The first part of the title up there is taken from a sermon delivered by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, a Unitarian Minister from somewhere else. He, previously, had borrowed it from Betrand Russel. How I stumbled upon it is of no importance, but what he says is.
I will paraphrase: it's Godly to be leisurely, Luther. There's a lot more to it than that and if you are interested, check it out. It's got lots of that yummy God talk too which I always enjoy and pepper our songs with.
But the good Reverand touched a pleasant nerve and reminded me of our own humble roots here in the Kingdom. Which brought me back to our discussion of Tripgrass music, which instilled in me the need to get the History straight before I delve deeper into the Tripgrass discussion. You'll remember I promised many more essays on Tripgrass music but abandonned that pretty quickly. Before I go back, lets go back further.
Shall we?
It was early summer, 1996. I had just moved out of the concrete mayhem of Adams Morgan to the greener, quieter pastures of Maryland. My life consisted of riding around on these old bikes and drinking tea. Ty's life consisted of fixing these old bikes and drinking tea. But there was one major discrepency between our lifestyles. I went to work each morning. Ty just worked on his bikes and drank his tea. And wrote his screenplay.
After a couple of weeks of this and some intent listening sessions of MC 500 Foot Jesus, I realized that Ty was no mortal being. His manners had a noble taint. He was King Leisure. And I dubbed him as such.
It wasn't long before we had created an entire Kingdom in our heads and realized that the gospel must be spread.
The cornerstone of the gospel was this. This wedge of the world, crammed between the Pawtunxent and the Potomac, is one of the most affluent, and more importantly, comfortable, wonders of creation. We are surrounded by amenities. And yet, so few people seemed genuinely able to appreciate it. Everyone is too busy being stuck in traffic, leaning on the horns of their too-clean SUVs, cranking the A/C, and working too hard for no good reason...paying for unneccesary goods.
To quote the great West Virginian wordsmith, Dylan Kinnet,
"Money, when gone, is meaningless. It only pays for microwaves and cable TV."
This was the trap. Paradise was all around us, and no one was able to see it, let alone appreciate it.
So, we set out to convert the world. Fortunately, there were abandonned drums in my basement. Fortuntately, Ty was a trained drummer, having toured and performed in front of stadium capacity crowds. Fortunately, Ty had the patience to deal with my undefinable and untested guitar style. So we decided that music would be our medium.
Two years later we are still preaching the gospel. Granted, along the way we have gotten distracted by other pursuits, Tripgrass being prominant amongst them.
The pursuit of great, original, improvised, American music is not antithetic to the original prophesy of appreciating the comforts and the leisure that bombard us every day.
In short:
Leis.
Welcome to The Kingdom of Leisure. Again. |