https://docs.google.com/document/d/19HfqbVgl1Rk1rfDabxuTfo3AvoV3gL8SrtibznxeisI/edit
^DEtFruit Research and Lyrics w/ Links Doc 

This is a straight-forward telling of Genesis 2-3 by an unknown artist broadcasted on a pop radio station in the upstate of South Carolina at 7:25am on 11/04/21. I happened to be recording myself singing along to the ‘city of Compton’ song while I drove alone to drop off rescue puppies to be spayed. It was amazing to me that a) this song exists, and b) it played that morning as I have been thinking quite a bit about the story of Adam and Eve and how it just doesn’t even make sense, and what does the fruit represent again? I don’t remember. Sin? It would make a lot more sense to me that the original sin was rape and that Adam raped eve, if there was even a garden or two humans, which also doesn’t make sense and if God really did make man in his image, why don’t we look like rivers? Oh, wait…I guess we do, a little bit…the branching of our veins and what not. 

Anyway, with all due respect and humility, I think the story of Adam and Eve is played out af, and doesn’t make any sense at all and teaches nothing but the subjugation of women under men which given the patritheocratic nature of Christian societies and rulership, there is a fairly clear conflict of interest in powerholders designing and enforcing the grand narrative of God and man in such a way as to benefit those who hold power. Seems suspect to me, not the sort of story that I am able to put much confidence in as being true. Maybe a penis looks like a rib or a snake and a vagina is an apple - sort of like the 🍑? 

I don’t know. It makes more sense to me that a naked man would rape a naked woman in a garden and create shame and punishment that blames the woman for her harm done to her to exculpate the male protagonist. I bet you 1 million dollars that this story was made up by a man. Oh, yeah, wait..of course it was…

This song is a fairly good telling of the story that is one of the bedrock tales of Christianity, all said. 

While I was researching songs about Adam and Even and Don’t Eat the Fruit, I did a quick sampling of Google search results, with lyrics and links to other songs about Adam and Eve. I LOVE the Nas Adam & Eve feat. The Dream - it is so spot on beautiful and tragic. Pure poetry. The rest of these songs are…eh, pretty good evidence that the whole Adam and Eve thing is wrecked all to hell at this point as any sort of viable holy story, although the Adam & Eve songs do seem to correlate with themes of commodification, transactionalism, and females as ‘bitches.’ 

Oh, Jeez - I forgot about the whole Adam & Eve porn store? 

Adam and Eve need a radical re-telling, a futurist revisioning.

I-26 E 3 DEtFruit Mystery Radio

I recorded this brief bit of singing on the way home from visiting my folks in the (undisclosed location in The South) and reflecting on the joyfulness I felt about a conversation at a gas station with a man who had a confederate flag license plate on the front of his truck and who was really, really nice. 

I told him thank you for helping me with the air for my tires before I asked for help, for taking the time to notice a person, and to pull the long hose from the shop out to the curb. I saw him out of the corner of my eye as I was stopping a video of a static garbled ‘Take Me to the River’ playing as I caught a bit of time looking at the beautiful happenstance windshield reflection of a camellia leaf on the dashboard that made a beautiful green filter-shape over the grill of the truck and it’s flag, the melted snow water little slow rivers also reflecting because even under trucks the light can find something to shine off of. 

When I realized that he wasn’t there to ask me what the hell I was doing taking video of his truck, that he was going to facilitate me not having to f*with the janky-looking 50c air pump, that he was doing something nice, I almost got misty with gratitude and something like relief because the day yesterday was full of snark and confusion and straight-up shiftiness and shitty-ness of people who were pretty far from grounded or even seemingly aware of what they were doing/saying/creating in their participation in the course of interacting with me. People can be real shitheads and the more hurt and wounded and confused and desperate they are the crummier their capacity to not live simply lurching through life in a series of perceptions and reactions and partial narratives. 

