That's the Formula!

We did our Sex, Drugs & R&R show last night. It's a lot of work to put these things together. 9 performers, 30 songs, lots of set-up and take-down, and major schlepping of amps, P.A. system, etc.

Even-though you do all that work, it's best to keep expectations low.  You never know how it's all gonna turn out, will people actually come out to see the show?  It's always a mystery.  So you put as little thought and energy as possible into speculating about it.

You do all the work to make a show successful, and then just let the chips fall where they may.  Turns out this one worked out beautifully. A full room, lots of great music. A satisfying set for our band. Smiles and good feeling all around!

Low expectation - High Satisfaction! That's the formula!

The Secret Word is...

Yes. There is a secret. It's the secret to the whole thing.  We live it. We embody it. It is encoded in us and manifested by us, and by everything we think and touch.

It's Darwin's Dangerous Idea.  The secret is evolution.  It's helpful to go back to definitions.

"A process in which the whole universe is a progression of interrelated phenomena."

You got it!

Human Rights for All Humans!

It's been a hot topic at the Supreme Court this week. And in all the headlines. And for many of us this topic is such a "no-brainer." Of course, Gay People should have all the rights and responsibilities as anyone else. Marriage? Sure.

This got me thinking about how this all came about.  It really was because of a some brave and forward-thinking people who realized that it was time to "come out of the closet," back in the 60's. And it was time to be vocal and "proud" to be the people they really were.

Once the closet door was opened, it became clear that lots and lots of people were gay. And they were not strange, or weird, or really any different than anybody else.  Or maybe some of them were strange and weird and different, just like everyone else. And they deserved respect just like anyone else.

Some trace this all back to the Stonewall Riots.  It was a significant event.  Gay folks standing up for their rights.  These were brave souls who risked life and limb to stand up to the Cops.  And now these many years later these brave souls are vindicated.  And those standing against the Gay movement are really just retrograde, bigoted folks.  People without a leg to stand on, except of course, blind ignorance and intolerance.

Human Rights for Humans! All of us!

Public/Private

Yes, I love performing. I love getting up on a stage. I love playing guitar, making music. I love acting. I love the public nature of these things.

I also love meditating alone. I love getting lost in my own head, my own space. I love reading a book. I love sitting in a quiet room. I love thinking. I love writing. I love being alone.

I love the public/private dichotomy.  I don't think I could love one, if I also didn't love the other.  The public and the private, they feed and energize each other.

Equality! Of Course!

All this talk of equality... in marriage... and in life... got me thinking.

Of course we are all equal, I mean, of course we are all unique, and we are all coming from different circumstances, and have different levels of abilities and opportunities available to us, but beings with life streaming through them are more the same than different.  

Some of us are, as Wm. Blake once wrote, "born to sweet delight," and some are "born to endless night."

But of course we should all be treated equally under the law. We should always strive for a society of equality, fraternity, and justice.  The circle of equality always needs to be expanding and inclusive.  

It's better for all of us if everyone is treated with respect and dignity. And we all have the same rights. Each and every one of us. 

U2: "One, but not the same." Any differences should be honored. Celebrated. Of course!

More Rehearsing!

More rehearsing.  If you do theater or have a band, you rehearse. Or you should. You spend lots more time rehearsing than performing in front of people. What drives you? The imperative "not to suck."  So much of performing is about confidence. Knowing what to do, without bothering about the knowing. And it's not a "mental" knowing. It's a body thing. A muscle memory thing. And if you are really, really well-rehearsed, you can then "let go" into the moment.  That's when you can be free in the moment of performance. So you rehearse to get free of thought, to get to that place of unconscious knowing in the moment of spontaneous creation.

Or something like that.  

We spent last evening in our kitchen.  Two guitar players, three voices, a violinist arrayed next to the refrigerator, the stove, the dishwasher.  We conjured up a sonic hurricane.  It blazed through that little space.  And it was good. I mean there were clunky moments. But the work was to get through those moments of hesitation, of uncertainty and to push through to some certain clarity.

The essential good work of trying to be good. Good without trying.

Sex. Drugs. R&R. Blasphemy!

This coming weekend we are doing a covers show, "Sex, Drugs & R&R." There will be 9 performers: solo acts and bands, doing 30 songs "dedicated to life's essentials."  whitewolfsonicprincess will be closing our little mini-set with the Patti Smith Group's version of "Gloria."  It's off Patti's debut album "Horses."

