Writing to John Mayer in 2010: An Excerpt from On Being

Dedication to On Being:

For John Mayer
For the wonder in the eternal moment with you
that you show me,
And for, impossibly, changing the world. 

From Chapter II:  The Cabin in the Woods

Inside the glass box is an untouchable form. It is perpetual and beatified and Incorrupt, like as reserved for religion's pure saints--even as the Catholic church literally puts them in glass boxes--even as they wait on the Prince of Peace, this internal state awaiting all but unrecognized by, unawakened in culture. The Church is even said to be this bride-in-waiting to be recognized, itself a closed story without the recognition of Being and their impenetrable ego pent-inside-itself-adherence that IT CANNOT BE FEMININE, or form. Bringing Being through is returned to society by bringing the female, the gift of life itself, through to consciousness and thus altering the foundation of the institutions themselves.

Whereas it looks as if Snow White is doing nothing in the woods, this is the universe entering. This again matches what was known 40,000 years ago in the caves of the Pont d' Arc in the south of France: the female as Being, the male in coming to know his Being. Therefore the Snow White epic is just as the rite: the going into the womb of earth, the deepest forest in nature, and finding the nature of one's self. The rite of the feminine is her very own body. Her coming to know herself is consciousness itself. She comes to know herself as the womb of the universe--not as the disposable receptacle for the supreme male that she has been force-fed that she is--but as the forming and nurturing spirit into form. Now her Being is known to be the Universe's Being, and what is of her is also of the Universe. Her care of that is also care of the Universe. Likewise, the Universe is care of her. Culture must come to her. Like a body waking up, if one portion awakes, the whole is awakening. And so her own awakening is the whole. Her awakening to her consciousness is the whole moving into awakening. And so the awakening has been waiting on the awakening of the feminine to herself.

Because none of this is known or valued, there is the ordeal--necessary like birth, and not of war--of introducing it to culture where dark, hardened egoic identity is fiercely and impenetrably tied to the old set of judged values which define their states of relating to form (harsh and punishing). For those minds, that identity, even the inherited Puritan identity, is a concrete, unshakable paradigm, which defines who they unnaturally think they are. For them to lose that, it means death to them. Humanity has proven for thousands of years they will slaughter and mutilate life itself for this illusory identity, fighting for its existence to every extreme with no actual arrival (they keep believing if they kill enough it will appear in the future), determined even to carry it with them into the afterlife and try to establish this made-up hierarchy there, submitting all who do not "believe" (agree) to eternal damnation because they said so, but in reality have no power over other Beings. There is no awareness of the state of Being; it is as if non-existent to them. The further dimension of it--what is developing into awareness to Snow White in the woods--seemingly does not exist. ("Is Snow White still alive or is she not?" the story asks. They do not even understand the depth within the question.) This is the level in culture that has determined Snow White's value. Her form is literally in danger in society because of this.

If the story of humanity follows her, as it quite clearly has done for thousands of years, with all of mythology leading to it, as Joseph Campbell says of the feminine, it would also be imperative to kill her story or keep her sleeping in unconsciousness (unable and unwilling to wake her) because it naturally makes unreal their own, and as story is imperative (even on a small scale) for this made-up identity. However, as one sees in the woods, it is no story but a state of Being. They then, unknowingly, seek to kill the state of Being. They rage against it. They have no idea why they hate it so much, but it means in their minds their own demise (something they could never articulate). The very sight of a female triggers it and they need to do harm. Their worlds to them are in "danger." And it is, as it is a delusion of the mind.

This cultural milieu can be clearly seen in the circumstances surrounding Prince Harry's new American wife, Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. Without Prince Harry, Meghan had to work tirelessly for place, voice, and recognition, trying to shine through the harsh and judgmental system in place designed to keep her down as unworthy or real. With Prince Harry falling in love with her, finally a different light was shown on her attributes that were far deeper than what was seen on the former social level. In that light, we, too, could fall in love with her and see beyond jobs and roles and the former value placed on her as having been definite and limited, although that all had been surfacely, and mistakenly, determined, limiting her and our destinies. And like the Moon reflecting the Sun, we can also then see Prince Harry's attributes in a new light. Likewise, through Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, we get to experience love, whereas it had been a "role" before. Society, then, is not to be trusted in determining value: they seek to destroy, tear down, throw away, do away with . . . Furthermore, when Meghan supposedly became a "story," her half-family members, for the most part, lost their minds over scurrying to find identity and recognition in it for themselves. And yet the fact remains: this is a state of Being seen glowing through Meghan's face, her demeanor, her words. It cannot be had through the media and clamoring for attention and faux immortality and grasping after attention and dollars, demanding the "story" is theirs. And so, they seek to destroy the "story." And that is a narrative as old as ego, the turn towards destruction and abuse when it cannot get what it demands.

