Buddy Wakefield - Free Air lyrics

If I really was created in God's image Then when God was a boy he wanted to grow up to be a man A good man And when god was a man, a good man He started telling the truth in order to get honest responses He'd say something like, "Dear Ted," My town sure is cute Like a bumper sticker Like "God Bless America" bumper stickers Judging by our excessive luxuries, those stickers really work Now if we can just get God to bless the whole world Alix Olsen's bumper sticker reads "I LOVE MY COUNTRY, I JUST THINK WE SHOULD START SEEING OTHER PEOPLE" But my town doesn't see other people y'all We're just too cute Like the difference between what we say and what we do Like the fact that violence in any form Is sanctioned by the government as criminal or insane Unless they're the ones who commit it My town is cute in the way we worry about the gays Messin' up our family values and the sanctity of marriage Yet we still let our children watch television shows like Wife Swap The Bachelor Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire American IDOLatry and Fox News My town is so cute that - check this out y'all One time, once, over eleven years ago There were some brown people (boogity boogity) They attacked two of our tallest buildings and k**ed a boatload of our innocent citizens Kinda like we did remember in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador, Tanzania, Mozambique, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Hiroshima, Philippines, Kosovo, Bolivia, Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Dresden, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, Indonesia, East Timor, Cambodia, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq And my cute town pretends we never saw it or had it coming So in a perpetual attempt to save cute face We've waged a war on terror About effective as the war on d** Yes, this is a true story The first time My Town saw the sky it s**er punched us in the throat Left us breathless, so breathless Goodness gracious Well, well, welcome What an exciting honor it is to be here at TED My name is Buddy Wakefield I'm a spoken word poet I know, I too was hoping for Malcolm Gladwell Or Eckart Tolle Love those guys Been reading Eckart Tolle's "The Power of Now" for four years On page 73 I keep getting lost in the moment Dear TED Thank you for inviting me to share an idea that will change the world I accept your super intimidating invitation And will now speak with this room full of innovative geniuses and renowned fancy-pants about my awesome idea Which is not actually mine But will in fact change the world The idea is: air Everybody, take a deep breath through your nose and into your whole body: go Good, do it again Ok now y'all continue doing that Forever You're gonna need it The idea is to stay present It offers an absolute reprieve from suffering Pay attention to the incoming breath and the outgoing breath Without judgement Inhale The idea is to master our mind through the practice of observing respiration equanimously TED, this, this air that we share This is our priority Not our backdrop Drop your guard The idea is to make it easy To turn on the light To establish ourselves In a universal, measurable Tested and proven technique For coming out of suffering at the root level The technique is called Vipa**ana V-I-P-A-S-S-A-N-A Vipa**ana is a poly word It means "to see clearly" To see things as they are To observe reality as it is, not as you would like it to be So, it is first important that you see Vipa**ana exactly for what it is It's a word It's a word that represents clear, experiential insight into this moment - as is For those of you who may fear change or unusual foreign names Please take note: Vipa**ana is a technique, not a terrorist It does not represent a religion, cult, blind faith, rite, ritual or any other spiritual red flag foreign names may cause in the warring story boards of your superior mind brains Vipa**ana is work The right kind of effort It's a self-observation operation Where mindfulness of breath Leads to clearly observing and understanding the sensations that make up our personal biology It's a practical, reasonable tool that must be experienced Not just rationalized The idea is to incorporate vipa**ana into our daily lives To free our breath from the compounding stress overriding us The idea is to stop holding on with your neck so tight To let your head climb back down through your throat and into your body So you can see just how good you look when you're not compared to anything Dear TED, pretend inside your skin you've got a friend Who's willing to give you everything you've ever wanted In exchange for all you've ever been Because you do The idea is that I am here today representing air It's kind of a big deal, guys And I don't wanna mess it up so you better not freak me out Utah I promised myself that if I freak out I'd have to start breakdancing And I don't even know how to breakdance so we have got to get this right Yes Vipa**ana is a form of mediation But don't worry, this isn't going to turn into "hippie talk with baldie" I'm not gonna try to levitate incense cones or go whipping crystals around the room with my root chakra Don't you dare let something as subjective as