What Else? Pt. I

G2 says:
Dude are you there
il ambasciatore says:
yes
G2 says:
Listen to this
il ambasciatore says:
What?
G2 says:
Holy shit
il ambasciatore says:
What???!!!
il ambasciatore says:
talk to me dog
G2 says:
We received an email today
il ambasciatore says:
yeah
G2 says:
From this lady out in California
G2 says:
Do you know this email address jxxxxxx@yahoo.com?
il ambasciatore says:
I don't know
il ambasciatore says:
not off the top of my head. Why what does it say?
G2 says:
She says to forward this to you. Says she works for the CIA
il ambasciatore says:
I thought they were in Virginia or something
G2 says:
She says they already have Osama Bin Laden
il ambasciatore says:
Really? Who is she?
G2 says:
     I don't know. I thought you knew her. I looked up her address and couldn’t find a name.
il ambasciatore says:
     Interesting. Email her back and tell her we said thank you
G2 says:
     I did dog. She says they caught him and they are keeping him captive until later on in the presidential race. I will forward you the email.
il ambasciatore says:
      o.k. please do. If that's true they are a wise bunch of evil-doers.
G2 says:
Can you imagine if they already have him? bastards. We will have no chance. You will have to move.
il ambasciatore says:
Yes. I will move to France, like all patriotic Americans should do at this time. forward me the email. I'll check it out.
G2 says:
That would clinch re-election for the Dark Forces.
il ambasciatore says:
      maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. I don't think people are that stupid. I think everyone has had enough. We’ll just have to wait and see. But wouldn’t that be something... hanging onto him all this time just to try to get re-elected... the final straw that breaks our backs
G2 says:
O.k. I sent it. Read it.
il ambasciatore says:
thanks. later
G2 says:
     O.k., let me know what you think.
il ambasciatore says:
     I will.

on with our story...

What has it been? Three days? Four or five days? I am not sure. But it is working. The writing is working. The reading worked somehow. Something is working. Its all coming together. i guess what it was was that I wasn't happy being in the void. I was in resistance to it. but after speaking with the medium I understood that it was o.k. to be in the void. I came out of resistance to it at some point in the last two or three days. just popped out. I am starting to see the infinite possibilities again. And more. I am starting to feel the magic again. for the first time in many years. I am starting to feel that spark of divinity inside again.

Tonight we went to Zekes house to work on the mixes for the nothing is cohesive album. doing things a little different on this album. a lot of sounds and noise. I get excited at one point at this one passage that is just lots of continuous feedback for many minutes. Sounded incredible, like a dream. Zeke thinks it sounds more like a nightmare. I'm jumping up and down. ‘oh man we are Grammy bound baby’ I'm shouting, joking.... zeke looks at me ‘hey just remember how you have felt from all those bad reviews of sleep with you because it looks like you better get ready for another round of them if you are really going to put this out like this. prepare for more sleepless nights in the fetal position, referring to all the heat we have taken for swy the last two months. [one recent review said that swy was by far the worst album of 2003. of the whole year. just thought it was awful. He took his whole first paragraph to quote almost all the lyrics to the title song sleep with you to use them as an example of how blatantly crass and crude and sophomoric etc that he thought it was... so he just didn't get it. not in touch with the fact that he has felt that way, we've all felt that way before. all the time. But I just said it, that's all. I just wrote it down and sang it. I was expressing something very real. Real thoughts that we have all had. in a very blunt and open manner. You know, we do have crude and crass and sophomoric thoughts like that sometimes. At least I do. That’s just the way it is. It’s animal consciousness. And that's all I was trying to do, explore that aspect of us. But we also have very sublime and brilliant and eloquent thoughts as well. I think we are big enough to carry both within us.]

So the new new album sounds great. We’re going out on a limb a little in a number of different ways with it musically. Lyrically it is pretty tame this time, thank God. But musically.... we’ll just have to see what happens...

Came home late and popped in the ram Dass biography DVD Fierce Grace. And I just feel so alive from it. He was my first guru. He's one of the only people I have ever read/heard that really KNEW. His BE HERE NOW is a bible for so many. Just brilliant. and here he is. great film. He means so much to me. Yes. The magic is returning. Something about doing all the writing the last few days. release. Relief. its been amazing. lightening up. feeling happy and hopeful. Something is changing as he indicated it would in his reading. It is a transformation. And its o.k. perhaps, as he had said, the old me is dying. And now all of a sudden I am alright with it. will I still sing? I don't know. will I go away and just travel and write forever? will we still tour? will we still make and sell albums? I don't know. will I go to France? Will I move to New York? Will I go to India for a while as was predicted? I certainly hope I take that African safari. I just have no idea. None of it. And I don't care now. I am just taking it day by day now. Whereas before I was just freaking out. He said it was going to be o.k. and as silly as that sounds, it was enough. Just to hear that. It was enough for me.

