Had a most profound spiritual experience today at church. Today was the last of four new member classes we were attending. I had decided this week not to go ahead and become a new member officially because of the five questions one needs to answer. I could of course answer yes to all five except this third one about committing to Jesus as my personal savior and serving him etc... because quite frankly I just don't even know what that means let alone feel able to answer that in the affirmative... so I delicately and politely bowed down from going up with my fellow classmates that I have been privileged enough to share the last four Sundays with learning about the history of the church and the religion etc. great times for me in my life right now truly. But I just didn't feel a hundred percent about going up there and not being true to how I feel in my words. I have too much respect for these people and this church. It means the world to me right now. so I will continue in my struggle/search/discovery of how I feel in my deepest heart about this matter. Either way I told the reverend, I'm in. consider me in. you have my presence and my money and contributions and anything else I can do to help. I'm just not sure about the whole Jesus thing. I felt very good seated in the pews still while my friends went up to officially become new members while I sat and watched. I had made the right decision. Fishy is growing up. Fishy is acknowledging his true feelings for once and making decisions and taking actions on those truest feelings above anything else now. miraculous.
His sermon today was awe-inspiring as most are and then his prayer afterward was even more moving for me. with my head bowed with the rest of the congregation I noticed that I was tearing. Actual tears. And I don't tear when I cry. remember? Just one of those quirks, or so I thought... so there I was tearing... so was I crying? Man I don't know. not sure what was happening. just deeply moved. But today, as I sat there with my hands clasped and my head bowed and listened to his words to and with us all I found myself tearing and crying and so moved that I would say it was the second most spiritual experience I have ever had, the first being just a few months ago when I heard that whisper to wander into that church on a Wednesday and just went in and sat down and was filled with the most intense and comforting feelings of peace love joy security and joy that I had ever felt in my life before. today was just as meaningful. in the shower this morning I was thinking to myself how often throughout my life I have mistrusted the God-concept... how hard and cynical I have allowed myself to become as a person of the world through the years... with full appreciation and no incrimination whatsoever I just felt into it and decided that I would let it go, honor it, recognize it, but deliberately decide to move past it. just finally decide to trust it fully.
Lets face it, we can’t make intellectual sense of the God-concept. We can always find a way to think our way out of it, in fact, its easier to think our way out of the God-concept than it is to believe in it. but that doesn’t stop us from feeling it still does it? and that's the thing about it. right there. that's it. we can always think our way out of that and so many other things, the after-life, reincarnation, the soul-concept. But you know intellectually we could just as easily talk ourselves out of many of the basic truths of physics and chemistry and biology if we rely solely on what we can see and hear and touch in the world with our basic human senses. The idea of molecules and atoms and string theory and chaos theory and how our bodies work and our brain functions... even these concepts are pretty hard to understand and fully accept. They seem so ‘not of this world.’ so beyond our ability to fully comprehend. And yet, if we break them down mathematically we can grasp little bits of it all. so there has to be a little faith there. either faith in science or faith in spirituality, call it what we will in our current incarnation here in this moment... it all requires a little faith.
Faith. wow. that's the tough one. fear is the biggest enemy of faith. what if I believe and I then get disappointed at some point down the road? that's it for me at least. Why should I believe in something that may disappoint me later on down the road? well so what, I asked myself this morning in the shower. why not just give in finally and just accept how you really feel, fear and all? I say we try it, I told myself as I scrubbed and shampooed. Why not just go for it? after all, don't you feel better when you believe than when you don't believe? I mean, don't you find that things just work out easier when you come from that place? don't you find that you are more lit up and more inspiring to others and to yourself when you are coming from that space? well yes of course the answer is yes. well then. lets settle it.
So today the sermon and the prayer seemed to address these questions and these matters quite eloquently and personally for me. and there I was sitting amongst hundreds of other people with actual tears streaming down my face. my God, I thought, I am truly truly sorry. And I'm truly truly happy. and I'm truly truly grateful. Thank you thank you thank you.
Last screening: world war I in color. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh. The six part documentary covering the history of WWI. But through computer effects they have added color to all of the old b&w footage that existed before. really brings it to life. interviews several veterans who are still alive today, some born as far back as 1895. these interviews are awesome. great doc. Learning a lot.
current spin: Queen. The Game. One of their best. greatest vocalist. Awesome guitar. Sick drum and bass grooves. Their peak as a band. they would never achieve this again. not many bands ever have since.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Can foundations have an impact?
The most glorious day in New York today!!!! the city is just so alive with people smiling and happy from this great weather. how lucky we are indeed to live in this wonderful little world called New York city. went to the guitar shop in the morning with little Ty. Then we tried to get into a gentleman’s club. He's twelve of course so they gave him a hassle. But he really wanted to go in. so he tried to use his dads Jewish community center swimming pool ID. But it didn't work. We did have a lot of fun playing on a bunch of guitars going from store to store. Almost all of my favorite acoustics in the world were damaged from the climate change between Miami and here. but they managed to fix most of them thank God. I am so happy to have them back. they are like children. Today I sat and just sang and played in my apartment for the first time in so long. its weird but when my guitars are injured and in the shop its like I can’t play the other ones. I just let them sit there... now I feel so happy that they're all back where they belong.
Still studying this foundation stuff. reading studying learning getting into it. at one point they mention “improving our effectiveness and impact of our program areas.” I ask myself, ‘can foundations have an impact? Are they effective? What are the program areas? Think about this. whoever you are. whoever we are. whatever we do in life. in our day to day. there are people out there just like us who spend their time energy and money on helping us. whether its helping our environment, or giving money for scientific research, or helping education of our young, or homeless people, or older people... they are helping. They are spending their time and money and effort helping make the world a better place. not just using resources and living for their own life but living to help the lives of others. Wow. I am just still blown away by the opportunity this affords us. we all have this opportunity to help like this. but we have to find out within ourselves how we can and want to help. For everyone its going to be something different. Some people perhaps volunteering is going to be their thing. I get down on myself for not volunteering sometimes. But maybe that's just not my thing. building a foundation. Now that's my thing. created a flow chart outlining the steps one would need to take in order to start and maintain a really valuable foundation. First step really is just to create the cash. Expendable cash that you don't need for yourself. And then from there, just invest it so it can continue to build forever. you can then use the net profits minus taxes and expenses from those net profits to give to worthy causes. Its really that simple. Again though, first step. Have the cash there that you don't need personally. I'm not there yet. I'm kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, still spending more than I am bringing in. man if you could help by being good at that... I'd be a great giver. I am so good at that. spending more than I bring in. haha. but I am changing from learning about this concept of foundations. Its one thing to start a charity and that's a groovy thing. that's what I'm doing now. and it’s a great feeling. But to start a whole foundation that gives to tons of different charities.... now that's just an amazing concept. More later.
Still studying this foundation stuff. reading studying learning getting into it. at one point they mention “improving our effectiveness and impact of our program areas.” I ask myself, ‘can foundations have an impact? Are they effective? What are the program areas? Think about this. whoever you are. whoever we are. whatever we do in life. in our day to day. there are people out there just like us who spend their time energy and money on helping us. whether its helping our environment, or giving money for scientific research, or helping education of our young, or homeless people, or older people... they are helping. They are spending their time and money and effort helping make the world a better place. not just using resources and living for their own life but living to help the lives of others. Wow. I am just still blown away by the opportunity this affords us. we all have this opportunity to help like this. but we have to find out within ourselves how we can and want to help. For everyone its going to be something different. Some people perhaps volunteering is going to be their thing. I get down on myself for not volunteering sometimes. But maybe that's just not my thing. building a foundation. Now that's my thing. created a flow chart outlining the steps one would need to take in order to start and maintain a really valuable foundation. First step really is just to create the cash. Expendable cash that you don't need for yourself. And then from there, just invest it so it can continue to build forever. you can then use the net profits minus taxes and expenses from those net profits to give to worthy causes. Its really that simple. Again though, first step. Have the cash there that you don't need personally. I'm not there yet. I'm kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, still spending more than I am bringing in. man if you could help by being good at that... I'd be a great giver. I am so good at that. spending more than I bring in. haha. but I am changing from learning about this concept of foundations. Its one thing to start a charity and that's a groovy thing. that's what I'm doing now. and it’s a great feeling. But to start a whole foundation that gives to tons of different charities.... now that's just an amazing concept. More later.
Friday, July 29, 2005
A love letter to my future wife
O.k. check it, I am reading that surdna foundation 2004 annual report. This is a non-profit that was started by a guy named John andrus in 1917 and is still active today. they have orphanages, retirement homes, give to tons of environmental groups etc.... I am SO inspired right now by it. I'm jumping off the walls here. this is totally what I want to do – create something like this. this has really opened my eyes. totally inspired by this foundation, and by the family, and the ideas in this manual. THIS is what its all about.
Regarding the TA non-profit, the more I think about it, and read this manual, the more I realize that there is a lot more to it than I initially realized, more to do to get it off the ground etc, and a lot more places to go with it.
Great stuff! I am so inspired by what I've been reading. Creating actual orphanages, retirement communities, environmental-concern giving, community outreach and citizenry building. HUGE! I'm digging it big time.
I'm not thinking create this as your life, but create that it is the legacy of your life. still have fun and enjoy life through whatever you do... but make sure the bigger picture leads to something like this family has done. That the legacy of our lives is that through our being alive thousands of others for decades afterwards are able to have better lives.... this is just huge.
I will have to make changes. I am such a hedonistic and sybaritic self-pleasing pleasure seeking kind of a person.... will have to make a few subtle shifts and tweaks in my personality.