As case in point, Taylor Swift has spent the length of her career trying to do the same thing (and when it didn't work, to turn to destroy or destory the story, just as mind-bound Samantha Markle greeds to do, as this level of thought-bound always turn to destruction when it cannot have that which it can never have, true internal identity). Taylor has forcibly, abusively and egoically placed herself in a story with herself as the heroine in the past decade, not even understanding from the beginning the distortion of time in Romeo and Juliet (one generation stuck in the past, one generation rushing maddeningly to a non-existent future--swiftly--with clear evidence this was infatuation and not natural love as the play begins with Romeo musing in the woods over Rosaline--a heart that can be easily swayed--and this setting up for tragedy--an idea Taylor copied from me to write the lyrics "looks a lot like a tragedy now" in 2010 when I wrote out the explanation in the difference between comedy and tragedy, comedy being social and tragedy relating the isolation of the individual, and from which she set the music video in a library--which in my screenplay from which she was copying, was a bookstore, and with me as a sleeping person, supposedly getting away with her crime of stealing the lyrics "the story of us" while I "slept." I would always write at 4 a.m., so I would often fall asleep early [and I wasn’t paying close attention to her]. I had written to John that summer in 2010 to tell me "the story of us" because it was magical and also because I didn't know what was happening with him replying in the ways that he was). Taylor had/has no awareness of state of Being, and furthermore was not interested, her story not coming or developing naturally like the state of Being itself, but a force-fed social concoction that the audience would pay dollars for admission, like a movie, themselves buying into the need for that identity, and believing it was real because this was a singer not an actress--or so they thought--not knowing the difference in a con-artist who was in it for the fame and cash on false pretenses, no matter what the cost to other humans--especially an artist like John who had given his life to learning music and had put in the years in a very realness for which the audiences had first fallen in love with him, for putting the realness to words and embodiment. He was, and is, beloved and real. In 2009, with audiences and Taylor unnaturally hungry for more, she forced the issue to outright try to be seen publicly with John, steal that story, insinuate that they were romantically linked, even though he clearly throughout 2009 and 2010 was saying otherwise, and doing this in kindness and without discounting her in the public eye. The difference in these two instances with Duchess Meghan Markle and Taylor Swift is that the realness of Meghan comes shining through and the destiny of humanity is thus opened in possibility of what she brings. This is not a sexist story that Meghan had to get married to have value: Prince Harry has proven his deep humanity, carefulness and insightfulness. The world has watched him grow from a baby, inspired from the beginning by very real and sincere love and care, through greatest heart-crushing loss, to become a radiant human Being with the capacity to alter institutions with that inspired humanity. He stands in the position in the social vision where values can be broadened in the social understanding and visions expanded. With Taylor, audiences have to continue waiting for a resolution into an unknown future moment that never arrives (as in, "I can't wait for you to see what story I'm coming up with next,"— stolen ones and lies she is going to sell you—and appearing under false pretenses on romantic dates for the paparazzi to further her egoic agenda), this dangled in front of them to keep them paying money, never living in the moment that is miraculous in its depth. Each night of her Reputation tour people who showed the most delirious infatuation (the evidence is documented on social media and YouTube, as she knows they will document it) and delusion to her con, were invited to her make-believe throne to be mind-reinforced about their admiration for her, an effort to solidify and continue this sycophancy, their own lives closed without awareness. One is pointing to life, and one to continued unawareness and demise, even in this Moment. There is no life waiting for "more." She seeks to make sure no one awakes--not even her fans.

