Excerpt from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” by William Blake:
The Voice of the Devil
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:
1. That Man has two real existing principles: Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
Music is intention
Hear my intention
Through darkness
try
Affirm that
which faces
its shadow
is light
Through lullabies
& lucid dreams
I AM THAT
which awakens
In love
with no end
I AM THAT
which falls
from both sides
of a fractured past
I AM PRESENT
I AM WHOLE
One with Earth
but not of it
Here now
I AM ALWAYS HOME
Stardust in the hand
of space & time
Guided & the guide
Healer & the healed
From those same wheels
on that same Ride
I AM THAT
which has
always been
inside
I AM ALL LIFE
I AM AWAKE
I AM THE LIGHT
William Blake’s Ancient of Days
All songs written, arranged, recorded & performed by Robert LaSalle
Strings performed by Stevie Blacke
Woodwinds performed by Rubén Salinas
Vibraphone performed by Alexander Burke
Organ on “Earth” by Alexander Burke
Organ & Synth on “Fall for Something Beautiful” by Anthony Fossaluzza
Mixed by Robert Margouleff, Alexander Burke, Bobby Holland & Robert LaSalle
Second Engineer: Gio Bertuccelli
Mastered by Aaron Zeus Zepeda & Robert Margouleff
Sanctuary West Records
Bhagavad Gita @ Lands End Labyrinth 2019
Due to really bad deals & shit karma, no Robert LaSalle music was ever released until 2019. By the end of 2020, the artist self-released 200 songs from the previous decade & a half while writing & recording his final album, Awaken Light.
The Canon: RIDE>Lullaby>Night>Awaken
On Good Friday 2021, Awaken Light was self-released to no one. No one noticed. One can’t blame a person in the music industry for being stingy, fake, phony & full of shit just as one can’t blame a snake for being a snake. I like snakes much more than industry. Music industry was built on superficiality. Anyways, three people listened to Awaken Light from beginning to end. The album sold two copies. Then Robert LaSalle died.
The moment yet still to be found, the depths of silence from which Awaken Light screams were entirely lost in the deafening noise of an inept and deluded culture of monotonous mainstream mediocrity mainlined into the veins of a sick, sad society succumbed to a hotbed of apathy from which a people born of loss could no longer distinguish art from artificial, meaning from repeating, authenticity from the scrapings of a meat grinder, depth from daft, melodies of the eternal moment from automated, quality-free, plastic-wrapped tortured animal transfats with corn syrup-filled fatass fakeass autopilot industry drones stuck in repeat mode stumbling down the red carpet runaway train where every man for himself drinks his own hemlock in the dog eat dogma shellshocked hail mary punting corporate headless artifice’s artificial states of american dreamless sleepless beauty-less superficiality where mother earth’s breasts are pumped full of silicone & covered in fools golden glitter jiggling beneath lavalier microphones hiding monotone bronchial yodelbabble with autotune substacks dancing stilted heels in limelit strobelight over rumbling stages for crumbling crowds of bumbling idiots cheering for whom they affectionately refer to as “artists” while art slithers away with a sardonic shiteating grin into the ocean of nothingness where the mystic no longer needs them. It was the perfect ending to a career of perfect misunderstandings.
Awaken Light is dedicated to no one with special thanks to nothing. Fuck the music industry. Fuck society. God bless the creative spirit. Art is not content. Art cannot be subscribed to, tagged, liked, friended or followed. Goodbye, good riddance, God bless, farewell & thanks for all the fish.
At the end of 2020, Robert LaSalle was eaten by wolves. Awaken Light survives by its slippers.
AWAKEN LIGHT FULL ALBUM
try
“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.”
TRY
“I Am the light try
Open your eyes try
What did you find inside?”
I tried nobody noticed
I tried nobody came
I already know it
I tried and it's all the same
“If you know it so well
Why are you talking to yourself, why?”
I'll try you know I won't mean it
I'll try it's a waste of my time
I'll try just to appease it
I'll give it one more try
Why I already know it
Why I already know it
I tried but nobody noticed
I'll try but no one will notice
“Light is in the moment
Inside you it is growing”
I’m trying just to let go of
My mind in who controls it
“Time will never notice you
Find me in the moment”
I’ll try!
I’ll try!
I Am the light I’ll try
I’ll open my eyes I’ll try
What will I find inside?
