Elevator Music Quotes

Different elevator music was playing since my last visit-that old disco song "Stayin' Alive." A terrifying image flashed through my mind of Apollo in bell-bottom pants and a slinky silk shirt.

Annabeth’s shoulders ached. The elevator’s easy-listening music didn’t help. If all monsters had to hear that song about liking piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, no wonder they were in the mood for carnage when they reached the mortal world.

Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse.

They [Percy and Annabeth] held the Doors shut as the elevator shuddered and the music played, while somewhere below them, a Titan and a giant sacrificed their lives for their escape.

Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro.

Art feeds my soul. Great books battleproof my hope. Rich conversations magnify my creativity. Wonderful music uplifts my heart. Beautiful sights fortify my spirit.

It was a kind of sado-masochism. I would take the things that were painful to me and elevate them and, through the mantra of music, make them into a release.

Music can elevate man to new heights. Especially elevator music.

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

Together we made our way down to the street level. Neither of us said a word. The music was awful--Neil Diamond or something. I should've made that part of my gift form the gods: better elevator tunes.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

Literature today is like elevator music for a narcoleptic.

Music is fluid, and sometimes I fill up my saxophone to the point where it overflows. Of course, sometimes my ducks splash and slosh it all over my shoes, but the other passengers in the elevator never seem to mind.

The novel’s not dead, it’s not even seriously injured, but I do think we’re working in the margins, working in the shadows of the novel’s greatness and influence. There’s plenty of impressive talent around, and there’s strong evidence that younger writers are moving into history, finding broader themes. But when we talk about the novel we have to consider the culture in which it operates. Everything in the culture argues against the novel, particularly the novel that tries to be equal to the complexities and excesses of the culture. This is why books such as JR and Harlot’s Ghost and Gravity’s Rainbow and The Public Burning are important—to name just four. They offer many pleasures without making concessions to the middle-range reader, and they absorb and incorporate the culture instead of catering to it. And there’s the work of Robert Stone and Joan Didion, who are both writers of conscience and painstaking workers of the sentence and paragraph. I don’t want to list names because lists are a form of cultural hysteria, but I have to mention Blood Meridian for its beauty and its honor. These books and writers show us that the novel is still spacious enough and brave enough to encompass enormous areas of experience. We have a rich literature. But sometimes it’s a literature too ready to be neutralized, to be incorporated into the ambient noise. This is why we need the writer in opposition, the novelist who writes against power, who writes against the corporation or the state or the whole apparatus of assimilation. We’re all one beat away from becoming elevator music.

I'd fight a gang of wolves if they attacked my ducks. Like Mozart, you can call me Wolfgang.

I've always thought you can judge the quality of a villain by his elevator music. Smooth jazz? Devious villainy with an inferiority complex. Pop hits? Ageing villainy trying desperately to be hip. Nero had chosen soft classical, as in the lobby. Oh, well played. this was self-assured villainy. Villainy that said I already own everything and have all the power. Relax. You're going to die in a minute, so you might as well enjoy this soothing string quartet.

Over time, ink fades like a duck quack in the wind. I have a baseball signed by Babe Ruth, but his autograph has gone invisible. That’s why it’s now ON SALE for ONLY $19.95.

What are words worth if you write like Wordsworth? Not as much as a man named Wordsandpicturesworth. That's so long, so I'd just call him Memesworth, and I'd use him to help me sell ducks.

I'd underestimated him. I assumed anyone who started out gut-punching you in an elevator couldn't have all that much else in his arsenal. For instance, I had no idea he could smile, let alone at such an inappropriate time.

Some people shape wind with their mouths, and it sounds like words, but there’s no mind behind them. Even an echo can speak without thinking, and if a canyon repeats the word quack, that doesn’t mean it can communicate like a duck.

Growing up, I was always filled with DoNotDisturbery, and I dance like a Slippery When Wet sign with legs. The jerky motion might remind you of a Pekin duck in flight.

It should be illegal to condense xylophone music and sell it in a can as imitation duck broth, but it isn’t, and so I do. One for $20, or 19 for ONLY $19.95!

You don't need a vacation. You just need to dig a pond on your land and buy some ducks, and then you can enjoy moments of escapism without ever leaving your property.

God has given us music so that firstly we are lead towards higher things. Music combines all characteristics in it. It can elevate, it can tease, it can cheer us up, yes, it can even break the most brazen temperament with its tender and yearning sounds. However, its main aim is to direct our thinking towards higher things, to elevate and even deeply disturb us…

Rob Thomas has two first names for a first and last name, and his name spells out a short sentence: Rob Thomas. Rob Thomas of what, his doubt? That Biblical ambiguity is what inspired me to name three of my ducks after him: Rob, Thomas, and Rob Thomas.