Patti's album was one of those seminal moments in r&r.  A collision of garage rock with prophetic, visionary poetry, served up by one of the most charismatic, shamanistic, little scarecrows of a front-woman ever conceived.  Patti must have been dreamed up by some poetry-spewing, sacred monster.

Check out The Patti Smith Group debut on SNL in 1976 here. Riveting. Astonishing. The essence.

Anyway, we ran through our own version of Patti's song yesterday in rehearsal.  It was so exhilarating to bash through those three chords.  And when the Lovely Carla intoned: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine," I really did get a little chill up my spine. 

What's funny and coincidental (Although, really is there any such thing as a coincidence?!), we will be playing this song a day before Easter.  Love it! Sex. Drugs. R&R. And Fucking BLASPHEMY!

Days. They are Ours.

Days. They are ours. And we only get so many of them.  And the last one, is it written, recorded somewhere? In a book? Carved in a tree, or a rock? The last day? Or is that still to be written?

We have these days. Horrid ones. Middling ones. Good ones.  And every variation of those tones. The horrid ones would be when something terrible, something irreversible happens.  Think death, or disfigurement. Or dreams gone up in smoke.

Middling ones. They are deceptive. Lots of days go by where it seems nothing of import happens. But that can't be true. There is life and death every moment. But there are those days when nothing in particular touches or holds you. You are getting thru. Going through the motions. These days count. They are just as valuable as any other day. But they pile up and sort of pass by.

And then you have a good one. A really good day. How do they happen? An expansive feeling of well-being. Well-rested. A good meal. No cares or worries. Even chores seem fun and exciting. Somehow all the black clouds of existence sort of vanish in the light of the sun. You are engaged. Happy. You take your hands off the wheel. And are sort of carried along in the rush and flutter of life.

Yesterday was a really good day.  Just wanted to mark it!

UPDATE: I re-read this post and I thought, "Sunny Jimmy, why can't you be more specific? Why was it such a good day?"

1. Well, I was well-rested. And it was a Saturday, and it was "clean-up time" in our household, which means rags, mops, elbow grease. Now this can be a chore or just a mindless responsibility, or it can  be a Zen-like pleasure.  It was Zen. Very Zen. Doing simple tasks as well as you can.  Polish the chrome and porcelain and take satisfaction in a clean counter.

2. "Clean-Up Time," reminded me of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's great record "Double Fantasy." Just one of the all-time great albums.  Stands up to anything. I used to skip the Yoko songs and now they blow me away.  This is perfect Saturday morning chore music! Swept Away while sweeping away!

3. We had a phenomenal meal at Joy Yee Noodle. I had the Black Mushroom with Chow Funn noodles.  Unbelievably good and satisfying.

4. We had a short kitchen session rehearsal and went over cover songs for our show next weekend.  Everything sounded really good to my ears!

5. We went to a really cool play by Theater Oobleck.  It's about William Blake, or at least Blake is the jumping off point. And it jumps off wonderfully. Another great piece from Mickle Maher.

6. Bedtime! That was a good day. Hit the pillow and out!

The Pope Talk Stirred Me Up!

All that "Pope talk," reminded me that I was brought up "Catholic."  And what does "Catholic" mean to me? Sin, suffering, guilt, thorns, blood, nails, and wooden crosses.  Oh yeah, and betrayal. Being Catholic was not a cheery thing.  I was convinced early on that Hell was my fate. And Heaven just didn't seem real. Hell seemed real. Not Heaven.

And I felt sorry for Jesus.  He seemed like a nice enough guy. Maybe a little full of himself. And his recalcitrance shepherded him into a world of shit.  I didn't want him to suffer. And I guess I did feel guilty.  How did I contribute to his suffering? Beats me. "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

But somehow I was implicated in the whole sordid mess. And when he died, and he incubated in that cave for three days, and then shot up to Heaven, I don't know, I just didn't buy it.  Seemed like the grown-ups were lying to me, trying to put a gloss on a really, really bad story. Kind of like when my Mom told us our dog Prince went to live with a family on a farm, when the truth was (and it only dawned on me many years later) that Prince was put down because he was a very, very bad dog.

I never really believed that Jesus ascended to Heaven, but I did, for a long time, believe that Prince ascended to a Farm!

