The Flaming Lips
In a Priest Driven Ambulance

Fear of God. Because if He exists, He's quite the rascal.

 You have to wonder if on the quest for spirituality, it is truly necessary to have someone mediate who claims to know more than we do: some good shepherd to guide us step by step, we lost sheep (though I find it hard to identify myself with a sheep), in this tumultuous land dedicated to perdition.

I too, if I lived in Oklahoma City, could wake up in the morning and establish, I don't know, the church of Appestantesimo and publicly proclaim my personal way of understanding religion. Shoes off, to begin with.

 Ah, the magic of the universal priesthood of believers!

 I abolish underwear.

 I go to offer worship to the Lord!

 (Commercial break)

 Sweet-smelling fragrance, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God! 

 And be sure not to forget the T.

 True or not, when everyone wants to be a shepherd, a significant problem must inevitably arise: finding a flock to graze. The fact is that everyone tries but no one succeeds.

 Sed mundus bellus perchèm varium est, o forsem ovest, an illiterate Latin speaker might say: there is always a tiny little voice that, despite its hidden bucolic ambition, has no claim towards any charming fluffy ball of wool, no poorly hidden desires of petting or anything else. Someone who feels quite unsettled in front of the army of shepherds in Oklahoma City; who does not claim to have understood everything and, indeed, tries to see the world with that childlike light in their eyes possessed in the past, but which has now faded to a pale gleam. They try to regain that carefree and naive sense of Divinity from hours gone by, when He was a big man with the biggest hands of all and a long gray beard. With the slim conviction that Jesus is on their side... it becomes a great race on the ponies of the World. A festive and subtly silly, rambling, and ironic shindig.

But little Wayne's divine vision (let's be honest, our guy turned 18 after discovering that clouds are real) is much deeper and more complex. In Oklahoma City, God walks among us! For someone born on the day JFK got shot in the head, it's easier to view it all with a leopardian sly irony and talk of barren mothers who do not bring children to play on the streets, the same streets where God is walking, to invoke a universal deluge of infants, many little Holy Spirits who will drown us. The mother sends only burning kisses but, between us, dear DeBaserioti, the World is wonderful.

 Ah, true. There is also the music. At times relaxed, touching, with Dylan-esque accents. Sometimes narcoleptic, electrified, obsessive, dirty. Wayne chooses Mars, while friend Dingus, before leaving for Mercury, brands everything he touches with fire, giving the whole a unique and exceptional touch. The peak of the mountain above which no speech is delivered. All you need to know is that not a single word on this disc is said by chance, and the core lies there, between the lines, it's up to you to grasp it.

 Now I must leave you, dear sheep. My faithful call upon me, I can already smell burnt flesh. But before I leave, I'll whisper Wayne's secret in your ear.

 There You Are - Jesus Song No. 7

 There you are
And you stand in the rain
And the rain fills your brain
And it makes you think that God
Was fucked up when he made this town
There you stand
With your bleeding hands
And you don't understand
Why you work so goddamn hard
To be anything at all

There you are
And you drive in your car
And you wish for the stars
And you end up face down in the road
Dead as fuck

 When you die, the most beautiful music starts playing.