I will update this Description or continue it elsewhere as an accompaniment to this vocal track spontaneously taken on Voice NOTES without much thought or effort, except the thought of ‘worrying the line,” as some might say, but - for now - I am sitting in a parking lot in the rain because I wanted to go ahead and upload this before I got home and got the dogs into the house and completely forgot about how wonderful it felt to sing this song that I don’t know words to but that words arose to form…

Rise Up, Good South (…May We All…)

This is an edited, unscripted message for groups or individuals who may be contemplating a hate crime against a Historically Black College or University, a Black Church, a community location, or an individual. 

My name is Faith and I am the great-great granddaughter of the man who was the Georgia State Supreme Court Justice for the first 40 years of the 21st century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Wayland_Beck

I have no doubt in my mind that my ancestors’ souls suffered tremendously because of the harmful acts they committed in accordance with the codes of white supremacy, secretive violence, and the understanding that if one did not adhere to the call for violence from the loudest and most bully-ish forces, men who cared nothing about the fact that ‘The Judge’ would suffer in his soul for what he allowed and was a part of. 

My father’s line of the family was corroded by misery, shame, and secrets for generations after my great-great grandfather participated in lynchings, killings. 

I am so sorry if you are a person who finds themself in a position of having to decide whether or not to participate in acts of racialized violence. Hate and violence are never the right thing to do, never the right choice. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. 

It’s okay to be confused, and it’s okay to be angry and to be scared for the future of your children. It is never okay to kill
someone else’s child, their brother, their sister, their mother, their father. It is never, ever the right thing to do, and your soul will suffer in ways that will know no mercy. 

Please know that if you need help figuring out how to make sense of what is happening in the world and in this country, if you need help getting out of a dangerous situation where people are planning acts of violence that YOU KNOW are wrong…please reach out, and I will help you find information about ways to help you not ruin lives - your own and those of your family members included - because some guy with a big ego, a big mouth, big guns and a cold, broken heart told you that’s what you need to do to save this country. 

That’s a lie. Please, if you listen to this and feel like you want to harm me, or have ideas about harming me, please don’t. 

I am just trying to help someone not make a terrible mistake. 

Thank you for your time and listening. 
Thank you for considering what I am saying to you. 
Thank you for not hurting people. 

Sincerely,

Faith

A MESSAGE TO PEOPLE CONSIDERING VIOLENCE AGAINST BLACK AMERICA

This is an unedited unscripted one track recording of me making a verbal note of my thoughts and reflections on the situation and experience of the third day of February in the year 2022. 

This recording contains a very deep felt and personal prayer for the soul of my great great grandfather, and for the reconciliation of his soul with the soul of his son, his name-sake son, with whom he was torn in his life and his death because of the lies and the trickery of the brutal pressures of white supremacy in the United States of America. 

It’s 6:13 AM on February 3, 2022. I’m very grateful to be alive and to have had the opportunity to be present enough to know the work that the deepest fibers of me - my bones, my heartbeats, the secrets of my brain, the strands of my DNA - impel me to do in this life…very very grateful..and I wish that everybody were able to have the opportunity to know, 
and to connect w/ the work that is them to do in this life, the  lineage to heal.￼

voice note re: the morning of 02/03/2022 re: UnPerforming the Ceremony, and prayer for my ancestors.

This is a long track that has probably not too much talking, but some very softly spoken freestyle observations from the edge of the state of consciousness from which realities may be manifested by engaging one’s sonic frequency (or something, I don’t know the deets) in the larger orchestra of signal and code, which our ‘thoughts’ and even our thoughtless imaginings have a corresponding ‘signature’ - like our personal EMFs have a signature - or at least a general tone or broad sequence…? All of this is just old school conjecture based on direct experiential inquiry, considering various facets of potentially relevant information picked up along the way. The whole time lags and layers and leaps, the requisite interdimensionality of some events…like my friend finding puzzles on the curb and me seeing them in his apartment years later, and then returning home to find - of all things - a moon shell, a nautilus much like that one featured in the puzzle, right in the center of the floor of the main hall. The only explanation is that either time and space and experience are compressed and layered, configured in a vastly complex filigree of braille, tiny keys and spaces of detail, vague memory, spots where the synchronicities line up, and - possibly - feed into a broader current, a big river, so to speak. 