From Chapter IV:  Carousel

And the miracles move. The eternal story has held, even through incredible misreading, for the public misled mind, taking any surface heroine as the heroine with no depth understood, unconsciously accepting instead of Being, but a mistaken heroine of whom now it seems like even the Universe intended for Taylor to be able to look like Joni Mitchell, to appear even on a big stage acting like her with a guitar, playing to the audiences' demands for stories, even if untrue, compared to Joni's realness, but also without the cerebral or musical adeptness, the depth and the alive vibrancy of Joni, and be no where near the internal spirit--one glowing from inside the skin, showcased from the pivotal American and world time from the 1960s where she was a clear voice until this very Moment--and showing clearly the other as an impostor; and then also for Taylor to be named after James Taylor by money-hungry parents who bought into the music industry for fame for their fledgling daughter--a daughter born and taught to appropriate names and fame from those already here--and using the name of Tim McGraw for sales and headlines and social approval based on its structure and absorption of Tim McGraw's hard-earned and heart-won identity; but of a gentle James Taylor, who loves Joni and has for a lifetime. Taylor was raised hungry for fame and to impersonate the music industry--she was taught by her parents grasping to do it, and being empty inside and greedy, was more than willing to take advantage--even of the ineffable beauty of John Mayer and the raw honesty and passion of Kanye West. She cannot see or know beauty (most especially spiritual beauty and truest natures--or she would not have crossed it). John and Kanye were the utmost musical conquests, and of which personally couldn't be had. Both were determined for realness. Taylor sought to up her status to that of the romantic comedy and loves of Jennifer Aniston. Kanye was determined to speak the truth about her, but a predominantly white audience, even in 2009, was not ready to listen to a black man--and "one of the top Grammy winners in history (Grammy.com)--over an automatically presumed "innocent" young white girl, even if it was pointing to the truth about the visible merits of a black woman's work, and even though Kanye had already proven himself, and Taylor had not, except on sales, of which no one had questioned. Taylor went on to use the publicity and the subsequent Grammy nomination to further stalk John--with this newly granted social license at the backlash against Kanye after Sunday, September 13, 2009--by performing Stevie Nick's "Rhiannon" at the Grammys in January 2010, a reference to John's earlier tweets generously comparing her to Stevie Nicks, and in that line at the same time, also decorating her new apartment in it and declaring in Rolling Stone that she was thinking of putting koi in her pond at her new apartment--koi like John's Japanese tattoos. In that same issue John clearly states that he still loved Jennifer Aniston and did not have a girl friend, nor was he even close to having one. Taylor continued to act like John was just there for the taking, along with his career, and when he wasn't, the anger came out, when in fact, if she could have landed any of the famous men, Taylor Lautner or Joe Jonas, at that time she would have taken it for publicity. When the backlash hit John in February of trying to show who is actual girl-friends and sexual partners had been in Rolling Stone and in Playboy--Jennifer and Jessica Simpson, Taylor used it as her further meal ticket to knock him down all the way, all in pure lies. John even stated in 2018 that his "number was six, five of whom you know." Anyone able to do the math and see who he has dated since high school would know that would eliminate Taylor as a presumed sexual partner--which she was using, as a weapon of public relations, to essentially accuse him of rape by referring to her age to get her desired effect. I had asked John that spring 2010 if he wanted me to speak out for him. That following January after the false accusations Taylor labeled as Speak Now, John previewed his song, "Speak for Me," singing, "And the music on my radio/ Ain't supposed to make me feel alone," a sorrow about the emptiness in the music, and about his voice being taken in lies, he asks, "Show me something I can be/ Play a song that I can sing/ Make me feel as I am free/ Someone come speak for me." But the world stayed silent, even when he had been their beloved, even when he wrote, "I'm a good man, with a good heart." He even judiciously added in "Speak for Me," "I'm not mad about it/ But I'm not that mad about it."

