Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Rain and Pain (1992-1998)



Misery

Rain and pain its all the same
Let yourself know the name of this game
Rain and pain its all the same
Falling in vain leaving from where it came

Times of misery falling quickly
Hope and happiness like a drought that won’t pass
Never knowing which came first or last
Lifting your voice and begging for solace
Hoping God will pick you to bless
Stop the rain and the pain
I call your name, my hurt you drain
Out of me it pours like from the sky
Every drop coincides with every tear I cry

Rain and pain its all the same
There is no blame for another storm I claim
Rain and Pain its all the same
At times it will wane but never change

You can see my tears falling in the rain
Hear my heart breaking in the pain
Feel the storm moving outside
Feeling everything inside leaving as it died

Monday, August 11, 2014

Not A Sin (1992-1998)

Clash colored pencil drawn 1993

I’m sorry that I didn’t explain what last night meant
I simply wasn’t ready for the gift God sent
I thought that love had sirens and bells
Instead it’s like peace and only a kiss can tell
I thought I I’d know if it caught me in it’s hold
I figured I’d see it shine fierce like spun gold
But instead it crept up behind me frightened my heart
Made me believe that I was wrong this can’t be how it starts
Now months later I can’t explain the night at all
I just now that right when I pull away, I fall
When I hesitate my mind brings pain
When I doubt I feel no gain
So I torture myself and wonder at the fact
Could he really love this idiot this spoiled brat
This indecisive beast who plays the silliest games
This petty person that yelled over the ignorance of a name
I really don’t care how it started that night of before
I’m standing here in love and I’m terrified of opening the door
I give myself headaches, practically lose my mind
Did I really walk away from what I thought I’d never find
I comfort my heart with my imagination
Still wondering if God sent a man to see to my salvation
I feel unworthy, but I want it all so bad
I feel like a failure because the loss of love makes me sad
No one really cares about the state of anyone’s heart
All they care is if their words leave another dart
I’ll wake up tomorrow and start my fight again
And eventually I will understand that love is not a sin

Sunday, August 10, 2014

My Serenity (1992-1998)

Self Portrait in colored pencil 1994

Heaven and hell wrapped into one
Peace held in check by the power of the sun
My life, my love, my form of exquisite ecstasy
If only you could understand what its like for me
To hold this gift within my soul never to leave
Held in myself so string and tightly it’s hard to believe
Everyday I take my joy and share its grace
From the voice in my throat to the smile on my face
Every time I move, every step I take
From every tilt of my head to every sound I make
Lives in color the proof of my joy
In full light that can never be called coy

What is my life, my peace and my constant company
It is the music in my soul that’s my serenity

Pulled from the sky in the shapes of stars and the face of the moon
With the awe inspiring regality of a delicate rose in bloom
The feeling of touching the sky and finding it soft as silk
The sensation of holding wind as it runs like milk
Take me life but give me my song
Without the music life would seem wrong
Take my heart, but leave me my voice
No heart is needed when life is no longer your choice

Bound together by something far stronger than fate
It seems that music is my soul mate

Behind my eyes exists a separate entity
There lives my soul with music as my serenity

Saturday, August 9, 2014

My Excess (1992-1998)

Ruins painted 1996


I’d hold the key to your thoughts and fill them with me
Light another candle, offer salvation you can see
Lust after you from afar, wait and abide my time
But I’d never take your body without consideration for your mind.

I’d take your pain and let it rest beside mine in my heart
Destroy the cause and reason for it and gladly call it art
Let my soul calmly touch yours in the lightest kiss
But I’d never look you in the eye and pretend you don’t exist

I’d listen to your heart and tell mine to quiet
Blow my world apart and suffer in the silence
Give you a home by my side in my thoughts
But I’d never leave it open to be sold or bought

I’d kill to keep your heart from going cold
Destroy us both to love you
And fight the devil himself for your soul
But I’d never do anything you didn’t need me to do

I’d build, I’d destroy, I’d create, I’d deploy
I’d relish, I’d restore, I’d abolish, I’d ignore
Take you on as my ally and make the world itself our foe
But I’d never keep you chained to me if you needed me to let go.

