Ep. 10: Dominance & Control (3 of 3)
What are you willing to throw your life away on? With Andrew Reed and The Liberation. It's a serious question, one worth pondering. Am I living the life I want, an intelligent life, or something else? How can I have a better experience of life?
Speaker 1:These are some of the questions explored in this series of messages without the brag and the advertisement. Getting beyond even human institutions and society into the wilderness, nature, the reality of how life actually operates on this planet. These messages range from intimate recordings from the awakened forest to concerts, national conferences, and broadcasts on a wide array of philosophical topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. And in this episode, we're gonna talk about the last three songs on this epic prog rock record, Dominance and Control. Minstrel Boy. This is a song I actually wrote in high school. And as stated earlier, most of my early bands were all prog rock because again, I wasn't interested in doing covers, I was the artist.
Speaker 2:And to me it's just pointless to try to do other people's songs. But Minstrel Boy is kind of a laughable name when you think of minstrel. We would laugh even recording it this time with all these studio musicians. Minstrel Boy, and this seems so ridiculous. But when you look at the modern era of music, the rock star, the celebrity, it is kinda ridiculous.
Speaker 2:And in the middle part, the breakdown where Mr. Boy lays down his lute. Of course, we had to go to an ancient instrument with strings, of course, you know, to represent the modern electric guitar far superior than the steam power or the coal powered guitar of the past. And we just thought it was just groovy and all that. But Mincer Blade, let's talk about the content.
Speaker 2:Okay, with glory fading and satisfaction dissipating, rock star Caesar, our central figure, He's reconsidering and contemplating life just like all of us do because we don't want to live what? The unconsidered life. So he's doing this but his fan base is dwindling with age, gravity, all the things that happen in the natural process of life. And his power and influence is subsiding. Let's just say this, he's despondent and weary, really, of life.
Speaker 2:He's old and ugly, he's looking at his mask, loss of his fertility, his time's running out, and he's facing what? The great certainty of death. And of course, the mask has to fall off. And to me, this is one of the more interesting aspects of masks. And of course masks in this case really taken on more prevalence as masks represent what the roles that we play in life, our portrayals to the world, the production and all that of who we are, to society.
Speaker 2:And it's a form of protection or sometimes plays a role in hiding from society, our true self. You know hiding our authentic person that we are because frankly most of us find it very hard to reveal ourselves to others. Through these podcasts I'm trying to be as real as I can be. And there's a big risk with that. It's like oh my God, that's embarrassing.
Speaker 2:Or could embarrass due to either failure or sometimes even success, but both ends you can be embarrassed about. And so this idea of the mask and then at some point it falls off. And in our hospice work or end of life work, there's a point when you can say to the patient or the person that's dying, you don't have to put your makeup on today or anymore. And there's a relief with this, a release you might say, that no, maybe I can relax into life finally. But I guess what I'm saying there is maybe we can drop the masks sooner and start to experience life, the joy of life, rather than postponing it for some certain date or some event that we can enjoy process of practicing, of preparing, of getting our educations, of striving for the big event, the big goal, the big attainment.
Speaker 2:And even playing a role that it's okay to put on the mask. It's okay to portray someone else. There's nothing wrong with that. But then there's times where you really just want to relax and be yourselves. I will say this, when you're performing with a mask, there's a different level of confidence, you play different, probably do more outrageous things than you normally would do, why?
Speaker 2:Again, this protective feeling. And so with that, let's get into Minstrel Boy. Sky pilot, our rock star Caesar, a center of consciousness. At this point he dies because he dies in Minstrel Boy. And his identification with his former self, life start to disintegrate.
Speaker 2:And he starts to travel in the celestial spaceship with the Sky Pilot. And the thing about it is if you ride on airplanes and you look down, what do you notice? Everything looks so small, especially after takeoff or as you're coming in for the landing. You see the roads and with these little specks on them, you see all the neat patchwork of farms and fields and buildings and all this. And it all seems so small.
Speaker 2:And then you start to think about the universe and contemplate really our size in relation to that. And of course you can get this feeling of being insignificant. But obviously all things are relative that to an ant or subatomic particles or whatever, we look gigantic. So it's all relative to really our position, our level, whatever, in consciousness, you know, in life and that we all are playing our respective roles and somehow this all integrates in this experience of life that we have. But Sky Pilot I wrote actually when I was in Bible school.
Speaker 2:And of course here I'm this guy that gets kicked out every other week due to controversial ideas and hair issues. So I was at the apartment with my mates and stuff and I had my tape machine and whatever and I had slowed it down to half speed in order to get the timing right. And it sounded cool. So when it came time to actually record Sky Pilot, I had to have Wayne play double time which then we slowed down again. And then of course Alex comes in and adds all these epic treatments to the drums.
Speaker 2:And I think that's one of the most brilliant aspects of this song is really the production value, the slowed down drums. And then you have this almost Elvis like chord progression like the 50s which is a happy kind of music. Yeah, because that's what you'd want to have in the afterworld. We can sing Alleluia all day long. After a while though, someone might say, Hey, let's jazz this up a little bit.
Speaker 2:Let's rock this out. Or, Hey, let's do a little Elvis Hallelujah or something different. The point is we don't know quite but we know that the afterworld, the afterlife, and most of us that have been in hospice and end of life work, we believe we're more than just a physical body and that life continues. We go from one life to another. And so this world just identifies this and I'll just say in the contemplative state of writing in this celestial spaceship, rock star Caesar of course is losing that identification, probably not even thinking about himself in that context now.
Speaker 2:And he's thinking about what he wants to do in the next life. And does he want to be a cab driver? Does he want to be another rock star? Does he want to drive a bus? Does he wanna cut hair, be a barber, be a farmer?
Speaker 2:And that's the way it goes because it seems also that life is a reiteration and it's regenerative. But one thing we know is we can't stay where we are now but that it continues and there tends to be a secular pattern in nature. So with that, here's Sky Pilot. This brings us to the last song. Pulsar, Reprise, Tomato, Tomato, just depending on where you're from.
Speaker 2:But here we're back to pulsation. Life as vibration, life as consciousness. We're in this reconstituted, reconsidered existence in a new role, in a new mask, but we're a more reconciled person at this point. In fact, in this song there's a humility, a great softening that's taken place in this soul. Why?
Speaker 2:Because great losses of things tends to tenderize us, make us soft, makes us more understanding, gets rid of many of our prejudices towards life where we can flow, flow with nature. The video for this is epic in that it lends itself back to the album of this trilogy, Demarcation. The song is called Leaf, that we're all this consciousness or this leaf in the stream of consciousness, or it could be even the Rubicon in this case, where we're floating along, again with the process of life, maybe with some will to go to this bank or that bank or whatever, but we're going along really entrusting life that is operating as this harmonious whole. So there it is, dominance and control. And I will say this, I'm proud of all the music we've been able to put out.
Speaker 2:I I don't put out anything that's just fluff or whatever. It's all very considered. But I do believe this is a very special album and it says a lot about humanity, our feelings towards life, towards society and I think it explores just a lot of different aspects of the human experience. And so I hope you've enjoyed it. Left behind, left behind.
Speaker 2:I see you're with my mind. All I have is done. I see this life for what is.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you need anything further, just go to mbi.life.