Reptile aliens, cosmic turtles, and country music

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I now submit to you the real reason for marijuana prohibition: Independent critical thinking, and the loss of any sort of real hold on free-minded people.
The lyrics to “Turtles all the Way Down” by Sturgill Simpson

I’ve seen Jesus play with flames, in a lake of fire

That I was standing in
       
Met the devil in Seattle
                                      
And spent nine months inside the lions... den 


Met Buddha yet another time
                                    
And he showed me the glowing light within 

But I swear that God is there, every time I glare

Into the eyes of my best... friend 



 

 Says my son, it's all been done
                                         
 Someday you're gonna wake up old and... gray
     
 So go and try to have some fun, showing warmth to everyone 
                                                  
 You meet and greet... and cheat along the way

        
There's a gateway in our minds that leads somewhere out there
                 
Far beyond this plane 

Where reptile aliens made of light
                            
Cut you open, pull out all your pain 

Tell me how you make illegal
                                  
Something that we all make in our brain
     
Some say you might go crazy
                                 
Then again, it might make you go... sane 
   

 Every time I... take a look... inside that old and... fabled book 
       
 I'm blinded and... reminded of...
                                          
 The pain caused by some old man in the sky
    
 Marijuana... LSD... psilocybin... DMT...
   
 They all changed... the way I see... 
                                               
 But love's the only thing... that ever saved my life 

     
So, don't waste your mind on nursery rhymes or fairy tales of blood and wine 
   
It's turtles all the way down the line 
      
So to each their own til' we go home... to other realms our souls must roam 

To and through... the myth that... we all call... space and time
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Thanks for writing them down, I was beginning to wonder if I was making up my own random (weird) lyrics.

This really belongs as a Eurovision entry - possibly sung by a Transylvanian transvestite.

I did not give proper attribution to the person who did the writing down part. David Potsiadlo did the lyrics and tabs together for this song and they were posted here.

Pretty sure this was the original script to the Michael Bay TMNT movie.

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“Turtles all the way down” - a reference to the anecdote in Steven Hawkin’s " A Brief History of Time"? chapter 1, I believe

Yep, Sturgill Simpson’s a cosmology fan. Here’s a good interview with NPR.

In it, he directly discusses this track on the current album.

So there are these kind of obscure references, but you say it’s an album about love. Point me to a track or a lyric that you think illustrates that.

Well, in “Turtles,” for instance, there’s a line: “Marijuana, LSD, psilocybin, DMT, they all changed the way I see / But love’s the only thing that ever saved my life.” I think there’s a lot of negativity in the world that stems directly from belief. And I think the main purpose, or at least from my observation and what I’ve learned about myself — I used to be a pretty negative, angry, self-destructive human being, and once you get to the root of why those things are taking place, it helps you to understand a little bit more about things you see on the news every night. I guess all I was trying to say with the record is just we should just be nice to each other.

In high school he was busted for drug dealing. I think he probably partly did it to act out against his dad who was a narcotics officer. Simpson also says that the album is about love, not drugs.

And without saying one way or the other that I do believe or don’t believe in this or that, or that I’ve found answers here or there, really, the record’s just about love. And even though there are some pretty blatant references to certain naturally occurring entheogenic compounds on the planet, I wasn’t really saying, “Hey everybody! Go out and eat 10 grams of mushrooms and you’ll understand life.”

If you read the earlier lines in “Turtles” you’ll see that it’s speaking against trying to find happiness through religion or drugs. (They’ll change your perception, but might not give you an honest view of the world.) Simpson thinks we exist on multiple plains of existence, and that’s written into his music. A really interesting guy.

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