I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KASVOT VÄXT-“We Have Come To Outlive Our Brains” (1981/2018).

After reviewing all of the songs that Phish covered from Kasvot Växt, I discovered that a fan uncovered a really good-sounding copy of one of the original songs from the album (which is all but lost) and then posted it online.

Once again I am kind of surprised at how everyone thinks of them as prog, because this song is not all that proggy.

It certainly has an 80’s vibe, as you might expect from something released in 1981 and the Phish cover is remarkably faithful.

The bass sounds great–it’s a really catchy bass line.  I prefer Phish’s vocals, possibly because these are a bit more condensed in an 80s way.  The “I see you in the distance” voice is a bit reedy too.  But the “I’m the glue in your magnet” part is fun and the music is really solid with an almost reggae feel to it.

The end of the song has a pretty wild solo (quite muted) as the rest of the band continues as if ignoring the guitar.

The biggest surprise for me is that this song is in English, when the original album had the Icelandic title of “Við Erum Komin Lever Utover Hjernen.”  Perhaps it was a stab at commercial success?

It was Brandon S. Meyer of Keanu Trees who posted this song.

[READ: January 2, 2019] “A Divine Pat”

The setup of this piece makes it seem like it was presented as a talk (it’s called a Sermon) and it opens with him apparently addressing people, but there’s no indication of to whom he spoke.

But it does cut to the chase in the opening”

It must have seemed some kind of risk to request a sermon from a man once so widely accused of blasphemy.

He talks about the outrage from Monty Python’s Life of Brain but also points out that they never felt the movie was against religion per se, but against the way people practice religion: “an idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it”

After listing the litany of horrible things people have done in the name of religion–all religions–he mentions his own introduction to the church in the 1950s.  He says this turned himself and man of his friends off of religion for twenty years.

But then he starts quoting from people who spoke well of religion.

Aldous Huxley talks about the difference between Genesis and Revelations and how people can “believe” in both and still be Christian.  They both regard “The union with God” as the final end, even if their approaches are very different.

Cleese then talks about his cat Wensley and who while he thinks Wensley is smart, he believes he himself is smarter.  He then says that the gap of intelligence between himself and Wensley is much smaller than the gap between himself and God.

He says that Christ asks us to love our enemies which most of us would find impossible, but maybe if we received some kind of divine experience it would be easier.  He then quotes The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which talks about how we spend most of our time doing unimportant daily chores responsibilities–“or shouldn’t we call them responsibilities” which gives us no time for truly important things.

So how do we quiet down our lives?  Cleese quotes British psychiatrist Maurice Nicoll who talks of cleaning the machine–like weeding a garden.

A person who is always thinking unpleasant things about others, saying unpleasant things, disliking everyone, being jealous, always having some grievance, or some form of self-pity…such a person has a filthy mind in the most real and practical sense.

Cleese hopes that if he can get free from negativity he might get a gift from god.

I’m a non believer myself, but getting free from negativity is always a good thing and a good thought for the new year.  It is one I never expected to get from John Cleese.