Willi Brown

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  • Waymore Random

    Waymore Random

    Music: Al Gromer Khan (“Conga Jog”) Words and Remix: Willi Brown

    leaving aside all evidence 

    that discipline is a drag

    Let’s assume that humans

    all want some kind of goal 

    Then the question is how we get there

    and, the input along the way

    that changes your objective 

    and modulates your soul

    …

    Wish I could claim divine inspiration 

    Could unfold a tattered map

    Some ragged paper catcher of my dreams

    then i could point to some direction

    Like I’m the master of my plan

    But this is way more Random than it seems

    Yeah, it’s waymore random than it seems

    …

    14 billion light years argue 

    against the limited local view

    So I’m of the mind to wonder what’s the point 

    But unless I’m in depression 

    I’m always rolling somewhere 

    Even if it’s just another joint

    …

    I claim to be a poet 

    and it protects me from the game 

    all competitive and thrashing up the stream

    I’m all “just dreams and vague directions” (Gorka) too cool 😎 for…  school

    But yeah possibly less random than it seems

    Oh yeah, totally, less random than it seems

    …

    So when your heart begins to notice

    Some doubt and hesitation

    Just breathe and make a friend with another change 

    Whether you march ahead, 

    or you juke and dance around

    May your trip be light and always long and strange

  • Climate Inaction is Wisdom

    Climate Inaction is Wisdom

    I’ve decided that “it” is inevitable and has momentum like a motor car rolling downhill. Climate collapse – death of water bodies, coasts, forests, humans, animals, insects, etc. – is happening now! And humans holding meetings and legislating carbon reduction targets is just theater arising from collective shame. We blew it. 

    It is conceivable (non-zero possibility) that letting it blow is the wisdom action. I could list possible outcomes of that – we get scared straight and prepare, we escape to the stars, we (most life on Earth) just die out – but pondering those outcomes misses the point. We live on a planet in one galaxy that has billions of stars. Doesn’t seem too much stretch to conclude, “big deal if we die”. 🤷 

    A dying Earth might be “right” and proper in the evolution of this Universe. The big picture of consequence is too large, distant and complex for us to have an accurate understanding of the universal impact. 

    But hey climate action feels good! Working and changing our behavior in order to preserve this magical Eden. It is a way of expressing our gratitude and love of our Mother Earth and compassion for all the living beings human and otherwise who are threatened by climate collapse. Right?

    But isn’t it insane hypocrisy to take a bus downtown to participate in a march for Climate Action… or a plane to Brazil for COP30? Our complicity is all pervasive. Just my jeans and tshirt are a carbon footprint embarrassment. True there are big bad players like BP, Shell and Exxon but… we are them. The enemy is us. We buy a gallon of gas (or a tshirt) and the system goes round and round. 

    Animals use (and are) energy. The answer to climate collapse is clean and renewable. So get your solar panels and move to the wooded hills and turn your car into a chicken coop. But get ready for wild fires. And masses of desperate new refugee neighbors increasing yearly.

    God we want to look hopeful. We want to be seen as cheerful, industrious and positive. A “going concern”. You want to look at your children and feel that you are working to protect their future.

    What if a dying Earth prevents the death of 2 other Milky Way planets? Would that convince you? 

    “Nope. I’m all about me and mine right now and in the future.”

    Again the bias. Even in a hypothetical.

    The bodhisattva vows to eschew enlightenment while one sentient being yet suffers. Even if that being is a mass murderer? Yes! Because the bodshisattva can’t split hairs and abide in dualistic thinking. All phenomena is interdependent. The light, the mirror, the dust, the reflection, the eye. It’s called compounded phenomena for a reason.

    So, do nothing. You don’t know what you’re doing. But do something.

  • Beg Forgiveness

    Beg Forgiveness

    It’s no time to complicate

    To arrange or communicate

    Add more layers to the dress

    Consider angles of load and stress

    Master techniques, straighten lines

    Research approaches, estimate times

    Prepare the process or perfect the plan

    Apologize or repay the man

    No time to add another flock of words

    Just time to vanish like imagined birds

    No time to worry about what happens so

    Just close your eyes and let them go

  • Vanish (demo rough)

    Vanish (demo rough)

    In the thick of this / I miss my drift 

    In this crowded city / I cannot gift

     

    Try to swallow my life / Try to disappear in the fog 

    You can only follow my coattail / I’m only wagging the dog

     

    I’m leaving town / Driven by the overwhelm

    I’m leaving town / Though my heart just finally got here 

    I’m leaving town / Watch me disappear 

    Yeah I’m leaving / as I watch me disappear

     

    The world so loud / I cannot think 

    It all gets skinny / become either green or pink

     

    Try to swallow my life / Try to disappear in the fog / You can only follow my coatail / I’m only wagging the dog

     

    I’m leaving town / Driven by untreated bullshit 

    I’m leaving town / Though my heart just barely got here 

    I’m leaving town / so watch me disappear 

    Yeah, I’m leaving / as I watch me disappear

     

    I reappear, in another place

    dissolve into my own form. 

    Could I join this party, 

    find shelter in this storm?

    I’m leaving town…

    So watch me disappear 

  • Journal entry 31oct25 

    Who will read this? Me? Doubtful! The urge to write is strong. The drive to tell the story as a way of appreciation, a way of savoring the bright white contrails of a plane, heading east in pure blue – stealing time from the Earth rolling slowly in the same direction – and now, far past the mountain peak, like just the disappearing tail of a cloud. 

    Sure, I can sit and look, breathe it all in, the desert hills washed in shrubs, succulents and spiny life. The mountains like teeth, the lower jaw of a prehistoric giant. But pre to whose history? Not mine.

    For my passage is so brief and fleeting, like the rare, delicate wind blown yellow, butterfly (moth?) tracing wavy changing trails through the bush. We say, it might as well have never happened. It was without enough consequence to mark.

    Sure, I sit here in my camp chair on BLM land, “dispersed camping” it’s called. Boondocking. With my notebook and pen and a good lot of my worldly in my van. Mountain bike beside me like a loyal steed. iPhone 15 on a camp table. It’s just stuff having its own adventure as I pass through the possession phase.

    Last week I sold a drum for $150 to a man from Ghana in a McDonald’s parking lot in Hutto Texas. I bought that drum at the market in Bamako in 1995. Hauled it back to Seattle on Air France, checked in its own duffel. Was it worth $150? In my history, it was a millionaire. Having resounded its deep bright voice across the country for 30 years. Drums keep time. I let it go.

  • Friends I Miss You

    Friends I Miss You

    friends, I miss you out there / in all the worlds / friends, I miss you

    Composed and Recorded 20jan17

    A morning like today, like any other, like you say, that coat could have done. that election could have kept you warm. And yet, so this morning, out the door you flew to Washington, to wishful thinking, to those long deep drinks at the bar. No, there’s a flooded street now, high and low emotions. There’s a flooded street now and a long deep drink and a cold, clear mirror, a mirror with no back, which admits nothing, which contains all reveries, nothing. look at the truth and back home to the ground, around us, where a hand reaches, shoulder and a light kiss.

    Friends, I miss you out there in the country and the world, and all the worlds. Friends, I miss you. And yet I touch you. right now. through waves, bits, I touch you. Friends, I miss you? You’re right here. We’re all right here together. Round a campfire. You know how it is? It’s. It’s like that. So you bring it in. Throw a little tamborine on it. Everybody’s all… a little tickle.

    Friends, I miss you. I know that I don’t write enough, I know that I don’t call. Yeah, well, I could say I’m busy. We’re all busy. We all got our hands full and our arms full and our eyes full and our mouths full.