When slightly open, a door is ajar, but when slightly open, is a jar adoor? That reminds me: Ducks have no hands, so you'll probably need to unscrew the jelly lid before you feed them their favorite grape format.

As early as 1930 Schoenberg wrote: "Radio is an enemy, a ruthless enemy marching irresistibly forward, and any resistance is hopeless"; it "force-feeds us music . . . regardless of whether we want to hear it, or whether we can grasp it," with the result that music becomes just noise, a noise among other noises. Radio was the tiny stream it all began with. Then came other technical means for reproducing, proliferating, amplifying sound, and the stream became an enormous river. If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, "regardless whether we want to hear it," it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaurants, in elevators, in the streets, in waiting rooms, in gyms, in the earpieces of Walkmans, music rewritten, reorchestrated, abridged, and stretched out, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, a flood of everything jumbled together so that we don't know who composed it (music become noise is anonymous), so that we can't tell beginning from end (music become noise has no form): sewage-water music in which music is dying.

Geese are terrorists. But ducks, ducks are the heroes of the bird world.

There's not much money to be made in duck farming. That's OK, because The Whisper Factory is now hiring! Report your grandma for suspicious behavior and get PAID!

Liquid xylophone music with a hint of saxophone is too exotic to drink. But it's perfect for swimming ducks, and that sound really comes across in the taste later.

People pay top dollar to eat my duck eggs. I wish they also paid bottom dollar, plus all the ones in the middle, because honestly, what am I gonna do with a dollar?

Kevin Bacon has a name made for breakfast, and no one knows this better than Johnny Scrambledduckeggs. Ask me how to get FREE coffee in the morning after 3:33 PM.

The dandelion gives all of its future to ride on the wind for one beautiful moment. I'll bet my flightless Pekin ducks would trade their life away to become one with the breeze.

When I make duck soup, I add an extra pinch of Simply Red’s hit song “Holding Back The Years.” It makes a better emulsifier than peeled carrots.

I partly base my financial decisions on the annual migratory patterns of Bigfoot, because maps are the new charts, as taught by the esteemed Ponce de Leon School of Beauty, Youth, Wealth, and Duck Farming, but what do you say to a man who wants to be his own cartographer?

The reason I write music with one note occurring every 24 hours is that slow dancing is a lost art, and I'm trying to bring it back at an almost inaudible pace. Listen like a duck swims or you'll miss the best part of the song.

Both a rose and a cactus have thorns, and while the rose may say, "I love you," the cactus says, "Fuck off." I think that's important to remember, and it's the ideal way to farm ducks.

A stranger asked where I'm from, and I said I was from Jacksonville. His brow furrowed and he said he didn’t remember me. I thought to myself, “Oh, no! Have I just been caught editing myself out of his memory?" So, I grabbed the Duffel bag full of ducks and ran out of the room.

If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, "regardless whether we want to hear it", it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaurants, in elevators, in the streets, in waiting rooms, in gyms, in the earpieces of Walkmans, music rewritten, reorchestrated, abridged, and stretched out, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, a flood of everything jumbled together so that we don't know who composed it (music become noise is anonymous), so that we can't tell beginning from end (music become noise has no form): sewage-water music in which music is dying.

Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro.

I make music for whales, dolphins, ducks, and deaf people. Using only sign language and silence, my songs are meant to swim in your ears using the same power that allows the moon to create the tides.

I like the circus, because they make a business out of being a clown show. But I hate The Chamber of Commerce, because they make a clown show out of business. In between those two extremes is my duck farm.

Race scholars use the term white supremacy to describe a sociopolitical economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefits those defined and perceived as white. This system of structural power privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017: - Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world) - US Congress: 90 percent white - US governors: 96 percent white - Top military advisers: 100 percent white - President and vice president: 100 percent white - US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white - Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white - People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white - People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white - People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white - People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white - People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white - Teachers: 82 percent white - Full-time college professors: 84 percent white - Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white These numbers are not describing minor organizations. Nor are these institutions special-interest groups. The groups listed above are the most powerful in the country. These numbers are not a matter of “good people” versus “bad people.” They represent power and control by a racial group that is in the position to disseminate and protect its own self-image, worldview, and interests across the entire society.