Friday, August 8, 2014

In Love (1992-1998)

Waiting chalk pastels drawn in 1994

Before God and myself, I tell my story
Before my heart and my soul, I give leeway
Before this earth and it’s creatures, I hold court
I request a boon, a favor if you must
I ask only for forgiveness because it is necessary
I request love because it has all we have lost

In love there is faith, beautiful, glorious, blind faith
In love there is hope, a prayer for happiness beyond earthly confines
In love there is tolerance, differences matter not in it’s face
In love there is joy, an entity as elusive as wind, coming and going at it’s own pleasure
In love there is life, a gift we have forgotten to treat as such
In love there is beauty undeniable to the point of ensuing blindness
In love there is sorrow, without which the beauty does not exist
In love there is the essence of hell tempered by the breath of heaven
In love there is chaos, free as a bird, destructive as fear
In love there is peace, what we truly crave
In love is what I truly ask, don’t fear it’s gain, be terrified of it’s loss

So just be In Love.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Unconscious Love and the Path to Duende


In some sports and other physical activities when someone hits a streak of perfection they are thought to be unconscious.  In basketball especially.  A player can shoot lights out for a quarter and he’s having an amazing game.  If he shoots lights out for an entire game, has double digit assists and rebounds he is unconscious.  The idea stems from the player attaining a visceral plane of existence beyond themselves, beyond the limitations of their own body.  He has in essence abandoned his own form and become in those moments the game itself.


Flamenco
In dance and music the Spanish refer to it as Duende. Its most commonly associated with Flamenco. With their attempt to quantify this elusive concept they describe a nature that creates something to aspire to.  It carries the power of a dark goddess and an insistent muse inciting liberation from all forms.  The spirit of evocation.  What makes music move us to become it in the form of dance, or when singing or playing an instrument.  It is the tapestry of human will, emotion, thought and form where all pours into and out of the spirit and soul at once.

Christopher Mauer the editor for “In Search of Duende” has isolated it to four key elements, irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death, and a dash of the diabolical.  The Duende is not a possessor but a foe.  It flashes the artist a glimpse of the Universe, life, death and the beyond forcing them to acknowledge the primal forces civilization has attempted to weed out. For to create something of a Duende nature you must drink from the fountain of the divine.  With ambrosia on your lips the art is force of creation reshaping the artist, the viewer and in that moment the fragments of time and space themselves. The artist battles with the dark, the opus, to try and harness it’s power with their own will. The nature of it is to consume and the will of the artist must fight to prevent being lost to it because then it is misspent force producing only destruction.  The terms are simple; you either create or be destroyed. The force cares not which one is the result, only that the show, the dance, the song go on.

Beyond
Duende, being unconscious, are states of love.  Instant blind unquestionable moments of human connection to the will of creation.  Built in a second yet somehow lasts an entire lifetime.  When you hear the plaintive whining, words of desperation, pain, elation, humiliation in the verse, the chords, the pull of a song like Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.  The untamed temerity, angst, dark lord rise of Ravel’s Bolero.  The soul shattering burn of desolation, delusion, and degradation of Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves aWoman. You are in its presence.  Its seat its foundation its very will empowered by love, of a concept an idea and even upon occasion an actual person. Our love and ability to feel and pursue it is a myriad of self-serving justifications of our own selfish desire to know joy and joy alone.  However we forbid the whole story choosing to determine the measure of that love, only the joy, only the sweet, only the succinct. 


The beast will not abandon parts of itself to humor your earthbound delusions. It is a full serving, a full course that has to be taken in as it is whole and unbound. It will show you suffering and revel in it knowing how sweet that next climax of joy will now be.  It will bury you under your own filth knowing the elation that freeing yourself from it will bring.  It knows love in ways that only subjugation can embody.  The will of the spirit is not a benign entity but a ravenous specter.  A poltergeist of your own creation that hungers for the fight because in battle alone can it reveal its true face.

Instinctively we seek the ones that will bring us the fight.  We seek the ones that will embody our spirit, empower, provoke, goad so we can rise to the fight again.  Know our true faces. FEEL.  The pain, the rage, the fear, the hope, the rise, the push, the ease, the release, and the fall.  Always it begins and ends with the fall, pain the catalyst and the affirmation of life, of love. Search through those dark, dark, dark spaces.  Love lives even there.  Love sees itself clearly there. It settles with the comfort of an old friend, for in the dark all is free. Stare into its phantom less eyes and know the wonder of the creation of life again and again.  All rises from the darkness and that’s where all shall return. 