The songs on the radio from Taylor and receiving the highest praise, and the most written headlines were and are based on conflict, selling the tabloids herself. No one even publicly mourned the loss from her predatoriness. But the loss was great. It was a loss of honest, irreproachable, forthright, incorruptibility, filled-with-life and passion surge of new real music, more enlivened and real than where music had gone, that in its honest simplicity and outspokenness, balanced with raw and hard-earned talent, had suddenly awakened us from the drug-based lows, depression, and deaths of rock and roll. (I know because I watched it happen, first hand, having seen the music scene from the 80s and 90s from Dallas to Austin, even as Kurt Cobain died.) The music had a new vitality and was offering a new way. Rolling Stone wrote upon John's first studio release of Room for Squares, "These thirteen songs are a travelogue of discovery — of love, identity and purpose. They may chronicle what Mayer wryly terms a ‘quarterlife crisis,’ but they trade on energy rather than angst, wonder instead of pain (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-albumreviews/room-for-squares-251724/Retrieved 12 December 2018). Those are signs of the awakening to Being that John was bringing. It was felt.  It felt real because it was/is real. The same review states, "On 'Why Georgia,' which like so many songs on Room for Squares lifts into a melodic chorus you won’t soon forget, Mayer asks, 'I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life/Am I living it right?' He needn’t worry. On the strength of this irresistible album, the verdict on Mayer is already in." Just as the melodic chorus was lifting, the outlooks for life were, too. My last name meaning "judge" in German, too, leaves this verdict to be reexamined now in its full glory, uncovered for what he and his music are.  John's talent alone was such an upsurge that it can fuel a lifetime of powerful reborn energy in music. Along with his writing, his boyish good looks, his humor, and intelligence, there are no ends to what worlds he can change, and coming with a powerful illumination and predetermination to do so, there was actually nothing that could stop it. 

To look past him is the mistake to look past the real, which is even looking past oneself as holding anything real. But in Taylor's popularly dominated world, conflict (and coming from victimhood and negativity--which is not powerful--to try to force purchase) considered as courageous is ingrained into our very thought structures with so few noticing what an endless trap and how damaging it is, personally and collectively. They do not know it is a trap in Dante's Inferno of unbreakable patterns, repercussions, and reverberations even into the cells of the body where it is unhealthy, becomes constricted, and needs to lash out because it does not know how to heal itself, or others. It spreads it damage; attracts it, damages for further use. John was/is an eternal kid of deep humor, high intelligence, careful upbringing and education, and kindness, even approaching playfully and intelligently the rigidity and threat of the pressing paparazzi and press. (Was/is being like his As/Is albums of live recordings from his tour of Heavier Things, with its Japanese wave of white rabbits artwork--symbols that show up prominently later.) The trade-off was immense: a loss of innocence, true inspiration, sincerity, and true awakening, aspiration, and hope. (It was so punishing, even Norah Jones, another one of radiating realness, wanted out of the public relations spotlight.) John's was a voice saying that the world could change, that it was possible, when our generations stepped into age and power. (This is the Moment.) He was the new spirit of music,silenced by lies and fakeness and a public that didn't know the difference, although beneath it all, the collective feeling shifted to sinister, with people like Trump being lauded as reality stars for having nasty personalities, and Taylor's libel for cash and headlines seen as gutsy and outspoken, even feminist, which it was not, in tearing down any and everyone. The innocence was gone and we had to embrace the outright destructive. John's heart is worlds more gentle and courageous. Both John and Kanye were up against a culture willing to throw away the real for what seemed to be. Not to even mention personally, they weren't going to let it happen to the music to which they had given their lives.

