By Kevin Alan Lamb

With flowers in her hair no timid man would dare to steal a kiss, on lips that remind that love will never be lost, only missed. Spring is the time for flowers — life is in the air, it is in our blood, in our eccentric celebrations — stare if you must. We run wild and playful as we dance from the streets to the grassy fields and the Electric Forest.

We celebrate our love of music and each other while the moment is before us. Dreams lived while fools throw their wishes down a well. Song and dance is the perfect trance-like concoction. Our happiness and joy the cleanest intoxication. You will never take us from the music we love — we are addicts — to the perfect drug. It gives far more than it takes; unites us around the world and in a single place. The head and the heart – the best part of being so imperfectly human no matter how far we stray from the smiles on our faces, like home- there are places within ourselves we must always return while some must learn more about the way we feel, the way we love, and the healing power of a hug.

Some find the music we love with people we love and we laugh at the world and the trivial problems that we let bring us down.We scream lyrics that have carried us through the thick and the thin, the real shit of it all. We dance wild into sweat and exhaustion and we do it together because each other is all we really have in any of this.

Everything will return to the earth but our memories are everlasting, they will live on in the world around us, in the people we love and even some we barely know. Because that’s what living is — and we live hard, with our hearts, with our care, with our conscience and with an understanding that all life is precious and freedom should not be a commodity – even though it is. So to free others we must come together and form a community of the world – the United Fucking Planet! One love. And we must keep living hard together. Better together. Jack Johnson is a righteous man. Most people listen to that song and think it’s about a man and a woman, a romance, a relationship… not me. I prefer to believe it’s about mankind. Our species.

Happiness is best shared so we sing, we dance, we bleed, and we rejoice together because we are healing the world the best we can: The best we know how. We’re not waiting for a bill to be passed, or salvation to be showered from above. It all starts with us! And why not? Wouldn’t you rather control your destiny? With your own two hands.

We go to school, read books, write papers, get jobs, maybe start a family, then what?

I insist on more! Let us inspire radical change one hug at a time. Fear is our enemy. The darkness is fueled by fear, but love will prevail if an army in the form of an uprising for all that is good… all that is fair assembles and refuses to be defeated!

It starts with choice – choice and commitment. Though difficult–seemingly impossible for some– there is no mountain unclimbed with choice and commitment. Have you ever believed in something so much that it hurt? Believed in something enough to know nothing else really mattered without it? Our lives are filled with relative truths, needs and circumstance. The more we conform, the less we live, the deeper we bury ourselves in our trivial relative circumstances.

So we must live hard! With the people we love. Whether that is in Michigan or Hawaii is irrelevant. Life is to be lived both near and far and love to be given here and there. We must celebrate without compromising the well-being of others. We must live and lead by example and change each other if we have any hope in changing the world. It must start with ourselves: with me; with you; with the entitled; with the entitled; with the wealthy and with the poor.

There is no escaping our divine need for positive growth! I was cognisant of my use of growth over change. The notion of change is smeared with politics; with hate; with fear; ignorance and apathy. So we must grow; and growth must occur within before we let it out.

We will grow together if we help each other get better. We are in dire need of healing. We are a depressed, lonely, and vengeful people. By no means is it all we are; and by no means does it define us; but darkness is among us and if it’s in one of us it is within all of us.

Another excerpt from “Just Living on Caffeine, Dreams and Love.“

__________________________________________________________________

@ShaggyLamb

The Haven Sanitarium: Mystery, Murder, Movie Stars

Just Living on Caffeine, Dreams and Love

We’re not famous but we will be soon

Vision Amidst Pouring Rain

Good Signs

This Is A Good Sign

Eric Hampton Photography