Saturday, September 15, 2012

Creation Tale from 'Illustrated Theory of Stink'

This is the creation tale from the self-help book I am currently writing 'illustrated Theory of Stink: The fairytale of personal empowerment'
. .  enjoy:


PRINCIPLE ONE:
LEARN TO CREATE OR LEARN TO LOVE THE CREATIONS OF OTHERS

The first principle is in fact the most important principle.  In our world today there is nothing that is taken for granted as much as art.  The irony of this being that art is the basis of all things that humanity has ever contributed to this earth.  Using the logic that it is claimed we all possess, try and rationalize now.  Would there be language were there no cave drawings?  Were there no language would the sciences exist, no science would there be medicine? This tree can go on forever and ever.  Why?  The root is art, the root is creation, more so the desire to create and the need to understand the creations of others.
Sometime a very long time ago, mankind decided that it wasn’t content living and dying without leaving something for others to learn from.  Somehow connecting himself to the future through more than just procreation.  And thus the first cave drawing is made.   This is a level of human development and growth.  The desire to exist beyond the confines of your current shell.  This is the realm of Gives Stink Through Rhythm, through her this need is affirmed.  Not many people know this, but she used to be a pretty drab girl.  Downright dour. 
Day in and day out she would remake the same landscapes, the sun would come up and it would go down.  There were no seasons then, no concept of temperature or even feeling.  The place moved like an automaton not being driven by anything, not being halted and not truly living at all. Disheartened she would float through the Universe without a form, without the very will to actually sustain one.  Just a lifeless lump of stink that could’ve been more. 
The Great One of the Most Stink saw this and knew then and there that this creature must be given a renewed lease on being.  She was stifled, chained by the bounds of her own lack of limitations. Somehow, yes, somehow, she must be set free. This became the greatest puzzle and ultimately the only one that ever really mattered when all was said and done. How, oh how? How do you free a creature that has no bounds except for the ones of their own making? 
The rationale was surprisingly simple. Since the Great One of the Most Stink sees and knows all past, present and future the answer was discovered while observing the odd earthbound creature known as a cat. It was in essence the problem of herding cats. Cats don’t herd well because they have no similar tendencies other than the state of being a cat.  And being a cat means that the utmost concerns are self reliance and comfort.  Cats are most self reliant and comfortable when they are being true to their natures’.  Which relates directly to appeasing all matter of ‘in the moment’ discoveries. Cats pay attention to anything they please which means they pay attention to everything making a day an exhausting endeavor. But cats are free from the machinations of their limitless perspectives.  Why? Because at no point and time do they let everything they can do get in the way of actually doing it.
She was drab and dour, never knowing when, where or even how to start. The problem with being without limitations is that there is no form to assume.  There is no criteria for right or wrong, there is no justification for up or down.  There is just the is, just the void. There is no comfortable spot.  But couldn’t you make it?  With a wide array of everything available on your plate the plate can have nothing at all or everything you want.  Choices must be made.
So the Great One gave her a task, a simple, simple task.  Build me place, a place where all color lives, build me a place where all thought is alive, build me a place where fanciful creatures strive, build me a place where anything can survive. 
With the chant ringing in her being, giving life to her form she gave herself hands so she could shape these creatures, she built herself eyes so she could see the colors.  She gave herself legs to move through the terrain, she gave herself a back to support her legs, she gave herself arms to move her hands, gave herself a head to hold her eyes, put the head on a neck so she look away as she worked, gave herself a nose to smell the life.  And finally she gave herself a voice to make it all sing.
With this voice she declared the first principle. 

To exist is to create, I create my own existence.

First there was rain, water fell from the sky, then came the winds to move it as she saw fit, on to warmth, cold, brisk and dusk.  Then the stars the heavens, moons and mass.  Leave it open for more things to inhabit as I comprise.
This loosed the beast of creation into the Universe, the void rapidly filling with wonders untold.  She carried on and on creation after creation.  Her worlds multiplied and compounded straining into and out of each other without rhyme or reason. What was dark became light and quiet had sound, motion stopped and the still covered ground.

