Roman Emperors

In the studio all day recording vocals. Cleopatra ecstasy and Somebody kill the DJ. 

http://www.amazon.com/Cleopatra-Ecstasy/dp/B000QVQH6O

The album is so filled with good songs that it is impossible to have a favorite. But DJ and Cleopatra are close. I am really pushing the guys. It is easy for them to lose their inspiration. And their focus. Everyday I call or email “Cmoncmoncmon. We gotta finish this album man. Lets do it!” We’re close now. Almost done with vocals. And then we break out the secret ingredient. This will be the one where I finally do it musically. There is this sound, and this method I have been trying achieve for ten years. But I just don't think that I have gotten up until this point. But on this album we have gotten it. Everything now seems very clear and very simple. There is not enough time in the day, but we are achieving amazing results on the new album. 

On the screen: I, Claudius. This the thirteen hour BBC production dramatizing the history of the roman emperors. It ties all the pieces together. All the names and plots we have heard about all our lives, all tied together in one magnificent but slightly over acted English epic. And they all have British accents, which is strange because I didn't know that they even spoke English back then in Italy... Hey well you live and you learn. Hehe. What an evil bunch these Romans were indeed. Augustus Caesar’s wife Livia killed six of her relatives to get her son Tiberius to become emperor, even her own husband the only noble emperor the great Augustus. It’s a story of greed, and adultery, incest and murder the likes we have never seen or heard of since. Truly fascinating. Year after year of their history you think it cannot get any worse than what you have already seen, and then something worse happens. I am in the time of Caligula now. He is completely insane. Kills his father. Then his nephew. Marries his sister. Declares himself a God. Cuts his pregnant wife/sister’s stomach open with a knife to take his unborn child out of her womb and tries to swallow it whole. I actually tried this once myself, but it didn't work for me either. But of course I'm not a God. 

So you know. I've been studying the history of Rome and Italy for the whole summer now. And what you walk away with is this understanding that the real problem there for the few hundreds of years that they were a successful empire, the reason why they didn't last very long, is that anyone who was good or pure or true or who could have made a great statesman or emperor was murdered. The only people who survived, and therefore attained the level of emperor, were either really evil, greedy, selfish people, such was the case with Tiberius or Caligula, or just fools who by obligation of necessity were the only ones left, as was the case with say Claudius. The real heroes or noble men like Drusus or Posthumous or Marcus Agrippa were quickly killed off before they had a chance to lead. Of course it follows to wonder how much of this is still taking place today around the world in various countries, including America. I wonder if there are better able leaders, heroes even, who are out there ready to lead us, but they just aren't prepared or willing to or even alive to do battle with the more selfish, greedy, evil people who do anything they can to climb the political ladder for their own reasons rather than for the pure love of serving their country and their fellow countrymen. 

It is interesting to think about. In the case of Rome, it is easy to imagine what the empire could have been like if the likes of Marcus Agrippa or Drusus or any number of other more worthy men would have become Emperor. It seems to me that sometimes we are still a very simple people and easy to fool. Not much different today than two thousand years ago, as can be evidenced by our current president here in the States; or all the shenanigans that are still going on in Iraq in our name. or even in the white house currently. It is as if the whole damn house is just going to crumble down around them. Its one lie and foul up after another. the problem that seems very apparent from the outside, and I admit that we are all on the outside so granted its hard for us to judge, but it seems like very soon after the moment they took office, these old time rebel rousers, they have had to spend so much of their time covering up lies and deceptions, or fixing mistakes or mix ups, or devising schemes to shield their true motivations for things, that they just haven't had enough time to attend to more important matters; nor have they have had enough time to celebrate any victories they may have had. They just have too many other wrong doings that are coming back to bite them in the ass. in less than a year i along with many others I believe went from really being angry at the current president and administration to more like just feeling sorry for them and for America. 