a cliche word like meditation rip you off from sustainable joy We're better than that Vipa**ana meditation is just an uncomplicated Moral answer For eradicating suffering At the root level of the mind Consciously, give attention to your respiration And your sensations, without arbitration If your mind wanders off, calmly bring it back Every single time Start again: go I know, the answer seems way too easy Good, then turn off your miserable inner critic and finally start practicing The continuity of practice is the secret to success Just ask Malcolm Gladwell I'm only a few years into this practice of staying present This practice of not reacting to the distractions of the past and the future The cravings and aversions that have been controlling my mind since I was a child So I am fully aware you can still smell the bottom of the barrel in my family blood some days And that the anger still leaks from the lines in my face Usually in the morning But I am also quite certain Coming from the hard dark handed to me Right at the start How utterly, indisputibly vipa**ana has comprehensively nourished and given life To my health, my strength, my compa**ion My clarity, my concentration My awareness And a thorough understanding of impermanence Yes There is still a whole lot of room for me to grow In patience, in kindness, indeed And I am still releasing what's left of a very compelling need to be right But there's not enough time in this talk today for us to compare hardships Or the gold medals you and I both won in the decathlon of dysfunction Listen y'all Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past Reverend Kathy N. Lewis said so She also said forgiveness is for anyone who needs safe pa**age through our minds Dear TED: Let's let each other safely pa** Let's own ourselves completely Tell me what it is you want me to own And I will take it Damaged goods? You bet. Hit or miss? No doubt about it Misses important social cues? Occa**ionally I'm dirty underneath the light I'm pale on the backside of my bright And I feel a little bit stupid about learning a language Whenever I experience God Cause that guy...so fast My best friend can speak six languages I still get pretty excited English took hold Sometimes I don't feel like I'm doing my part on this planet Sometimes I read without paying attention Hoping everything will sort of sink in so that if I ever need the answers Like on a test, my subconscious will somehow pull through for me I talk too much If you see me being quiet, don't ask me what's wrong I'm just practicing I often wonder if anyone died because of the pencil I handed to a prisoner at San Quentin State Penitentiary He stuck it in his pocket The point is...you're sharp There are things wrong with us There are things wrong with me But I do have the ability to split epiphanies with my face on demand Hold me like a birthmark Awkward if you have to I wander, so if you lose me, don't worry After the big tsunami The only structure still standing in the wiped-out village of Malacca Was a statue of Mahatma Gandhi I want to be able to stand like that Even after getting gargled and spanked and spit out by God I want to know that I do not have to fall Every time the sky opens up like a coin return To change me into little lines on maps Drawing circles around my blood Constantly showing scars here in the shape of Gandhi On my planet To show that I've been here before And tonight is not the last time we will see the light Dear TED History is repeating itself in record time y'all And we have got to stop acting like nothing's happening Right here, right now With you, at the breath y'all This, this is my church And if church is a house of healing Halleluja Welcome, come on in As you are, exactly as you are Have a look around Stay out of my p**n There are ma**ive stacks of bad choices in my backyard Clearly, i have not yet reached enlightenment beyond a few fleeting moments It's all I've got so take it It's called Free Air It's a practice, not a product A process, not an event And to give the best of the goods to the kids Like an understanding that taking time for personal peace is not a waste of time Y'all there must be one way to experience Daily As a part of our public education Since children belonging to different religions study together Thank goodness Like say...breathing air Listen I'm not suggesting we integrate more opportunities to see clearly I'm saying we have to We now have access to all the evidence A trajectory of misery at this point It seems intentional We are no longer unaware toddlers on the landscape of consciousness It is no longer cute to crap ourselves Dear TED I am standing like shoe polish on an overstocked shelf Hoping that one day, today someone will pick me to make things better This is not a showdown or a shootout, we are not facing off But I can feel the rumble between dusk and dawn As if the chance to come clean with myself will be outlawed unless I relax I have heard, that if you pull a bent breath Through the second hole of a harmonica Tuned to the key of Georgia While a train moves by on the tail end of dusk There is a good chance you will finally know what it means to rest We, we have not yet rested It takes a long time to make love with someone who hates themselves