Grateful Dean

It’s been an interesting week here at The Official Home of Unofficial Grateful Dead and Music News. Apparently, I’m either a decent writer or a good actor. Maybe I just cuss too much… It seems like the bulk of the readers were under the impression that I’d waste my vital life energy being mad about something that someone said about somebody else. I don’t get mad about shit like that. Truth is, I saw all the headlines and weighed in on it. I did my best Don Rickles impression. While perched on the toilet, I took 10 minutes to make up a rant and send it out. I was totally free from any real feelings of anger and just thought a rebuttal was appropriate given the situation.

Like my parents with me, I had very limited expectations for it… In another case of, “If it bleeds, it leads!” the blog set new records for circulation. That doesn’t mean much since my blog isn’t monetized in any way but it’s interesting that in our community of endless love, the most circulated pieces have been the most unloving. Regardless, while I relaxed on a hammock, visualizing pleasant shit wrapped in 100 dollar bills, with absolutely no anger in my glowing spiritual center, I caught a vision. I was sitting there with Jesus and he had the CRB’s new album in one hand and John Mayer’s in the other. He said he was considering sending me to an Island like Patmos, as he did with John the Apostle, and I could only take one album with me. In my vision, he seemed to lean forward a little more with the hand that held “The Search For Everything”. I thought about being stuck on an island with nothing to hear but “Still Feel Like Your Man” and “Love On The Weekend”. I began to feel slightly withdrawn like one might feel if they were standing naked in front of the Dallas Cowboy’s Cheerleaders immediately after exiting an ice cold lake. Then the Lord said to me, “Why you gotta cuss so much?” I was starting to realize I had no good answers for anything…  As I reached out for the album I chose, the vision blacked out…

Once I regained full consciousness, I realized I might be the biggest ass of them all. I was just having a laugh and it turned into something much larger than planned or expected. Mayer won’t have anything to say about any of it because he’s more like Garcia than Chris Robinson. I should probably shut up because I was more like Stern than I was David Gans. Before you’re too quick to agree with me calling myself an ass, realize that you’re an ass too. If you agree with me, you’re an ass. If you don’t agree with me, you’re an ass. If you didn’t care either way, you’re a lukewarm ass. If you left a comment anywhere, regardless of what you said, you might be an ass too. Regardless of who you are, someone thinks you’re an ass. Once we accept that we’re all asses to someone we can move on peacefully and in harmony without caring much about it.

Then I had this revelation… When it comes to the giant nipple that is the Legacy of The Grateful Dead, it’s like a nipple with a million nipples on it. There’s one for everybody so there’s no need to fight about a particular nipple. Folks will always fight about the nipple that seems to be getting sucked on more than the others. There’s a lot of jealous nipples out there. Some folks prefer the $15 nipples. Some folks only want the free nipples and are pissed that there are other nipples that charge people at all. The nipple they suck on is usually the one that tastes like a lemon and has a big black hair coming right out of the center of it. Regardless, there’s a nipple for everyone…

When we walk through life, we should do so like a beautiful, productive, perky nipple. Just like The Grateful Dead, the nipple is the delivery system for the substance of life. It’s not the substance of life itself, it’s simply the vehicle that the substance of life passes through. Not all nipples are capable of that. Without some great and productive nipples, there would be no life in nature. Nipples represent the beginning of a tremendous time of growth and development. For some of the species, once they have matured and grown and developed, they will then possess the nipples that carry the substance of life to a new generation. Once again, they’re not the substance, merely a way to deliver it to the next generation. When you grow up, you start to see nipples differently. While you can acknowledge that they provided for your growth as a baby, they eventually become a form of entertainment more so than nourishment. Some bands are like man nipples. They seem to be of little use and certainly don’t provide any life for those that feed on them. Nothing is produced by them and other than being a personal thermostat, they provide nothing. I’m thankful that the substance of life I was raised on came from the giant nipple that The Grateful Dead provided. Through that experience, my life took shape and I developed from the inside-> out. As I’ve grown older, nipples provide me with more entertainment than they do the substance of life. I still take joy in knowing that the same nipple and the millions of nipples that exist as a result of it are feeding and providing for the growth and development of the next generation.  In my own life, I hope that I can be a conduit through which the substance of life occasionally flows. Just another nipple passing on what’s required for the growth and nourishment of the next wave of folks. In that sense, we should all aspire to be nipples!

I don’t know who to credit with the Stealie but, here’s to ya!

Dead To The Core,
Dean Sottile (pronounced So Tilly)

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