The last few weeks I have been writing and meditating endlessly on how can we help more while we are here. How can we help more? Do I turn my house into a homeless shelter? God that would freak the neighbors out. I mean what can we do to really make a serious difference. To seriously up the level of happiness worldwide for all of us? It has been an obsession the last few weeks for me. What can we do? ....

And then in the film tonight ram Dass recounts how he asks the maharaji, ‘what can I do to get in line and stay there?’ and the simple answer was, ‘love people, help people, and feed people.’

And I just started smiling and laughing. As if in some way it was a message for me too. for all of us. Thinking of how the last few years, especially the last few months more and more, I am just giving money away all the time now to people in need. Perhaps not the smartest thing to do, totally crazy in a way. Random giving. You see someone in need. You don't think about it. you don't judge them or yourself or the experience you just give them whatever you have in your pocket. Its an amazing feeling. And maybe you give them a hug too. and a smile. And you do this all day. Every day. Where ever you are. its wild. Obviously this is going to have to change. Become more organized. Less random. I mean you can’t be borrowing money every day from your friends because you are giving all of your own money away to homeless people all the time. But it is a good start. It’s that move in the right direction...

And then from there I started to build this portfolio of orgs that I donated to. you know like Easter seals, amnesty international, Greenpeace, working assets... and then you start to sponsor a few kids every month... that type of thing. and I think that's a good thing. I mean you're not really giving that much money. and even all that... one wonders.... what more can we do? .... even bigger.... even more... how can we go from rowboats to motorboats in our quest to improve the life of all people everywhere forever...

So lately I've started to think about how can we take this one step further? How can we do that times ten? Times a hundred? How can we make sure that everyone in the entire world has food everyday of their lives forever more? And good health... What can I do in the brief short life I have left here to help in a bigger, more permanent way? that's it really, how can we create bigger change in a way that isn't just giving money to these charities? Is there a way to create even bigger change?

That part in the movie just clicked something for me. Just made me smile because I knew I was on the right track with this in my thinking. and then you see ram Dass in his father’s backyard with his long scraggly hair and his long scraggly beard and his beads and he's just sitting there with like 3 or 4 hundred other people teaching them and talking to them, singing, chanting, meditating.... you realize.... you get it... you see the bigger picture.

For me it has to be a balance. I know that intuitively. I am not someone who can live in poverty or even in middle class. Its just not in me, its not my nature. I don't want to live that way in this life. So giving and helping and serving others for me I have decided and I think for every one if they so decide doesn’t have to be about giving up your own luxury. It doesn’t have to be about being poor yourself or anything like that. You can be rich as all hell if you want to and still give and help and serve and have that still be the main mission of your life.... Think of Anthony Robbins or Oprah winfrey both come to mind. So that made me feel good too. just realizing that for me.

Understanding where I'm at with it. I think for a lot of people they start thinking of feeding the world or helping people or you know giving all your money away everyday to homeless people on the street and they start getting afraid for their own welfare, as if maybe they won't have enough. But I don't believe this anymore. I think we can have both. We can be rich as hell ourselves and still just be giving away tons of money to help poorer people. Can you imagine the joy in that? Just the total fucking joy of it.

To be rich enough to have your own driver available 24 hours a day, which to me just moved up a few notches the last few months to number three on the list, taking over the cook position. I'm just not much into driving anymore, especially more than a few minutes.... but I digress. So the point is, you’re rich enough to have all of that more, the cook, the housekeeper, the assistant, and the driver, the helicopter, the jet, I mean having it all.... AND you're giving away a few thousand dollars a day to people who need it. Just throwing it out there where ever its needed....

And then from there you create your foundations etc.... but here's the deal. Do we really need anymore foundations? Doesn’t it kind of seem like we have all of that set up already. Maybe the only thing left to do is just give to all of these orgs that are already out there.... I don't know. I wonder where there is still need..... I guess that's the real question... what are the needs?

I have learned that we can watch our mind and not be a part of it. this helps tremendously. We can become the witness. And in that moment we can then decide how to experience almost anything.

Something else. better to tell the story. My alarm monitoring service at one time made a bunch of mistakes. Equipment was failing. Alarms going off in the middle of the night. things like that. I wrote them a letter and told them to fuck off; that they were history. They tried to uphold the contract we had with them. I told them the safety of my home was on the line and we weren't going to mess with that, contract or no contract. Someone actually called repeatedly until they reached me. at the time we were paying about $30 a month for monitoring service, standard. She gets on the phone and apologizes profusely. And asks me, “well what if we turn your account in to a month to month agreement with no contract and we lower your monthly payments from $30 to $12 per month for as long as you are with us?” it was a no-brainer. As a business person, I hung up the phone and was inspired by them. that was a good move on their part. They’ll keep my business forever. What's the lesson? Lots of them. Maybe, go the extra mile to keep every customer happy. keep them all. I remember reading some statistic a few years ago that it takes five times as much money to get an old customer’s business back again than to get a new customer.