Tonight while writing sitting outside on the steps in front of our townhouse at about midnight a woman I see frequently, or better put, who sees me often sitting there writing, asks me, ‘so what are you writing tonight?’ ‘I'm writing a letter to my future wife.’ ‘a love letter?’ ‘well yes’ ‘well there are all sorts of letters one can write to their fiancé.’ ‘well I haven't met her yet so this is about the only kind I can think of to write to her at this point.’ She looked perplexed. ‘you haven't met her yet?’ ‘no.’ ‘you're writing a love letter to your future wife that you haven't met yet?’ ‘yes.’ ‘is this some kind of dating-site thing?’ ‘no. I'm just taking notes for her, asking her who she is.’ ‘why are you doing this? are you a romantic?’ ‘I would say this qualifies.’ ‘I would say it does. So why are writing to her? shouldn’t you be out trying to meet her?’ ‘great question. Perhaps I should be. But this keeps me focused on her. if I was out trying to meet her I'm sure I would never meet her. I would just be getting distracted.’ ‘you're right. that's the way it is. you're right about that. how long have you been writing to her?’ ‘about four years now.’ ‘my God aren't you sweet.’ ‘or crazy.’ ‘Are you a writer?’ ‘yes.’ ‘so this is good exercise for you anyway.’ ‘yes I guess it is.’ ‘and do you have a day job?’ ‘yes. I sing in a rock band.’ ‘I thought you were a singer. you look like a singer.’ ‘yes we tend to all look the same.’ ‘well you must tell me when you're playing next. I'm in apt 6E.’ and she gives me this smile. You know the one. ‘well have a good night. good luck meeting your wife.’ Thanks. Have a good night.’
Regarding the TA non-profit, the more I think about it, and read this manual, the more I realize that there is a lot more to it than I initially realized, more to do to get it off the ground etc, and a lot more places to go with it.
Great stuff! I am so inspired by what I've been reading. Creating actual orphanages, retirement communities, environmental-concern giving, community outreach and citizenry building. HUGE! I'm digging it big time.
I'm not thinking create this as your life, but create that it is the legacy of your life. still have fun and enjoy life through whatever you do... but make sure the bigger picture leads to something like this family has done. That the legacy of our lives is that through our being alive thousands of others for decades afterwards are able to have better lives.... this is just huge.
I will have to make changes. I am such a hedonistic and sybaritic self-pleasing pleasure seeking kind of a person.... will have to make a few subtle shifts and tweaks in my personality.
Tonight while writing sitting outside on the steps in front of our townhouse at about midnight a woman I see frequently, or better put, who sees me often sitting there writing, asks me, ‘so what are you writing tonight?’ ‘I'm writing a letter to my future wife.’ ‘a love letter?’ ‘well yes’ ‘well there are all sorts of letters one can write to their fiancé.’ ‘well I haven't met her yet so this is about the only kind I can think of to write to her at this point.’ She looked perplexed. ‘you haven't met her yet?’ ‘no.’ ‘you're writing a love letter to your future wife that you haven't met yet?’ ‘yes.’ ‘is this some kind of dating-site thing?’ ‘no. I'm just taking notes for her, asking her who she is.’ ‘why are you doing this? are you a romantic?’ ‘I would say this qualifies.’ ‘I would say it does. So why are writing to her? shouldn’t you be out trying to meet her?’ ‘great question. Perhaps I should be. But this keeps me focused on her. if I was out trying to meet her I'm sure I would never meet her. I would just be getting distracted.’ ‘you're right. that's the way it is. you're right about that. how long have you been writing to her?’ ‘about four years now.’ ‘my God aren't you sweet.’ ‘or crazy.’ ‘Are you a writer?’ ‘yes.’ ‘so this is good exercise for you anyway.’ ‘yes I guess it is.’ ‘and do you have a day job?’ ‘yes. I sing in a rock band.’ ‘I thought you were a singer. you look like a singer.’ ‘yes we tend to all look the same.’ ‘well you must tell me when you're playing next. I'm in apt 6E.’ and she gives me this smile. You know the one. ‘well have a good night. good luck meeting your wife.’ Thanks. Have a good night.’
Thursday, July 28, 2005
July 28th, Cool breezes here in New York this week.
July 28th,
Cool breezes here in New York this week. lucky us. everyone in great spirits. Last night I had a great meeting about this non-profit that I am starting, turning the transcendence army into a charity that gives to children’s causes... good stuff. I love mid-town and the upper east and west sides. And I love summer in New York. people spend a lot more time communicating with each other because we aren't rushing our asses into warmer confines of homes or offices. A few minutes ago some cat I always say hello with and I were speaking and it turns out he's the music supervisor for def jam, the movie division. He just unloaded a barrage of stories about everyone in the biz without me saying a thing... I have no idea why he would think I was someone to drop names to. I'm an absolute nobody. A few minutes later another dude I always chat with when I'm sitting out here gets out of his car and we’re chatting, comparing notes about who works the hardest – I'm out here all freaking night on this laptop so it appears that I work the hardest but what he doesn’t realize is that he gets to work by 8am and I'm not even out of bed till close to 11am... so... anyway turns out that he's the VP at Tommy Hilfiger. I tell him I'm the lead singer for transcendence, and he says ‘the Minnie driver guys, right?’ and I'm like yeah, but we have a new album out now... [we will never live that one down.] so yeah, the midtown and upper east scene... say what you will about downtown being hipper.... but all you run into down there is out of work peeps, peeps still trying for it. whereas here its peeps who are already there. and then if you head up another twenty blocks, to the eighties... holy shit, its just over the top wealth and affluence up there. a whole new level.
Last screening: Dragon, the Bruce lee story. So cool. this is great. I was never into Bruce lee of martial arts, but I'm about to be.
Current spin: to rococo rot, the amateur view. More glitch music. Out of Berlin. like it.
I just read this on Bishop John Shelby Spong’s email blast. loved it. here it is:
“”””Jean Palmer from Daphne, Alabama writes:
"After reading Dr. Hecht's column I recalled my thoughts over the years about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wondering why our United States government has always supported the Israeli side and seemingly neglected the Palestinians. My thoughts centered on our collective guilt over disbelieving the tragic Holocaust for so long. When the ship carrying refugees arrived on our shores during FDR's presidency and was forced to turn back to Europe, it caused me to gasp! How on earth could our country turn away refugees? Well, it seems we did and this has perhaps caused us to overcompensate on the Israeli side today. Having lived to the ripe old age of 71, I now know how guilt can cause one to do a 180-degree turnaround in some cases. I have asked myself why I was not sensitive to the issues of growing up in the segregated south all those years. Well, I was a child, then a teenager, then a nursing student, then a wife and a mother.too busy to think how others were faring, i n particular my African American brothers and sisters. Today, I embrace these same brothers and sisters wherever I am in church, social events, or anywhere else. Attempting atonement is a feeble attempt on my part but it seems to be the best I can do. I had been hoping that after 9/11 our government would stop, think and want to know why the terrorists hated us so much and how we might listen to their side of "the argument." So, what did President Bush and his administration do? They began a war they thought we could easily win; evidently thinking about how to turn the tide of Muslim hate was never a consideration. When I think of all the Iraqi people and our loyal military personnel who have been killed, it makes me nauseated!"””
I thought more about that scene with Ramstein in the park. Normally that type of thing is going to make me freak. I have spent so much time in my life worrying about and avoiding conflict. Doing everything I can to avoid it. I have been amazed at how little I was affected by it. I have found that i have developed this serene calm about friendship lately... realizing that we don't have to stay friends with everyone we’re friends with at one time, and we don't have to make friends with everyone we meet. That's not natural. I'm o.k. with the fact that we disagreed. Especially about something so profoundly important as that was. and I'm o.k. with the fact that my delivery of my truest beliefs weren't met with total acceptance, even disdain. You can’t go around trying to please everyone all the time. eventually you just have to start believing in you and what you believe, no matter what other people say. you know, you reach that point where you would rather spend as much time as possible as “pure awareness experiencing” rather than “consciousness desiring and resisting.” I'm not saying it’s easy, but if you continue to work at it, you get better and better at it.
Dreams. every night we dream. When do we know when to take dreams seriously? Or astrology for that matter... I mean, how do we know when to take it seriously and when to just let it go? or any of that stuff? palm reading and tarot card reading and psychics and horoscopes and religious studies and the I Ching and Feng Shui and omens and signs and messages we may get in meditation and all of it... hard to tell. Something I have been thinking about a lot the last year. what if we just lived through only what we saw and heard in real life and didn't take any of that other stuff seriously? someone says to me recently, ‘you know how this life is all an illusion?’ and I'm looking at them almost with pity, thinking, “what? I don't know about you, but this life seems pretty damn real to me...” But you know, in eastern thought, that is the viewpoint, that this is all an illusion, and this other world they have manufactured in their mind is very real. Western religions are the same way. speak to anyone of any of the four big religions and they place more importance on what they call “the afterlife” then they do on the “right here right now.”
I spoke with one of my favorite people in the world yesterday. a very famous and beloved psychic by the name of echo Bodine from Minnesota. We already had an appointment ironically enough, for months. She had nothing but good things to say. We shall see.
Last screening: Kevin smith speaks. He lectures at universities....
Current spin: still listening to dandy warhols. And this cat antony and the Johnsons. This guy is great. cabaret. Very gay. but very very good. you have to hear it to believe it. he could be very famous one day if enough money is put into him.
And here's an important announcement from the idiots at CNN.com:
“Anderson Cooper 360º”
””Children are starving to death. Anderson Cooper travels to Africa to put a human face on the hunger crisis in Niger. “”
Well thank God, because the Africans who are starving over there -- after all -- don't have human faces of their own.