I'm wearing my Midnight Black Dancing Shoes. They are shaped like vintage locomotives, and I move like the memory of Branson in 1991—which fluctuates by minutes every day, just like the scene at my duck farm.

Music is so archaic. Why do we still listen to songs through our ears? Why can't music come in liquid format, and be mixed in with my morning coffee that I love to drink when I first wake up at 3:33 PM? Also consider the ducks. Wouldn't they love to swim in music?

I make music one note at a time, just like Mozart did. Tomorrow night you’ll get to hear the second note in my masterpiece symphony. If you could take the clicking noises that a whale makes, merge them with ducks quacking, and convert them to digital wavelengths, that's the vibe.

Music is one of the most efficient mood elevators we have. People in nursing homes, whether ambulatory or even bedridden, whether lucid or not, would be provided with great pleasure by your playing. Maybe they could even dream, return to the best times in their lives, when they were loved.

When jerks ask me, “Hey asshole, what’s your deal?” I say, “Buy One Duck, Get One FREE.” But then I inform them that I’m out of stock, and they can only get Buy One, Get None.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I’m a moron. Fool me three or more times consecutively, and I’m a VOTER. Not even ducks are that dumb.

When not duck farming, I'm busy being mysterious. I'm like The Hardy Boys. Both of them. That's why I exclusively shop Buy One, Get One FREE.

Why is it called a flight of stairs? It should be called The Pekin Duck of stairs, because it's the kind of flying that's composed entirely of walking.

Not every musician should be obligated to reassure us that we are not zombies.

My laboratory is like a church because it is where I figure out what I believe. The machines drone a gathering hymn as I enter. I know whom I’ll probably see, and I know how they’ll probably act. I know there’ll be silence; I know there’ll be music, a time to greet my friends, and a time to leave others to their contemplation. There are rituals that I follow, some I understand and some I don’t. Elevated to my best self, I strive to do each task correctly. My lab is a place to go on sacred days, as is a church. On holidays, when the rest of the world is closed, my lab is open. My lab is a refuge and an asylum. It is my retreat from the professional battlefield; it is the place where I coolly examine my wounds and repair my armor. And, just like church, because I grew up in it, it is not something from which I can ever really walk away. My

Sometimes my kitchen sink doubles as a duck pond. Problem is, I can't exactly move my diving board, so I have to relocate Greg Louganis Hour to another slot, like one on the toaster.

Water-flavored lollipops that flow upwards on a stick, that’s what cats want. I would make that, but I’m too busy making duck soup that’s so advanced I got the formula from the year 2244.

When something is thrown at someone, why do people shout, "Duck!"? I'll tell you why. It's because SwimmingFlying Birds are the world's greatest dodgeball players, and their name is synonymous with the quick athletic reflex needed to avoid getting hit.

In all seriousness, Archer claims that if you, as a living, alive person, hear the song "You're the One That I Want" from the musical Grease three times in a single day - seemingly by accident, whether in an elevator, on a radio, a telephone hold button, or whatever - it indicates that you'll surely die before sunset.

In music, there is no bondage. Music is a door, and the soul escapes through the melody. Even if it’s only for a few minutes. And everyone who listens is freed. Everyone who listens is elevated.

Time flies, it's true. But what kind of wings does it have, butterfly wings, bat wings, or eagle wings? None. It has the wings of a duck, which is why I'm surprised nobody in history has noticed that time also swims.

How does one say in the jargon of musicology that my sould was pulled out of me and thrown up in the air, to be tossed about by the music. How does one say that I breathed, that I existed, in harmony with the ups and downs of those notes. What kind of notes both elevate and cast down, exalt and crush?

No matter how fat your kid is, I’m going to call him Sport. “Hiya, Sport!" Then I'm going to tell him that Gatorade is a subpar energy drink, and if he really wants to chug something powerful, he should gulp down raw duck eggs.

Bottom line: you never ever saw him looking wrong. Knowing this, I felt a cold shiver down my spine when I read in the Minneapolis StarTribune that when his body was found in the elevator at Paisley Park, "Prince was wearing a black shirt and pants - both were on backward - and his socks were inside out." This made no sense to me. The sheer irony of it broke my heart all over again.

It's too bad GIFs are silent, because I recorded some original saxophone music to accompany my newest masterpiece. It sounds like ducks quacking on the moon, and if you've got an empty elevator that needs space to be filled, it's now FOR SALE.

Some of the best gifts are ones the recipient doesn’t even know you’ve given, so they don’t ever feel beholden, and they never know how valuable it was or how much it helped them, which means they never feel obligated to repay you. I do that for my ducks all the time.

