The Dream Is Over

(Part Two of "Tempting the Fates")

Note how both items in parenthes on this and the last file refers to the other file. What Rolling Stones single has smippets of the flip side at the end of each side. I'll give you a hint. It's on Disk two of "The London Years" boxed set, just a little past the middle.

One thing that Dreams have in common is that they are all things you “wake up from” as in the AC song “Where I am is where I want to leave”. Back in December of 1970 I recorded and sang a bunch of songs, accompanying myself on either the guitar or the piano. I called this collection “Billy Preston’s Dream” and I don’t know why I called them that. There were a number of fractured Christmas carols, with new, obscene lyrics they’d never play on the radio. There was a heavily blasphemous theme to a lot of these songs and also the word “suicide” was employed frequently in the lyrics. What is interesting is- - - well, have you ever had two conflicting voices in your head? And one of them was giving you dire warnings about something and that’s the voice you decide to ignore and after a while it just went away? But only to be proven subsequently right? Well this is how it was with me and Christianity in late 1970. Basically I thought the new movement was a bunch of crap. I didn’t even like George Harrison’s “Chant in the Ways of the Lord and you’ll be Free” and talked all through the song on an open microphone. So I had a dream about thinking I was in Hell. That could be scarey for sure. It was that moment of dis-enlightenment when it dawned on me “I’m doomed”. But it was only a dream. It wasn’t reality. John Lennon contrasted reality in his own life verses Dreams in the song “God”. Also, “Working Class Hero” is in that song selection I recorded. But I do change one lyric to “Your parents bug you till you are eighteen- - then they throw you out into that capitalist scene”. John Lennon’s lyrics are better. But then a voice of enlightenment (turning out to be Stewart Sutcliffe later on) kind of dawned on me as I got to thinking. “You know, Christianity is not without its moral problems”. For instance that Dylan song about “I wish for just one time you could stand inside my shoes”. There is an absence of empathy or “putting yourself in the other person’s place” in Christianity. “Walk a mile in my shoes” is an Indian saying; it isn’t Christian. Also there is a problem that is “lack of specificity”. Pastor Mark used to refer to it as “God meeting you where the rubber meets the road”. With most Sunday sermons the preacher expects you now to go off to Fairy Land or something where you never run into real people or real situations. Another major moral shortcoming of Christianity was voice by me in one of my “wise sayings” to the effect that “When contemplating whether you should do something or not- - ask yourself the question “What if everyone in the world did this?” If the answer is a negative one, which it often is with Christians, then you shouldn’t do it. Even Pastor Mark himself said “I’m glad there is only one of me”.

I want to “Get Back” to a conversation yesterday at the lunch or dinner table where I had to show off my knowledge. You-know-who was talking with Andrew about his new serotonin uptake medication. And Andrew says “The drug doesn’t seem to have any side effects”. Other than sudden suicide or committing mass murder, I guess not. And I chimed in “You know they say that alpha males of almost any animal species under more stress in their leadership roles than do other more passive animals, and they have more serotonin in their system”. And she said “You know I can believe that. I found leadership stressful the one time I did it”. I’d like to talk a little about the Romulans and why they may have really turned down that alliance with the Ionians a few years ago. The Ionians are one group the Federation has been scared shitless of for the past three or four thousand years or so. But I think in the end, the Romulan people just did not have a “taste for war:, It’s a case of “been there- - Done that”. Arguing against my own theory (something I’m good at) is the case of “JR” who was bumped off by the Mafia because he “wanted out” and was threatening to talk. His position would have been more secure if he still had had a little more power then he presently did. (no, not JR Eweing) Being “Hey number one- - king of the hill - - top of the heap” isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Chuck Smith once said “One group has all the money at a certain time and then all the other groups conspire until they still the money from that group and then they have the money for a while till somebody else steals it from them”.

According to Chris Carter on Breakfast with the Beatles, “Watch Your Step” is a song that was recorded in 1961. Well, 1971 is more like it. This song you can tell by the sound engineering was obviously recorded around 1970 or 1961 and the idea of John Lennon hearing it in 1964 and doing “I Feel Fine” based on it is completely absurd. Of course Me and Mark Campbell rewrote the lyrics to “I Call Your Name” in June of 1980, the same month I wrote new lyrics to “You Can’t Do That”. They of course were celebrating John Lennon’s birthday on October 9, 1940. John Lennon played the lead guitar part for the first time on "You Can't Do that". Sometimes we run into time disconuities. I remember “Give Peace A Chance” being out in late May, but they tell me it was July. [The following three are add-backs:] ”. [There is some Romulan stuff I didn’t get to. I was going to make this joke about FH saying to Ray Maland “I can’t find Marcus’s face in this photograph of his band”. And Ray Maland comes and looks at the thing and says “There’s old Marcus right there” and circles it with his red pen and it’s an empty chair. “That’s him playing the clarinet”. This is the lyric, “Got to be so good looking because he’s so hard to see”. I remember thinking about how cool the lyrics "Come together - all together" were in GPAC and thinking "You know, the Beatles really ought to do a whole song based on these lyrics". You will remember that "Bad Boy" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" suddenly got saturation play on the radio in late May of 1965. This was a couple of weeks before the rest of Beatles VI was released on Friday June 4th. But later I heard that these two Beatles songs weren't even recorded till May of 1965. It's almost like that one George Carlen skit where the DJ says "I have here a song that's so hot it hasn't even been recorded yet and it's already a hit".] I remember playing an old Galaxy tape of my brother’s (Al) recorded around the first of April of 1965. But in the “official record” the Stones didn’t record the song until May. Al explained this to me once saying “Well they re-recorded it and changed the lyrics about smoking”. You know that Mal Evans banned the Beatles version of “Twist and Shout” out of loyalty to the Reigel Sixers. Mal Evans also banned the album “Flaming Pie” because I told him hearing certain songs on that album made me depressed and I didn’t know why- - after Ken’s death- - and a lot of other stuff I was depressed over”. Mal Evans said “That settles it then, I’m banning the whole album”. And he did. Actually Mal did not contact me again for years- - like maybe fall of 2004.