Cool breezes here in New York this week. lucky us. everyone in great spirits. Last night I had a great meeting about this non-profit that I am starting, turning the transcendence army into a charity that gives to children’s causes... good stuff. I love mid-town and the upper east and west sides. And I love summer in New York. people spend a lot more time communicating with each other because we aren't rushing our asses into warmer confines of homes or offices. A few minutes ago some cat I always say hello with and I were speaking and it turns out he's the music supervisor for def jam, the movie division. He just unloaded a barrage of stories about everyone in the biz without me saying a thing... I have no idea why he would think I was someone to drop names to. I'm an absolute nobody. A few minutes later another dude I always chat with when I'm sitting out here gets out of his car and we’re chatting, comparing notes about who works the hardest – I'm out here all freaking night on this laptop so it appears that I work the hardest but what he doesn’t realize is that he gets to work by 8am and I'm not even out of bed till close to 11am... so... anyway turns out that he's the VP at Tommy Hilfiger. I tell him I'm the lead singer for transcendence, and he says ‘the Minnie driver guys, right?’ and I'm like yeah, but we have a new album out now... [we will never live that one down.] so yeah, the midtown and upper east scene... say what you will about downtown being hipper.... but all you run into down there is out of work peeps, peeps still trying for it. whereas here its peeps who are already there. and then if you head up another twenty blocks, to the eighties... holy shit, its just over the top wealth and affluence up there. a whole new level.
Last screening: Dragon, the Bruce lee story. So cool. this is great. I was never into Bruce lee of martial arts, but I'm about to be.
Current spin: to rococo rot, the amateur view. More glitch music. Out of Berlin. like it.
I just read this on Bishop John Shelby Spong’s email blast. loved it. here it is:
“”””Jean Palmer from Daphne, Alabama writes:
"After reading Dr. Hecht's column I recalled my thoughts over the years about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wondering why our United States government has always supported the Israeli side and seemingly neglected the Palestinians. My thoughts centered on our collective guilt over disbelieving the tragic Holocaust for so long. When the ship carrying refugees arrived on our shores during FDR's presidency and was forced to turn back to Europe, it caused me to gasp! How on earth could our country turn away refugees? Well, it seems we did and this has perhaps caused us to overcompensate on the Israeli side today. Having lived to the ripe old age of 71, I now know how guilt can cause one to do a 180-degree turnaround in some cases. I have asked myself why I was not sensitive to the issues of growing up in the segregated south all those years. Well, I was a child, then a teenager, then a nursing student, then a wife and a mother.too busy to think how others were faring, i n particular my African American brothers and sisters. Today, I embrace these same brothers and sisters wherever I am in church, social events, or anywhere else. Attempting atonement is a feeble attempt on my part but it seems to be the best I can do. I had been hoping that after 9/11 our government would stop, think and want to know why the terrorists hated us so much and how we might listen to their side of "the argument." So, what did President Bush and his administration do? They began a war they thought we could easily win; evidently thinking about how to turn the tide of Muslim hate was never a consideration. When I think of all the Iraqi people and our loyal military personnel who have been killed, it makes me nauseated!"””
I thought more about that scene with Ramstein in the park. Normally that type of thing is going to make me freak. I have spent so much time in my life worrying about and avoiding conflict. Doing everything I can to avoid it. I have been amazed at how little I was affected by it. I have found that i have developed this serene calm about friendship lately... realizing that we don't have to stay friends with everyone we’re friends with at one time, and we don't have to make friends with everyone we meet. That's not natural. I'm o.k. with the fact that we disagreed. Especially about something so profoundly important as that was. and I'm o.k. with the fact that my delivery of my truest beliefs weren't met with total acceptance, even disdain. You can’t go around trying to please everyone all the time. eventually you just have to start believing in you and what you believe, no matter what other people say. you know, you reach that point where you would rather spend as much time as possible as “pure awareness experiencing” rather than “consciousness desiring and resisting.” I'm not saying it’s easy, but if you continue to work at it, you get better and better at it.
Dreams. every night we dream. When do we know when to take dreams seriously? Or astrology for that matter... I mean, how do we know when to take it seriously and when to just let it go? or any of that stuff? palm reading and tarot card reading and psychics and horoscopes and religious studies and the I Ching and Feng Shui and omens and signs and messages we may get in meditation and all of it... hard to tell. Something I have been thinking about a lot the last year. what if we just lived through only what we saw and heard in real life and didn't take any of that other stuff seriously? someone says to me recently, ‘you know how this life is all an illusion?’ and I'm looking at them almost with pity, thinking, “what? I don't know about you, but this life seems pretty damn real to me...” But you know, in eastern thought, that is the viewpoint, that this is all an illusion, and this other world they have manufactured in their mind is very real. Western religions are the same way. speak to anyone of any of the four big religions and they place more importance on what they call “the afterlife” then they do on the “right here right now.”
I spoke with one of my favorite people in the world yesterday. a very famous and beloved psychic by the name of echo Bodine from Minnesota. We already had an appointment ironically enough, for months. She had nothing but good things to say. We shall see.
Last screening: Kevin smith speaks. He lectures at universities....
Current spin: still listening to dandy warhols. And this cat antony and the Johnsons. This guy is great. cabaret. Very gay. but very very good. you have to hear it to believe it. he could be very famous one day if enough money is put into him.
And here's an important announcement from the idiots at CNN.com:
“Anderson Cooper 360º”
””Children are starving to death. Anderson Cooper travels to Africa to put a human face on the hunger crisis in Niger. “”
Well thank God, because the Africans who are starving over there -- after all -- don't have human faces of their own.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Homosexuality and Marriage
July 27th,
Yes you know the thing about the barbarians among us is that they never think things through all the way to their rightful conclusions... you know how we have this whole segment of humanity who are deathly afraid of and against homosexuality... they claim that allowing equal rights in regards to same sex marriage and other things would somehow threaten the sanctity of marriage because they claim “marriage is between a man and a woman...” o.k. well that doesn’t even make sense. The best that the enlightened can do in the ongoing battle is just take a deep breath with that one and smile, as you do when a child makes a mistake or does something wrong. the true sanctity of marriage as WE know is all about the love between two people who want to commit to each other, build a life together, and a family, and protect one another as families do. it has nothing to do with being between “a man and a woman.” and it shouldn’t because of course if you are going to have something like marriage set up in a society and you are going to consider it holy and attach all these religious connotations to it as we do, then its sanctity should certainly transcend the “between the sexes” aspect of it entirely; whether its man and man or woman and man or woman and woman. in marriage we are committing to certain almost-impossible-to-attain and highly unnatural ideas, several of them, and we do so because we have convinced ourselves that its for the betterment of our collective society and the individuals doing the committing, but also, and maybe as a way to take the matter more seriously, we also tell ourselves that it’s a “holy thing,” a “righteous thing.” So if two people come to this amazingly monumental decision together, ‘o.k. lets try it, lets go for the whole married forever thing, no matter how utterly, entirely ridiculous it seems, lets give it a try,” then they are committing to this holy thing... they're saying ‘hey o.k. we’re going to go for it., we’re going to fall for it, were going to pretend that there is something holy about two people bonding for life and we’re going to believe it and we’re going to uphold that as best we can together through thick and thin and all those other platitudes ... now I ask you, what has that got to do with man and a woman? the holiness is in the vows that the two people make to one another. The holiness is in that amazing commitment they’ve made to one another.
in this day and age what does the whole man and woman thing have to do with it? I mean, how frightened are these people of losing/compromising the “sanctity of marriage” that they feel that the whole damn thing is threatened by people of the same sex wanting to do it? crazy right? smaller brains I tell you. the barbarians have smaller brains... shouldn’t “the sanctity of marriage” be based on the mutual vows taken by the two individuals and the family they build together, rather than the sex of the two?
o.k. flashback... Perhaps thousands of years ago when cavemen were roaming the earth with their big clubs and beating the shit out of everything they saw either to eat it or fuck it, then maybe yes, o.k., creating marriage between a man and woman was good idea. that coming up with all these “there's a God up there watching you and you better be nice to women and in fact this God I'm telling you about wants you to marry a woman if you sleep with her because chances are she's going to have children and if you marry her then that means that other men aren't going to sleep with her, that’s the good news, so chances are those kids are yours and so someone needs to take care of them and that needs to be you, and oh yeah in the bad news department, it also means that you can’t sleep with any other women you might run into, you need to leave them for the other guys on the lock, because then they're also going to get pregnant and you can only beat the shit out of and kill a certain number of “insert various wild game here” to provide food for everyone so you better just stick with doing one woman so no one starves to death... and yes this is what God wants and if you don't do it, boy oh boy if you think its hard here, wait till you see this place called hell that this God has cooked up for ya...” o.k. you get it? that's marriage in a nutshell, right? and so if you look at it from that perspective, from the origins of it, then yes marriage between a man and woman was a good thing, an important thing. thank God for it. or else a lot of us probably wouldn’t be here. but in this day and age, it’s a whole different thing. ever heard of evolution people? ideas can evolve as well... indeed they must or they will inevitably over time lose their value in societies.
The other thing that is so puzzling about the view the barbarians take about homosexuality is this whole “they weren't born that way, they choose to be that way and it’s wrong...” theory that they love to spout off during the commercial breaks of their favorite sitcoms (TV is huge in the barbarian world), or in between sips of their favorite brewskis (so is beer). Imagine telling your average conservative that he's not really straight, that he's really gay and he's meant to do other guys in the bum, and that's just the way it is, and he better stop saying he was born being attracted to women -- that it’s unnatural to be attracted to women. He’d think you were nuts. Because lets face it, if you're born straight and you're a guy, you're pretty much obsessed with girls from the first moment you can remember. Well guess what guys? those gay guys feel the same way about other guys. o.k. so it seems strange crazy weird freaky, sure, to us... cause we’re straight. But hey that's what they say too.
