Joseph Arthur speaks this truth. His truth. My truth. It takes all the energy, focus and inspiration I can muster to get something – anything done. The simplest task as observed and evaluated from the hole in which my ass is stuck appears absolutely insurmountable. For a moment. Until I snap out of it. Like Joseph did when he created his 2002 masterpiece, Redemption's Son.

"I don't know where we've been/can you tell me once again."

Nick Ippolito in Las Vegas is the reason I'm able to uncripple my digits long enough to do what I forgot I did so well but have been too lazy to do recently with any consistency and devotion – that is, write about the music. A consummate musicologist and one of the most genuine and confident souls I've ever known, my Jersey born brother discovered a record he was none to familiar with. And he flipped out, from its power, beauty, genius, Synchronicity, heart and soul.

"Fearful eyes don't see very far." Inner voice is always chattering directions, few of which I follow. Been thinking I was seriously ill in the head, that what those UCLA Neuropsychic suits said to me last spring was true. "You have several markers for Manic Depression." That line is in quotes, but it's no song lyric. These highly paid professionals with their plaques and protocol cannot muster one tenth the authentic insight, wisdom and sanity that Joseph Arthur can. It's what Miller pointed out and it is a philosophy I embrace with absolute reverence: When we reach the End Times, only the artists can save us.

"I've been so happy being unhappy with you.
But I've just had a revelation/my heart's been dying of starvation
And I need somebody who will feed me/Salvation only comes when you fall."

In the light. A two plus minute shot of spiritual adrenaline that lifts me off the ground every time I hear it. "In the night/Voices of fire/Voices of the shadows and the runaways running from love." My most sincere fascination right now is where does that come from? I mean, what was the process that took the hook, the melody, the lyric and the performance out of the ether and into the unified field of the musician with the six string? The digital age has a couple serious drawbacks for us aliens groomed in the 60s and 70s. The album was a complete piece of art, aural, visual. I held the White Album in my 11-year-old hands like the Torah. A few years later, I clutched the Lamb Dies Down on Broadway with the same protective wonder. Front to back, jack, the LP took no slack. CD age reduced the impact, minimized the wonder. You had to really deliver the goods to ignite the molecules via the compact disc. Redemption's Son takes no shortcuts, rides no wave and wastes no grooves. It is a masterpiece. I've seen the Mona Lisa. She's petite. Like two feet by three feet. That's it. But boy does that girl deliver.

I am taken aback daily by music programming, however well intentioned, that features conversations between journalists (media personalities) and artists that never get beyond the superficial. This is often the case when the artist is trying to sell new product and that's the prime reason for his or her media attention. Like listening to Nick Harcourt's pedestrian interviews on KCRW's venerable Morning Becomes Eclectic. I will give Nick props for a more than decent dialogue with Yusef Islam, otherwise known as the minstrel poet, Cat Stevens.

I get lost so easily in this space. Stay on theme, nutty professor. Writing has long been a metaphor for my life. Moments of chaos, moments of clarity, fear and love in constant, Tolkein-esque battle, fairy tale real. Redemption's Son reminds me of Beck's Sea Change, the disc that accompanied me to the desert in the fall of '03 when absolutely everything fell apart. That and Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head and Dave Matthews Some Devil. Each deserves proper poetic examination but I can't go on forever here. I'm really working on my issues. 22 minutes prosperity chant first thing in the am followed by the Juiceman, the green concoction created by the angel Carrie during the Blue Man chapter. And letting go of the past while holding ever so close the lessons and the love.

Judy Applegate sent me a note from Big Sur on New Year's Eve. We made that journey. Often do we return to special places with new partners. It's exhilarating. It means your time there was significant. She had two kidneys when we peered through the wooden fence protecting the tree-covered front yard of the Henry Miller Library on Highway 1. Judy taught me about puzzle pieces and circles, the peace of the aquarium and the miracle of water. Most of all, she educated me on altruism, removing an organ so a loved one may live a few, pain-free years longer.

And what of the heartache, channeled by Joseph to all the lovers of the world within the sound of his gentle, ethereal, melancholy chords? John Lees of the angelic seventies torch bearers, Barclay James Harvest, once sang, "You know for every feeling there's a song." And love possesses so many feelings, sensations, vibrations, and machinations.

"Try to find me in a world's that gone away."

Adam loved Eve. How much? Look at us. Where we are.

"Home is somewhere I'm missing when you look around/Find a way out."

"Hell has no reason to smile/When you're living in an innocent world."

I am becoming a broken record, a scratched vinyl caricature like one of those Chatty Cathy dolls. Pull the string and listen. "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up." It's a call to action for all beings without and for this being within. I was flying directly over Iowa returning from New York on January 3rd watching Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on Jet Blue's Direct TV when the Obama miracle was proclaimed "official."

"With this world gone to hell/And my freedom locked away in jail/Lord's it's getting hard to tell if you're there at all/Is there a chance to be redeemed? /Is there another night to dream?"

Of course there is, Joseph. I changed the quote on my My Space profile page for the first time since launch almost two years ago. From 'Turn off the news/find the muse," the title belonging to an unpublished essay I wrote just before we marched blindly into the oblivion called Iraq – to a line that dropped off my fingers about a week ago with Arthur-esque ease, "When the dreamers out number the schemers, mankind will be cool." But hey, what do I know? I'm the guy who can close his eyes and see Obama in the same room with Osama – each man extending their hand.

"I think the sun is shining on me/I can feel it/God's eyes are looking down onto me/I will reveal it/Come on to my place and then let's embrace and then let's replace our fear with our faith."