LOVE, PT 4
LOVE, PT 4
Love, save the best for last
Love, no questions left to ask
Love, lay both feet upon the gas
Love, save the best for last
Enough is enough to know it's meant to be
Enough is enough to say it's meant to be
Love, you wrote my destiny
Love, don't you know
Who you're supposed to be?
Story of a broken heart
Tale with no arc
Love with no start
Strangers making love in the dark
Flames without sparks
Love with no end
Love with no start
Don't run
Let's jump a train to eternity
Love, your broken arrow cut me deep
I'm done with orchestrated fallacies
Love, you became a goddam tragedy
Love, I'm here for reverie
Love, I owe you everything
Enough is the air you couldn't breathe
Oh, my love, you bring out the best of me
Story of a broken heart
Tale with no arc
Love with no start
Strangers making love in the dark
Flames without sparks
Love with no end
Story of a broken heart
Tale with no arc
Love with no start
Strangers making love in the dark
Flames without sparks
Love with no end
Love with no start
Love
Start
Love
Start
Love
Start
Love
Start
Love
Start
Love
Start
Love
Start
HELPING HAND
“Some light, of course, is allowed them, namely from a fire that casts its glow toward them from behind their backs. Between the fire and the prisoners there runs a walkway at a certain height. Imagine a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show their puppets.”
“If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.”
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“It happened once. Four men were walking in the forest. The first was a gnana yogi (intelligence), the second was a bhakti yogi (emotion), the third was a karma yogi (action), and the fourth was a kriya yogi (energy). Usually, these four people can never be together... But today they happened to be walking together in the forest and a storm broke out...
They started running, looking for shelter ...They came to an ancient temple ...There was a deity in the center ...There was no other place to go, so they moved closer and closer. Finally, there was no alternative. They just hugged the deity and sat down.
The moment these four people hugged the idol, there was a huge fifth presence. Suddenly, God appeared. In all their four minds the same question arose: Why now? They wondered, “We expounded so many philosophies, did so many poojas, served so many people, did so much body-breaking sadhana, but you didn’t come. Now when we’re just escaping the rain, you turn up. Why?”
God said, “At last you four idiots got together!””
HELPING HAND
I want to show you as you are
A true reflection in life of art
A light beyond mishaps of words
To bridge the gaps between our worlds
The fire, the sun, the source of all
Behind the shadows on cave walls
Where nature and nurture come face to face
In vice and virtue, time and space
Be my helping hand, my guiding light
At the ring of a bell, at the roll of a die
Until I understand, be my helping hand
Scholar’s faltered worlds she denies
All’s lost on her, she thinks she’s her mind
Poet’s emotion guides his hand
Eternity’s his moment, his world’s a grain of sand
Mystic’s in it, of energy
The body’s a temptress in time’s feigned creeds
Myths I’ve lifted, attempts to shine
Monsters and marionettes, lambs and lions
I’ll be your helping hand, your guiding light
Of the union in emotion, body, energy and mind
Push the boulder up the hill
To watch it roll back down again
Find the source of all that wants
And wonders what and why and when
Until you understand
I’ll be your helping hand
Every creature in the world
Child of stardust by the shore
Science finds it in itself
Nihilists deny it, affirming it in themselves
Light
Light
Light
Light
Vagrants pass in caravans
Blinded by the underhand
Nobles pass in limousines
Convinced each other’s hands are clean
We’re walking hand in hand
There is no face to face
We’re all on the same side in the same race
We’re all in this to shine
Beyond the shadow of desire
No accidents, no flaws, no wrong and no right
It’s a work of art, a masterpiece of fate
Stardust in the hands
Of the hand of time and space
Until we understand
We hold infinity in the palm of our helping hand
FALL FOR SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in”
“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.”
“The way of love is not a subtle argument;
the door there is devastation;
birds make great sky circles of their freedom,
how do they learn that?
They fall, and falling, they’re given wings.”
FALL FOR SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
The sky falls on another setting sun
Since I found out why I don’t mind so much
So much pain and so many ruts
The world is heavy but I’m holding up
When I fall in trouble and out of luck
I count my blessings in a half full cup
In every moment there’s a glimpse of love
I fall in and out and that’s enough
Wheels keep rolling down the one-way track
My feet are heavy but I won’t roll back
Chasing silhouettes on the setting sun
I want to fall for something beautiful
If I keep falling down I’ll keep getting back up
I’ll keep fighting through the fire and rain!