You know how Asian kids practice their musical instruments with continuous gusto? Well, American kids don't practice at all. I was one of those American kids, and that's how I came to be a performer in an elevator. Enjoy as I coax duck farm sounds out of my saxophone.

In the movie White Men Can’t Jump, the final boss duo that the two street hustlers must defeat are called King and Duck. I felt that, because I’m The Duck King, and I didn’t have to win a basketball game for the title—I was elected via unanimous and cacophonous quack.

As a singer, she's in the music industry. As a duck farmer, I’m in the noise business. The product I pulse through the air invisibly is better for your ears.

I’m a duck farmer, and that’s not something you go to school to be. If you did, there certainly wouldn’t be any kickball classes.

Why miss a SALE at twenty dollars, when people will buy at $19.95? I've found that the opportunity to save that nickel really makes people say YES to buying a NEW duck.

When you have a pet waterfall, and you want to take it for a walk, the trickiest part is trying to figure out what to use for a leash. Next time, try a duck.

I'd like to repair your elevator using only a kayak and a smile. If it's broken, my advice would be to remove the ducks and restart the waterfall.

People ask me, "Jarod, why haven't you won an NFL Championship by now?" My answer is the same. I reply, "I may not be Mozart, or I might be, who's to say, but if you put me in an elevator, I'm going to make music that fills the space completely, like duck quacks in a can.

Some questions are shaped like slow elevators, and they deserve words that fill spaces like notes from a brass saxophone. Sometimes the silence of body language is music for my eyes.

Duck farming has taught me that my day-to-day thinking changes in a gradient that's subtle and unnoticeable when observed in 24-hour blocks, but becomes obvious when seen in longer time frames. In the past two years I've changed from pink to blue, but it was all purple to me.

Why is a talkative person called a Chatty Cathy? That phrase possesses brevity, when someone verbose should instead be called a Chattering Catherine. Cathy talks so much and manages to say nothing. She could learn from ducks, who speak only one word, quack, but say everything.

Old houses make funny noises. One time I stayed in a decaying place that made sounds like John Waite's 1984 radio hit "Missing You." Personally, I liked it, but the 13 ducks I was sharing a bathtub with didn't agree, so they made me take them to the luxury hotel known as Motel 6.

The skills needed to stay employable are changing daily, which is why I'm now offering a class called: "How To Sew Pants While Riding A Unicycle And Playing The Saxophone Like A Quacking Duck." What are the jobs of The Future? Nobody knows, but my class will train you to Get Hired!

For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

Shining like a work of art Hanging on a wall of stars Are you what I think you are? You're my satellite You're riding with me tonight Passenger side, lighting the sky Always the first star that I find You're my satellite Elevator to the moon Whistling our favorite tune Trying to get a closer view You're my satellite You're riding with me tonight Passenger side, lighting the sky Always the first star that I find You're my satellite Maybe you will always be Just a little out of reach

Thoughts, ideas, music, desires, poetry, anger, hate. People speak of the heart, Lieutenant, but it’s the brain that holds all the magic and mystery of the human species. It elevates us, separates us, defines us as individuals. And the secrets of it—well, it’s doubtful we’ll ever know them all.

God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble...The musical art speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart...Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful.

There are so many ways of making the approach to meditation as joyful as possible. You can find the music that most exalts you and use it to open your heart and mind. You can collect pieces of poetry, or quotations of lines of teachings that over the years have moved you, and keep them always at hand to elevate your spirit.

Tennis Elbow is easily curable, and here's how: Switch to playing ping-pong. Sure, the pain is still there, but now it's Ping-Pong Elbow, and that's so silly it might make you rethink your hobbies, which might turn you into a duck farmer.

Every Friday The Thirteenth I celebrate Knights Templar Day. Here at my Duck Farm Gift Shop, I've got THE authentic map that details the location of their hidden treasure, and I'll sell it to you for ONLY $19.95. (Limit one per customer.)

I just invented a way to put the smooth sounds of a saxophone directly into a trumpet—with little or minimal rusting. When you listen to my music, just close your eyes, because your mind is about to take a romantic trip—inside of a mental elevator.

Hacker with Bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!" Prospective Station Wagon Buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!" Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!" Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music." Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks, we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!" Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!

I think when you VOTE, you should be handed synthetic duck meat on a stick for participating in The FREEDOM Ritual. Sure, the charred meat will be made up of ground-up bugs, but the flavoring, that is 100% organic chemicals of unknown origin—and that’s as real as America.