PRINCIPLE TWO:
THERE IS NO PURPOSE TOO GREAT OR TOO SMALL, MAKE IT YOUR OWN
But why the creation of others?  Such a question that it confounds why would the creations of others hold any weight when one can create all.  She who Gives Stink Through Rhythm found this a conundrum that she could not get around.  She was greedy with creation taking it on as her realm and hers alone.  Her creations had actions repercussions and sequences that she ignored for the sake of always creating more. The nature of creation is forward never backward.  Creation is not a stability, it is a wave, motion moving forward an undulating reaction.  Her creations had creations, their own changes to document.  Soon the place was much too crowded.  Things interacted in unintelligible ways.  They bumped and bruised they clashed and strained.
The Great One observed what was unwittingly wrought. She was free, too free and now had boundaries in another way.  She needed a level, a place a function to see to.  The idea was to free her of all inhibitions and here she was now prisoner to one.  Fear of stopping, of creation ending. She had no concept of temperance, no thought for progression. An end in being a reason to start over and a reason to stop.
The Great One pulled from the gnashing the clashing and grating.  Pulled from the bumping, the grinding the bruising. Given form from conflict a mate to see to these ends. Thus He Who Reeks of Intent is born. The job was simple and they were bound as one.  For every mess is made let your will make it undone. No one knew more of the need for balance and temperance than he, the creation from the void of imbalance. Filled with purpose and scope, scale and desire, He Who Reeks of Intent created Plan.  He was swift and sharp as he held her in check, so well balanced they were, his force she couldn’t reject. Where she was creation changing and streaming, he was solidarity, the foundation for beginning.
He told her truthfully what the issue was with her endless creation.  No rhyme or reason, no path no course, such a foolish design. There must be a plan.  To make a plan there must be intent and intent is the consequence of purpose.  What end does your creation see to?
She was confused and torn not understanding the line of questioning. Purpose was a word that held no sway over her mind, no consequence to her creation.  But he insisted, what is the purpose to your creation?  He pointed to a cloud buzzing with lightening and rain. This creation of yours knows what to do, it sees to its end and gives reason to. He pointed to the grass that grew on the land, then to the animal that grazed on it there.

There must be purpose no matter how big or how small it is the responsibility of each creation to make it, its own.

Saddled behind her they moved through the Universe.  He shifted her spaces and closed her holes, he connected her dots and even fastened her clothes. There was a small hole that he didn’t close he left to be open.  She argued why would he leave it so.  He closed all her others, connected dots and shifted her worlds. Why this hole, why is it so special not to be closed.  So tiny it is it couldn’t really matter.  So tiny it is why would it not just go.  He had been waiting for this knowing she would demand that he explain.
This hole is open because it is too small to allow passage, it’s open because it has no connection to anything.  This hole is too tiny to do anything but be.  It is a reminder that sometimes creation is its own purpose and reason.  Creation has to be respected whether done by you or me.  This hole is the whole, the signature on the piece.
She didn’t understand the course the feeling behind his words.  They seemed foreign and tense.  He told her the way that the Great One created him.  We are bound one and the same, I am of you and you are of me. To deny any of you is to cut away from all of me. 


PRINCIPLE THREE:
ONLY A LIFE LIVED FOR OTHERS IS A LIFE WORTH LIVING

The Great One watched the couple that strife had created.  The woman confused by the nature of the bounds they shared.  So there would be a being that would show her the way.  One much like her living to create but in a different way.  From the symphony created by the swirling planets and stars she was formed seated on a comet, hair blazing with the tail, One To Stink for All blazed across the stars in front of the couple.  Without thought or consequences she came up to the hole and placed a strand of her hair there making it a star.
They only watched the spectacle as she flew on by.  By then He Who Reeks of Intent thought it odd enough to ask.  This had not been part of the plan.  And he couldn’t reverse the actions done by this new beast. It served no purpose, it left nothing in its place. Why would you leave a part of yourself there?  Doesn’t it belong to you with you?
With a smile and a laugh that echoed thorough the abyss she chastised him as silly.  We are all one, one and all I am you and you are me, where you are big I am tall.  I span this plane in every breath, I span this space in every spot.  I see you there and see me there all holding firm.  Where I to go you go with me whether you want to or not. I exist because you do and the opposite is true.