[in college I had the honor and horror and privilege of rooming with three gay guys for two semesters. Me one straight seventeen year old kid fresh out of high school, and three older gay guys. talk about a wake up call. This is s true story. I knew something was fishy when my roommate had posters of James dean, boy George, and corey hart on his wall. I just knew we weren't in Kansas anymore. But I learned a lot that year. I used to talk to my buddy Ron about doing girls all the time. he was about five years older than I was and he was a bigtime DJ at a local club. He was super popular and super gay. I would always ask him, ‘man don't you just want to see a girl naked and touch her there?!’ and he would shout ‘no way man! that is sooooo gross!’ and he wasn't kidding. He really thought of going down on a girl as being really gross. And of course I really thought going down on a guy was really gross. But he thought it was awesome. we would always try to gross each other out by telling each other our sexual experiences...
I will never forget him telling me about when he was in high school and he would be in the back of his car making out with girls and feeling her up and all that and how grossed out he was. he knew back then that he was different. He tried to resist it because he knew his parents would freak if he told them he was gay and liked guys. But he couldn’t help it. he just did. I will never forget that. I always pictured myself in the back of a car making out with a guy and how grossed out I would be by that. and from that point on I understood the whole gay thing. I think we call it biology. Maybe the conservatives among us never took that class?
So why not just trust them? take them at their word. mind our own business. get on with living our own life. and hey be happy that by them being gay they're taking more men out of the playing field and leaving more chicks for us.
Yes you know the thing about the barbarians among us is that they never think things through all the way to their rightful conclusions... you know how we have this whole segment of humanity who are deathly afraid of and against homosexuality... they claim that allowing equal rights in regards to same sex marriage and other things would somehow threaten the sanctity of marriage because they claim “marriage is between a man and a woman...” o.k. well that doesn’t even make sense. The best that the enlightened can do in the ongoing battle is just take a deep breath with that one and smile, as you do when a child makes a mistake or does something wrong. the true sanctity of marriage as WE know is all about the love between two people who want to commit to each other, build a life together, and a family, and protect one another as families do. it has nothing to do with being between “a man and a woman.” and it shouldn’t because of course if you are going to have something like marriage set up in a society and you are going to consider it holy and attach all these religious connotations to it as we do, then its sanctity should certainly transcend the “between the sexes” aspect of it entirely; whether its man and man or woman and man or woman and woman. in marriage we are committing to certain almost-impossible-to-attain and highly unnatural ideas, several of them, and we do so because we have convinced ourselves that its for the betterment of our collective society and the individuals doing the committing, but also, and maybe as a way to take the matter more seriously, we also tell ourselves that it’s a “holy thing,” a “righteous thing.” So if two people come to this amazingly monumental decision together, ‘o.k. lets try it, lets go for the whole married forever thing, no matter how utterly, entirely ridiculous it seems, lets give it a try,” then they are committing to this holy thing... they're saying ‘hey o.k. we’re going to go for it., we’re going to fall for it, were going to pretend that there is something holy about two people bonding for life and we’re going to believe it and we’re going to uphold that as best we can together through thick and thin and all those other platitudes ... now I ask you, what has that got to do with man and a woman? the holiness is in the vows that the two people make to one another. The holiness is in that amazing commitment they’ve made to one another.
in this day and age what does the whole man and woman thing have to do with it? I mean, how frightened are these people of losing/compromising the “sanctity of marriage” that they feel that the whole damn thing is threatened by people of the same sex wanting to do it? crazy right? smaller brains I tell you. the barbarians have smaller brains... shouldn’t “the sanctity of marriage” be based on the mutual vows taken by the two individuals and the family they build together, rather than the sex of the two?
o.k. flashback... Perhaps thousands of years ago when cavemen were roaming the earth with their big clubs and beating the shit out of everything they saw either to eat it or fuck it, then maybe yes, o.k., creating marriage between a man and woman was good idea. that coming up with all these “there's a God up there watching you and you better be nice to women and in fact this God I'm telling you about wants you to marry a woman if you sleep with her because chances are she's going to have children and if you marry her then that means that other men aren't going to sleep with her, that’s the good news, so chances are those kids are yours and so someone needs to take care of them and that needs to be you, and oh yeah in the bad news department, it also means that you can’t sleep with any other women you might run into, you need to leave them for the other guys on the lock, because then they're also going to get pregnant and you can only beat the shit out of and kill a certain number of “insert various wild game here” to provide food for everyone so you better just stick with doing one woman so no one starves to death... and yes this is what God wants and if you don't do it, boy oh boy if you think its hard here, wait till you see this place called hell that this God has cooked up for ya...” o.k. you get it? that's marriage in a nutshell, right? and so if you look at it from that perspective, from the origins of it, then yes marriage between a man and woman was a good thing, an important thing. thank God for it. or else a lot of us probably wouldn’t be here. but in this day and age, it’s a whole different thing. ever heard of evolution people? ideas can evolve as well... indeed they must or they will inevitably over time lose their value in societies.
The other thing that is so puzzling about the view the barbarians take about homosexuality is this whole “they weren't born that way, they choose to be that way and it’s wrong...” theory that they love to spout off during the commercial breaks of their favorite sitcoms (TV is huge in the barbarian world), or in between sips of their favorite brewskis (so is beer). Imagine telling your average conservative that he's not really straight, that he's really gay and he's meant to do other guys in the bum, and that's just the way it is, and he better stop saying he was born being attracted to women -- that it’s unnatural to be attracted to women. He’d think you were nuts. Because lets face it, if you're born straight and you're a guy, you're pretty much obsessed with girls from the first moment you can remember. Well guess what guys? those gay guys feel the same way about other guys. o.k. so it seems strange crazy weird freaky, sure, to us... cause we’re straight. But hey that's what they say too.
[in college I had the honor and horror and privilege of rooming with three gay guys for two semesters. Me one straight seventeen year old kid fresh out of high school, and three older gay guys. talk about a wake up call. This is s true story. I knew something was fishy when my roommate had posters of James dean, boy George, and corey hart on his wall. I just knew we weren't in Kansas anymore. But I learned a lot that year. I used to talk to my buddy Ron about doing girls all the time. he was about five years older than I was and he was a bigtime DJ at a local club. He was super popular and super gay. I would always ask him, ‘man don't you just want to see a girl naked and touch her there?!’ and he would shout ‘no way man! that is sooooo gross!’ and he wasn't kidding. He really thought of going down on a girl as being really gross. And of course I really thought going down on a guy was really gross. But he thought it was awesome. we would always try to gross each other out by telling each other our sexual experiences...
I will never forget him telling me about when he was in high school and he would be in the back of his car making out with girls and feeling her up and all that and how grossed out he was. he knew back then that he was different. He tried to resist it because he knew his parents would freak if he told them he was gay and liked guys. But he couldn’t help it. he just did. I will never forget that. I always pictured myself in the back of a car making out with a guy and how grossed out I would be by that. and from that point on I understood the whole gay thing. I think we call it biology. Maybe the conservatives among us never took that class?
So why not just trust them? take them at their word. mind our own business. get on with living our own life. and hey be happy that by them being gay they're taking more men out of the playing field and leaving more chicks for us.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
My apartment is where they filmed Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe and Walter Matheau
now the funniest thing and this has
nothing to do with anything is that the apartment that I am fortunate
enough to live in here was the apartment where they filmed this famous
Marilyn Monroe movie some like it hot with Walter matheau. And it so
happens that my apartment is THE apartment where the film was filmed,
where she lived in the movie. So from time to time people will come from
far away lands tourists mind you to come look at the building and take
pictures of themselves in front of it. now being that its summer, I sit
out here every night smoking and writing just what you are reading here
for hours. like a fixture on the upper east side scene so to speak.
People not only aren't surprised by my ubiquitous presence on these
stairs, they expect it. whether they are jogging or waling their dogs or
strolling by with a babay carriage they can always look up as they pass
by and give a wave and a hello to the long haired guy who sits there
with his laptop on his lap and a stogie hanging out of his mouth. Some
people are more annoying than others wanting to stop and chat and ask me
what I'm writing and all of that, and you can’t blame them. if I'm
anything I'm polite. But what I hate is the whole marlin Monroe thing.
because you know this is where I live and where I come to work. These
stairs are my private, although rather public – but isn't everything in
New York? -- little work space. and the last thing in the world I enjoy
while I'm trying to pen the longest not-great American novel is people
asking me questions on the history of this building and that stupid
movie. I've never even seen that movie for gods sake. In fact I don't
know if I've ever even seen a Marilyn Monroe movie. That's just not my
scene. Well wouldn’t you know that tonight as I'm writing about this
ever so important series of events with Ramstein and all things cosmic
and life affirming and almightily important, this group of tourists
arrive to stand in front of the building with their cameras, drink cans
of Budweiser and ask me all about the building and Marilyn Monroe and
that stupid movie.
Check it out. someone just sent this to me:
Radio Payoffs Are Described as Sony Settles
By JEFF LEEDS and LOUISE STORY
Published: July 25, 2005
To disguise a payoff to a radio programmer at KHTS in San Diego, Epic Records called a flat-screen television a "contest giveaway." Epic, part of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, used the same gambit in delivering a laptop computer to the program director of WRHT in Greenville, N.C. - who also received PlayStation 2 games and an out-of-town trip with his girlfriend.
In another example, a Sony BMG executive considered a plan to promote the song "A.D.I.D.A.S." by Killer Mike by sending radio disc jockeys one Adidas sneaker, with the promise of the second one when they had played the song 10 times.
The gifts, described in a $10 million settlement with Sony BMG that was announced yesterday by New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, exemplify what Mr. Spitzer called a broad effort by the recording industry to curry favor with radio station programmers in exchange for their promises to play specific songs.