Of all the animals that fly, some are like floating flowers (butterflies), some are songbirds that are full of gulp (swallows), and some are swimming birds that also run marathons (ducks). When I compose music to be performed live in an elevator, those are my inspirations.

People are all the same. We all think we are unique. That's what I like about ducks. They don't think about themselves. They think about things like: How can we save humans from killing themselves? Of course, they have the solution, but they just refuse to share it with us.

If you want to buy a duck or a synthetic duck substitute, ask me about my Tuesday Specials that happen every Wednesday. If you're a fan of invisibility, inaudibility, and undetectability, then you'll LOVE this deal, because you can't see it, hear it, or in any way sense it.

How many minutes of my life have I wasted staring at the microwave waiting for my plate to get hot while my food stays refrigerated? To save time, and add potentially years to my life, I've decided that I do like cold pizza. I learned that from my ducks, as they LOVE cold pizza.

Virginia Woolf wrote famously, “About December 1910 human nature changed.” Well, one doubts it. What did change, and has been changing all through the closing decades of the 19th century, is that the intelligentsia became increasingly alienated from the bourgeois world from which it sprung, and wished to become something Higher. It wished to make novels difficult and technical – think of Woolf or Joyce – to keep them out of the hands of the uneducated and to elevate the intelligentsia to a new clerisy, a new aristocracy of the spirit. Similarly in painting, music, and philosophy. It wished to make everything difficult and technical, and it succeeded. [Economists Lawrence] Klein, [Paul] Samuelson, and [Jan] Tinbergen were middle-period modernists. The vices of modernism come from the master vice of Pride, the vice so characteristic of an actual or wannabe aristocracy. It is prideful overreaching to think that social engineering can work, that a smart lad at a blackboard can outwit the wisdom of the world or the ages, that a piece of machinery like statistical significance can tell you how big or small a number is.

They can take our homes, our possessions. Our families. Our lives. They can drive us out, like they’ve driven us out before. They can humiliate us and dehumanize us. But they cannot take our thoughts. They cannot take our talents. They cannot take our knowledge, or our memories, or our minds. In music, there is no bondage. Music is a door, and the soul escapes through the melody. Even if it’s only for a few minutes. And everyone who listens is freed. Everyone who listens is elevated.

If you're reading this book, there is probably an artist or band whose music you have an intense personal relationship with. I would also guess that this artist or band came into your life during a time when you were highly vulnerable. if this is the case, this artist or band might be the closest thing you had to a confidant. in fact, he, she, or it was better than a confidant, because his/her/its music articulated your own thoughts and feeling better than you ever could. This music elevated the raw materials of your life to the heights of art and poetry. It made you feel as if your personal experience was grander and more meaningful than it might otherwise have been. And naturally you attributed whatever that music was doing to your heart and brain to the people who made the music, and you came to believe that the qualities of the music were also true of the music's creators. "If this music understands me, then the people behind the music must also understand me," goes this line of thought.

When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them I'm an elevator-button salesman. Then I ask them if they've ever seen those domed buttons that light up yellow. When they vaguely nod yes, I say, "Yeah, I don't sell that particular model." I fib about my occupation because if I tell them the truth, that I'm a duck farmer, they simply wouldn't believe me.

Inside, upstairs, where the planes are met, the spaces are long and low and lined in tasteful felt gray like that cocky stewardess's cap and filled with the kind of music you become aware of only when the elevator stops or when the dentist stops drilling. Plucked strings, no vocals, music that's used to being ignored, a kind of carpet in the air, to cover up a silence that might remind you of death.

Huffing from her exertion, her face flushed and her expression happy, she looked toward the door—and went still. Dare pushed past Trace and went to the wall unit to turn down the music. Into the silence, Chris asked, “Everyone having fun?” “God, Chris,” Dare said. “Trace is going to kill you if you don’t shut up.” “Really?” Priss struck a pose of annoyance, one hip cocked out, her arms crossed, her chin elevated. “And here Molly and Chris assured Matt that you weren’t the type to cause bodily harm.” “They must have been jesting.” Trace was well used to Chris’s warped sense of humor, so Chris wasn’t in any danger. But Matt . . . Trace zeroed in on him. In a tone more lethal for the quietness of it, he asked, “What are you doing?” “Harmless dancing?” Matt replied in a nervous question, unsure of the right answer. Priss suddenly stepped in front of Matt, which left Matt bemused. “Don’t act snarky with him, Trace. I asked him to dance with me. We had some time to kill before this crud comes out of my hair. And you were nowhere to be found.” Matt pulled her aside, earning a glare from Trace. He quickly held up his hands, palms out, to prove he wasn’t touching her. “Speaking of time, we can go wash your hair right now, if everyone will just excuse us.” “I need a minute with Priss first.” Trace eyed her militant stance, and had to fight a smile. She had a backbone of steel. He liked that. “Alone.