To destroy you I destroy myself so I must give to you.

She Who Gives Stink Through Rhythm finally understood.  Creation needs purpose but purpose needs giving without both there is no creation.  The song of creation hummed through her as the words from this new entity vibrated in the corners of the universe. He Who Reeks with Intent contemplated her oddly.  So is this part of the plan?  He wondered. Creation then plan so that it is prepared to be gifted.  As I give unto her I give onto me, as I am the same as she before me, I am the same as she is far away from me. 

PRINCIPLE FOUR:
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LEARN WITHOUT LISTENING

Gives Stink Through Rhythm called for He Who Reeks of Intent to be silent letting the song of One To Stink for All ring clearly in the distance. Without a thought they both moved to find the source of the song.  She was somewhere near yet far echoing along.  There was something more they needed to know from her.  Something else her song was trying to say. The message was clear yet unspoken, almost like a wisp of air.  They followed far and long and eventually caught up to her.  As she sang she built, pulling locks from her hair, parts of her arms, patches of her legs, bits from her comet and finally the largest piece from deep within her chest. She stacked and shaped, clumped and dumped as she sang to herself.

If you want to learn a song you must listen to it play
If you want to hum the words you must know what they say
If you want to stay in pitch you must find the proper key
If you want to sing it well you must know the melody
If you want to do it right you must think in symphony
If you want to make your own song you must embrace harmony
Because the only way to make a song is in synergized unity
Let creation and purpose meld with giving for the sacred trinity

You understand, she asked. 

You can’t know until you learn and you can’t learn something that you aren’t listening to.

They watched as he was born, Stink That Stands Alone.  One To Stink for All sang a song to grant him life:

So that someone always knows the song of unity
I build you now with my parts of dubious impunity
As I always sing I need someone who always hears
As we are one, I’ll be your voice if you will be my ears
As I move through this plane shall you stand still
Learning is a thing of balance not a trial of will
Listen to the lessons being sung in this open space
Let the song of harmony state and declare your grace

They watched as he shook off the stardust and debris.  Standing tall and firm he nodded to the three.   The couple that strife produced regarded him loosely as One Who Stinks for All continued on her way.
Leave him be, she said as she left, he’ll always be as he is listening to every breath.  When you forget the song because you’re lost in your own creations, he’ll be the one to make sure it’s sung no matter the occasion.

PRINCIPLE FIVE:
APPRECIATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF LOVE

The Great One of the Most Stink was pleased with the helpful addition made by One Who Stinks for All.  The mistress of unity was correct and yet short sighted on one simple avenue.  With the rate of which she gave herself away for the cause what would happen when she was all used up?  This was an instance The Great One knew could not happen.  Knowing they were ready to create a being that would help, The Great One turned to the couple strife created to see what they had learned.
She will burn out in time, she is too sparse with her parts, she doesn’t create more she just shifts what’s there. Was what Gives Stink Through Rhythm told her purposeful mate.  What we need is a plan to balance her out, a place that repairs all that she’s forgotten about was his reply. Is it necessary to rhyme, asked Gives Stink Through Rhythm.  No got caught up in her ambiance, He Who Reeks of Intent admitted.
So the couple pondered on just what to create.  They thought long and hard about what would make things right.  They thought of what they learned.  Creation, with purpose became a gift to bestow on others. There must be balance and unity, they must know all parts of the song and appreciate all that put forth the effort to make it possible. The being that they created would have to be respectful, understanding, compassionate and more than anything else appreciative.
What do you appreciate about me, Gives Stink Through Rhythm asked her mate. He answered without hesitation, Your creations. And you me?  Your purpose.  With this in mind they took parts of her creation instincts, combined with a section of his focus, foundation and creation with the lessons learned about harmony.  She sang the song and he joined in as they took the parts from all around them and as they watched One That Stinks For All had done before they fashioned creature from nothing.  The creature was still and didn’t move, and they stared wondering what to do. The song that always sang became higher pitched Stink That Stands Alone looked pointedly at the couple and with a slight gesture pointed to his own chest.
What is the song about, Gives Stink Through Rhythm asked.  Love was his answer. They pulled the new being closer and as one they pulled from their selves and thrust it into the other. Newly born this creature cried in out in her first breath.

