dennis rodman: I Keep Things Simple (Dedicated to Jimi Hendrix)

Of course when you get down to it, it’s all intermission. Our lives I mean. Sure our time on this planet seems like the significant event we set the alarm clock for; but in the larger scheme of things there are only two events that matter: when we’re born and when we die. Everything in-between’s just intermission.

Why God or fate or whatever you call the powers-that-be bothered to put the whole thing in motion remains a mystery; yet for all the debate in regards to the the meaning of life the answer doesn’t strike me as particularly complex. We’re on this planet to be born and to die. Sounds simplistic, I’ll admit. I never alleged to be deep. All I know is that everything that lives--dies; so the longer you live the longer you put off the reason you were put on this planet. At least as far as the higher powers are concerned.

As for myself, I don’t bother to contemplate God or religious questions. I don’t need to. God (and particularly religion) are for the ignorant, poor, or the heartbroken. Desperate people like our primitive forebears or political assholes who need to justify their quest for glory.

We humans aren’t privileged to know what informs the universe; but science allows us to study the rules that guide it; and thru art we can ponder what drives our own behavior. In these ways we can at least get a sense of our creator and what might motivate it. We may not like what we learn, but that’s life. You don’t like it, you know what to do.

Unfortunately for me, I can’t add three simple numbers without a calculator; so science was never gonna be my path towards enlightenment. I had to take a different route. I tried a lot of things--music in particular, yet I was uniquely mediocre at that. But that’s okay, ‘cause now that I’ve discovered blogs and blogging its fair to say I’ve found my medium.

And just as Long Intermission and Stays Put are direct reflections of my soul and character; I myself am a direct reflection of my creator. So the more I work on my blogs and myself, the more connected I am to that higher power that put me here. And I like to work on my blogs, so in a simplistic way, I guess you could say I’m a very religious person.

Still, if it were up to me, I’d have been a great musician. Like Eric Burdon once sang,“You wanna find truth in life? Don’t pass music by.” No question music’s the best.

Speaking of Eric Burdon, it was his bass player (Chas Chandler) who first signed Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix couldn’t score a deal in the U.S., so he had to go to London to get discovered. That’s how stupid life is and how backward Americans can be. But in the end, truth can’t be denied. That’s why its truth.

Once Chas Chandler signed Jimi Hendrix he brought him back to the States where he played the Monterey Pop Festival. Probably the penultimate cultural achievement of America. Otis Redding; Simon and Garfunkel; Janis Joplin; Jefferson Airplane; Ravi Shankar; Hugh Masakela; Laura Nyro; The Who; The Grateful Dead, to name a few. Couple big names in there, all in their prime.

But the biggest and best was Jimi Hendrix.

You gotta wonder what music would have been like had he lived longer; but greatness achieves its goals faster than the rest of us. So rather than lament his death, lets all take a short intermission to celebrate that day where fate, or the powers-that-be; or whatever you want to call it put Jimi Hendrix on this planet for the rest of us to behold.

But for the sake of simplicity, lets just call it God.