The focus of Mr. Spitzer's inquiry is now expected to shift to the other three major record companies - Vivendi Universal, the Warner Music Group and the EMI Group - and the radio companies whose employees have accepted gifts in exchange for playing songs. Mr. Spitzer's investigators have served subpoenas on several radio companies, including Clear Channel Communications and Emmis Communications.
"This is not a pretty picture; what we see is that payola is pervasive," Mr. Spitzer said, using a term from the radio scandals of the 1950's in describing e-mail messages and corporate documents that his office obtained during a yearlong investigation. "It is omnipresent. It is driving the industry and it is wrong."
As part of the deal, Sony BMG acknowledged "that various employees pursued some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper, and apologizes for such conduct."
Yesterday, the company fired the top promotion executive at its Epic label. And it disciplined four executives in its Sony Urban unit and at Epic by imposing financial penalties and placing them on probation, said two people briefed on the actions.
Sony BMG also agreed to pay a $10 million fine, to be distributed to nonprofit organizations that promote music education; to follow new policies governing its efforts to cajole programmers; and to better monitor its promotional spending.
The finding that gifts were used to help tailor the playlists of many radio stations comes as audiences show signs of rejecting the music choices made by programmers. The iPod and other portable devices have begun cutting into the popularity of radio, and the growth of satellite radio has been putting pressure on the station owners to play a broader range of music.
For more than four decades, federal law has prohibited broadcasters from accepting secret payments or anything of value in exchange for airplay of a specific song. While music companies have long tried to sidestep the law, Mr. Spitzer says they have continued to violate it.
The state investigation found that Sony BMG, which releases music by acts including Jennifer Lopez, Good Charlotte and Beyoncé, had provided stations with entertainers for station-affiliated concerts or paid for station equipment or other bills in exchange for having its songs played. It also provided vacations and electronic goods for on-air giveaways in a direct trade for airplay. And it hired independent promoters to funnel money to radio stations.
In addition, the investigation found that the company had tried to distort industry airplay charts - creating the false impression that a song was taking off - by paying stations to play its songs as sponsored advertisements. It has also used interns and hired vendors to call radio stations with requests.
As a result, Mr. Spitzer said in the settlement documents, "Sony BMG and the other record labels present the public with a skewed picture of the country's 'best' and 'most popular' recorded music."
While many of the promotions detailed by Mr. Spitzer appear to come cheap - for example, $939 to fly a Buffalo programmer and a guest to New York City in connection with the addition of a Jennifer Lopez track to the playlist - they add up to millions of dollars a year. More than that, the settlement documents provide an unusual window on a sector of the music business where the public airwaves are discussed as a commodity, and where little is allowed to stand in the way of bolstering a song's chart position.
In one case cited by Mr. Spitzer, an executive at Sony BMG's Columbia Records label - after learning that airplay for the John Mayer song "Bigger Than My Body" had declined on certain stations that had accepted a promotion package from the label - told his staff in October 2003 that "many stations here will NOT be given the promo with the airplay" being given at the time. "Either deal with it or pull it," the executive said.
In other cases, Mr. Spitzer said, Sony BMG, a unit of Sony and Bertelsmann, had negotiated large deals with radio conglomerates, in which the record company would fly dozens of national contest winners to see an artist perform. In return, the radio station would commit to playing specific songs a certain number of times a week. He cited one case in which Epic had struck a deal with Infinity Broadcasting involving the Celine Dion song "Goodbyes." By e-mail, an Epic executive, whose name was not disclosed, said each station had committed to "report" the song on its playlist on a certain date in October 2002.
Infinity declined to comment. Clear Channel said that it was cooperating with the inquiry and that "the allegations made today will be fully investigated and any wrongdoing will be met by swift and appropriate disciplinary action."
It remains to be seen how far-reaching the impact of Sony BMG's new policies will be in altering the culture of promotion. As part of the settlement, Sony BMG agreed to an array of changes. For instance, the company said it would no longer provide stations with cash or gift cards, which are difficult to track, for use in listener contests. The company also said it would no longer use "spin programs," in which it pays stations to play songs as commercials, to manipulate the charts.
The company is also expected to end its relationships with independent promoters unless they meet strict new guidelines, a prospect that many consider unlikely.
In a practice once widespread, the promoters acted as middlemen paying radio stations annual fees - often exceeding $100,000 - not, they say, to play specific songs, but to obtain advance copies of the stations' playlists. The promoters then bill labels for each new song played; the total tab costs the industry tens of millions of dollars a year. Under the new rules, Sony cannot reimburse promoters for any expense for a radio station or contest winner.
The industry has been divided over the impact of the settlement. Many executives say Mr. Spitzer's inquiry amounts to too little too late: radio companies like Clear Channel and Cox Radio severed their deals with independent promoters before the investigation began, for example.
Others, including several independent record labels, say the settlement could signal a shift that might break the major record companies' chokehold on the airwaves.
"This sounds to us like something that will be very helpful," said Don Rose, president of the American Association of Independent Music. "It's obvious to us that we're not getting the fair share because of the embedded relationships with big radio."
This is shedding light on something the industry already knows and deals and works with. You want airplay you pay. I can show you my receipts at the office for checks written to stations, promoters and bestbuy for gift certs exactly how much it costs us to chart the song superhero girl last year. I think I spent about ten g’s on it. and if I had more money I could have been played on more stations. They tell you straight up when you call. You want play? You gots to pay. No one even beats around the bush about it. I don't know if this will help or not. chances are it will not. but we will see. There's just no way that a station is going to play a song by an artist or label if they aren't going to get anything out of it when they have hundreds of songs by artists and labels that they are going to be paid for. its really that simple.
Current spin: dandy warhols, dandys rule o.k. dig it.
China is making a bid to buy out the American oil giant known as Unocal. Think about that. the second largest super-power in the world today besides America already owns over fifty percent of American Treasury bills and is now making a bid to buy one of America’s largest oil companies. Michael Moore says the way he looks at American capitalism as practiced by most American corporations is that they're so greedy and stupid that they will sell you the rope to hang them on if they think can make a buck from it. If this deal goes down, I would agree.
Current spin: dandy warhols, the dandy warhols come down. I just like this band.
Last screening: born to boogie, the marc bolan T.Rex film. none other!!!! totally restored and in full color for the first time! so much fun. The movie stuff is very cheesy but the concert footage is so fucking cool. just to see marc and the boys up there doing their thing at the peak of it.
Check it out. someone just sent this to me:
Radio Payoffs Are Described as Sony Settles
By JEFF LEEDS and LOUISE STORY
Published: July 25, 2005
To disguise a payoff to a radio programmer at KHTS in San Diego, Epic Records called a flat-screen television a "contest giveaway." Epic, part of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, used the same gambit in delivering a laptop computer to the program director of WRHT in Greenville, N.C. - who also received PlayStation 2 games and an out-of-town trip with his girlfriend.
In another example, a Sony BMG executive considered a plan to promote the song "A.D.I.D.A.S." by Killer Mike by sending radio disc jockeys one Adidas sneaker, with the promise of the second one when they had played the song 10 times.
The gifts, described in a $10 million settlement with Sony BMG that was announced yesterday by New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, exemplify what Mr. Spitzer called a broad effort by the recording industry to curry favor with radio station programmers in exchange for their promises to play specific songs.
The focus of Mr. Spitzer's inquiry is now expected to shift to the other three major record companies - Vivendi Universal, the Warner Music Group and the EMI Group - and the radio companies whose employees have accepted gifts in exchange for playing songs. Mr. Spitzer's investigators have served subpoenas on several radio companies, including Clear Channel Communications and Emmis Communications.
"This is not a pretty picture; what we see is that payola is pervasive," Mr. Spitzer said, using a term from the radio scandals of the 1950's in describing e-mail messages and corporate documents that his office obtained during a yearlong investigation. "It is omnipresent. It is driving the industry and it is wrong."
As part of the deal, Sony BMG acknowledged "that various employees pursued some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper, and apologizes for such conduct."
Yesterday, the company fired the top promotion executive at its Epic label. And it disciplined four executives in its Sony Urban unit and at Epic by imposing financial penalties and placing them on probation, said two people briefed on the actions.
Sony BMG also agreed to pay a $10 million fine, to be distributed to nonprofit organizations that promote music education; to follow new policies governing its efforts to cajole programmers; and to better monitor its promotional spending.
The finding that gifts were used to help tailor the playlists of many radio stations comes as audiences show signs of rejecting the music choices made by programmers. The iPod and other portable devices have begun cutting into the popularity of radio, and the growth of satellite radio has been putting pressure on the station owners to play a broader range of music.
For more than four decades, federal law has prohibited broadcasters from accepting secret payments or anything of value in exchange for airplay of a specific song. While music companies have long tried to sidestep the law, Mr. Spitzer says they have continued to violate it.
The state investigation found that Sony BMG, which releases music by acts including Jennifer Lopez, Good Charlotte and Beyoncé, had provided stations with entertainers for station-affiliated concerts or paid for station equipment or other bills in exchange for having its songs played. It also provided vacations and electronic goods for on-air giveaways in a direct trade for airplay. And it hired independent promoters to funnel money to radio stations.
In addition, the investigation found that the company had tried to distort industry airplay charts - creating the false impression that a song was taking off - by paying stations to play its songs as sponsored advertisements. It has also used interns and hired vendors to call radio stations with requests.
As a result, Mr. Spitzer said in the settlement documents, "Sony BMG and the other record labels present the public with a skewed picture of the country's 'best' and 'most popular' recorded music."
