I can’t believe how excited I am to be turning 30. Its not anything like i’d thought it would be, but then again I don’t think about stuff like that much anyways.
Its all so gradual, how are you really supposed to know your getting older anyways? I guess thats one of the things birthdays are for, but with the Renegade Karaoke on Wheels party tonight to celebrate, I feel like more of a kid than ever. Maybe not more than ever, but as much as always.
Today, while drivin around blastin all the great new tunez i’ve just gotten, I played Hurricane over and over cause it just feels so good. God Bless that Jamie Lidell. Especially for the breakdown. I can listen to it over and over. Who can hear it and not feel the celebration?? Its time to Celebrate!!
A little while back I went for a drive where I was able to give myself over to the moment pretty effectively. Every light, every sound, every driver seemed more there. More a part of the whole. Every sensory input and every one of my movements a delicate piece of the great dance of life. During this time my mp3 player was on random and Radiohead’s Videotape came on. Up until that moment, it was probably my least favorite track on the amazing In Rainbows. It sounded to me too much like some sad dude leavin a somewhat lame suicide video to someone he loves. Too depressing and bleak. But I head read in a Rolling Stone article that Thom and producer Nigel Godrich considered it their favorite track on the album. This gave me pause and made me think I should probably give it another chance. A closer listen.
Now I think it may be my favorite track on the album. I get it now. There’s a part around the 1:30 minute mark where Thom’s voice starts echoing around itself and begins to sound like so many ghosts. It was then that the song hit me on another, deeper level. Not as some sad guy’s final goodbye video, but as a song awake to our entire world culture’s final goodbye, happening now. Our artifact to leave behind when we’re here no longer to tell our story.
I recently read an article in the LA Times reporting that Youtube had recently hit the 75 million video mark. And is growing by 200,000 videos a day. So much media. So many moments. So many lives. A videotape of humanity. Our desperate attempt to say to someone, anyone, this is who we are. And this is how we’re saying goodbye, not in monuments, but in media. We are our media. Someday perhaps, our media will be all thats left of us. All our hopes, all our dreams, all our triumphs, all our tragedies, all our love, entombed in red blue green. red blue green. One long day on Videotape.
“No matter what happens now. Shouldn’t be afraid. Because I know today has been the most perfect day I have ever seen.”
While I have spent most of my life as an idealist, I do not seem to be able to continue such a world view any longer.
Idealism: The property of having high ideals that are usually unrealizable or at odds with practical life.
Central to the idealist view is seeing the world not so much as it is, but as one would like it to be. Due to all humans’ inevitably anthropocentric view of existence, my “as one would like it to be” part was always solidly in the framework of a world most ideal for humans.
My recent inquiries into the ideas of non-dualism have begun to shatter these anthropocentric views on existence to the point that the very notion of a world that is ideal for humans now appears to be the very root of the unsustainable moment of madness our world currently reflects. Humanity, so concerned with the self-perceived majesty of its deluded powers of observation, now seems to me a truly flawed evolutionary experiment. Our evolutionary path towards dominance through brain-centered intelligence has imbued us with such a large set of intractable discontinuities and paradoxes that conflict and suffering are at the very foundation of our species’ existence.
But perhaps evolution itself is a process of perpetually flawed experiments. Forever interacting with a shifting landscape of reality over time, there could never be a life-form that perfectly responds to and accommodates the dizzying array of inputs that the harsh physics of both reality and the surrounding life-forms responding to reality output in a near infinite play.
I say no life-form as this is a classification which humanity and all other species and evolutionary experiments are intractably subordinate to. But life itself… it is something beyond classification. Life, in its totality. Life as the complement to the part of reality that is non-living, and even beyond that, the whole system that is life and non-life in perpetual balance with each other - here may be an idealism that actually exists. But it is not a point to be reached, a state to strive for, or an accomplishment to laud. No, this ideal state is forever and perfectly in process in every moment. For while there is no life-form that evolution has ever birthed to reality in perfect, perpetual balance with the world, there is also no perceivable time or place in which the game of life is not ever-present, nor ever out of balance. It is only in our perception of the details of life, the fractured moments of limited perception that our mind holds so dear, that humanity is doomed to see the need for suffering, for desire and for change. When the truth is there is never any need to bring about change, for change is forever. Change is perfect. Change is the face of the ever-present balance that our brain perceives in multiplicity and our soul accepts as one.
I do not call myself an idealist anymore because I no longer strive to be at odds with “practical life.” Practical life - that which is already occurring and is forever is where I now choose to exist. For even though this practical life is all that is, it is humanity’s unique distinction that allows us to choose to think otherwise. For it is only the mind that is capable of creating that which is not, while existence is simply that which is.
