For those of us who follow the “Royal Road” of Direct Experience, accounts of other people’s insights, legends, and myth based religions have little appeal. We may resonate with the person(s) who had the original insights, but we understand that each time someone has a direct experience of consciousness, Oneness, divinity…LIFE, (whatever you choose to call it) there are inevitably blind followers who create empty rituals and adulterate the original insights.
You can tell how far the followers are from the original vision by the rigidity if their rules and the intensity with which they defend their position.
While Direct Experience is a living thing, followers create religions, which are dead.
Religion clings to the empty cocoon after the butterfly of direct spiritual experience has flown. Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for the ‘Random’ Category
Life is Life’s Greatest Gift
Psychanaut is coming along great! (although there is some tweaking as is always necessary) Still looking for just the right chemistry in players. And the recordings are one by one being mixed/mastered. The songs sound really great. And its a great time for creativity! New tunes are coming along.
But what I’m most pleased about is the new people in my reality who share my feelings of compassion. IT’s always been my dream to play with creative, conscious people who both know how to rock, and are aware and sensitive. Do these things always have to be mutually exclusive?
Here’s a couple of quotes that caught my eye today… The first is anonymous, and a variation on a quote about children…if you know the author, please let me know so I can add their name.
“A hundred years from now, it will not matter the sort of house I lived in, what my bank account was, or the car I drove… but the world may be different because I was important in the life of animals and the creatures on this earth.”
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Life is life’s greatest gift. Guard the life of another creature as you would your own because it is your own. On life’s scale of values, the smallest is no less precious to the creature who owns it than the largest … - Dr. Lloyd Biggle Jr., Musician, Author, Historian (1923 – 2002)
Life gets so busy!
OK, I know my postings on facebook have been minimal, and the newsletter hasn’t been sent in a while, and I’ve cut down on blogging too. This is not because I don’t love you guys. I do! It’s just that I’m really focusing on slowing down just a bit and spending less time online ~ heresy? Oh yeah! I’m just feeling like I’ve over digitized myself lately and I feel a need to spend more time in the analog world.
Meanwhile several of the most recently mixed tunes have just been mastered, and yeah! They sound really sweet. We’re holding these versions back until the whole album is done. I think it’ll be worth it.
Meanwhile, my new thing is to avoid clocks as much as humanly possible…somehow, I find more time for songwriting and all that studio work when I just stop looking at the clock.
It doesn’t work so well for performances, though, LOL.
My other new thing is to mellow out on the multitasking. Again, too much stuff happening, and it winds up being like there’s three songs being written at once, three more being mixed, another couple with overdubs ~ and nothing actually done! So, for the time being, it’s all about focus, vision, and being present in the moment.
Where ever you go…
There you are. I have a dear friend who’s a world traveler, yet he always calls me and says he’s bored. It’s crazy, bored in Paris, bored in Spain. So finally I had to mention that quote to him and we had a good laugh!
Someone recently asked if I miss California and I guess I’d have to say not really. I’m there a couple times a year but I never miss it. I’ve lived and performed all over the place, from LA to Maui and some crazy places between… but I do like my current location:to be able to get to a forest for inspiration…and to a river… and to the ocean… well, there’s nothing like it.
Certain places in Europe are calling to me lately, too… but any place I can breathe deeply and sing loud are good enough for me.
Wow, the past couple of weeks have just been crazy as we’ve continued auditions for Psychanaut plus getting our acoustic/electric set ready for the Cozmic Pizza benefit July 29. Tonight we’re trying out some congas and hand drums which will be an alternate to our normal trap kit for this show.
I’ve been pondering the intense changes that are happening among many of the wonderful people I know right now – precipitated by the BP Oil Genocide/Disaster. I have noticed that I am not the only one who feels deep changes happening.
This is an update of part of a previous post – but people keep asking me, so I’m posting just and updating it today. If you want to read the rest, it’s in the posting entitled BP Gulf Oil Disaster. I apologize for the length of this post; I hope to revisit this again and make it more succinct. It’s a work in progress.
PS – (If you’re just here to find out what’s happening with the music, mixes and shows, this post has basically nothing about that. Sorry.)
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You ask me what we can DO?
Just a thought about creativity
In working/playing in the studio, It’s easy to forget the actual moment of the song’s original beginning. The writing and performing flow together into the production, and it feels as though the song always existed…we just give it a form in which to express itself.
DaVinci said his sculpting was to free the form from the stone, rather than to create it. Music is the same way. The creative process is often one of discovering rather than invention.
And there’s a cycle to any creative process – if you’re an artist, writer, musician, or whatever your creative path, you pretty much have no choice but to go with the cycles. You can’t force it.
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
- Anais Nin
Skill Variations
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. ~ Robert Heinlein
I keep thinking of this quote lately! “Specialization is for insects.” These evenings in the studio continue to be both fun and intense. It used to be somewhat frustrating to be both musician and engineer; switching from right brain (creativity and spontaneity) with performing to left brain (precision and deliberate focus) for engineering and editing. I can recall the guys in the band and I all having difficulty with it not so long ago. But it’s getting easier to just shift from one to the other. It used to drain the creativity right out of me to have to do analytical work on the computer. This more flexible feeling is so liberating! It feels so empowering to be able feel confident about various skills.
Friday the 13th – a day of luck and love
It always strikes me as odd that most of us don’t even know the origins of everyday words that we all use, much less the origins of holidays and supposedly “bad luck” numbers, items, and days.
Most people are unaware that each day of the week is named for an ancient God or Goddess sacred to our forbearers. (Monday is Moon Day, generally personified as a Goddess, Tuesday is Tyr’s day, the Norse God of war… etc.) We live in a culture that is somewhat isolated in time – we celebrate some holiday traditions but most of us just skim the surface, not knowing or caring why. Or perhaps even sillier, many people continue to believe that their favorite holy day has something to do with their favorite contemporary religions (Christmas, Easter, etc). Despite the signs they put in their lawns, it’s simply not true. Contemporary religions subverted and/or borrowed holy days from older beliefs.
But back to Friday the 13th.