A poem and promotional video for Days of Surrender
Release May 26th, 2015
An innovative art and music combined release by Joseph Arthur
Available NOW at: http://josepharthur.store-08.com/days-of-surrender/
Video by: Ehud Lazin
#DaysofSurrender
Holy Rolla
I’m honoring it
I’m celebrating it
Taking me all those places
Giving me a little dressing room in parking lots outside of dives
In northern Canada
Or down south
I remember the first time it rolled down sunset blvd.
or drove over bumps in Time Square
I remember it kareening thru snow banks in Vermont
Or driving low and dark in New Orleans.
I remember putting a bed in it and using it as my place to live for a time.
It took me all over the country and beyond
Thru different bands
Solo and otherwise
The Lonely Astronauts watched endless bad movies in the back
Dreaming big things about where rock n roll might take us
Never knowing that we were already there.
Already living the dream.
This is a living breathing artifact of my own little journey thru the bizarre contours of rock n roll.
I picked it up in Detroit
It seemed ridiculously fancy at the time.
I felt like I was going to prom everytime I took it anywhere
Only I didn’t have a date or a corsage
Eventually I got used to it
And soon we were friends.
Certain stories you only tell the wheel of the car you drive
Alone on long lonely nights tracking from one middle of nowhere to the next.
Delusion fuels all of us and maybe it was delusional but I always had the sense that I’m on a mission.
This van for me embodied the spirit of that mission.
What good is life if we can’t celebrate it as we go?
Most of us don’t get retirement parties
Or award ceremonies to mark our ascension or declension into oblivion
So for types like us we need to
Invent our own.
Our own markers in time which signify the lookout points of our transformation
And beyond that,
We must embrace insanity
And celebrate the will to color our lives out of normalcy.
Celebrate freedom
And the road which finally takes us off the road
Or beyond the road
Or from the real road
To the painted road
The road of black ice
And death
To the road of new dreams
And endless possibilities
I celebrate this road I’ve taken by turning the vehicle into a Holy Rolla
The music and the van are one
Let them be one
Only one.
Only one
And gone.
– Joseph Arthur, 2015
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