BTW I have a Waffle House frequent diner’s card, but don’t care to sit at the counter either, for reason already cited.

Here comes god, rearing his ugly head.

I place art in cahoots with beauty, but I have no faith whatsoever in the divine, because there is no divinity to speak of.

The recent hurricane has left our little corner of redneck heaven with some real gems of sign outages. Unfortunately I am way too stupid to remember any of them at the moment.

Loved “Waffle Ho se” though.

I am relatively glad you are honest in your posts (at least up to the modesty bit). You shouldn’t apologize to anyone up front. Your beliefs (however bizarre I find them to be) are still yours. The Unspeakable will never tear down the throne of religion for you or anyone else. Too bad though… Love to be there to “witness” that.

Music is relevant everywhere and to everyone whether they enjoy it passively or not. I can’t imagine how much worse the planet would be if music wasn’t a part of many religious practices.
Its no secret to everyone that I abhor organized religions and all that he does to us.

Since you opened the door, I will also say that I am not impressed with the Baha’i faith- because to me, it has its foundation in the same place as all other religions- and appears to be just one more group of people saying, “This way is better for everyone. and if you disagree, then enjoy being shunned and exiled.” How many times have I seen the frosty-eyed believer smile and pat my hand because I am just a poor “unbeliever”? Too many times, because you are everywhere. And let’s be clear here. It isn’t unpopular to say you have a faith in this world, its unpopular to say that you don’t.

People in general are flawed when alone and when in congregation. I don’t claim to have anything special going on. I have participated in many religious experiences across different cultures and belief systems… I think that if anything can get us closer to the “Divine”, then it IS music… I just don’t expect to see a big wizard open a trap door when I get to the top and slap me on the back for getting there the “right way”.. especially as a woman. And I don’t think its particularly encouraging to see millions of painted red wagons- thundering loud like calliopes on a march to save the world- where recognition is more important than progress.

Thanks for giving me something to think about while I was at work today.

I love the idea of some crazy waffle house cult somewhere with a stockpile of letters in a barn and a militia to protect them.

I love me some waffle house, and in a lot of them you can still smoke inside. Ah, the simple pleasures.

Creating a song is not really an earthly process. It’s not just a form of expression. It’s creation – of something from virtually nothing; demonstrating (perhaps) free will and (hopefully) the power of imagination. What is that feeling you get when you hear a new song that just wows you? The universe getting smaller, or maybe larger – whichever but it’s pulled you in.

I don’t buy the concerns of “too much self” which is pretty much a universal topic of debate in religious music (be it Muslim, Christian, Baha’i…). I wouldn’t concern myself with that at all. Selfishness is not such a bad thing (like most things in moderation). In performance, the more self you bring into music the more likely others will respond to it. More important is whether or not the performance has any soul; and what one does with the “star” role. This may be just another way of wording what you’re expressing.

This topic isn’t as unpopular as you might think nor unfitting for this site. I liked this post. Of course any discussion of religion lends itself to debate so you have to be prepared for that.

Tricia and I used to road trip a lot and for a while we stopped at Waffle Houses. You get to see your food prepared if you sit at the counter which turns out to be a bad thing. After one too many disgusting behind the counter observations we stopped stopping at the aff e Ho s .

reminds me that what we think we know so well, we may not know at all and that always gets me in a grabby kind of way as well as when I inevitably fall into the trap of thinking I’ve got something down that I think is ’so simple.’

the only ladder you could provide, I would think, is the ladder you use. And maybe others can use it too, but they may not. Roberto’s comment seems appropriate too.

i don’t like waffles.

The theory we came up with to explain it was that somebody was going around swiping a letter from each one so they could start their own rogue Waffle House somewhere else using the stolen letters.

Ah, long drives with nothing else to do…

As for writing music with the purpose of “providing a ladder”, that seems like a very difficult goal. I would say that the best chance at being able to do that is by being part of the congregation you are writing for and knowing the people in the congregation and having them be a part of process in some way.

We see a show? did you stop and play one of the WH songs on the jukebox and the waitresses started dancing like in some musical?