    And damn, if, you know, it when it all comes down to it… shoo, fill my entire life out of one good hug. One good, true and real conversation like I had tonight.

    Friends, I miss you. And you’re marching. Or you’re sleeping. But we’re all still around the same campfire. It ain’t them. There is no them, okay? There’s only us.

    May all beings be happy. May all beings be free.

    [Podcast is brought to you by…]

    Sunset on the Malecon deciembre ’24
    Willi Chief Wahoo Brown
    Chief Wahoo grinning in a sweater Point Richmond, CA 2019
  • Golden & Perfect

    Golden & Perfect

    Here, have a hit. I have no idea where it’s from and I love, love, love it and could never play it again a second time the same way ever.

    It seems to have been recorded a week before I was laid off from a gig in Nevada City, California in the summer of ’16.

    💖 Love to Each and All 🌞

    Golden Perfect

    There’s nothing to think about

    but the sun going down

    There’s nothing to sing about

    but the sun coming up

    It’s Golden and it’s Perfect

    There’s nothing to do

    but sing a simple song

    There’s nothing to do

    nothing is wrong

    It’s Golden and it’s Perfect

  • Love Gives Time Space

    Oh …stay my hand that seeks your palm

    forgive my ear that longs to sink

    into the pool of your voice

    which only music

    of the purest tone could bear.

    your skin is buttered, vibrant

    before the crust of my longing

    time is now the blade between

    this midnight poem and the resolution

    of my lust.

    and the chime

    is spreading outwards

    from the central history

    of my desires

    satisfaction has not and will never

    resolve this boy, this pen, this poem chiming

    from you and i

    rippling back to 1985

    and forward to the next line

    all so damned archetypal

    consummation being both

    mythic and mistaken

    i can taste you now

    from across the many futures,

    your delicious moan

    echoes back from yesterday and on

    and on my lonely hand

    pushes time and lust and memory

    out into the waves

    setting free the myth

    and the mistake

    to find me when

    the winds of change

    have changed

    again

  • Queen 👸

    She’s got the eye of an eagle and the tooth of a cat
    she can drain my swamp in seconds flat
    her hair hanging down like old spanish moss
    she’s the queen of the river but I call her the boss

    long before the school in the heat of the bank
    she made gold from a catfish she pulled from a tank
    she got the night wired up and it’s playing her tune
    hound dog bark giving orders to the moon

    she has the judge and the jury drinking mushroom tea
    sliding railroad papers in the land of the free
    governor flames talking highway slack
    she tame baptist preachers with a bullwhip crack

    She calls and I come or my head starts to jerk
    blood curdling moans dog my guitar work
    I got long, jagged holes in the back of my shirt
    my hands disappear ‘neath the railroad dirt

    no mystery spell gonna break her mind
    she take medicine men make ’em wish they was blind
    she live in a house that don’t have no walls
    she’s the queen of the river and she’ll break your balls

  • Evolución (safe after dark)

    Evolución (safe after dark)

    acoustik version

    Words and Music by Willi Brown

    I introduce myself
    in a modernly sensitive way
    but I can’t help but feel
    hypocritical…
    because i want you

    (and respect you beautiful) 

    But I don't want you to be bugged honey 
     
and a-think i'm just a-hittin' on you 
    
i think it's a drag that a girl don't feel... 
    
Safe. After. Dark.
    
    {Evolution seems like a failure}

      A six pack of pride swallowed tonight
      when i spoke to you / at the slam dance
      it’s always our job to make the first move
      and buy the flowers

      Chorus

      Nah know I’m not your Jesus Christ
      and he ain’t no axe muderer neither
      I ain’t the cream of the wheat / or the cream of the crop

      I’m just confused!

      Memory is that this was written in Seattle around 1994 when I was going to the Crocodile cafe every other night to drink and hit on girls. After reading an article in the Stranger (some feminist propoganda thing *jk*) I wrote these words in a cheap spiral.