(En)light(enment).

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way.
- Heraclitus

Some get spiritual 'cause they see the light, and some 'cause they feel the heat.
-Ray Wylie Hubbard

Here's a lesson from the Wylie Lama ...

From an NPR interview ...

HANSEN: How much do real people and situations inspire your lyrics?

Mr. HUBBARD: Well, it's a thing I've kind of - I guess I've learned that songwriting is inspiration plus craft, the inspiration being what we call the great a-ha. You go a-ha, boy, that would be a good idea for a song. And then the craft being taking that inspiration and making it rhyme and, you know, fit the laws of music, whatever song you're trying to write. One of my favorite quotes is from Flannery O'Connor, who said never second-guess inspiration.

HANSEN: Forty-one years old...

Mr. HUBBARD: Yes.

HANSEN: ...when you put down the bottle for the last time, or you picked up the bottle for the last time. And you started taking guitar lessons after everything that you knew?

Mr. HUBBARD: Well, at 41, you know, that whole - I'd been a working musician, but I was playing in honky-tonks. Somewhere after I got clean and sober, I said in order to be a real songwriter there were certain things I had to do, and one of them was to learn to play guitar better. So somewhere around that time, too, someone gave me a book called Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke. And there was a line in there about fear. And to paraphrase him, it was like our fears are like dragons guarding our most precious treasures.

And so at age 41 or 42, I overcame this fear of embarrassment and picked up the phone and called a fellow there in Dallas, Texas by the name of Sam Swank(ph). And I said would you give me guitar lessons? Because I'd never had guitar lessons; I just, you know, in high school picked up a guitar, and just playing in honky-tonks. You know, once I overcame that fear, there were these little treasures on the other side, these little songs.

Mr. HUBBARD: (Singing) Down in Corpus Christi always around midnight, you'll find the devil limping along because his shoes is too tight. His hair's up in pigtails, his whiskers are in braids, he's talking about the promises he says God forgot he made. Oh the way of the fallen is hard, the way of the fallen is hard...

HANSEN: Here you are, you're quoting Rilke, you're quoting Flannery O'Connor. Do you think it would surprise people to learn that your song, The Way of the Fallen, is based on Dante's Divine Comedy?

Mr. HUBBARD: It would probably surprise some of the people that come to see me perform, but I don't really think about that when I'm writing. I just will get an idea and see where it goes.

HANSEN: This is all about a conversation with the devil, and you really paint a picture of him, with the billy goat that he feeds marmalade, and you write a lot about demons and angels.

Mr. HUBBARD: Well, yeah. I write songs about God too, but they're not gospel songs or spirituals, you know. I'm so interested in mythology and religion and spirituality that I read a lot about it.

Mr. HUBBARD: (Singing) God smiles and lights a cigarette and says this is the souls you ain't gonna get. I'd take all the little critters if I could, some are too smart for their own damn good. They don't even believe I'm here. They ain't seen where I've been. Hell wants (unintelligible), Hell wants (unintelligible), get me out of this and never do again. All it takes is some grains of faith and a few kilowatts of sweat and grace.

Here's more ...