This playlist is heavily based on two things.
I found Almost Famous the other night. I must say, it’s probably the best movie ever. I did see The Dark Knight, twice in two days, although that has nothing to do with this playlist. I recommend you go watch it, now, if you haven’t yet.
So Almost Famous is the first inspiration.
The second would be that I saw Pharoah Sanders play last night, and it was amazing. I would have seen him twice in two days had that been possible. I highly recommend you see him if you get the chance.
So without further ado.
I found out that I’m in bondage to a spirit of happiness, that’s what they told me down at the first baptologist church of the fifth night. Monday night is deliverance night, Xenu showed up one time, and a picture of baby Jesus appeared in someone’s napkin after they wiped their mouth. He was in a cradle and everything, just like the nativity. I’m really hoping this deliverance session works out.
Someone told me a large donation will grease the palms of heaven, helping me out of this gosh darned happiness.
Governments create initiatives. Grand schemes to produce better fathers, reduce unwed mothers, rehabilitate people back into society. Never mind you that these seem to never work. All that is needed are bigger budgets. So raise taxes, increase budget deficits, and then once we’ve spent enough, we’ll be happy!
Something I wrote at Epsilon Concepts.
More correspondence with a friend:
I’ve been talking to “christians” of a more fervent variety as of late. People who feel threatened by Islam, by liberalism, by any ideology that they view as a threat to their freedom. It saddens me, it truly does.
Christ came to set people free. The freedom he talked about was not a freedom that anyone can take. People have taken freedom by physical force for all of human history. True freedom is not physical in nature. It’s something that only you can take for yourself, or give away out of fear.
Peter took his sword out and sliced off a mans ear when they threatened Jesus. Now the church, tries to do the same thing. They try to neutralize through force anyone who they see as a threat. They take physical freedom from others, hoping they will be protected from having their freedom violated.
“Whom the son sets free is free indeed.”
Freedom, true freedom, cannot be taken away. It’s something you carry inside. It’s choosing peace when you want rage, forgiving when you want to kill those who’ve wronged you. It’s in love and compassion. The only way you lose freedom is by giving it up to fear. Fear that compassion, mercy, and love are not worth suffering for. When we fear we find something we think is truly worth suffering for, and then cause suffering to anyone who disagrees with us.
When you find true freedom you realize you can’t force people into it. You can only live, passing it on to others by example. People don’t want to do that naturally, it takes too long, and requires too much consistency.
That’s the thing I appreciate most in my mother. She’s always loved people, always tried to forgive. She has a peace that I haven’t seen in many people. I think that she truly knows freedom, in a way that most don’t. She does not seek to force it on anyone either. Because she knows it’s not an ideology you can just pass around, it’s something you can only discover by living.
The truth is, I don’t know about the bible as fact. I do believe in love though. I trust that forgiveness is right. I have faith in mercy, confidence in thankfulness. I can’t kill for those things, I can only die living them.
That’s what I honestly think matters. I think maybe we’re just letting the things that don’t matter fall away. Not falling away from faith, but learning what real faith is. Learning that nobody’s got the ideas right, but it has never been about ideas, it’s always been about action.
Eventually we’ll die, and maybe we get to go to a place where those things are a persistent reality. Or maybe we just inspired some who still live to live in those emotions. Either way, I think it’s worth it.
An old friend of mine recently sent me a message regarding my current views on religion, here are his questions and my replies. Maybe you’ll find them interesting.
“It seems you have made friends with the world, and are happy in doing so. Are you trying to convince me otherwise?”
I try to make friends with anyone who crosses my path. Everyone I’ve ever met has been emotionally hurt, used by people, and generally pissed on. I try to a life of love, giving what I can, forgiving people, making friends. While happiness does not always result from this, it is extremely fulfilling and gives me much joy.
I would never try to say otherwise.
“I can remember you leading me in worship. What was the deal with that?”
“What’s gotten in to you, man?! When will you come to your senses? I mean, you are professing atheism now?”
I was taught Christianity from an early age. I sincerely believed that it was true at one point in my life.
Around the time I turned eighteen I began to ask the same questions of Christianity that I had been taught to ask other religions. I found that it holds up to theological scrutiny no better than any other religion. I spent quite a bit of time trying to reconcile the incongruities I’d found, but to no avail. In the end believing Christian doctrine is a matter of ‘blind faith’. Something has to convince you that those things which do not make sense are irrelevant.
I can’t say that I’ve ever met God before, nor that I have ever heard his voice. I’ve had emotional experiences, and I’ve regurgitated the Bible, but I can say with complete sincerity that I have never met God.
I do not dismiss the existence of a God. Nor do I claim a religion. I believe that something must have happened to cause this universe. I simply have never seen it, and so I cannot comment on its nature.
I would love to meet God though. Talk with him. I’d love to pay for his coffee and have a conversation about life, about him, about me.
“Can you honestly tell me that you are happy living as the prodigal son?”
Honestly, it’s not very much fun being viewed as a prodigal son. People have a tendency to judge me, tell me that I disappoint them. One individual has said that I perform the works of Satan.
It’s funny too, because in a lot of ways the life I live is far more in line with Jesus’ teaching than most of the people that believe the ‘right’ things. It saddens me when people write others off simply because they don’t agree with a theory they hold to be true.
People are too valuable to injure simply because they don’t have the same castles in the sky that I do.
However I do greatly enjoy life. I try to remember that I can’t control other peoples emotions, and remember that they’re convinced of what they believe, they just want to help me. I have found life to be completely amazing and worth every moment of pain, there’s so much joy to be found here.
“Other’s might look the other way, but I will rebuke someone who calls (or called) themselves a brother, and now lives in matrimony with the spirit of the age.”
