Accelerate: Sing for the Submarine

Driving home from an acting class tonight I decided to write about Sing for the Submarine. By far my favorite on the Accelerate CD. In spite of the kickass quality of the Takeaway Video live performance, they were not playing this one during the Accelerate tour - at least not by Atlanta...

This is a song about Dreams, obviously, but it occurs to me that it is about the Grand Dream - Row Row Row Your Boat...

I've heard it described as a post-apocalyptic thing, where the character goes to the shore and sings the submarine to come whisk him away.

But it occurs to me that Michael is singing about singing, in order to keep the Dream machine active - "climb into the hidden machine".

It's about what Alice the Canine Messiah calls Professional Childlikeness - engaging one's art & soul in order to keep the Dream front and center in RealTime.

**

We have some young people in the acting class, which is being led by Betsy Brantley. I'm the old guy, and my teenage buddy Ethan is in there. I imagine he's about 17. Then there are three young ladies - likely in the 11 to 14 age range. All three of the young ladies are there to "learn about acting", and Ethan and I - both musicians - said "stage presence".

Later in the night one of the young ladies said something about stage fright, and on the drive home it occurred to me that in effect we are all there to address a form of stage fright. I thought about dropping a note to Betsy, which I might do.

Then I slipped in Accelerate. When I reached Sing for the Submarine it hit me - this is what Alice has been on about. That if we learn from youth that we are always on stage, always playing roles whether consciously or not, then we can get comfy with the ones that feel right from birth.

Professional childlikeness.

Save ourselves the hassle of becoming again as children after a bunch of tears and counseling dollars.

The submarine is of course the subconscious - the deeper soul Dream so to speak. The one we usually subject to being, well, "sub-"... And the point is to sing out your Dream, sing out the soul.,
The point is to bring out the Soul Dreams that are typically swept under the rugs of everyday routine. The most effective manner may well be to engage them full on.

**

So this is where you give in to the machine.
Lift up your voice, feel gravity's pull, drown out the sirens ring.

Giving into the machine is a reference to accepting, or choosing perhaps, the Game of Life; stepping into duality. There's the "up" of lifting one's voice and the "down" of gravity's pull.

**

It's all here where I keep it

"Here". Not there.

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It is what it's going to be

The bringing together of Absoulute and Relative Time - the Now and the Future. Alice talks of this in reference to racing motorcycles, when I would enter Turn 7 at Summit Point and look toward the Exit of Turn 9 - bringing that into my Now as my Future, even as the tires were planted in Turn 7...

**

So This is where you trust me that This is where it begins.

Now baby. It's always Now. Always beginning.

**

It's all a lot less frightening we're here in the interim.

Here, Now in the still frame - the perpetual still point in the interim of Relative Time's extremes.

**

Climb into the hidden machine...

Commandeer your Self. Engage the soul's song.

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It is post-apocalyptic, in the sense of It's the End of the World As We Know It - a personal apocalyptic event, and the dawn of a Now day.

**

Best of Now, always,

Greg Allen and Alice the Canine Messiah