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‘LOVERS & FIGHTERS’ by Sananda Maitreya

When I was young, I did not speak as a child, I spoke as myself and it kept me in constant arrears. I used to hear as a child the phrase, “I AM A LOVER, NOT A FIGHTER”, a reference to the Vietnam war and a reference point for the pacifists who opposed it. Years later, I realized that to survive our dreams in the world, to be able to reach up and write our names on the blackboard of notoriety, we were challenged to be both lovers, as well as fighters. Warriors for our daily just causes and lovers of our triumphs, our small yet perceptible gains. I love my life, my choices and am willing to fight un to the death for them, as living anyone else’s idea of life but your own is its own slow, tangible death by suffocation and neglect of that which marches within us, aiming for its own stride, in lock step with the will of one’s spirit, which attends to our graces as a kite to the small key attached to its end, waiting for the lightning of illumination and surprise to strike. The ways of love are not without spikes, to be negotiated as a dancer shadow dances through a minefield. Those who choose the ways of love walk through doors composed of fists, to embarrass them is sport for the jaded and afraid, who hide behind their laughter, while cringing their grins to keep their tears from exposing their pain. We walk through because we must, because, to paraphrase the sublime Robert Frost: “We have miles to go before we sleep”. Because this is what we do, take our new hopes, new visions, wrap them in the pillows of new promise, then use those pillows to cover our ears, so that we can hear only the voice of the dream gods, whose tongues speak in tones of silver lightning, and whose lisps crack like peals of thunder. Sometimes it seems as if a ‘beat-down’ is all I’ve come for, to be constantly at the whipping boy’s post, at the ready to receive my slap, my rebuke. For as long as my spirit is willing we will take our bruises and use them to tune our guitar strings. We will take the games, untwist them and turn them into songs.
We will work with what we are given. We will take what the defense gives us and run the plays we were given to run and make what adjustments we may on the way to our goal. Our goal, simply stated, was to help take the veil of suffocation from the music, the sweet music which gave birth to my existence, my true mother spirit. It was to do all that I could to help free the music from the chains she’d become bound in, from the rules and politics and ‘profiling’ which had come to defile her. It were to help free God’s Angels from the tyranny of a brutal consciousness which toyed with her spirit as a pimp a prostitute does. It were to help to kick the thieves out of the temple of music, who had come to believe that music and it’s collectables belonged to them, as if they, and not the spirit of God, created it. I knew an ass whipping, and for a long while, I would have to take. I knew that as much as could be, I would be ‘duplicated’ and my ‘image’ and ‘demographic’ carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey and parcelled out to other producers, then I’d be KGB’d out of the picture, history wise. Yet, I also knew my calling and would no sooner ignore it’s voice than ignore my own breathing. My faith is long and we also know that the spirit of the music, a child of God’s, will bless and keep those who serve her with sincerity and stealth. She never ever forgets her debts to those who care. She found for my service, 2 capable young warriors who care, NIK TACCORI and ENEA BARDI. They were dubbed the NUDGE NUDGE as it were an inside joke sort of matter, what with myself and Taccori both being March 15th born and Enea’s mother also. We have met opposition (as you would when you are dreaming in Babylon’s fabric), we have also met many enthusiastic, joyful, excited faces who picked up on the new Post Millennium groove, and held on to it like a live wire transfer. We are grateful to them, we are grateful also to our Sound Tech MATTEO SANDRI. We are grateful to our small but loyal staff. We are grateful to our wife and friend (and apologist), Francesca Francone Maitreya. We thank Antonio Baglio at Nautilus Mastering. We finally thank our God, Our friend Shiva, and you for your patience and interest in this portion of my solar journey through the rambles and ravages of space time. We are called by our fate to be both LOVERS AND FIGHTERS. Just as a simple hand can be a cooling caress on the cheek or a cold stunning slap in the face, to arouse, to awaken , to reduce the collected swill.
WHO CANNOT LOVE, CANNOT FIGHT (and who will not fight, will never know the depths of love)!