You can’t really be mad at them anymore, because they just seem too sad and too dumb and too confused to be mad at. I think we will survive. I think they are doing a lot of damage yes. But hopefully if we get them out next year its damage we can reverse soon enough. I used to say this: that it is important to be totally loyal and in honor of America—this is the real measure of each of us and our leaders, but more importantly to be loyal and in honor of humanity, and even more important than that is to be loyal and respectful of and to honor the truth. That's a real man. Someone who puts the truth above all else. because in the bigger picture, and I mean this almost philosophically because it is such a grand ‘big picture’ concept, in the long run the truth is all we have. But the truth isn't going to help you if you're thinking survival of the fittest. Sometimes the truth loses. And the strongest survives instead.  [o.k. fine. So what then is the most important tenet in life? The truth? Or survival? Should truth be sometimes sacrificed for survival? Should survival sometimes be sacrificed for the Truth? And is the truth indeed a subjective indefinable concept wholly dependent upon survival rather than any real measurable facts or data? ...]

[Sometimes the strongest does not survive either. Plenty of empires have risen and fallen very quickly throughout our short history of civilization. Plenty have had strength and resources. But none have truly managed to exist in what could be called a real state of truth and honesty and justice. America tries, but doesn’t do such a good job yet, England does a much better job. Now. But that's because they have already been through many years. They have risen and fallen and risen many times over. So I think they have learned from their mistakes. Right now if we are intelligent people we have to kind of beat around the Bush, forgive the pun, when speaking to say our children about the president. You don't want to directly tell your children, ‘look there, that's the president. He's not very nice and he lies a lot to us.’ because you don't want to scare them or make them as cynical as the rest of us are at such a young age. But at the same time, you don't want to just totally lie to them either like when we were kids. It was all just bullshit. I imagine what it would be like to wake up one day and be able to really tell my children if I ever have any, ‘hey look there, that's the president. Now that's a good man. That's a noble man.’ So I wonder, what is it in us, as a people, that stops us from creating that here in our great country? Is it the system? Is it that we are all corrupt? And that there really is no one to choose from? Is it just us and we are just really stupid and can’t choose the right people? Is it a conspiracy like many people claim? And we just can’t get access to the really good guys? What is it exactly that is creating this quandary that we always seem to be in decade after decade? I don't know. But I wonder....]  

Reading history of Rome again. the franks, the Lombards, Byzantine, the guelfs, the giberdines, the Visigoths, the ortrogoths. Italy has been host to just about every other country in the world at some time or another. the southern part an Arab controlled state for over 200 years in the first millennium, which you can really see in the look of many of the Italians in the South still. Julius Cesar, Octavian, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero. I meet Giovanna after her work and we go to meet some friends from my school. We eat dinner in the piazza navona with a few thousand other people from all over the world. We drink three bottles of white wine. We are all buzzed. Beyond buzzed. Giovanna is the strange Italian in the group. The rest of us “stranieri” from other countries just visiting here from somewhere else to learn the language. You can perceive the differences in having her as part of the group. because she is Italian. She is much more bold and forward than everyone else. smokes twice as much. Speaks loudly and forcefully. Very social and outgoing. So very Italian. Drinks more. God she is sexy. Her belly showing. Low cut jeans. Amazing body. Dark dark features. 

We go to another bar. Drink more. rambling through the plaza amongst hundreds maybe thousands of other people. me and tom, another student from New York talk about how much we will miss Italy. The food. Tonight I had a mixed meat and veggies grilled on skewers and spinach sautéed in olive oil. Last night I had beef tips smothered in gorgonzola and spinach and of course lots of tomatoes. Every day for lunch and dinner tomatoes. Why can’t we have this in America we mourn over our twentieth glass of wine. Ten dollar bottles of delicious wine and any kind of gourmet food we want for ten bucks a plate. Made with love and honor not just the quick buck mentality of the states. Tom from new York is much more cynical than I am about our food in the states. Telling the others that in the states the people don't care about good food. They just care about making money and survival so we can invade another fucking country like Iraq. Americans are down right now. especially the ones who have run away to places like Italy, or Spain, or Greece, etc. here you eat a plate of tomatoes drowned in olive oil and onions and basil and you feel this really groovy vibe of love and health coming from within. In the states if you can find something like this out on the street you just feel ripped off that you had to pay eight or nine dollars for it to pay for all the fancy fucking furniture they installed in the restaurant to try to make it look cooler than the restaurant next door. Its all bullshit in the states. Fancy this and that. maybe not in all the states but in the big cities now. everyone is always trying to out do each other and people have forgotten about the simple things like good food made with love and offered at an affordable price. God will I miss the food here. 

The breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. 

I am supposed to come back to the states tomorrow or Sunday. I keep telling myself this. but Giovanna's body is so beautiful. and I have so many friends here from all over the world. So instead of thinking about it I just down another glass of wine. I want to pick her up and kiss her and make love to her all night.

Everyday in class or in the street you hear that Italy is still not unified. Still no sense of patriotism in the country. Today was no different. Our teacher Francesco was explaining the reasons to us. he being a northerner, a Florentine, had all the reasons memorized. The economic situation in the South is very poor so they depend on the people in the north for everything. and of course the northerners resent this fact a bit. In the South they lean a lot more towards socialism—they call the left. They are extreme leftists obviously since they have no money. And in the north they lean much more toward conservatism. In the South they are very traditional and religious and in the north they are much more modern etc. in the South their language is totally different, kind of a hybrid between Spanish, Arabic, and Greek. In the north more of a French and German thing happening. People from the deep South cannot understand people from the north when they speak etc. I guess its like what we have in America say if a person from Wisconsin was to go to Louisiana, but just a lot more pronounced. 

I listened today like I have for the past two months to everyone talking about how Italy has only been a unified for a hundred years or so. And they are all very competitive against each other. Each region thinking that they are a separate state all on their own. no one wanting to be part of a country. Everyone very protective about their own region and their own dialect and their own customs. I cannot help but wonder why don't these people just come together. I mean rather than acknowledge the problems and the lack of unity and complain that oh we’ll never be unified, why not let all that go and just start taking action for some serious unification. I asked my teacher this question and he said it was impossible. O.k. well there's the answer. They just don't want to work together for some reason. In Brasil there is such a sense of patriotism for example. They just love their country. Its nice. like in America. It doesn’t matter where you live, you love your country. I pondered this question all day. what can they do about the South also? I mean, it’s a tough call. Its kind of a barren region. Not much going on. They have no money. No industry. Not much of value. So the people of the north definitely have a point. The South isn't bringing any money in. Why should the people of the north support them. hey that's the free enterprise system baby. If you cant make money in the South, get your ass to the north or starve. But regardless of the problem of the South at least the regions of the north should all get together and really do something to unify themselves. Like their glory days. But these are not a “unify” type of people in Italy right now. not even neighbors living in the same town. They are a very “cold shoulder” people right now in their evolution. Not like Americans at all. Francesco tells us that it is because of their long history. That they have gotten like this. not to trust. Not to look forward to things. not to be too friendly for fear of being taken advantage of. 

In the new world of course we don't have this yet because we’re just too new of a people. last night me and Giovanna were sitting on these really ancient stairs while she rolled a joint and I'm starting to catch this buzz and I look up at this plaque that is on the wall of this mammoth building that is in front of us. and I'm like in slow motion reading it, “ Augustus Cesar ...” and I'm like “what is this place where we are right now?” and she drags from the joint and then says “it’s the tomb of our first emperor,  Augustus.” And I'm like “holy shit. We’re sitting here on the tomb of Octavian? The nephew of Julius Cesar? Augustus? The first emperor of Rome?” and she's like “yeah. You know about him?” and I'm like “uh yeah, a fucking little!!! The whole fucking world knows about him. That's where we got a lot of our ideas for America. From the roman pseudo-republic of Augustus Cesar and the Greeks.”