While many of the promotions detailed by Mr. Spitzer appear to come cheap - for example, $939 to fly a Buffalo programmer and a guest to New York City in connection with the addition of a Jennifer Lopez track to the playlist - they add up to millions of dollars a year. More than that, the settlement documents provide an unusual window on a sector of the music business where the public airwaves are discussed as a commodity, and where little is allowed to stand in the way of bolstering a song's chart position.
In one case cited by Mr. Spitzer, an executive at Sony BMG's Columbia Records label - after learning that airplay for the John Mayer song "Bigger Than My Body" had declined on certain stations that had accepted a promotion package from the label - told his staff in October 2003 that "many stations here will NOT be given the promo with the airplay" being given at the time. "Either deal with it or pull it," the executive said.
In other cases, Mr. Spitzer said, Sony BMG, a unit of Sony and Bertelsmann, had negotiated large deals with radio conglomerates, in which the record company would fly dozens of national contest winners to see an artist perform. In return, the radio station would commit to playing specific songs a certain number of times a week. He cited one case in which Epic had struck a deal with Infinity Broadcasting involving the Celine Dion song "Goodbyes." By e-mail, an Epic executive, whose name was not disclosed, said each station had committed to "report" the song on its playlist on a certain date in October 2002.
Infinity declined to comment. Clear Channel said that it was cooperating with the inquiry and that "the allegations made today will be fully investigated and any wrongdoing will be met by swift and appropriate disciplinary action."
It remains to be seen how far-reaching the impact of Sony BMG's new policies will be in altering the culture of promotion. As part of the settlement, Sony BMG agreed to an array of changes. For instance, the company said it would no longer provide stations with cash or gift cards, which are difficult to track, for use in listener contests. The company also said it would no longer use "spin programs," in which it pays stations to play songs as commercials, to manipulate the charts.
The company is also expected to end its relationships with independent promoters unless they meet strict new guidelines, a prospect that many consider unlikely.
In a practice once widespread, the promoters acted as middlemen paying radio stations annual fees - often exceeding $100,000 - not, they say, to play specific songs, but to obtain advance copies of the stations' playlists. The promoters then bill labels for each new song played; the total tab costs the industry tens of millions of dollars a year. Under the new rules, Sony cannot reimburse promoters for any expense for a radio station or contest winner.
The industry has been divided over the impact of the settlement. Many executives say Mr. Spitzer's inquiry amounts to too little too late: radio companies like Clear Channel and Cox Radio severed their deals with independent promoters before the investigation began, for example.
Others, including several independent record labels, say the settlement could signal a shift that might break the major record companies' chokehold on the airwaves.
"This sounds to us like something that will be very helpful," said Don Rose, president of the American Association of Independent Music. "It's obvious to us that we're not getting the fair share because of the embedded relationships with big radio."
This is shedding light on something the industry already knows and deals and works with. You want airplay you pay. I can show you my receipts at the office for checks written to stations, promoters and bestbuy for gift certs exactly how much it costs us to chart the song superhero girl last year. I think I spent about ten g’s on it. and if I had more money I could have been played on more stations. They tell you straight up when you call. You want play? You gots to pay. No one even beats around the bush about it. I don't know if this will help or not. chances are it will not. but we will see. There's just no way that a station is going to play a song by an artist or label if they aren't going to get anything out of it when they have hundreds of songs by artists and labels that they are going to be paid for. its really that simple.
Current spin: dandy warhols, dandys rule o.k. dig it.
China is making a bid to buy out the American oil giant known as Unocal. Think about that. the second largest super-power in the world today besides America already owns over fifty percent of American Treasury bills and is now making a bid to buy one of America’s largest oil companies. Michael Moore says the way he looks at American capitalism as practiced by most American corporations is that they're so greedy and stupid that they will sell you the rope to hang them on if they think can make a buck from it. If this deal goes down, I would agree.
Current spin: dandy warhols, the dandy warhols come down. I just like this band.
Last screening: born to boogie, the marc bolan T.Rex film. none other!!!! totally restored and in full color for the first time! so much fun. The movie stuff is very cheesy but the concert footage is so fucking cool. just to see marc and the boys up there doing their thing at the peak of it.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Our good friend Ramstein from Munich is in town right now
Our good friend Ramstein from Munich is in town right now to study of all things SANSCRIT. Leave it to the Germans. The Germans are always the ones that know the most languages of the world. Wow. So Ramstein is learning to read the ancient language of Sanskrit so he can become a better Vedic astrologer. We hadn't seen each other since ‘99. He's a brother. A few years older, and aways been a very interesting character. we spent a great day together today hanging out in union square. I took him to the infamous Coffee Shop so he could see all the beautiful girls there. He has become quite the expert in Vedic astrology. Very different than western astrology. We spoke all day of this and it was fascinating. Hours passed and seemed like minutes. I was captivated by the things he was telling me and showing me about my chart, which he had researched back in Germany based on information I had sent him a few weeks ago.
He told me that I have several special features in my chart that makes it astounding -- that makes me a king, theoretically or astrologically speaking he said, or an ambassador to humanity of some kind -- we had a good laugh over that because the irony didn't escape us when he used that word of course. said that he wanted to show it to me and tell me very important information, as he pulls this stack of papers out of a bag he brought with him. at first I was too busy looking at all the girls in the restaurant. But I could see that he was serious about the subject, so slowly he got me to start focusing in and taking him seriously... He was being very serious. Much more serious than I had ever seen him. you know, we are like brothers. We talk serious at times but we are usually just guys talking about things... He starts asking me all of these questions. Writing things down, or shuffling his papers to look at all these mathematical calculations that he has made.
He said that he had never seen a chart like that before, all the planets grouped together in one sign, especially in the twelfth house etc, and that there was this eclipse in Vedic astrology that was a sign of some great prophecy. now bear in mind, we are in a restaurant that has some of the hottest girls in Manhattan in it, in SUMMER. so they are all barely dressed. So I'm trying to listen, but the truth is that I have heard all of this millions of times before and I'm still not a gazillionair... so I'm thinking privately, hey you know, show me the money baby.... show me the fucking money.
Now of course as fate has it he picks up on this, in fact he picks up on everything I’m thinking usually a minute or two before I even think it. tells me, (try to imagine this German accent coming out of this bald headed intense German blue eyes staring at you, ‘man Fishy, you think that its all about money right? right?’ he flashes me this big smile. ‘you do man! admit it. this is what you think you are working for still. so you spend your whole life waiting for this kind of prosperity to come to you and for dollar bills to come out of the sky on you... but this is not who you are. this has nothing to do with the prosperity that you are here for. you are a king Fishy. so prosperity will be yours. But you are wasting all of your time working because you think you are trying to achieve this kind of prosperity.”
“why do you say this? what makes you think that?” I ask suspiciously. “I don't think it. I see it right here. this isn't like western astrology. Where someone just says something to you because it sounds nice and you want to hear it and maybe it happens and maybe it doesn’t. this is true.” I laugh. How can you not laugh when anyone says anything is “true.” that is a funny thing. if we have learned one thing since we've been here, it is that nothing is true except “I am” and “I am here” and “hey who are you?” And that's about it for truth on planet earth if you're human.
So he continues to ask me questions about what has been happening lately. What happened in 2003? What happened in February. What is happening now? what happened in 2000? Do you remember? He asks me. this is when you first became a wealthy man. do you remember? You were very young. Well how could I forget of course. well here it is and he shows me. this was like an explosion for you. yes I know, I say, but then I have spent so much of it and things have really seemed to die down now... what is that? I ask. well, but it died off because you didn't understand it... you thought it was about money and luxury... but it is happening now for you again but you are ready this time. you are building and in September you are going to have another explosion like you’ve never seen before. only dreamed of. Because now you know. and if you don't, that is why I am telling you this... brother this is important. this is not something that in five years of studying this I have ever seen before in any book. This kind of chart. This is the chart of a king of England or something. did you ever study English history he asks me. and he's serious. You should. You will be a good king. Because your heart is in the right place. but you do not believe it. why not? And I'm looking at him leaning back in my chair like o.k. what kind of crack has Ramstein been smoking over there in Munich... I'm a hard working American schmo. I'm not a king. Eminem is a king. Jay z is a king. Shit, 50 cent is a king now even. But me, I am just another singer in another rock band... or well at least this what I tell myself...
He continues. Tells me that my gift is connecting people together around me like a kingdom, creating large networks where everyone is served by a higher purpose, and that as long as I spent my time helping people who worked in my “empire” then I would always have a large empire and that this had nothing to do with money, although I would always be as wealthy as a king is, but that it didn't have to do with building wealth as other peoples charts do if they're born with it that way, but it had to do with building an empire or a kingdom, very large connected spheres or groups of people all gathered around me and a higher purpose, everyone wealthy because of me and these higher purposes.... As a good king lives, not a bad king he tells me. o.k. cool. because I reflect back on that night when I told my friends around a large table at a restaurant that I believe that ‘your network is equal to your net-worth. Its all connected. The bigger your network, the bigger your net-worth kids,’ I would say. And we would all laugh, but of course I have always believed this to be true.
He asks me what have I been spending my time doing the last few weeks. and he shows me all these strange figures and formulas on one of his pages...
I tell him that I have been spending a few hours everyday for weeks making lists of transgressions I have committed against myself or others throughout my life. writing out the story, feeling the victim side of it, and then getting to the ownership belief of it. of every fucking conflict I have ever had in my life with every single person... getting to my ownership and taking responsibility of my actions and how they have affected myself and others in my life... acknowledging who I really have been and seeing the patterns and the results of my actions in my life and the lives of others...