So the whole thing kind of fell apart for me. Yes, I liked that message of Love. I liked the idea of Forgiveness, but the whole dogma thing seemed like some elaborate shell game, and somehow I was being bushwhacked.  So by about the middle of third grade I was already an "unbeliever." I went through all the motions. I tried to keep to myself, I pretended I was invisible, and hoped for the best.

And what do I think about the new Pope? Same as the old Pope, and the one before him.  He's a guy ruling over a very, very corrupt organization. Backward, closeted. And a cover organization for abusers of children.  Kind of an evil thing there, don't you think? Turns out the Catholic Church is the exact opposite of what it claims to be.  It's certainly not a road to any salvation. The believers seem like they are being duped. No thanks, not for me. I'll invent my own hell, and my own heaven, and I will gladly live with them both.

Mirror-World vs. Flesh and Blood World

Maybe this is all so obvious, it doesn't need to be written... but what the hell... it's on my mind.

Of course, it is understandable that people want to live in the virtual landscape that we have created; our vast mirror-world.  It is a bubbling paradise where the present just expands exponentially every second of every day.  No one dies. Or if they die, they are not gone, they are not silent.  They are trapped in the mirror. The past is just as alive as the present. The past is the present.  There is no need for a future.  The present is one second away from being more encompassing - more present.

We offer the best and the worst of ourselves to the mirror-world.  And best and worst is the same thing too.  It's all just part of  the stream of consciousness.  We can float, pick and choose - that's our freedom in the web.  We don't have to stay anywhere, we can float anywhere.

Our flesh and blood world is no match for the vast mirror-world.  In the flesh and blood world we bleed, we break bones, we get tired, we die and are gone, silent - forever.  Now these things can happen in the mirror-world, but they are just another image, another event that can be repeated over and over.  So those moments are no longer just discrete moments. They are part of the present stream.

So yes, consequential events happen in the mirror-world, just like in our flesh and blood world, but they aren't the same.  They are now just images, just like any other image. They have no substance, no consequence. They are "dream-like" and they can be repeated, they can run backwards.

So we live with both worlds. All the time. It has changed us, this world/mirror world existence.  It just is part of our reality now.  And it has changed us too.  In ways I don't think we can even pinpoint.

Mixed Signals

Mixed-Signals? Yes. All the time. Isn't that the cloud of unknowingness we live in? Mixed-signals all the time.  A world of confusion. Everything. All the time. We must deal with it all. Navigate through it. Sift through the chaos, the controlled chaos.  Swim in the slow motion confusion. We are armed with that amazing, marvelous brain (see previous post), but then we are inundated, overwhelmed with an endless stream of contradictory information. Mixed-signals.  We do our best to make a life out of that mad, Tower of Babel-ness.

A Broth of Biological Molecules!

This guy is trying to build a "virtual brain."  Not sure if it's a good idea or not.  My brain can't really see the point...  

But this description of a what a brain is, sort of captivated my own brain: 

"The brain contains nearly 100 billion neurons organized into networks with 100 trillion total connections, all firing split-second spikes of voltage in a broth of complex biological molecules in constant flux."

Kind of mind-blowing. I can blow my own mind, by contemplating the complexity of a brain. That's a strange kind of self-referential mind-blowing-ness.  And it's all sort of amazing that we have evolved these complex organs all just to navigate this world that we have created for ourselves.  And what do we do with these brains of ours?  

Don't ask.  It's all so weird.  There must be some grand purpose.  But we spend so much time muddling along doing very stupid, mindless and pointless things.  It's all a little befuddling.  All that firing of voltages, all those neurons, all that stuff floating around in a biological soup, sitting up there in our cranial closet.  

Searching for a purpose? Trying to justify an existence? To what end Pilgrim?!

Social Media

I have a small toe-hold in this vast social media landscape.  And I'm a little ambivalent about it all. I do think the real action is in the flesh and blood world. And this mirror-world is a dazzling diversion from, and abstraction of, that real world. But it is all so vast, there is so much "life" out on the web. It's seductive, and all-consuming.  It has become almost an obligation to "check in." Of course, you can be selective, you can "pick and choose" what to pay attention to, but paying attention is time, and time is an exhaustible resource.  Of course, time doesn't really exist on the web. Time is ever-expanding; past, present, and the future, (or no, maybe Johnny Lydon was right, "there is no future," only the ever-expanding present), is there all the freaking time.  It's all a very grand illusion. Sometimes you think it's a magnificent illusion. And sometimes you think it's a very destructive and malevolent illusion. It's just another way of killing one's own autonomy and integrity.  All part of the business of demeaning the validity of one's own existence.