As a minister of the Lord in whatever way the Lord decides to use you and with the gifts he gives you for the work, there is the tendency to start idolizing the work itself or the gifts that you forget it is the father who gave it to you. Who picked you up and dusted you from nothing and adorned you. You forget and make the work a god before him. Exodus 20:3 "You shall have no other gods before me". ----- This can be very subtle especially for social media ministry. You begin to love your social image over the word of God. You begin to dampen and tweak the word of God to appeal to a wider audience. You're suddenly no longer about the raw truth of the gospel. As the followers and likes increase you begin to get more and more addicted to the fruit of the works and the response to YOUR messages and posts. If a post doesn't do too well and get many likes and comments you are not happy. It hurts you deeply. That is how you know It has become about you. ------ If this is you and this message has touched your heart, if this post is like a mirror to your face, go back to God and ask for forgiveness. Ask God to forgive you for elevating yourself and your work as a god before him and return back to when it was just about loving him and preaching the good news. You probably may have noticed you lost the fire of inspiration you used to have at the beginning. This is why.

back,” Daddy said. “It’ll work out.” He had no idea what to do about Helen. They spoke a completely different language. He was an old-timer who called school “schoolin”’ and called me “boy.” He had run off from Jim Crow in the South and felt that education, any education, was a privilege. Helen was far beyond that. Weeks passed, months, and Helen didn’t return. Finally Jack called. “I found her. She’s living with some crazy woman,” Jack said. She told Ma she didn’t know much about the lady other than that she wore a lot of scarves and used incense. Mommy got the address and went to the place herself. It was a dilapidated housing project near St. Nicholas Avenue, with junkies and winos standing out front. Mommy stepped past them and walked through a haze of reefer smoke and took the elevator to the eighth floor. She went to the apartment door and listened. There was music playing on a stereo inside, and the voice of someone on the phone. She knocked on the door. The stereo lowered. “Who is it?” someone asked. It sounded like Helen. “I’m here to see Helen,” Mommy said. Silence. “I know you’re there, Helen,” Mommy said. Silence. “Helen. I want you to come home. Whatever’s wrong we’ll fix. Just forget all of it and come on home.” From down the hallway, a doorway opened and a black woman watched in silence as the dark-haired, bowlegged white lady talked to the closed door. “Please come home, Helen.” The door had a peephole in it. The peephole slid back. A large black eye peered out. “Please come home, Helen. This is no place for you to be. Just come on home.” The peephole closed.

Think of Chicago as a piece of music, perhaps,” he continued. “In it you can hear the thousands of years of people living here and fishing and hunting, and then bullets and axes, and the whine of machinery, and the bellowing of cattle, and the shriek of railroads, and the thud of fists and staves and crowbars, and a hundred languages, a thousand dialects. And the murmur of the lake like a basso undertone. Ships and storms, snow and fire. To the north the vast dark forests, and everywhere else around the city rolling fields of farms, and all roads leading to Chicago, which rises from the plains like Oz, glowing with light and fire at night, drawing people to it from around the world. A roaring city, gunfire and applause and thunder. Gleaming but made of bone and stone. Bitter cold and melting hot and clotheslines hung in the alleys and porches like the webbing of countless spiders. A city without illusions but with vaulting imaginations and expectations. A city of burning energies on the shore of a huge northern sea. An American city, with all the violence and humor and grace and greed of this particular powerful adolescent country. Perhaps the American city—no other city in the nation is as big and central and grown up from the very soil. Chicago was never ruled by Spain or England or France or Russia or Texas, it shares no ocean with other countries, it is no mere regional captain, like Cincinnati or Nashville; it is itself, all brawn and greed and song, brilliant and venal, almost a small nation, sprawling and vulgar and foul and beautiful, cold and cruel and wonderful. Its music is the blues, of course. Sad and uplifting at once, elevating and haunting at the same time. You sing so that you do not weep. You have no choice but to sing. So you raise up your voice and sing of love and woe, and soon another voice joins in, and you sing together, for a while, for a time, perhaps a brief time, but perhaps not.…