These recordings were taken from some ‘shows’ we did over the summer. This is a completely organic musical offering, all notes, all tones are exactly as they were played, live and in the moment. Nothing at all was fixed, if it sucked too bad, we just left it off the recording. This is music without a condom or a safety net, just like my hero’s used to do it before we all became pussies and started putting everything on tape. A note for note reproduction of a record, live, leaves no room at all for visitations by the Holy Spirit, the secret ‘unsung’ ingredient behind all great concerts and performances, whatever name we give it. If the spirit is present, the ‘notes’ are less important. The notes themselves only being there to arouse the spirit from the woven basket as the snake charmer uses his movements and notes to move the mighty Cobra to a more attentive state of mind. In any event, I do not claim to be the world’s greatest musician. I am it’s most grateful. We have come this far by faith!

Guitar notes for guitar heads (who are legion).

I can recall during the summer of ’69, while the world was abuzz with the Apollo moon landings, my great uncle, a pastor of a small church in New Smyrna Beach Florida, Uncle Howard, gave me a big old acoustic guitar. I was 7 years old and had been playing the keyboards (which we had in our home, an organ) and the drums. With excitement I began playing the guitar though my frustration grew that it was too big for such a small child, such as I was at the time. Eventually, I gave it back to my uncle ‘to hold for me until I got bigger’. I was 25 before resuming the lessons and experience of the instrument, by which time my hands as well as bank balance had grown. I were informed by a ‘guitar roadie’ (now called ‘guitar techs’, insolent bastards) that it were best I focus on the ‘right hand’ as he told me, ‘Any monkey can develop a fast or busy left hand, your ‘tone’ is in your right or ‘rhythm’ hand. This made sense to me as I didn’t wish to become another Hendrix, but a capable rhythm guitar player, like my hero’s Masters George Harrison, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Nile Rodgers (my Uncle Howard was a Rodgers), Prince, Neil Young, Jimmy Nolan of James Brown notoriety, Jimmy Page and the great Slash. I also aimed to find my own ‘voice’ on the instrument and not be another mimic. Growing up, no one tried to make me emphasize myself more as a singer. Where I grew up, music was music and you did what you could, you learned from everything and everywhere. If someone else was already playing the drums, I played the piano, were someone else on the piano, I filled in where there was space, and made what joyful noise I could. Only later in the music business did I began to hear noises of annoyance because I would not submit my musicality to bullying and reduction. I as constantly being told that I was ‘just a singer’. I would state that I was not ‘just’ anything, anyway. I would never be ‘just’ something and reduce my commission for the convenience of the lazy and spoiled.
It would be ‘counter-evolutionary’ and that, I am certain, is not why I am here. As the last of the basic instruments that time sent me with, the guitar has attained a sort of mystical allure that largely explains why it is kept out of our hands, those who labour with this ‘profile’, to regain use of the tools they invented in the first place. To regain the right of choice in one’s presentation. To take the heavy stain of racism off of a wonderful instrument of expression. I have young nieces playing guitar now, that is good news. The white Les Paul was given to me as a gift almost 20 years ago by my old partying buddy Billy Idol, he had his guitar player at the time, a Texan by the name of Mark Richards, send me one straight from the Custom Shop. It has only grown better and more faithful with time, and I thank them for the gift, it has kept on giving. The other, a black Les Paul, I picked up in San Francisco California as I was leaving to go to the airport, after a session we were a part of, which featured the masters Booker T. Jones, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, and Steve Cropper. After a particularly encouraging conversation with Cropper, long an idol, I was inspired to stop at a guitar shop and buy what moved me (but quickly since I had a plane to catch). It were this instrument that jumped out at me. Both have been with me for at least 15 years, the white one for almost 19. Almost every time in the past, if I brought one of these guitars to a photo session, they would all seem to magically disappear from the picture, like the old KGB days, before we all had access to photo shop. I guess some executive was afraid that it would confuse people’s concept of me a ‘just a singer’ (nor has my mind been colonized to the extent that I feel I have to be the best player in the world to justify playing it, haven’t you always wanted to be the guitar player in your own band, do our dreams die because our friends do?). We are more than grateful to have days upon us whereby we may simply express the music which has accompanied our journey since Babylon was birthed. And without all of those cheap and phony obstacles that are constantly threatening to suffocate musicians from being all that they can be. We are instruments of the music itself, and we can follow it wherever we wish. And where her faithful pipers go, the birds of continuance fly as well! No one has to follow my way, but they do have to get out of it.

COPYRIGHT SANANDA MAITREYA 25th SEPT 2008 - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED