bob’s son

I'm enjoying this new R.A.P. Ferreira album, "bob's son." Rory Ferreira had an uncommon idea with the roll-out. Some artist created a virtual reality cafe that is password-protected and you have to figure out how to get into the cafe through Reddit and Twitter. Once the code is cracked, you enter the cafe and feel your way around, perusing artwork on the walls and learning (as much as you can by way of vague visuals) about the poet Bob Kaufman, who the album is inspired by, and whom I had never heard of, I don't think. Rory mirrors his writing process and lifestyle with that of Kaufman’s, pulling his isms and quotables onto a blank canvas and expanding upon them with his own thoughts.

Hearing each song from various nooks in the cafe was momentous.  A smell was in the air, weed or coffee or incense, reminding me of my middle school friend, Tony Beuerlein’s, Nag Champa ~ an incense he would often burn on the floor of his Suburban.  Some smells plant themselves in your amygdala, and at least for me, come up often when associating one thing with another.

I imagine Rory being in a similar cafe to the one in the virtual reality one I find myself in, and I presume he's smoking a blunt? After all, there is a container of sativa cannabis called "Lamb’s Breath 8th" sitting on a table next to a chess board. If you click on it, you're taken to an online shop where you can order some.

Rory has a way with words, bending a word and turning it in on itself and over itself and almost making it mean something else entirely. He repeats a line if he really likes it, and the line becomes more meaningful and jumps out of the song at you as it's repeated. I appreciate this; when a good line becomes somewhat of a mantra.

I struggle so much with this thought ~ what is my voice? I'm trying to get over that. Currently, I'm trying to just simply keep talking and writing, and maybe I won't be self-aware about it in such an obnoxious way. To not be so critical. Why criticize my own way of thinking? It isn't healthy. I'm trying to not think whether or not it's a good thought or a bad thought, but that it's a thought and I think that counts for something.