If I can’t have it all
I want to fall for something beautiful
When the sky falls down and the walls cave in
I can still find beauty in the little things
I don’t know much but I know this
Darkness shows me the light I might‘ve missed
Where one day ends another begins
When I can’t forget I choose to forgive
I gather up all the broken limbs
Forge a path over every burnt down bridge
Wheels keep rolling down the one-way track
When your eyes get heavy you can never look back
Chasing silhouettes on the setting sun
Don’t you wanna fall for something beautiful?
If you fall down you better keep getting back up
Keep fighting through the fire and rain!
You can choose it all
When you do it all
For something beautiful
I can fall out of love without a heart attack
I can fall down hard and I can jump right back
I can fall for lies over cold hard facts
But I won’t fall through the cracks
Well I’ve done wrong
I always meant well
I’ve seen heaven, and I’ve seen hell
I forgive you all
Hope you can tell
Hope you forgive me
I’ve forgiven myself
Wheels keep rolling down the one-way track
Our minds are heavy but we can’t go back
We’re the silhouettes on the setting sun
Everyone will fall for something beautiful
We all fall down then we get back up
Keep fighting through the fire and rain!
If we all have to fall
I want us all to fall for something beautiful
You want to know why the sky falls on us?
Why we fall on hard times and fall out of luck?
Why we’re falling in and out of love
Why darkness falls on the best of us
Light falls down at every dusk
So we see the sun when it comes back up
We have to fall to get back up
The sky falls down so we can hold it up
When the sky falls down
You can make the rain sound musical
You can make the mundane unusual
You can do it all
Forever you can fall for something beautiful
Everyone falls, everything falls
Everyone falls, everything falls for something beautiful
Everyone falls, everything falls
Everyone falls, everything falls for something beautiful
Falling for something beautiful
Everyone falls for something beautiful
We’re all falling for something beautiful
We all fall for something beautiful
Fall for something beautiful
FALSE LIGHT
“You asked me how I get out of the finite dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don’t use logic when I do it. Logic’s the first thing you have to get rid of.”
FRACTURED LIGHT
“Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I Am)
-Descartes
Carpe nihil (seize nothingness)
-Satire of Horace
Magister dixit (the teacher has said it)
-Aristotle
Que sais-je (what do I know?)
-Montaigne”
“The enlargement of the light side of consciousness has the necessary consequence that the part of the psyche which is less light and less capable of consciousness is thrown into darkness to such an extent that sooner or later a rift occurs in the psychic system. At first, this is not recognized as such and is therefore projected – i.e. it appears as a religious projection, in the form of a split between the powers of Light and Darkness.”
FRACTURED LIGHT
Two sides of emotion
This soft fractured light
Lost in the moment
Affirming life (all life)
Eons reflect from fractured glass
All in a split second
Present, future and past
Assuring this presence
Is more than fractured light
Delusions of heaven
Only tricks of the mind, an absent mind
On backdrops of hell
Masquerading as dreams
Visions withheld for eternity
Eternity
I don’t, I don’t want to stay
Had it in for me, I had enough
I’ll go, why won’t you let me leave?
If this is a dream I just want to wake up
I don’t, I don’t want to stay
In this place and in this time
I know, I know there’s another side
I Am, I exist
This shift to no aim (cogito ergo sum)
No want and no will
No purpose in this pain (go ego way, carpe nihil)
No lesson can teach
No words can describe (magister dixit)
No sermon can preach
From this fractured light (que sais-je, que sais-je)
Fractured light, fractured light
THE OTHER SIDE
“Of all the definitions of God, none is so well put as the biblical statement ‘I AM THAT I AM’”
“Soham
(I AM THAT)”
“God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM. Say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.”
“Before Abraham Was, I AM”
““What are you? Are you a celestial being or a God?”
“No,” said the Buddha.
“Well, then, are you some sort of magician or wizard?”
“No.”
“Are you a man?”
“No.”
“Well what are you then?”
“I AM AWAKE.””
THE OTHER SIDE
I don’t, I don’t want to go
Back alone into time and space
I don’t, I don’t want to leave
If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake
The prism ascends
If words could explain
I Am That I Am
I Am awake (soham)
A world apart
Sharing space and time
The soul controls the heart
Perceives with the mind
All Light
I don’t, I don’t want to go
Yet I know I can’t stay
I don’t, I don’t want to leave
This isn’t a dream, I Am Awake
I don’t, I don’t want to go
Back alone into space and time
I know, I know the other side
INCANDESCENT WHOLE
“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour”
INCANDESCENT WHOLE
You made it to the other side
Fallen for beauty
Fall to rise, fall to feel so alive
You want the wisdom
Don’t want the pain
Yin without the yang, it’s nothing at all
Like sunbeams searching for the sun
Trying to find what makes you One
It’s been with you all along
Stars be the light that guide till sun up
Darkness reveals who shine among us
Wearing the seal of light that brands the soul
Love is not afraid to find you
Sun it was made to shine through you
One incandescent whole
Like a labyrinth
You’re back where you began
Told you, you hold the world in the palm of your hand
Without contraries no progression
Evil is hell and good is heaven
The oldest Poet showed us eternal delight
Good is only passive (try)
Evil’s only active (try)
Repulsion and attraction, still screaming lullabies!