Bill Gunderson was just over here for a half hour visit and he had twelve pumpkin muffins piping hot from the over to share equally between me and my roommate. I’ll have a full report on the rest of the visit but right now I want to talk about a question he asked. He said “What has homosexuality contributed to society- - not homosex-uals, but homosex-uality, in the abstract?” I said I didn’t know. Then he said “If you were to ask the same thing of science you could come up with a whole host of stuff” and he rattled off a bunch of things. Then he asked “What have people like Stalin and Hitler and Jim Jones contributed to society. And when these people talk about Change, is it Change we can believe in?” I said “I pretty much know where you are headed with that one”. But I would like to pose one more question. What has Religion contributed to society? Not religious PEOPLE but religion in the abstract? Religion in terms of “Theology”?

I would now like to conclude with that “Dallas Theological Seminary” alias the Orion Federation- - list of interrogatives to Rick Perry. For instance Job said in the Bible, “I know my redeemer lives”. It’s in “The Messiah”. Was Job referring to Jesus? When it says that God created the heavens and the earth and goes on to say that the earth was “void and waste, and the spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters”. My explanation is that it’s a translation error but let’s let Walter Martin have his way on this one. Gene Scott, Chuck Smith, and I have our own “gap theory” but let’s take the scripture as it occurs “Rat there in the Babble”. Does life exist on a planet that is “void and waste”? So do these bodies of water breed green slime with first individual cells in it and then multi cellular creatures and then higher forms of life like jellyfish, clams, and squid? Is that how God worked? There is a scripture that says “Who is this man with blood dripping robes coming forth from Bossra? Is this referring to Jesus? How about the passage where it says “In those days a man will be ashamed of his visions and say to you “I am no prophet; I am a farmer”. Is this Jesus? How about the passage where it says that one would be born in Bethlehem- - whose going forth was from long ago?” No now does this mean Jesus was on the earth previously. Why does Isaiah say Jesus would be born of a “young woman” but the Greeks later translated it as “Virgin”. And of Joseph’s line was descended from David of what relivence is that if Jesus had no earthly father? What’s with this scripture in “The Messiah” that states that people would spit on Jesus? Where did that ever occur in the Bible. It says Jesus “would have no form nor cumliness that we should desire him”. As you know Jesus was a very charismatic fellow. They called him ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar”, after all. Scripture says that “As for his generation they would consider that he was cut off from the land of the living”. So then the Christian Church didn’t exist right after he died, or by that generation? That could be revealing. It also has the line “Behold I will prolong his days and allot him a portion with the great”. Two things: First of all it says “I Will” mean another Greater than he will Give it to him. And it also says “Portion” and not the whole thing! In Genesis it says that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of (or kill) the serpent (or Satan). So then Satan died the minute Jesus uttered the words “It is Finished” from the cross? What about the passage that says or asks “Will continue to say “I am a god” in the presence of your enemies” and the same passage goes on to say “Behind you will be delivered into the hands of the uncircumcised and die the death of foreigners”. Also it says the messiah would be born on Bethlehem. But in the gospel of John it says that the Jewish priests said to Jesus, “You can’t be the Messiah because no Messiah comes from Galilee”. And Jesus never bothered to correct them. Also it says in Isaiah 61 “Behold I come proclaim the favorable year of our Lord, and the day of vengeance against our enemies”. But Luke omits the 2^nd part of this quote. Walter Martin says a scripture without a context is a pretext. Scripture says “I will be a father and he will be a son to me” but then goes on to say “And if he sins, I will discipline him with the rod of my mouth”. And of course we come to the phrase, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The obvious question here is that if God really knew everything he would know why he was being forsaken. It also says “By his suffering the many are justified”. My question is the moment Jesus died on the cross, how many people were qualified as Saved. If we believe that Texas pastor that Perry is a Christian and Romney is in a cult and unless you subscribe to all the theology in the Nicene Creed, then I imagine not too many people were saved that first Easter. One can argue if you’re saved by “Knowing Jesus” than many Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness and Seventh Day Adventists are saved. But if salvation has, shall we say, certain more man-made criteria, then it’s a different story.