I’m not sure what you mean by the ’spirit of the age.’ However from my observation of the world around me I’ve found common mentalities to be; racism, nationalism, consumerism, and a concern only for one’s own convenience.
People generally live in a state of unhappiness and then try to hurt others, blame others, they try to make themselves feel better by viewing anyone different as lower than them. It never works for long, and they always have to hurt someone more deeply the next time to have a sense of relief.
There’s also a widespread addiction to ’stuff’. People try to fill themselves with physical things, thinking that they can buy happiness, when in reality only a pursuit of something they have a deep passion for will fulfill them.
I agree with none of that. I am saddened that people continue to perpetuate these mentalities, I live my life in opposition to them.
“I exhort you, Marshall, to work out what you need to work out in your heart during this time of wandering, and return to the shepherd and overseer of your soul. You don’t have time to burn.”
I really appreciate your concern, and I hope you’re able to truly understand where I’m at. I’m sure that whoever God is, having created this universe, he’s perfectly capable of shaping my theology in whatever direction he’d like to.
Thanks!
Marshall
A part of a conversation with a friend:
They say that no one can please God without faith. How can you trust someone you never met though? Two thousand years is a long time, and the minds of men are forgetful, hearts are even more volatile. Have you ever seen a mountain move? If a tiny drop of faith can do something like that, then I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who had any faith at all. Maybe the residue of faith, like a scent that lingers on clothes. Scents can be powerful things.
If people had faith in the words of Jesus, they wouldn’t live the meaningless lives they live now. I believe that. They would sell everything they had, and follow him. They would learn to walk in faith, with mercy in their hearts and glory on their faces. Instead they walk in doubt, with fear in their hearts, and judgmental scowls on their faces.
I think Thomas had more faith than the rest of them. Afterwards anyways. It’s funny to me how in that story there is no rebuke just, blessed are those who have not seen yet believe. Jesus was a pretty understanding dude.
Childlike faith is based in trust, take away the trust and the faith disappears. I feel like a child. I don’t like the ‘adult’ world. I see too many games in it, too much falsehood, too many answers. When people think they have the answers they have a tendency to hurt and kill the people who have different answers.
You know what I like about Jesus, he said to forgive, he said to love. I think if I could be like anybody, I’d choose to be like Jesus. All the way to the cross, in death preaching forgiveness.
People don’t have room for faith much. People want power, people want control, they want to know for sure.
I’m confident in my inability to know for sure. I want no power, people do horrible things with power, no matter their intentions. I just want to live, to love people, to play guitar in quiet places.
Perhaps my lack of religion creates a greater capacity for faith than those with one. Who knows? Certainly not I.
The fourth of July is coming up, and there’s no better way to say you love America, than to wear a shirt made by someone who’s not there.
Check out, Lazy Merch.
You too can be a part of the best inside joke ever.
I know how many people visit this website, and let me tell you, there’s no smaller niche you can be a part of. Which basically means, that if you bought one of these shirts, you’d be the coolest person ever. One of them anyways. Think about it, you’re walking around, and all of a sudden, someone you don’t know is like ‘Hey! You know that Marshall guy.’ instant conversation. Instant number of some hot person!
Yes, it’s clinically proven, you’ll get laid more (or less if that’s what motivates you) if you get one of these awesome shirts.
And when someone asks, ‘What’s that shirt supposed to mean?’ You can feel free to snidely respond, ‘It’s something cool people know about, you wouldn’t get it.’ Finally you can be one of those annoying popular kids you were mildly jealous of in high school.
You can buy the one with the logo here.
Less borderline objectionable lazythreads coming soon.
One of my favorite sounds to fall asleep to is distant traffic. The faint rumbling of tractor trailers hauling genetically modified grain, nuclear waste, plastic toys stamped ‘Made In China’. Sometimes you hear higher pitched engines, rubber on asphalt, the displacement of air. It’s a symphony of almost, a whisper of not yet. Highways are urban seashores, as long as you’re several miles away, tucked safely inside a concrete treehouse.
It’s not nearly so soothing when you’re directly atop the action. The apartment I’m staying in right now is directly above what I believe to be one of the busiest streets in Beograd. Traffic starts with the trolleys at around five thirty in the morning. The whole apartment shakes a little when they pass by, their bells ringing, a not so gentle alarm clock. They run throughout the day until somewhere around eleven in the evening. Large trucks follow roughly the same schedule, mufflers don’t seem to be as effective here as they are in the states.
Last week I didn’t sleep for more than five hours at a time. As my host Sasa put it, ‘It’s like living next to a fucking airport.’
This past weekend I tried a polyphasic sleep schedule, two four or five hour naps per twenty-four hour period. My body ached all weekend and I my brain was in a sort of fog with brief periods of alertness. I don’t think it works, not for myself anyways. Last night I was completely exhausted, I went to bed at around eleven, and woke up drenched in sweat at seven, the temperature in my room was around eighty degrees I’d guess. This apartment building is brand new, the landlords haven’t installed air conditioning yet. That is supposed to happen sometime in the next several days. It had better happen, or else.
Belgrade is nice, I haven’t had much opportunity to get put in jail, or meet many people for that matter. I hope to remedy that situation in the near future.
I’m trying to go to the Tuborg Green Fest tomorrow. Franz Ferdinand and Cypress Hill are playing. I’ll let you know how it is.
This one’s a typical Marshall playlist, soft, smooth, slightly emo. I’ve been getting little sleep lately, something I’ll explain on Monday. I listen to things like this to sooth my ears, to bathe my soul. I do so hope you find something to enjoy in it.
New post I wrote up at Epsilon Concepts. It’s about problems, I recommend it.