Sour Grapes

I wanted to do a little tribute to Wharariki Beach and an epiphany I had there almost one ago to the date. I was hanging out on the beach that day, listening to a band started by the lead singer of Tool, Maynard James Keenan. If you know me at all you know how much I worship Tool. Each member of the band is incredibly talented, genius even in my opinion. MJK has a way with words that is not only incredibly poignant but breathtakingly poetic and profound beyond measure. Their music and the message contained therein go as deep as you care to take it, and it most certainly has been one of the more influential forces in my life. But I digress...

Puscifer is the third band Maynard has started, and it's perhaps the foulest of them all. He's done some pretty unorthodox stuff with it, and I'm sure to the casual listener it might even come across as tasteless and crude. Regardless, one man's trash is another man's treasure and I've certainly found some gems in his panderings. The particular song to which I was listening that day is called Sour Grapes. It starts out with a heavy orchestral tone, like one would hear before an epic battle scene in a movie. Before long a deep voice begins booming, telling a tale that one might liken to some "hellfire and brimstone" type sermon. I had always taken the song to be some sort of satire on this evangelical approach and left it at that. I had heard the song and the words before, but never had I really listened to it. And then it hit me. For some reason as I was kicking around in the sand, jamming out on my iPod, those words finally took root and bloomed before mine own eyes. I looked around me in awe, and as I listened to the rest of the song this is what I saw and heard:

And the angel of the lord led me

Into the belly of the holy mother

A chamber black as pitch

But I felt no fear, only comfort,

For I was as a child in the womb

And she begged me

"Hear through yonder portal

Which looked upon the heavens,

And behold! a morning angel"

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

She ascended slowly from far beyond the horizon,

Her light like a heavenly finger pointing the way

And on yonder wall she traced for me a path

Which led me five directions, eight winters to east,

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

And behold!

As my feet landed firmly

Upon the vital winter of the second storm

There appeared before me a heavenly star

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

A holy virgin, the bringer of life and breath

And she spoke unto me saying

"Fear not the movement of the heavens above or the earth below

For change is what we are, my child.

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

Righteous are those

Who look up and sway with the wind,

Who look down and dance with the shifting of the soil,

Who swim with the movement of the tides

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

Who seek the truth around them

And discover that we are

And have always been in paradise.

The reflections of heaven on earth. Amen!'

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

And she spoke again saying

"Know, my child,

That there is no devil seeking

To cause guilt nor harm to men.

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

No evil, save blind faith, ignorance,

And the desire for the unprepared

To blame others for the devastation

Left in the wake of change

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

Change, my child

Change is in the heavens

Change is on this earth

Change is all around us

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

And if we

Are reflections of the divine

We must roll with these changes,

For we are these changes.

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

Eyes wide open,

We must look upon

The heavens as a mirror.

Wide awake, aware, deeply breathing

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

And when the shit comes down, my child,

You will be there,

A true and holy survivor

To inherit the kingdom of god.

[Hal-le-lu-jah!]

You will rise above the rumbles of the unprepared

To greet the new day,

To drink from the sweet fruit of the vine,

The water of life, the blood of the risen Christ, my child.'

[Je-ho-vah! Yah-weh!]

'Go now, son,

Tell them all.

The ignorant, the blind paw by dogma,

Blinded by faith, the doubters, the nay sayers.

[Je-ho-vah! Yah-weh!]

Tell them all, child,

They can not see

The kingdom of God,

They can not see paradise

Unfold before them

[Je-ho-vah! Yah-weh!]

They can not drink

From the chalice

Which holds the blood of Christ,

The water of life,

Until they get right with Jesus.

[Je-ho-vah! Yah-weh!]

Until they get right with Jesus.

It's always gonna be

Sour grapes with you, boy,

Until you get right with Jesus. Amen!

[Je-ho-vah! Yah-weh!]