The urge to remember that we are not several
but one rises like the lotus again and again in the most unexpected times and places, as
Aldous Huxley reminds us in The Perennial Philosophy. One recent flowering was in
music in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s.
"Slip Inside This House," for all its imperfect and forced rhymes, its halting
meter, its time-bound jargon, is as succinct a re-statement of the Old Wisdom as the 20th
century produced.
And the music . . . Rocky's reed-like voice, the thudding 60s bass, and the
obbligato of the electric jug ride the words to a place where Easter is everywhere, if we
would only remember.
 Easter Everywhere, the album containing the song, is
available on CD, though you'll have to do a bit of searching to find it.
As you may have noticed, several verses of the song pop up in
both the Short List and the Long List. You could do worse that memorizing the whole thing
as a really long lick.
So powerful is "Slip Inside This House," I was tempted to throw copyright
caution to the winds and put an mp3 file of it here. I wound up not doing so, not because
of ethical considerations but because the file was just too big for current bandwidth. If
the words speak to you, I urge you to get the CD.
Slip Inside This House
by Tommy Hall and Rocky Erickson
The Thirteenth Floor Elevators
1. When your tribe's ascending
from the egg into the flower,
alpha information sending
states within the heaven shower
from disciples the unending
subtleties of river power.
They slip inside this house as they pass by.
2. If your limbs begin dissolving
in the water that you tread,
all surroundings are evolving
in the stream that clears your head,
find yourself a caravan
like Noah must have led,
and slip inside this house as you pass by.
3. Slip inside this house as you pass by.
True conception, knowing why,
brings even more than meets the eye.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.
4. In this dark we call creation
we can be and feel and know
from an effort, comfort station,
that's surviving on the go.
There's infinite survival in
the high baptismal glow.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.
5. There is no season when you are grown.
You are always risen from the seeds you've sown.
There is no reason to rise alone.
Other stories given have sages of their own.
6. Live where your heart can be given,
and your life starts to unfold
in the forms you envision
in this dream that's ages old.
On the river layer is the only sayer.
You receive all you can hold,
like you've been told.
7. Every day's another dawning.
Give the morning winds a chance.
Always catch your thunder yawning.
Lift your mind into the dance.
Sweep the shadows from your awning.
Shrink the fourfold circumstance
that lies outside this house.
Don't pass it by.
8. Higher worlds that you uncover
light the path you want to roam.
You compare there and discover
You won't need a shell of foam.
Twice-born gypsies care and keep
the nowhere of their former home.
They slip inside this house as they pass by.
9. Slip inside this house as you pass by.
You think you can't, you wish you could.
I know you can, I wish you would
slip inside this house as you pass by.
10. Four and twenty birds of Maya
baked into an atom you
polarized into existence,
magnet heart from red to blue:
to such extent the realm of dark
within the picture it seems true,
but slip inside this house and then decide.
11. All your lightning waits inside you.
Travel it along your spine.
Seven stars receive your visit.
Seven seals remain divine:
seven churches filled with spirit,
treasure from the angel mine.
Slip inside this house as you pass by.
12. Slip inside this house as you pass by
The space you make has your own laws.
No longer human gods are cause.
The center of this house will never die.
13. There is no season when you are grown.
You are always risen from the seeds you've sown.
There is no reason to rise alone.
Other stories given have sages of their own.
14. Draw from the well of unchanging.
Its union nourishes on
in the right re-arranging
till the last confusion is gone.
Water-brothers trust in the ultimate
of the always singing song they pass along.
15. One-eyed men aren't really reigning.
They just march in place until
two-eyed men with mystery training
finally feel the power fill.
Three-eyed men are not complaining.
They can yo-yo where they will.
They slip inside this house as they pass by.
Don't pass it by.
—Sung by Rocky Erickson
on Easter Everywhere.
Go to the Long List
Go to the Color Licks
Go to the Word
Licks
Go to the Blob Licks
Back to Saltlick
Contents
Magellan's
Log V
Magellan's
Log front page |