Wow, he says and his bright eyes are beaming... and he points to the chart and shows me that that was exactly what I should be doing at this time... what made you do this? he asks me. I told him I had learned it from Avatar, I had done about ten days of it a few months ago on a course, and experienced a lot out of it; so I did it again specifically regarding the last ten years of my life and had amazing almost miraculous things happen, besides just such a great feeling of liberation from it. but that in Avatar you just do like two or three of them per round and then you complete it; but that I just decided that I would just work my way backwards throughout my entire life and do as many as I could ever remember and clean up my entire life and its been three weeks now and I'm still doing it. I have about fifty pages of them, two to four sins or selfish acts or transgressions against others per page! I do them every night till I can’t keep my eyes open... I cannot believe what a compromised life I have led so far. far from a good king. More like a dictator or a desperate criminal...
I just decided that I'm going to do this and I'm not going to stop until I'm done. For me its just all about finding the stuff. who am I? who have I been? Why do I do what I do? what is the motivating feeling? What are the motivating fears? Or desires? Or resistances? for me I had such potential and Ramstein I just feel that I used all that power in the wrong ways for most of my life. I see now that I was just a really crazy out of control selfish person who didn't care about anyone but himself... and I'm almost overwhelmed by it. but for all of these years I had it repressed... so I was living through it, but not able to see that. I knew something was wrong... I could see that as my life was not how I see it in my heart of hearts or in my visions of what it is meant to be.... but I could not see what the problem was... and the problem was that even though I had cleaned up my act years ago and began to discover a beautiful person inside of me, I was still operating with all of these actions and their reactions inside of me...
you are right my friend. I became a wealthy man at a very young age. But I do not believe that I was ready as a vessel so to speak to carry it, or to know what to do with it...
Well now I've just gotten so much out of this process. I'm so clear-eyed and free spirited feeling the last few weeks... yes yes. you look better now, younger, happier, than you looked eight years ago, he says.
I feel like I'm walking on clouds or something, I say, its similar to the feeling you get when you fast... really light and cheery. You know that fasting feeling when you don't eat for a week or two? Its like that. its like I am becoming a baby again.
Well brother, I adore that you are doing that. can I say that? I adore it? he asks me if it makes sense in english. yes you can say that. its cute when you say that... Well I adore that you are doing this. it is perfect man. it is exactly what you should be doing now because there is something I need to show you. you have a tendency to work too hard... at the wrong things...
Too hard? I ask. Yes, listen to me... you are not meant to be working hard at things. like a manager... doing manager things... this is not you. but you may think you need to because of how easy it was for you to receive so early in your life and you connected that with all the bad things you caused for others... you connected these results together and now you are like a man sprinting across a field as fast as he can when there are plenty of cars driving along side of him that he could take, but he chooses not to get in the cars... he chooses to sprint and then he passes out at the end of each day... this is you now is it not? yes I answer this is me now...
He Continued. If I busied myself with work and hard tasks out of guilt, or perfectionism, or fear that it will never be done right, that I would always be prone to mediocrity. I confessed to him that that's been my biggest challenge lately... trying to come to grips with the fact that the empire that I have built so far is not nearly as grand or lavish or wealthy as I would have expected it to be when I first started to become aware of this potential that I could feel inside of me from an early age. he said it was right there in the chart and showed it to me. that there is the potential, this special gift of transcendence – and yes he used that word – and yes we both laughed at the irony – because of this uncanny totally insane thing where I had six planets in the twelfth house when I was born and that there was this eclipse of the moon or something...
[Now mind you, in western astrology, when a person has one planet in the twelfth house it can mean one of two things, either they're fucking nuts, total addicts and loony, or they're some kind of spiritual ascended master, like they're in their last life, or all of the above. they have abilities to tap into spheres of consciousness through their minds as he calls them beyond human contact. Now having six planets in the twelfth house, well forget about it. not only is it unheard of, it makes the astrological reader get really scared of the subject because they're thinking this person has got to be completely mad, like they aren't even of this planet. Now two weeks ago I was told the same thing from this western astrologer, a lovely lady, but she assured me that I am not to worry about it. “are you crazy you think?’ she asks me. and I'm like, ‘I don't know. I mean, does anyone ever know if they are crazy? especially if they really are crazy...’ ‘you know Fishy. You can pretend all you want. What this means is that you have this amazing transcendent potential while you are here, like a Buddha or a Gandhi. But you also have the potential to be a recluse and a hermit and a lonely creature of the night, hording your gifts and insight and keeping it all to yourself, spending a lot of time thinking and dreaming and writing... It is something that I have never seen before. not even in books. It is as if you are some kind of messenger. You have nine planets all lined up above your head at the time of your birth, and six of them all in your sun sign and your moon sign and your ascendant sign and all in the twelfth house, the house of the spirit, the house of transcendence, the house of God. It is unheard of. Are you aware of this?’ she was more interested in hearing my experience of my life for her own research than giving me information really. Which was fine with me because I wanted to share because I am at this point where I am at a wall really... wondering what the hell do I do in order to achieve this kingdom on earth so to speak or tap into all the great potential that I feel and that is indicated in this chart... because honestly I don't mind being Mr. hey lets hang out in my kingdom and have a great time, but I want to be able to afford to eat at the same time too. you know. she cautioned me to reflect on the life I have already lived and recognize how unbelievable it already has been... perhaps I am just not seeing what's already been clearly enough. And I know that. but I also know that there is much to do still and I still feel held back compared to what I see in my type-a-personality minds eye...]
Anyway, so back to Ramstein. yeah I know all of this. great. but what does it mean to me? I mean, I'm still me. I'm still moderately struggling I tell Ramstein. He asks me if I work hard. And I say yes. yes. too hard. He tells me that's the problem and again shows it to me in my chart. He says that there is a feature in the chart that clearly shows that I could have the potential to focus too much on serving the coffee to the passengers instead of piloting the plane, even though I am the pilot. Its right there he shows me. and if you can get over that. from this point on, just get over that, stop doing the work and realize that your work is creating networks of people who are fulfilled and happy and satisfied from working with you and around you and for you, that's your work, then you are going to be happier and more fulfilled than you’ve ever been in your entire life. stop serving the coffee bro. start a plantation that grows the coffee so everyone has plenty of coffee but stop thinking you have to be the one who serves it.
you are going to make hundreds and hundreds of people happy in your kingdom from just being you and helping them while they work in your empire or your kingdom. But due to this little feature in your chart, you have a challenge where you aren't quite comfortable with this for whatever reason and you are stopping yourself from actually being who you really are completely. And bear in mind Fishy, if you keep on doing this, you are blocking the happiness and the fulfillment of the hundreds of people who are depending on you building this empire as big as its supposed to be. let me put it this way Fishy. you could make more money and more success from going to one party a week and networking with others, or from playing one concert, than you could sitting at a desk running your band’s record company for a week. this is right here in your chart. That's your real calling. That's your purpose. That's your gift man... that's who you are in your heart.
we are in Starbucks now. “here. do this.” and he puts his fingers to his wrist. Can you feel your pulse? He asks me. yes. what do you feel? I feel life, I answer. yes! he says and smiles big. And what do you have to do to get this life? nothing? I respond. Yes exactly. that is how you are meant to live and work in this world in this life time. it is o.k. for you. For other people this is not the way it is for them. it depends on who they are and how they came into the world. for you, life is easy, receiving is easy, having an kingdom is easy... you have always known this, but you fight it... you are supposed to just go around building things with others, and you aren't the one who does the building. You just give the plans of the building. You need to see this brother. your job is to help others while they work in your kingdom...
O.k. wow. Ramstein, my friend that is enough to digest. I have no idea how you just nailed all that. but I feel what you are saying. I feel it so much brother that I feel like I am shaking... you don't know how much this means to me, how much I can feel what you have been saying... I need to go home and rest and soak this in. thank you so much. see you tomorrow. Totally fascinating. Dead on. I was amazed. I am walking around in shock tonight. just feeling it all out. trying to get control of the information... could it be? could it be true. can I stop serving coffee and just enjoy being the pilot? What is this worry that I have to let go and just fly the plane?
Don't know. we’ll see.
But I bet it has a lot to do with this work I have been doing. This past life I have lived the last thirty years of confusion and deception and dishonor and disrespect to others and to myself... and miraculously I have been cleaning it up. without Ramstein or anyone telling me to. I was just called intuitively to do this exercise and to continue to do it until I can’t find anything left. little by little, day by day, softer and softer, lighter and lighter. happier and happier, freer and freer...
we’re not home-free yet. i have gone as far back as junior high school now and some elementary school. Tonight I am headed into more elementary school years and even further back, to my earliest memories of when I first got the very first ideas to lie or to deceive or to manipulate or use or abuse another person or betray my own intuition or trust. After this round I will then rest and then start again and target specifically the areas of my career, money, my father, and then my mother. I need to get to those very first moments of consciousness when a being first begins to fear or distrust and resorts to dishonorable acts because of that fear or that distrust...
I have found that it is always the same things underneath it all. fear that I am not enough. Fear that I am not liked enough. Fear that I am not loved enough. Fear that I am not good enough. Fear that I do not have enough. That is it in a nutshell. fear leads to a dishonorable act.
The act leads to subconscious judgment of self and projected judgment onto others and to repressed guilt. The judgment and repressed guilt leads to more unconscious fear or resistance, which leads to another dishonorable act. After a while we don't even notice them. they seem like very normal ways of just living in the world like everyone else. And on and on it goes. It’s a circle. Now you are on automatic pilot. Operating your human spaceship as most people in the world do. we don't notice our own dishonorable acts anymore. But we do notice the acts of others. our TV news is filled with the reporting of the dishonorable acts of “others” the “them not us” that do all the wrong in the world.