Or maybe there are just a few very powerful sorts of ways things can go, and people pray for this and they pray for that, or that fear a world they unwittingly create, lust after pleasures that turn to rot like manna left too long on the earth…and maybe there are some stories told again and again, stories that play out again and again, major chords…and yet there must be some great fidelity of tune that calls to us all, the major and minor merging and inverting in a resonant movement, a very special note.

…and maybe someone prayed for something, prayed hard for something…cast that out onto the felt…and so - by whatever means - here we are…

meditation observations 02042022

On the morning of Saturday, 02/25, at approximately 5:15am, artist-researcher faithrr (Faith) was driving through downtown Asheville after dropping her daughter off at work for an early shift. Faith was listening to the radio, that Counting Crows song - Rain King - and reflecting on how she used to sing that song, which she sings rather well, in the springtime after she left graduate school, tried to die, and went back home. Worked at the dog kennel, read DeLillo’s Underworld, found the skeleton of a horse in the thin pine woods behind the kennels, woods that she had walked a little ways into because she is curious and she loves the dappled shade of pine, the rising warmth of scent from the fallen needles on sandy ground. She thought of this, happy as she sang, opening her voice up to be big and clear. “I belong,” she sang, “in the service of the Queen…I belong anywhere but in between…” 

She knew it was true, and so she sang as loudly as she could, hoping they would hear and know - also - that it was true. She does, indeed, by the twists of fate she learned to untie and her own stubborn integrity, belong in the service of the Queen…or someone…but, really she knows that she is in service to only one authority, one force, and that is life. 

She thought the young man she saw walking just west of the Basilica was her friend Bobby, the kid who wears his pants down low, so she pulled into the parking lot of the Basilica, and called to him. “Hey! Hey, Bobby…” The figure slowed their stepping down from the sidewalk to cut a diagonal across the street, and turned. 

“I’m not Bobby,” the person muttered, voice gravely and as though there were something heavy around the tongue, almost a slurring, but not drunken. Muddied. “Oh,” Faith reached for her bag, “…well, I was going to give my friend Bobby some money, but…well, do you want some money?”

“No, no…I don’t want any money, but a prayer. I’d like a prayer.”

Faith was surprised and knew immediately that she would not only offer a prayer, but would pray with the man. There was no doubt in her mind that this was precisely what she needed to do, given everything that had been happening, that the man who was standing there, lumped and almost brick-shaped under the many coats he wore to keep warm, his face heavy-bearded, head covered with a torn-edged toboggan and the hood of his coat. Even amidst all the fabrics and layers surrounding him, it was easy to see his eyes - the color of amber, brackish water. 

She got out of the car and walked with him back behind the Basilica, where the statue of Mary faced North with her hands open wide. He stood at the corner of the statues tall pedestal, and placed his hands on the cold concrete, his head down, and began his prayer, a muttering and rumbling low-spoke prayer that sounded like stones in a tumbler, stones in a stream. She didn’t move to the corner, but stayed right near him, her own hands down, own head down, edge of her black hat pressing her forehead, cold of stone on the tip of her nose. 

They prayed, all of the prayers - the usual prayers, the prayers of the ages, for the people and the world, God’s world and God’s purpose, for mercy upon the masses and wisdom among the leaders, for justice and truth and the simple of goodness of life to reign peacefully upon the Earth once more. 

“I left a raisin cookie,” the young man, whose name is Ezekiel Simon, said with the delight of a child, the most beautiful haze of unseen light smoothing his face and lifting Christ into his eyes, God into his laughter, “by the statue of Jesus.” He grinned, “It’s still there.” They had hugged and embraced, and she had smoothed her hands through his homeless beard, and felt the warmth around his ears, her hands like doves finding shelter. He was her friend and there was something like children about their walking toward the statue of Christ to say hello and to share a raisin cookie that had sat in the rain and sat in the sun, been nibbled by birds. Communion.