Only through love is appreciation gained and only through love can it live.

The new creature built was a salve to the place in ways that creation and purpose couldn’t be.  She rearranged matter, developed time and gave the space leniency. Sharps were blunted and straights would bend, the healing spray of diplomacy. Creation had longevity and would sustain.  Plans had a pace that they followed and would maintain. The song was clearly timed and paced, the melody so very clear now.  She swopped and dipped dancing lively to the new found sound. Strings flew from her fingertips connecting here and now.  They even flew behind her to capture what had passed.

PRINCIPLE SIX:
LET THE PAST REMAIN WHERE IT IS

Pleased with themselves the couple enjoyed their creation.  They watched in humble acceptance of the things that changed.  But soon it wasn’t enough for Gives Stink Through Rhythm to watch.  She grew restless and bored watching her creation have all of the fun.  So she stared creating again as she had before foolishly done.  Because he was enrapt with their newest gift, He Who Reeks of Intent didn’t even notice. It wasn’t till the new creation began to cry in earnest did he pause to see what has so distressed this lovely creation of theirs.
Then he saw what had happened to break their creations heart.  The careless disregard for what she had created as Gives Stink Through Rhythm systematically destroyed it.  Her lines were breaking and her balance was ending.  Time was morphing and disarray was happening.  He Who Reeks of Intent became solemn, not sure how to combat this problem.  It seemed inevitable that as soon as this stopped it would just begin again. Then he noticed that silently from his post, One Who Stinks Alone was offering him a hand.
He looked into the hand of the one who would never speak and took the offering that he presented to lay at their feet.  I see now, he thought as the cries grew deafening behind him. There has to be another creation that tells us of the past.  One that lets us know what we can’t repeat what has come and gone.  The true path and plan should go forward never back.
He looked at the offering that came from One Who Stinks Alone himself and added in his memories of what had come before.  He sealed it up with his will so that it didn’t leave.  In this creature would be the pain he had been breed in.  In this being is the pain creation can wreck. It would know the song and know the words because of the one who always listens.  He added the will to harm those who refused to hear.  Force upon them the very pain that they stand to inflict.  In this way and only this way will there be balance.
He rose like a wraith such a frightful creature, his feature dark and countence untenable. He went to Gives Stink Through Rhythm and she immediately stopped.  She jerked once and fell into a stupor.  He turned to the other who was crying still and gave her much the same.  He then went through methodically and rendered everything new.  As they woke each one they knew what had passed, time was in place again and they were repentant of their crimes.
The couple regarded their creation feeling shameful for their acts.  So selfish was their thoughts they hadn’t even bothered to give her a name, thus she was dubbed for all time Stink Which Carries On.
As for the other they couldn’t explain. The Great One knew only he would be able to name him.  This creature they fostered was necessary.  A creation in response to a creation. Only the Great One had the concept of the past, created when Stink Which Carried On made time.  So he dubbed this new beast What Once Stunk Stinks Again.  He knew his name and answered instantly.

Don’t forget your past just leave it where it lies

The past belongs in the place it was breed, a mistake now gone that generates wisdom instead. None of the others knew what this past was, they merely understood that the activities they participated in made terrible options.  They knew that they didn’t want these things to happen again.  No regret just knowledge of what not to do. They carried it with them so that they would never forget this pain from what they did.

PRINCIPLE SEVEN:
BELIEVE IN SOMETHING WITH THE WHOLE OF YOUR BEING

The Great One of the Most Stink admired what had been created.  Everything was accounted for save the one thing that they all had so they didn’t miss.  Grace.  With this in mind, the others were beseeched and each made an offering from the depths of their beings.  The thing that they believed in most, Creation, Purpose, Giving, Listening, Appreciating, Rectifying and they put it together to bestow to the far reaches of the Universe.  The Great One merely blew over it and out she sprang fully formed, the things they believed in most, the Stink That Will Not Die, their sweet pungent Stink of Ages.  Like newly formed light she infused the others with all that she was, the peak of all of their wills combined.  Through this they were fortified, joined and made whole.  Each realm connected joined from the couple that strife created to the unsavory valleys of deeds gone past.  From the tendrils binding all together to the singing and listening to the song of creation.
She observed all around her and declared for all to hear.

All you believe in with all of your being makes me the best of you