Smooth

Its was a big hit by Santana and Rob Thomas in the 90s … and it still turns me on my heels when I hear it. Its a mature Santana … grown past his years of the howling Bukowsky … and came back to the bard … he was always born as. It features the electric guitar … and the staccato sound of the drums … that pound on the leather … to create acceptance … of the smooth and the not-so-smooth … in the message of the song.

The way the song starts out … makes the listener feel … he just walked into the middle of a jam session … with the boys … messing about with their band group. When the vocals come on … its like a speech … trying to explain something … in a tentative manner … apparently beginning in the middle of the issues. The voice is slurred … and through the growling ... we can just make out … the faint meaning of the words. We get the impression that Santana … the hippie child of the revolution in the 60s … is no longer stopping to ask ... if we believe him. He's just gone on to do his thing.

As a result the song and the tune … conveys a total dismissal of any and all resistance. It flaunts its own sense of individual pride … that the singer perceives … and perhaps is entirely alone in that experience. But he don't care. It flows like water down a waterfall … tumbling over the rocks … and then picking up where it left off … below the falls … to speed its way downriver. It stops for no one … and pays no attention to anything else. But Gorth almighty! … its the sweetest sound … to reach a man's ears … and then to flow through an unresisting acceptance … of the words … the tune … and the vocals … by the wailing on the electric guitar … to our passions. Marvelous!

Our hesitations speak well of us … particularly in relation to doing the right thing. It says our intentions are good … that its born in a place of joy and fun … and it seeks to live that way … in relation to all. We figure we ought to be able to do that … without being a King who commands … or a God who inspires with unfailing faith. We see no reason to package it a certain way … for people who come into contact with it … to understand. Its unmitigated love … that borders on hedonism.

I think perhaps its the Brits who first gave it a form … and moved man's impulses into an organization … in the way we experienced that joy. It brought a curtailment to the experience … and one suspects the hand of the mother … behind the need to present a decorum … in the way we eat … live … work … have sex …. and maybe even the way we die. It captured our imagination. It brought a decor to our eyes … that said we can be all that … and more. It represented a capability … a skill … knowledge … and savvy about life.

To the cow herders of the Indic sub-continent … one man's love for life … became the flag of assurance … that it was about everybody. In an age … when we shared the oneness of humanity … that must have appeared like … someone is saying … I am special too. The Indic brought it into song … and equated the dawn of civilization with the dreams of Gokulam … the pond of creativity that stores the potencies of man's senses … to seek an optimization of themselves. In the fertile imagination of the Indic … he saw in visions … the possibilities of life … and wrote them down in the Puranas.

The Oriental referred to it as the great Tao … that kills and brings to life … of which you cannot take thought to understand … it is the source of our thoughts. ' Sitting just to sit ' … is an expression in Zen … and it qualifies the experience of form … with which we see the world … its people … and its activities. The Oriental would have loved Smooth … for the way it flowed like a waterfall … and keeps right on going.

From these early beginnings … we the children of the future … are doing a little more … to bring these experiences to a new light. We are no longer able to rely on painting poetic words of wisdom … or speak of mysteries of achievements couched in abstractions of civil speech … nor the rhetoric of thought … that simply affirms. Neither are we able to dress everybody in uniform … do the goose step … and have them realize the vision of the father's design … with him in the center of the globe. We worked for a while with faith … and the prophets stirred our passions about love for our neighbors. But it appears … we still have more to do.

In my writings … I sometimes feel … I just stumbled into the middle of a high caffeine situation … with issues of creative intelligence and the creator … the gay paramour … gender bias … child raising … social organization and the mysteries of man in his individual nature. They source themselves from a place very far away in our child natures of wish fulfillment … that I refer to as the M & M … after the delightful gem-like chocolates Mars Inc produces. Its a start … and it serves to remind us … that all this used to be about something. It can be again.