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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

March 16, 2025
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

September 26, 2024
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

July 9, 2024

Evolución (safe after dark)

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)

(Chorus)
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!

(Chorus)

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.

April 9, 2023

Independence Day

Well future stepped into my field…

Uke version Dechen Dancehall Wimberley, TX 16apr22

Independence Day written by Vic Chesnutt

From the album “Little” produced by Michael Stipe.

For a long time I thought in the last verse the line was “untouchable as the undocumented self”

April 16, 2022
Elvis Came Home Today
Inspired by this Elvis Frankenstein image mashup
```
so this was a bit unrehearsed 
     and seriously
had spent most of the day
        on housework
with a brief 
          swimmin' pool brek
```
Credits: SomaFM Heavyweight Reggae (background music), quotes from Dylan (“Isis”), Withers (“Ain’t No”) and a Willi Brown tune called “Elvis X2” which can be found …. here!
August 30, 2021
Genuine Heart of Sadness

Elvis Came Home Today Word Jazz Dub Tribute

a few years ago… 2013 to be frank
in San Francisco fall weather is like summer
and thinking about the state of things
culture environment
and surfing the web late one night
mashing up things on photoshop
It… emerged…
thrust hips on his toes
the abandon of the arms
his serious face

So this weekend it felt like time to print and frame. Enjoy!

Prints are available: $66 for 12×24, $99 for 24×36.

August 30, 2021
Pass Me By

Words and Music Willi Brown

Moving on leaving all your books behind
pages falling from what I need
Forgot whatever I wanted to find,
won’t remember what I once believed

I’ll create my own confusion
get my legend with room to spare
I pray for patience and something old
to help me driver to get back there

*Pass me by I’ve forgotten the way
Go on ahead, you know the night will stay
No one can help me – don’t even try
Go on ahead and pass me by

No comfort of familiar nightmares
can hold my wishes back down inside
Tell my story for me… after I’m gone
Those questions of right and wrong … let ’em ride

I’ll take this the wrong way
It’s happened before (“I didn’t touch a thing”)
I’m always hopin’ the night will stay
Like a bird of prey with a broken wing

Surrender all my expressions of love… with my pride
A gift to leave back down by the gate of our lives

*Pass me by I’ve forgotten the way
Go on ahead, you know the night will stay
No one can help me – don’t even try
Go on ahead and pass me by

July 24, 2021
Double Dub

Double Dub avec beatz

Seems everybody is just too stunned to look back
And the look-ahead holds just a mountain of graveyard black
Yet my watch tells me I got an appointment in the morning
I don’t need a needle to tell me – morning may never come

When this year started I said the ’19 can go to hell
Something didn’t die but it would’ve been just as well
I got the penalty box for riding out there into harm’s way
…pain’s easier to face with an option to look away

*
They say it always gets better baby
but I think I’ll just pass
You can take double dub (2020) and…
tattoo my ass

There was friendship for days and a mountain of golden sunshine
People coming together singing “Time’s up!“ all down the line
But then the Suits with the news, they started dumping their shares
Controlling the story so the people would be unawares

So we had a paranoid spring and summer confusion kicked in
And the rich got so richer and casualties kept pouring in
Yeah the West Coast was burning and cops kept murdering black men
Yeah the west kept burning and cops kept murdering black women

*
They say it always gets better
but baby I think I’ll just pass
You can take double dub
And tattoo my ass

Tired of surviving dog eat dogging all day?
Consumer cellular Netflix those thoughts all away
Comfort is killer, sugar always comes with a price
It’s time to take two the hard way first let me add us some spice

*
They say it always gets better
but baby I think I’ll just pass
You can take double dub
And tattoo my ass

It can always get worse
I can’t breathe … the past
Don’t call it 2020
I can’t see through all this ash

They say it always gets better
but baby I think I’ll just pass
You can take double dub
And tattoo my ass … goodbye 👋

Double Dub spoke.word

December 29, 2020
Sliding on Vinyl

Another insertion

This time a cab from Newark

I can’t see a badge but the accent is African

The sky could be any season

The air, any industry, sweat and petrol

I bounce in the back

Of this yellow Ford

Generic black interior

Without breakfast or sleep having

lost much more than three hours

Cause certainly my dinner

in the Sierra foothills

was half a day ago

And now sliding on vinyl

I recognize NewYork approaching me

First the tool booth cutie

Do-rag, yellow safety vest, mirror aviators

Big lips do a little kiss/sniff/purse move

As we pull away and she

prepares For the next encounter

And the cabbie’s sad dixie cup rattles

with pens and straw

As my phone charger cord snakes back

from his lighter plug

Juicing back to connected life

For one more day

And we then dip

Holland Tunnel US 1 & 9-Truck

Through the alien wonders of Jersey City

Why humans spend so much to crowd

Is now somewhat beyond me

Cab 91 (dispatched by Patricia Canty)

Bears me east into MnHaddn

His garmin promising an arrival time

Odds averaged against the crowd

Every passenger a poem, a progress

We <3 ny

September 28, 2020

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Golden Perfect