Mirrors
What is a Juggalo...I don't know....
“You have lied, they have cried, Now your life has been denied”
-ICP, House of Mirrors
Yeah, as soon as I opened up my big black book to the next page and looked at “Mirrors” I remembered how it was inspired by those words from “House of Mirrors”, paced in a similar cadence to the song when I read it for myself, and it put my brain spinning into all the different ways I found inspiration over the years. Take the last entry into this Substack as example; a simple swing ride at a local fair prompted me to write my first original poem in years. For me, the words I put into this black book were often inspired by music interwoven through the emotions and feelings I was wrapped up in at the time. I see pieces of Insane Clown Posse, Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains; all the music I consumed then and largely continue to until this day. Music is as much about the lyrics as it is the beat for me, perhaps more so…definitely more so. Generally I attach to the words more than the drum, the bass, the lead guitar, or whatever other instruments combine to make the sounds seeping into my ears. Yet I find a calm in the often wordless noise produced by DJ Shadow, a peace in the Jazz channels on SiriusXM I drop into now that my Smithsonian History of Jazz CD collection is scuffed up beyond listenability.
Lyrics nest in my brain, spin around, and become something else. Once it was the words I wrote that comprise this black book, then it became different promo lines that would’ve been effective. Song lyrics as part of a promo aren’t anything new by any stretch of imagination, I had a strong memory of Dusty Rhodes cribbing Eric Clapton’s “After Midnight” for a promo, turned out it was Jim Cornette the entire time, and in no small irony it was in a Ring of Honor promo as well (it was also in search of this promo that I learned J.J. Cale created the song four years before Clapton’s version)! Memory is a funny thing isn’t it?
In my searches I found Dusty quoting Bob Dylan by name in a promo, Eddie Kingston has spoken in interviews on how music inspires the words he delivers, Raven had his share of musical quotations, CM Punk too. I never had much opportunity to turn the musical inspirations I had into promo work, cribbing the Butthole Surfers song “Whatever (I had a dream)” into one for ROH’s Gold Rush DVD release is the only that springs to mind and, quite frankly, I failed miserably in what I was trying to accomplish. Even to this day, several years removed from being on the other side of the camera, lyrics continue to inspire promos in my brain. Spinning “All you know about me is what I’ve sold you” into a verbal diatribe as I sit behind the wheel as if I’m about to put the microphone in my hand.
Inspiration is a funny thing too…
mirror image, pain reflected
once again - true self rejected
you have lied and you have cried
by yourself life’s been denied
mirrored fear, whirling death
speaking words with dying breath
mirror shows what’s trapped within
years of pain worn on your skin
still blind as mice to the proof
yet your eyes scream of the truth
your worst fear still as you grow
reflected is no face you know
but patience isn’t yours to grasp
slipping through your fingers, last
years and years, reflections change
as you wake up to the game