Stars be the light that guide till sun up
Darkness reveals who shine among us
Wearing the seal of light that brands the soul
Love is not afraid to find you
Sun it was made to shine through you
One incandescent whole
Love! Love! Love!
Find a reason within yourself
Love is not afraid to find you
Sun it was made to shine through you
One incandescent whole
HOME, PT 4
“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.”
HOME, PT 4
Home was a place I had never known
A place I thought I’d never go
Till I was lost, alone
I finally found my home
For so long home was backseat in the cold
A Ride spinning out of control
Moving back and forth
Down a never ending road
One day home came and found me
It’s a place where I can be
Just as I Am
There is no us or them
The Ride taught me
How to fly with broken wings
How to land gracefully
And let the bygones go
I finally found my home
Home is the hardest thing to find
All one can do is
Try to make the most of life
There’s no place like home
Home
Home was a monster in my dreams
A place where I got beat and nearly buried
Before I found my Sanctuary
There was no love in between my sheets
Bugs sucked the life from me
Until I came undone
Before I finally found my home
Home is a dream that’s coming true
Everything I do
I do to find Truth in life
Home is my beautiful retreat
A place where I can breathe
With the aspen trees
Trade fate for destiny
And I’ll trade youth
For a truth not soon forgotten
The smell of smog
For cherry blossoms and a clear night sky
Trade bedbugs for butterflies
Home!
Home is on the earth I love
I caught the setting sun
Now the heart is One
EARTH
“I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
“BELOW: ‘Pale Blue Dot’ photo of Earth taken by Voyager 1 space probe 2/14/90”
EARTH
Runaway train on a one-way track
Fade to black
Curtains of shame in the third act
When the gun fires back
In the story of us, from past malaise
To the present stage
Either step up and save the days
Or we fade away
I'm on my knees facing the heavens
The moonlit seas hear my confession
I hear melodies as I'm counting my blessings
Begin to sing, for the world heeds my affection
Singing, home is the earth I love
Home is the earth I love
The earth I love
Through the rear-view from future's past
What's life's forecast?
What do we choose when they look back?
Do we choose to last?
Mother Earth grieves for all we lost
On the pale blue dot
Will we believe before we're gone?
Still, life lives on
The tide recedes, lured by her waning crescent
The evergreens, faintly silhouetted
By our galaxy, providence's reflection
For her I sing, for the world heeds my affection
Singing, home is the earth I love
All I know under the skies above
The greatest show under the sun
Singing, home is the earth I love
The earth I love
Children of paradise
Can't agree on anything
Though red and blue sides have to meet
On the side of green
Sullen breeze whispers a mixed message
Air I breathe leaves fate second-guessing
As I leave I feel prudence evanescing
Still I sing as long as she heeds my affection
Count my blessings
My country is earth and my faith is good
Just do good
So I sing for her
For the earth I love
And the good in us
One lonesome rock with a heart of gold
On a black backdrop
In an ocean dark and cold
The pale blue dot enlightened by her sun
She's all we got
The earth I love
The earth I love
GOODBYE
“May your dreams NOT come true. May things that you could never dream of happen to you.”
“Let it be.”
GOODBYE
It’s time
For us to turn another page
For us to go our separate ways
In the story of our lives
I wouldn’t trade a single word
I wouldn’t change a single line
It’s always hard to say
Goodbye, goodbye
So long
We’ve only learned to let it be
If we could go back into time
Would we skip a single beat
Relive the shadows to find the light
I wouldn’t change a single thing
At long last this is goodbye
At long last this is goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Farewell
If we should ever meet again
Here’s to us now until then
Last words are the hardest ones to find
Now it’s time to say goodbye, goodbye
The linguist survives on mourning tithes
Now it’s time to say goodbye
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
“Riding south into the misty morning, I’m soaring, now I’m soaring”