Regarding whether the songwriting process comes more easily after more than two decades as a band, Flynn said: "I just try and do my thing. With this record in particular, I've tried to discipline myself more with routine, writing a little bit every day, but for months I was in a riff rut. Every riff I wrote fuckin' sucked! Then we took a two-week break and I was writing my Facebook journals about the 'Through The Ashes Of Empires' [MACHINE HEAD's 2003 album] story, and that cleared my head. At the end of those two weeks, the floodgates opened and all hell of riffs poured out. I was so stoked! This torrent of riffs, this molten hot lava, was at my fingertips. It's such a good feeling."
Torrent Machine Head Unto The Locust
Parents often warn their children, that theymust live by hand-work or head-work. That thelatter is far preferable, because the work is lighter,pays much better, and is generally in far higheresteem with the world. Virtue, intelligence andgood education are necessary to success in thelatter. No man cares much what the characterof his ditcher or ploughman is, but his merchant,his lawyer, his mechanics, and his physician mustbe men of good sense and good morals. Thusdo parents hold out incentives to virtuousexertion. Governors and rulers should do the same.States must live by hand-work or head-work. Theproduction of books on the various arts andsciences, and on other subjects, the manufactureof fine silks, woolens, calicoes, shawls, the makingof exquisite porcelain, the building of ships,and steamboats, the construction of machinery,and a thousand other pursuits that we couldenumerate, require intelligence and attainments ofthe highest order, and good character besides,else no one would buy what would probably be acheat or a counterfeit. A nation chiefly engagedin such pursuits, follows head-work, works withindoors, labors lightly, and makes five times as muchas one engaged in the coarsest occupations ofmere hand-work. There cannot be a surplus populationwith such a people, because they have theworld for a market to buy and sell in, and themore dense and numerous the population, thebetter opportunities are afforded for the associationand division of labor, which increase its productivenessand lighten its burdens.
At the slaveholding South all is peace, quiet, plentyand contentment. We have no mobs, no trades unions,no strikes for higher wages, no armed resistance to thelaw, but little jealousy of the rich by the poor. Wehave but few in our jails, and fewer in our poor houses.We produce enough of the comforts and necessaries oflife for a population three or four times as numerous asours. We are wholly exempt from the torrent ofpauperism, crime, agrarianism, and infidelity whichEurope is pouring from her jails and alms houses on thealready crowded North. Population increases slowly,wealth rapidly. In the tide water region of EasternVirginia, as far as our experience extends, the cropshave doubled in fifteen years, whilst the population hasbeen almost stationary. In the same period the lands,owing to improvements of the soil and the many finehouses erected in the country, have nearly doubled invalue. This ratio of improvement has been approximatedor exceeded wherever in the South slaves arenumerous. We have enough for the present, and noMalthusian spectres frightening us for the future.Wealth is more equally distributed than at the North,where a few millionaires own most of the property ofthe country. (These millionaires are men of cold heartsand weak minds; they know how to make money, butnot how to use it, either for the benefit of themselvesor of others.) High intellectual and moral attainments,refinement of head and heart, give standing to a manin the South, however poor he may be. Money is,with few exceptions, the only thing that ennobles atthe North. We have poor among us, but none whoare over-worked and under-fed. We do not crowd citiesbecause lands are abundant and their owners kind,merciful and hospitable. The poor are as hospitableas the rich, the negro as the white man. Nobodydreams of turning a friend, a relative, or a strangerfrom his door. The very negro who deems it no crimeto steal, would scorn to sell his hospitality. We haveno loafers, because the poor relative or friend who borrowsour horse, or spends a week under our roof, is awelcome guest. The loose economy, the wasteful modeof living at the South, is a blessing when rightlyconsidered; it keeps want, scarcity and famine at adistance, because it leaves room for retrenchment. Thenice, accurate economy of France, England and NewEngland, keeps society always on the verge of famine,because it leaves no room to retrench, that is to liveon a part only of what they now consume. Our societyexhibits no appearance of precocity, no symptomsof decay. A long course of continuing improvement isin prospect before us, with no limits which humanforesight can descry. Actual liberty and equality withour white population has been approached much nearerthan in the free States. Few of our whites ever workas day laborers, none as cooks, scullions, ostlers, bodyservants, or in other menial capacities. One free citizendoes not lord it over another; hence that feelingof independence and equality that distinguishes us;hence that pride of character, that self-respect, thatgives us ascendancy when we come in contact withNortherners. It is a distinction to be a Southerner, asit was once to be a Roman citizen. 2ff7e9595c
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