It also shows why Taylor was so willing to immediately infringe upon my copyrights, registered work, and personal writings to John beginning in April 2010. Both Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman are witnesses, among many others, that in June, already copying me, Taylor was still trying to land John by forcing her way over to see him and be photographed with him at the 2010 CMT Awards where John was there to perform with Keith. Her anger and false story-telling about it publicly was evident by July, markedly on my birthday in her performance at a festival in Canada, and in October she sold the made-up story to the public using John's and my writing and registered work and ideas. Kanye's warnings to the honest, inspired work had gone unheeded, with huge personal backlash, just as when he spoke out against a Republican political landscape that did not respond to the emergency of Katrina because the victims were black, and this being years before that would erupt in outright legitimized public hatred in the Trump "presidency"--when Kanye is actually the clear, true, and honest leader to whom was not listened, but was attempted to force him to bow to unknowing and mass unawareness, simply because the unaware public said so and are unable to hear or see. (Responding to devastating California wildfires in 2018 Trump said he was going to take away forestry money, that it was all their fault; Responding to white Alaska and Republican Sarah Palin for an earthquake, he immediately said there was no limit to the instant assistance they would be given--a repeat of what Kanye had spoken out against and was personally, endlessly blasted for it). The joke on the public then is in Kanye wearing the red MAGA hat. Knowing from these intense experiences and from being black that the criticism of the public at large were making judgments based on socially-conditioned mob rule, as they had throughout man/mind-dominated history, they were unable to hear him because they could not think for themselves, they could only repeat what others were saying (as if those on The View, for example, are wise, seers, or in any way enlightened, and yet those like them, along with very careless, sloppy, repetitive tabloid writers who refuse to do research or validate sources actually inform public opinion and perpetuate lack of thought in those who aren't critically thinking for themselves.) In a 1989 interview Joni explained the mindless routine succinctly:

George Bernard Shaw I think had the best line. He said, 'The duty of the critic is to educate the ignorant, not to emulate them,' right? So most of the time most criticism is really stupid. I'll give you an example, and the first review that comes out on a project, because critics are so lazy, it sets the tone for all to follow because the second guy gets what's available, what's already been written, and he bases that, that becomes the foundation of everything. On Dog Eat Dog, the first review came out in Time Magazine. They pitted me against James Taylor because they loved to pit someone, and not having Carly anymore, they just decided to pit the two of us, and I came out the short stick, and I believe they word they used, they called it an 'adolescent work,' in Time. And so that came up again and again, internationally, all around the world, and yet the music and the ideas that it contained, two years later were going to become their headline stories. So, in fact, was it adolescent? So you say, you know, 'Come on! How can you dismiss this?' That was released into a very ra-ra-Reagan-pro period. Any criticism against America, and that album contained some social criticism, was considered negative. It was, 'Hey, we're the greatest.' People were having this one last illusion. Now when Chalk Mark came out, the first review appeared in Billboard and it was a rave. The guy just loved it, he got it. I said to Gloria, 'Send him some flowers, because you watch, all of them are going to follow suit.' So they did. So, they're lazy, why do we have them? . . . [then, repeating the comment of the interviewer] . . . We should be our own judges (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEo16bzxD7g Retrieved 9 December 2018).

Not accepting that mind-control over his own Being, Kanye chose what the public could not possibly agree with, but what they themselves had obviously pushed for, and showed love for Republican and racist Trump--but in his own way, just as a brother would show love for the warring and doomed Achilles--and also thereby proving that the public's opinion is trapped in not knowing: Do you not want him to speak the truth, that blacks were not cared about as they lost entire communities? Or stay silent as a slave threatened by the master's voice conditioned in almost all Americans and from which they speak without even knowing or questioning it? And from that do you want him then to embrace the Republican party? Well, he just did. The supposed, demanding puppet strings are acting without knowing, most especially without knowing themselves first, let alone a universe at large.  Kanye's exposition on "slavery as a choice" then applies to everyone, that repeating public opinion, that blacks are lesser and should earn less, for example, is mind-control. Accepting it for oneself is mind-control. Humans are in no way lesser, they are Beings. Blacks are humanity's oldest ancestors and they most certainly had to be the first artists, and they are our present vibrancy--without whom culture would be a pale soup of watered-down non-Being dared against making any ripples of inspired thought, except for a few renegades who would rather go hungry. Kanye has ceaselessly, day after day, worked to awaken the inner Beings, for their own true freedom, as a true, eternal artist does, risking his own life and reputation (sales, anyone?) to get past a mind-bound world who are killing each other over colors because they were rigidly and ignorantly taught to do so--but to their own demise. Trump himself is a slave to his own ego, doomed to his own downfall because of it (and Kanye knows it), and tragedy shows it so. Melania trades a status role over Being and over the fates of other women, separating herself for status as Ivanka does, while she dresses in designer garb to look like the part, the looking-like being most important to her over life itself, just as it is with Taylor, who never speaks or writes a word of her own originality, because she cannot--there is not Being there to say or write it. She can only emulate "writer," "musician" and "pop star."