Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a fun excursion. 

Full of word paintings like this:

"The air rushing into the open windows of the bus came in hot and gritty like invisible smoke, and when they stopped, it just rolled over them, pure lava."

How cool is that?

The bus was named Further.

That would of been a trip worth taking.

While filling  my honey pot this morning I couldn't help but start singing.

Blue Ribbon Honey

Walt Sample

I was limpin’ out of the rodeo ring

Beatin’ dust off my Wrangler jeans

John Deere green eyed filly hollered out

Hey that was my bronc Oscar the grouch

She walked over and handed me my hat

She said Howdy they call me Brat

I taught Oscar how to shake & bake

Come on and buy me a funnel cake

Oh she’s my blue ribbon honey

The sweetest girl at the fair

Oh she’s my blue ribbon honey

My little 4H teddy bear

Tryin’ to shoot out the red star

Brat wanted a General Lee car

Strawberry cotton candy hair

Cutest girl at the County Fair

Oh she’s my blue ribbon honey

The sweetest girl at the fair

Oh she’s my blue ribbon honey

My little 4H teddy bear

Ferris wheel stopped at the top

Arms tangled in a young lovers knot

Blue FFA t-shirts on

Kissin’ under a rainbow neon

Oh she’s my blue ribbon honey

The sweetest girl at the fair

Oh she’s my blue ribbon honey

My little 4H teddy bear

 King Crimson album cover

inside of album

The Court Of The Crimson King

Robert Fripp/Michael Giles/Greg Lake/Ian McDonald/Peter Sinfield

The rusted chains of prison moons

Are shattered by the sun.

I walk a road, horizons change

The tournament's begun.

The purple piper plays his tune,

The choir softly sing;

Three lullabies in an ancient tongue,

For the court of the crimson king.

The keeper of the city keys

Put shutters on the dreams.

I wait outside the pilgrim's door

With insufficient schemes.

The black queen chants

the funeral march,

The cracked brass bells will ring;

To summon back the fire witch

To the court of the crimson king.

The gardener plants an evergreen

Whilst trampling on a flower.

I chase the wind of a prism ship

To taste the sweet and sour.

The pattern juggler lifts his hand;

The orchestra begin.

As slowly turns the grinding wheel

In the court of the crimson king.

On soft gray mornings widows cry

The wise men share a joke;

I run to grasp divining signs

To satisfy the hoax.

The yellow jester does not play

But gentle pulls the strings

And smiles as the puppets dance

In the court of the crimson king.

Take a trip without leaving the farm. Spin a King Crimson album, put your circa 1971 Koss headphones on and enjoy the ride.

Busy time of year no doubt. Hear is a little fodder to keep the pencils growing shorter through the Holidays and New Years.

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.” 

― Erin Bow

 Write.

Write more.

Write even more.

Write even more than that.

Write when you don’t want to.

Write when you do.

Write when you have something to say.

Write when you don’t.

Write every day.

Keep writing. 

― Brian Clark

I talked about the 52 Club hosted by Folk School Coffee Parlor a few weeks ago in one of my posts. In a nutshell, songwriters gather every Wednesday evening and sing a tune based off of the previous weeks prompt. At the end of the evening everyone put a word or two idea in a hat and one is pulled out becoming the prompt for the next week's meeting. The word for tonight is "butterscotch".

After a half dozen or so different first verses ideas hitting the dreaded second verse brick wall, this new idea came together. My co writer was the window I stare out of while stuck knee deep in daydreams.........

Nothing Ever Changes But The Truth

Walt Sample

Digging deep for twenty years one mile down

Sweating on my belly below a brow damp roof

Coal train don't run north anymore I'm livin' in a ghost town

Nothing ever changes nothing ever changes but the truth

Talking walking smokestacks spew butterscotch plumes

Amber clouds of promises so sweet so smooth

He'll change that a vote for him will heal all my wounds

Nothing ever changes nothing ever changes but the truth

Empty pockets swimming in a jobless sea

Red white and blue but our numbers two few

My uncle has no room for me on his bouncing knee

Nothing ever changes nothing ever changes but the truth

My uncle has no room for me on his bouncing knee

Nothing ever changes nothing ever changes but the truth

http://www.folkschoolcoffeeparlor.com/index.html/

Come on and join us tonight at 6.

 "That was the big high-school drive-in, with the huge streamlined sculpted pastel display sign with streaming streamlined super-slick A-22 italic script, floodlights, clamp-on trays, car-hop girls in floppy blue slacks, hamburgers in some kind of tissuey wax paper steaming with onions pressed down and fried on the grill and mustard and catsup to squirt all over it from out plastic squirt cylinders."

Tom Wolfe from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

The days of 19 cent apple pies.

Sophisticated Beggar

Roy Harper

I'm just a sophisticated beggar living underneath your summer day

Counting all my blessings as I'm counting all the money 

I've accumulated on my way

I don't want your plastic Gods

Tin-pot religions and silly ideas

All I want is your money

I listen to you but I know you have nothing to say

I'm just a sophisticated beggar living underneath your summer day 

I'm an emancipated firework exploding on your busy street

Strumming my guitar as you pass in your car always 

trying to knock me clean off my feet

I don't care if you own the whole world

The stars in the sky

Or a heavenly body

You're wasting your time if it's only that that you're trying to convey

'Cos I'm just a sophisticated beggar living underneath your summer day 

I'm an emaciated hipster drinking dreams and eating consciousness

Standing in the gutter in the middle of a splutter 

hiding horrors underneath my largesse

I'd be hoarse for a million years

Trying to rescue my brain from the flood of my mind

And all that I need, seems to me, to be needless to say

'Cos I'm just a sophisticated beggar living underneath your summer day

Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) said Roy Harper was his primary influence on guitar and songwriting. Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote "Hats Off To Harper", a song about him and his impact on them. Roy is still writing songs and touring.

His stuff  (32 albums) is incredible and worth a listen. His effect on many artists can be heard both musically and lyrically. Sophisticated Beggar was written in 1967. I didn't know the word "hipster" was around back then.....

http://www.royharper.co.uk/