I ordered a new book from Amazon this week, You Were Never Born, by John Wheeler. After reading a physics article (that I can’t find now) calling him a “poet physicist,” I began a search for books by theoretical physicist and Einstein collaborator, John Archibald Wheeler at Amazon. Instead, You Were Never Born by a totally different John Wheeler came up. It wasn’t what I was lookin for, but it had all 5-star customer reviews, and the first one, titled, “Probably the purest teaching I’ve come across,” intrigued me. It talked of a technique of spiritual teaching using “pointers” as a method to allow one to see one’s true nature. It is a recent book from a field known as Non-dualism whose principles were familiar to me, but whose name was not. On reflection, my very nickname, Y2, is a kind of non-dualist question/statement. Why two? Since of course, there is only one. This is the central precept of non-dualism in reaching its purpose, self-knowledge.
I’ve only read the introduction and have not yet gotten to the meat of the book, the dialogues, but already the book has affected me. Particularly Wheeler’s contention that there is no effort, special place or time, or work that needs to be done to reach true awareness of the truth of existence - what he and non-dualists call presence-awareness. Since presence-awareness is always what we truly are - it does not fade or change from waking to sleeping or due to changing emotional states or thought processeses - there is nothing that needs to be done to become aware of it. From this perspective, the very idea of enlightenment is a falseness and an impediment to reaching for what need not ever be reached for. So the logic of non-dualism goes, if enlightenment is a state that one must reach that is not currently attained, then a separation is required, which is against the aim of a non-dual state. The non-dual state is described as the consciousness or awareness that every experience, thought, emotion, and object of the world rests on. All of these are illusions of separation while the truth of awareness is infinite, unchanging, and forever.
At least, thats what I can describe it as at this early point in considering the teaching or pointers that John Wheeler has laid out. So far I’ve found the act of simply acknowledging (accepting? appreciating?) the state of being-awareness that is beyond thought and emotion is, as one questioner posed, a bit like a dog chasing its tail. Wheeler writes that the mind cannot process or think this state of being. It is not a concept. It is beyond thought. A fascinating proposition, but as of yet I must admit to difficulty in recognizing this state without cognition.
However, I do believe there was a time in my life that I may have been in acceptance and peace with this state for a moment and perhaps now look back on Read the rest of this entry »
Oink’s Pink Palace, my favorite site on the entire internet was shut down this week. October 23, 2007 - a sad day indeed.
I don’t think I could give a better epitaph than DJ Rupture did on his blog. A musician aware enough to actually be encouraged when he found his music available on the revolutionary sharing site.
“Oink had everything by certain artists. Literally, everything. I searched for ‘DJ Rupture’ and found every release I’d ever done, from an obscure 7? on a Swedish label to 320kpbs rips of my first 12?, self-released back in 1999. It was shocking. And reassuring. The big labels want music to equal money, but as much as anything else, music is memory, as priceless and worthless as memory…”
Getting invited to Oink was one of the most exciting and vindicating experiences of my internet life. The black market community of music distribution through file sharing has always been intensely interesting to me; it was at the heart of my initial romance with the internet. In the beginning, there were simply websites with mp3s for download and lists of ftp sites that were traded around on IRC. Then came Napster, which brought the masses into the game, and then came Soulseek, which shared Napster’s user-friendliness and simplicity of use, but managed to stay underground for reasons i don’t really understand to this day.
But Oink was a revelation. It was truly a music lover’s paradise. It was a community based on love of music, sharing, cuteness (avatars were required to be cute in an endearing attempt to foster kind communication), quality, and organization. It remains the benchmark for what a music service can and should be. I guess stuff like that is always destined to come up against the harsh reality of “too good to be true.” Oink, you will be missed.
Saturday, Oct 13th, 2007 Categories: music, robots
Last week I was browsing around Amazon.com and stumbled upon what may be the greatest treasure trove of customer reviews on the entire site. Autechre album reviews. Autechre (there are a variety of ways to pronounce it, and the duo, Sean Booth and Rob Brown, have said the name can be pronounced any way one sees fit) is an experimental electronic music act whose compositions tend to defy description. There’s is the sound of machines lumbering towards expression. It is music that has been called unique, difficult, complex, repetitive, alien, abstract, robotic, inhuman, minimalist, dark, strange, mathematical, architectural, atmospheric, frightening, structured noise, austere, intellectual, emotional, cold, beautiful, harsh, etc. Lots of words trying to express some kind of analog to an experience that is completely lacking in words.