Basilica St. Lawrence - Ezekiel Simon & faithrr

This is the first singing/speaking of a poem-esque writing in the middle of the night as I contemplated a pair of old red boots that I may or may not a) wear to a party, b) leave on the side of the road in the desert beside a briefly blooming cactus.

First Quiet Singing - Like Before

This is the first/second singing of a song I am developing in response to the title of Elvis Presley’s ‘Love Me Tender’ - recently referenced as a stand-alone phrase tweet issued by Elon Musk. 

The same afternoon that Elon tweeted this phrase, I was out delivering food in a rural area of the American South, and passed a poorly marked turn. I was instructed to turn left of Elvis Lane, and make a u-turn, which I did - though a full u was not possible, as Elvis Lane was - alas - only a lane.

I had been thinking about Memphis quite a bit, as I’d planned (though not executed) a trip through that city via the I-40 W earlier in the month. 

The night before Elvis Lane and Love Me Tender, I was driving a friend to run an errand and - because it was the Friday night before Easter - a sprawling reunion of family and friends had gathered in the yards and houses at the end of the street full of parked cars and open doors, men and women and kids moving and talking and laughing, several songs playing in layers as I slow-cruised toward the stop sign. 

A kid was walking a bit near the car and was wearing a brand-new Bass Pro Shops hat. Crisp and bright yellow, red, green, black. ‘Hey, man - I like that hat.’ 

Not everybody can do that, say something to a kid about their hat, but I can because I really did like the hat, and people can see that I’m nice and whatever little flash of protective hostility that might come up in response to someone saying something to a person is diffused pretty quickly, usually. 

In this event, the kid smiled and you could see that he was still a kid even though he was tall, said thanks. I totally got that he loved that new hat and appreciated the newness of it like I did. “Have you ever seen the Bass Pro pyramid in Memphis?” 

The kid gave me a look like I was a teacher being silly, said no, he ain’t ever heard of it. I was driving slow enough to tell him that ‘they have this big mirrored pyramid right by the river in Memphis and Bass Pro Shops put a big sign up on it, and now it’s a Bass Pro pyramid, I guess - but, it’s awesome - big pyramid, you could look up…have a great night!’

I love a good hat, a nice pyramid, a kid walking down the road to hang with his cousins. I love dirt roads named for Kings, and u-turns no matter what - getting back to where you need to be. I also love Elon Musk, and believe that even if we never meet or hang out or talk about clouds - we are, were, and will be friends forever because that’s just how some folks are, again and again and again. 

So, I ask: How tender is forever…?

how tender…?

This is a segment of a song that doesn’t exist yet. It is a layer for underneath. Call it lingerie, a thin silken cord slipping from the shoulder. Meat wrapped in silk. Call it a gift for a friend in the morning. 05/12/22 7:03am

RunThoseHorses, Johnny.

The words on this track were adapted from a poem-type assemblage by S.B. Hoffman, and published at http://strangewren.blogspot.com/2015/02/astral-lore.html  This is called 'Rocket' because S.B. Hoffman wanted to start a band called Rocket and said that I could be in it. S.B. Hoffman is not currently in a position to start a band, so I just sung/recited one of their poems while I played some piano, because they were on my mind. 

ROCKET

the thing I love most about my banjo is that I can play the same damn thing again and again and it always turns out a little different.

My favorite sound on this recording is the little choral "AAaaaaahhhh" that is made when I lift my fingers off the strings.  It is the sound of fingers leaving strings.

Song for The Chinese New Year

This is a song that I had to sing, about friends. 

Song for Best Friends

https://linktr.ee/_xfaithrrx_

I am an experimentalist in documentation and experience.

faithandherghosts

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