Text and Rock

01/31/2024

🔥🔥🔥

Follow your bliss, and if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. Sage advice on the source of the strife from Campbell and how to stay sunny and the reason culture is remiss...

01/19/2024

Mark and Eric talk about the the engine of an artist, what makes them tick and how they leverage loss for creative gain. They introduce the poem ONLY DREAMER...

12/20/2023

HERODIAN. SPOKEN WORD ON RE-THINKING THE BABY JESUS STORY.Copyright TEXT AND ROCK 2022The stories about Jesus’ birth are the original rage against the machi...

11/16/2023

...POLTICAL ANIMALS...
A Text and Rock poem on the moral cooperation
of the human race... here goes.

Socrates explains to the men of Athens
that a human being is what happens
when an animal is given a soul
and if you know that you are capable
to care for it and grow it to the full
you will King of virtue among the animals—
in moral goodness and self-control—
a new race of …humanimals.

Plato disagrees with his teacher
but always respectfully- he features
humanity by necessity
living together in a city.
He says humanity is a political animal—
we’re birds of a feather who do life together
in a city-state so that our fate
rests upon our ability participate.

One more idea if you’d rather,
Aristotle in turn disagrees with his father
and proffers this idea. He offers
that humans are a reasoning animal—
we are able to think scenarios real and unreal
and ask and test and collect and bask
in the glory of the sciences and techne—
the arts of mastery that come from inquiry.

These are all good notions and each one is a potion
that if you drink of its cup will show you what’s up—
how to be human with a soul we develop,
or with one unified soul achieved politically,
or thinking our way to divinity— all these envelope
a path with sure footing on a deep-space journey.
But only one definition can save humanity
and its the second of the three—

We have to learn life together politically,
not in a sense of left and right
but in the mystic sense of wrong and right.
We are the only animals that talk about justice
and think about how to advance as a team
if we became unified all under a common dream
and each found our purpose and place
in the advancement of the entire human race.

11/05/2023

“I think that philosophy is still rude and elementary. It will one day be taught by poets. The poet is in the natural attitude; he is believing; the philosopher, after some struggle, having only reasons for believing.”

—Emerson

07/19/2023

06/02/2023

New podcast cover… on an appropriately lazy day 🔥

04/14/2023

Mark and Eric discuss the need to invest in your soul. They talk about the theme of self-care and others care over and against consumption of marketing in the TEXT AND ROCK poem entitled, SPACE THEY CAN'T TOUCH. On the backend we revisit conflict managers from Mark's elementary years. He might have had a lotta chats with them. ...he might have had a lot of conflict.

We love you TEXT AND ROCKERS!

Be good to each other,
Mark Shaffer and Eric Madison

Mark and Eric discuss the need to invest in your soul. They talk about the theme of self-care and others care over and against consumption of marketing in th...

03/19/2023

Hey friends! This is a fun one. I kind of didn’t wanna make it because it was for a poem that we did a few weeks back.  But it turned out to be a really fun and hilarious discussion that I think is surprisingly hopeful.  I hope you love it, and I hope it inspires your own creativity. There is no box, and you’re here to make something in the house of the world…

Mark and Eric drown your sorrows like Atreyu's horse... did you swing at that change up? Ha! They present the thing behind the thing in the TEXT AND ROCK poe...

03/19/2023

I drew this griffin rhyton (basically a sweet beer cup) yesterday. It’s an artifact currently held in the British Museum from the Persian Period, so like 586–330s BCE. Somewhere in that zone. I’m not the best, sketch artist, but it’s about slowing down my mind, and focusing deeply for an hour. I don’t know about you, but everything seems to move faster and faster the older I get. Whatever the medium, art seems to lessen the pace, and collect my thoughts. I really believe when we are making something beautiful, it’s the closest we get to imitating our father in heaven. Have a great Saturday, Text And Rockers!

02/27/2023

https://youtu.be/fiSHR0CkSBk

Mark and Eric present the spoken word and rhythmic strategy of ISHTAR, and talk about the dangers of unchecked marketing and consumerism in western economics...

02/03/2023

https://youtu.be/eXWLwv53U5g

How lost cities back then could become lost cities now, and how the key to being human is imitating divine care of creation.ATLANTIS.Copyright Text and Rock ...

02/02/2023

https://www.textandrock.com/poetry/interstellar-ethics

Physical properties are everywhere,

in the exploded, expanding universe.

If reality is a multiverse bubble bath

of Einstein’s possible worlds,

at least in our bubble gravity holds power

and time is relative,

and laws of energy are uniform.

I wonder if this holds true for morality,

the sense of right and wrong,

or “should” and “ought to”….

While there might be some cultural variance, if you got past first glance, are ethics interstellar? Laugh all you want, isn’t your Jesus a deep-space rabbi sent from other worldly realms to solve a moral dilemma? By the way, we solved it with God but not one another. Just doing some basic theology...

12/30/2022

https://www.textandrock.com/poetry/on-time-travel

When God invented time, it filled the gaps between gravity and planet, black hole and red dwarf, between astroid fields and Death Star, and reached across the great nothing. And it was relative...

12/28/2022

Why poetry happens when prose is broken to paint a better House of the World.OUT COME THE POETS.Copyright Text and Rock 2022Out come the poets because prose...

12/27/2022

Why ethical Christianity is best summarized by love of God and love people and not so concerned with magic or theology.REFLECTIVE MESSIAH.Copyright Text and ...

12/15/2022

Out come the poets because your pride is broken…

12/10/2022

https://youtu.be/mLhTairsalw&autoplay=1

How I might sign up to leave western culture if only I could.HUGE FAN OF SPACE.copyright Text and Rock 2022I’ve always been a huge fan of space— both persona...