As one reviewer so well summed up, just go with beauty, stop trying to describe it and just experience it for yourself. Which is probably the best course of action with Autechre, but that doesn’t mean many have put forth some incredible attempts at the art of describing Autechre. Some particularly inspired samples:
“Here, we’re no longer looking at landscapes/listening to soundscapes. Instead, Ae bring us inside the mind of the machine. It is a claustrophobic, disorienting, but totally fascinating experience. The machines we inhabit are definitely mortal, perhaps mortally wounded. They spit out strange pattering rhythms, and quirky, touching melodies. They suffer from Tourettes and Obsessive-Compulsive disorder. They undergo life-cycles from birth to death before our eyes/ears.
When I listen to a great soul singer like Marvin Gaye or Sam Cooke, I feel a surge of emotion that comes from a sense that they are singing about my life and my experiences, more eloquently than I ever could. I feel like I share a special human bond with them. Ae have managed a more daunting task; they’ve brought me as close as is humanly possible to feeling a special bond with machines. Amazing.” link
“Through digitally construed mediums, we’ve been allowed to taste something that our parents and their parents never imaged, actually allowing us to ride on the shaped experimental surf of some unnamed audio sea for the very first time. Its uttering amazing in that respect alone, with foreign worlds never before experienced finding themselves sonically cultivated in man’s existence.” link
“Autechre sounds like the the noises of the inner cortex of a robot, while Aphex Twin sounds like a kid playing in a robot factory.” link
“Someone once compared the music on Tri Repetae as the sound of machines chattering away to each other in the dark. If so, then this record is the sound of those machines trying to drag themselves out of a dark tarpit under the glare of acetylene lights on some forgotten evil robot construction site. link
“It depicts an alien, mechanical, vaguely threatening but overall unclear form that seems to be wriggling into existence spontaneously (i.e., constructing itself rather than being birthed). link
“It’s weird. It’s repetitive. It’s difficult. And yet, there’s something there. Something fascinating. Something alive. I have to learn it’s secrets. I have to listen again. Marge! Prepare my headphones! Open the listening room doors! Hold all my calls! I’m going back!!” link
“picture crystalline structures of great complexity slowly growing, but incorporating organic fragments in a way that seems random and orchestrated at once. Now translate that to sound.” link
“damn brahmin… this is inaa fine style. jagged beats spin and contort, go out of focus, come back together. sounds like milford grave ripping apart acid house and early hip hop and putting it all back together as cubist dub drug cult funk.” link
After being inspired by the multitude of astounding reviews, I attempted my own review of the Untilted album. However, I found myself drifting towards trying to describe Autechre in general, instead of the album in question. It got me thinking about the music though, and ever since, I haven’t been able to stop listening. Maybe once I can decide on a favorite album I’ll be able to craft a proper review. My aborted attempt, after the break.
i think, for me, the wonder of the heavens derives from the idea that everything we’ve ever thought of, or ever will think of, is already out there, hurtling through that ever-expanding darkness.
I just finished watching “A Scanner Darkly” for the first time. I downloaded the hi-def 720p HD-DVD rip off of bittorrent and enjoyed the amazing clarity and detail that only animation can provide through my Infocus projector projecting onto the living room wall of my apartment at 1024×768. I find it a bit ironic … A Scanner Darkly is a very paranoid movie, pretty much a rumination on the mental and emotional state of paranoia throughout. The main character is paranoid of every entity he interacts with, his friends, his girlfriend, his boss, himself, and most of all the very high-tech 3-D surveillance police state that he works for. In some ways it is true, we live in a police state. More than ever, surveillance cameras, federal wiretapping and internet snooping programs and efforts are moving forward and coming online. But back to the irony, here I am, publicly blogging about a movie I watched that was downloaded off of bittorrent. Perhaps this is folly (though, who’s to say I haven’t already bought the HD-DVD of Scanner Darkly and just downloaded a version because I don’t have an HD-DVD player to actually play the disc), but I think it says a lot about the state of law enforcement and its attempts at “total information awareness.”
, by John Wheeler. After reading a physics article (that I can’t find now) calling him a “poet physicist,” I began a search for books by theoretical physicist and Einstein collaborator, John Archibald Wheeler at Amazon. Instead, You Were Never Born by a totally different John Wheeler came up. It wasn’t what I was lookin for, but it had all 5-star customer reviews, and the first one, titled, “Probably the purest teaching I’ve come across,” intrigued me. It talked of a technique of spiritual teaching using “pointers” as a method to allow one to see one’s true nature. It is a recent book from a field known as Non-dualism whose principles were familiar to me, but whose name was not. On reflection, my very nickname, Y2, is a kind of non-dualist question/statement. Why two? Since of course, there is only one. This is the central precept of non-dualism in reaching its purpose, self-knowledge.