  I remember, late in 2020 I think, fifteen of us huddling on the upstairs porch to watch “Bug’s Life”.  It’s the time of your life so live it well, Randy Newman crooned.  All I can really say is we did.  The memories allude language.

I  want to say more about this season but I can’t find the words…perhaps it’s better kept a secret.   Maybe songs can somehow do that better.  One of my roommates really was a professional poker player.  It was fascinating to witness those ups and downs.  And the landlord? Crazy in all the best ways.  When I first met Deke I kept saying things to him about how I make money, sheepishly trying to prove to him that I could afford the place.  He insisted he didn’t need to know that, he lives in some bygone era where humans would take each other at their word.  We didn’t have a lease for the last two years, I just walked down and dropped a check in his mailbox.  He’d tell me wild stories about the neighborhood, all The Who’s and what’s that have transpired here.

Maybe the melodies are a more accurate way to communicate how life has been.  I recorded this song probably 10 times.  At first I was convinced it needed to be a simple solo-acoustic live take or it would be too corny.  I also tried recording it with 10 people a few different times but none of those ever felt quite right.  One night in the fall I went to our Ecstatic Dance class, moved around freely to the music, and went up to my studio determined to find a pass of the song that felt authentic.  Between takes I danced around my office in silence.   This song feels like the most “me” thing I’ve ever stumbled into, and simultaneously like it has nothing to do with me.  It balances, in my mind, so many of the silly paradoxes we waste our time trying to resolve when they must exist as opposites.  I do wish some of those parties never ended though.  There were moments when all the micro-dramas seemed to relax around a fire in the front yard, and all my friends and family would sing together late into the night.  Maybe the after life…or life itself I should say…is circular and it will all come back around.  What I can say for sure is I believe in heaven, and I believe I got to live there for a few years on the corner of Orange and Midway.  Life was light and easy,  friends were always calling, I was basically broke the entire time but always managed to have enough for beans and rent.  I learned to not want anything.  I gave up fame.  That’s the most addicting drug of all, and it will kill you. It killed the Beatles. It killed Jesus.  I learned to not want to change anything about anyone, especially myself.  After learning that, everything started to change on it’s own.

I’m a living miracle.  I mean we all go through consciousness changes right? Radical paradigm shifts.  I’ve been enjoying the peacock as a spirit animal this year.  I’m a Leo, yes I love the attention I get for my talents….I don’t mind parading around a bit…shaking my tail feather.  Here’s the real reason for the bird.  In early Christian mythology it was believed that Peacocks ate snakes….and the more toxic the snakes consumed the brighter the feathers would be.   The truth is, it was the happiest and the hardest season of my life at the same time.  Saturn’s return, your whole idea of what life is about steamrolled, shattered, dropped into the void.  I learned to stop flailing.  I learned to be still.  I learned, above all else, to sing from the heart.  I learned that cats really don’t get lost, they can take care of themselves.  I learned that I can too.  I’ve spent way too much time thinking about AI being G*d.  I mean, it really is a physical representation of our collective consciousness that floats in the mystical soup of the internet.  It knows everything kinda?  Maybe G*d is more of a force of curiosity that steers the universe in the beautiful direction it is heading, more than an all-knowing entity.  Maybe the trinity really is that flow of energy between ourselves, the patterns that govern the world, and the poetry that renders it impossible to predict.

There’s so much I’d do differently but I don’t regret any of it.  Besides, I’m just a mile south of the place now going around all the same cosmic loops.  Perhaps a little slower and calmer in the spiral.  I learned a lot about intention.  I learned to pray (for truly the first time).  I learned to meditate too.  I learned that there is and isn’t a difference.  I learned to be heart-broken.  It’s a skill not a state.  I learned that life is about death, and the deeper our relationship to our own mortality the greater our capacity is for joy.  She also told me all the time I needed to learn to compartmentalize and I think I’m starting to get the hang of it (at least I’m able to not think about dying ALL the time).   I love being an artist.  I don’t revel in any sensation that I’m any “good” at it, but it feels more and more like the breath in my lungs than a title I’ve chosen.  I hear the music of life, I’m increasingly liable to hum along.  I hope this song makes you smile, maybe even dance a little.  I hope there’s some interval of time in your life where everyday you wake up and are surprised to find that life has somehow  gotten even better.  I pray your family heals.  Believe that is possible.  Please believe that it’s possible.  The world is a broken family.  We miss each other, we really do.  I see it in your eyes.

This will have to do, I’m sleepy.  It has almost nothing to do with what I set out to write, but the dots aren’t able to all connect in my mind yet.  I can only hope that I’m starting to find the true voice of my heart because as much as I desire to drift off into obscurity and never write or share my thoughts with the world again (I day dream about this) there is a compulsion to speak, to write, to sing….that will not be silent.  Thanks for listening, I promise I am doing the same to the best of my current ability.  Even that mean, drunken neighbor who cussed me out a few days into living here because my buddy parked in his driveway… I’m finding a space inside myself that just wants to understand his pain.  Is compassion truly limitless?  Is that what Christ invited us into?  If we are really one, as they say, then I hope you know that I love you.  I pray you feel that I love you.  Somehow, I love you.

With sincerity, gratitude, and deep joy,

        Corey Kilgannon