Our Way!

Yes, I guess there are those who, when they play cover songs, try to play them note for note.  It's almost like there is a "score," and you are being faithful to it.  And then the joy of listening, would be that the audience hears exactly what they expect to hear, when they hear it.

This seems so pointless to me.  Like working a crossword puzzle.  Everything neat and in it's place.

If you are going for a "note for note" experience, hell, why not just listen to the original? I have always approached cover songs as "raw material," a starting point, subject to interpretation.  If a song is really, really good, it will hold up, and then the joy of listening would be to hear the song in a new way.  Maybe a big production number would sound new and refreshing in a stripped down mode? Or maybe it's the other way around?

Anyway, yesterday we ran through a bunch of cool cover songs with our band.  And we did make the  songs sound like our songs. That's the way to do it!

Covering the Covers!

Yesterday, we had an intense rehearsal going over cover songs we are doing for a show at the end of the month.  We kind of deconstructed songs, and worked on parts: harmonies, guitar parts, etc. It was fun and exhausting. Our band is pretty much dedicated to original work, we have a vision, and our mission is to bring that vision to the world. But I like doing these covers shows because it brings out lots of performers and fans, and helps to sort of build a local scene.

The challenge of the covers is to do them justice, but also to kind of make our own mark on them. It's a cool process, and when it works, it's very rewarding.  Yesterday the hours just flew by.  Spent about 5 hours working on little parts. Really worked on harmonies, not something I'm very good at, and worked hard with another guitar player on meshing our two styles.

The list of songs we're planning on doing is pretty wide-ranging: A Day in the Life, Carmelita, Seeds and Stems Again, Venus, Gloria ("Jesus died for somebody's sins..."), and These Boots are Made for Walking.

A Simple Story

A man came... don't know where he came from. A man went... don't know where he went to.

Create/Destroy!

One thing you learn from many years of doing theater - you create and destroy.  You develop a new piece. You put together a group of actors, a production, you run the show, and then "blow it up." Destruction is part of the process.

You have to clear the energy. It's the only way to evolve, the only way to do a "new" thing, even if there really is no new thing under the sun.  I do have a knack for the destruction side of the equation, sometimes my ability to destroy is more finely-honed than the creation side.

But they go hand in hand.  It's the same urge. To create the new, to destroy the old. To foster growth, to cut out the dead wood. And just about like anything else, you need to find the balance.  And you need to not get too attached, even to the things you want to be attached to.

So yes, sometimes the destruction, the letting go is hard.  That might be a clue that you are on the right track. And the creating part can be hard too. It's best when it's not hard either way. But the process is the process. That's just the way.

It's all just a vibe!

I wrote about tuning a guitar here.  You can tune a guitar, but you can't tune a fish... right? Well actually that fish is tuned to it's own frequency.  Everything living, everything in the universe, has it's own special vibration. Tuning is a complex issue. I mean, you think it's pretty simple. Tune your guitar strings to certain frequencies, certain vibrations and then you are done.  But guess what?! There are many variables and options, and you are never quite there.

And even inanimate objects are vibrating... according to a musician friend of ours, the Earth itself is vibrating and emitting a sound sort of like a gong!  It's at a frequency that we can't hear, but it's there, doing it's thing... strange, cool... weird... vibrations!

Higgs Boson - Sort of Fascinating!

I love reading complex scientific topics, and then rendering them in my own cracked waring-blender of a brain.  I take all that complexity and nuance, and make it simple and comprehensible. And probably absurd too. I discard what I don't understand, and pretend to understand what I think I understand.

This Higgs Boson thing is pretty weird. The search for the "God Particle." The mysterious force that holds everything together.  Supposedly if this force didn't exist, everything would just be a big undefined mess of atoms.  Or something like that.

This New York Times article explores how some brainiacs, science-nerds on the hunt with this very large "collider," have finally "discovered," it. First someone comes up with the idea, they develop a theory, they in a sense invented it, and they look for it, find a way to prove the theory. Then they discover it!  That's the scientific method, the human way.  

What's it all about? I don't know.  But it is sort of fascinating!

Full Spectrum!

The highs are high and the lows are low. I guess you can't really expect more or anything less than that. A full spectrum!