What we have is the smoke left over, which is our judgment of others. all day long we listen to a tape loop in our mind chatter of our innumerable judgments of others... I never could figure out what that was... I just thought it was part of being human... I knew it was a symptom of something. I knew that just trying to stop it or discreate it was never going to stop it because in itself it isn't an “anything” at all. it is a sign of another “something.” the judgment of others is our projected judgment of ourselves onto others about our own acts that we feel repressed guilt over. And I would say as well these judgments are our reaction to the unconscious fears we have come to become accustomed to living with of not being good enough or not having enough (which really in itself is just another way of fearing not being good enough. I think “having” is just a cover for “being” when you break it down at its core.)
For me now, even though I now understand this intellectually and very much experientially as well, I feel a strong impulse to continue to acknowledge every act ever committed from these places, to break them down to their core, to own them, to feel the responsibility for them, and to rid myself of their memory and any stuck attention I may have of them inside of myself. I will become a clean machine. It is like when we are on the subway or in a store and a baby in a carriage smiles at us and it is this smile or sunshine and innocence that makes us feel so good... and then you look up at an adult and most of the time you don't even get a look in the eye from another person... they look away. you look away. but if you do get a look in the eye, it is a look of fear, or suspicion, of hardness, of defense or offense or pretense.... that is the fear of being a grownup in the world. The key is to go back, all the way back, before that fear became our way of life in the universe. Back before there was fear. When life was just life and it was unquestioned.
At one point we got started talking about it from a more general perspective. I had appreciated the three days that we had spent in the park discussing these things. I had learned a lot. all of my life I had money. if I wasn't earning it, it was falling from the sky. This has always just been the way my life has worked. But at the same time I have never been able to save money. I have made millions of dollars in the last ten years for example but have very little of it left. Now that sounds hard to believe, but trust me, its true and its not something I'm proud of. If it weren't for this never-ending belief I have in myself and that I'll always come out on top and in my ability to make money I would probably be scared shitless. But for some reason I'm not. but that's not the point. The point is that that's an amazing thing indeed and I have always wondered about it. what the hell is that? I have always wondered about that. why can’t I hang onto money. and right there on the chart he showed my why, cosmically at least, astrologically speaking. your money making power is collected in the twelfth house. in fact your whole chart is collected there. which makes you a deep and spiritual person who is in touch with the other side and able to get these flashes from the spiritual realm which I know you are well aware of, but it is also the house of sex and drugs and sleep and dreaming... so anyone could guess that you sing about women, sex, drugs, and spiritual matters – this is in your chart right here... you love to sleep, its right there. you wrote a whole album called sleep with you. funny man. very funny because its right here. but it is also the house of expenditures, so you have this amazing ability to make money but it is as if it flows through you and you never get to keep it. you make it and then its gone. You have twenty dollars in your pocket yesterday and you give it to a homeless man just because he asks you for it. this is crazy man. I asked you what you would do and your answer was ‘no big deal, I'll be o.k...’ this is something you need to work on, saving money... wow. amazing.
Goes on to explain that one of my truest gifts is communicating with people. that when I am around people I light up and when people are around me they light up. that I can bring whole crowds together to talk and dance and sing. True that. no truer words were spoken. And that the person with this chart has a fascination with foreign languages and travel. Are you still learning other languages like you used to? you used to be so crazy for learning languages. I tell him yes. great. what else?
ok so of course I'm intrigued. Good stuff. he then goes on to explain that Venus rules beauty and the fine arts of singing and drama and dancing and that it happens to be in my second house which rules the mouth among other things so any astrologer could see that I was a singer and that it is not something I work at or deserve to take credit for but that it was something I was born with it. he puts his fingers to his pulse to show me. you are singer like blood flows through your veins. [now I'll tell you right here, say what you will about not taking credit for being a singer, but I've spent my whole life taking lessons in music and honing my skills and have been completely obsessed with studying it and trying to be as good as I can be at it. so I would say sure there is a natural tendency there but that doesn’t mean that you haven't worked at it. but we’ll get to this later.]
it began to seem almost like a nightmare... by the time he was going to be done I thought he would have my entire life mapped out and I, I, I, wouldn’t have a say in any of it. It would be entirely decided by the planets in the sky and have nothing to do with me at all...
so we start speaking more general. And I am happy for him that he has found something so fulfilling in his life that he would fly half way around the world to study the ancient language of Sanskrit so he can become a better Vedic astrologer. But I want to ask him about how beings can transcend their charts. As in western astrology we have positive and negative aspects in the heavens when we are born and we have the ability to expand on the positive and minimize or transcend beyond the negative. He began to get angry. I could feel his feel change. The tension increased in our space. I was being myself. happy free open curious fascinated. But he would not have it. he said that western astrology is shit and psycho-babble and Vedic astrology is just the way it is. now we had met during an Avatar course about eight years prior. I do not remember where. But we were connected or so I thought through a very profound understanding of how consciousness works in the universe. That consciousness, human consciousness, is able to create or discreate anything it wants to through beliefs that it chooses to hold.
‘but bro, certainly you don't believe that we are bound to these beliefs?’ I ask. ‘these are not beliefs’ he responds. ‘this is the way that it is.’ now i have always been wary and in fact humored by this phrase ‘this is just the way it is,’ because certainly if our years on earth and our study of history has taught us nothing else it is that there is no such thing as ‘just the way it is.’ and if that weren't enough, Ramstein and I had already stood on top of the mountain and seen the light. we had experienced pure beingness, unadulterated Sourceness through the discreation of the majority of our beliefs and the appreciation of all that is for brief moments in our study and practice of Avatar materials, themselves ancient and taken from Vedic scripture. So we knew, without a shadow of a doubt that we are able to create whatever the hell we want to, or discreate on the other hand, as we wished. Any being could. that is the gift of pure awareness operating as consciousness and using its will to control its attention. not easy stuff and but not that hard either. And especially now after more than ten years of practice. I don't know how his life has been over the last ten years, but I have made tremendous gains in my ability to use these principles to create amazing things. and more than that, achieve a state of happiness and contentment that I never thought possible as I was growing up in a rather dysfunctional household oh so many years ago.
He had this condescending smile on his face... as if to ask why would I even ask about such things in the face of such groundbreaking carved in stone secret knowledge.
‘Do you think that you are more enlightened than this ancient knowledge?’ and I replied, ‘well of course I do. Don't you? don't you think you are? I mean this stuff is really old and I think its very valuable, but you can’t tell me that you believe that as humans we are weaker than this belief system...’
‘this isn't a belief system man,’ he replied sternly.
‘but of course it is man,’ I reply. ‘its like anything else. there's western astrology and Chinese astrology and now we discover there is Vedic astrology. But what the hell did we spend the last ten years and thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars on learning to create with our will as super-creative and powerful beings doing? Was it all to eventually fall back on some old belief system? we are more enlightened than that.’
‘a person is not more enlightened than this knowledge Fishy. this is your life. you cannot do anything about it. it is just the way it is. you think you are some Guru now do you?’
‘well no, but I don't believe that enlightenment is some unobtainable thing that we need to sit on top of a mountain to get. I don't believe that it is coincidental or mysterious. I believe that a being makes a conscious effort to attain enlightenment and there are a series of action steps that a person takes to achieve enlightenment and that for each person this is going to be different, depending on who they are and where they grow up and where they live. its all relative. And if after taking these action steps a person reaches a point where they can honestly and comfortably say that they are enlightened then God bless them. chances are, they probably are. to themselves at least.’
‘and you think that you are now enlightened?’ he smiles a wicked smile, an unfriendly smile, a patronizing smile. ‘like some Guru on a mountain?’ ‘no. but more like some thirty year old living in New York city. as I should be. I don't live on a mountain. I live in a townhouse in New York. and of course there are degrees to enlightenment. Perhaps I could achieve more enlightenment if I wasn't so obsessed with money and with fame and with women and with doing stuff. But is that to say that some monk on a mountain who owns nothing and does nothing but meditate all day is more enlightened than some guy who lives in New York and makes love to a different girl every night? Fuck no man. no way. not a chance.’ And let me tell you, that in that moment I felt wider, and happier, and more open and more comfortable and more accepting of myself and in my own shoes than perhaps at any other time in my life.
Well I don't have to tell you that in that moment Ramstein got up, packed his bag and walked away. I believe that he uttered something about ‘and this is my problem with you man...’ and that was it. I stood there and watched him walk away.
But here's the thing. I felt good. I didn't feel bad about it. I understood. I breathed. I took it all in. my God, could it be true? could that be enlightenment? To know in your heart that you are happy and you are confident and finally secure with who you are? and that you are free from guilt and playing the right and wrong game? That you know you sin and transgress and make mistakes, but that you are willing to accept them and acknowledge them and make amends for them? and that at long last you can breathe again and when you breathe you feel a sense of ‘I am happy to be me?’ could this be it?
I walked back to the studio happy and sad. Sad that I could not get Ramstein to see that we are beyond any particular manmade belief systems, that we are bigger than that. that we have evolved beyond it. but I was happy because I didn't feel any doubt about it or what I had said. I realized there, perhaps for the first time ever in real life and NOT on SOME MOUNTAIN, that I was happy to be on the path that I am on. I wasn't still studying and learning and meditating and chanting and praying and trying to figure it all out in frustration and eagerness to gain some understanding... I had achieved at least in that moment something that took years and years to collect, something that culminated from thousands of hours of practice and study: the feeling that I was in the right place at the right time saying the right thing. to me. for me. at that moment. with no doubts. No wondering if I was full of shit or possibly mistaken. You could collect it all together, everything that I felt in that moment, and call it peace. It was a feeling of profound peace. And joy. peace and joy. my God. if that's no enlightenment, then what is?
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Then later the cat calls. yes, THE CAT. The same cat. Been writing about her and the Wolf for almost longer than anyone else. gosh its been twenty years now. anyway, like I've said, I love the Wolf, but I just ended up spending more time talking to the cat over the years than with him even though I first was friends with him. life works that way sometimes. Anyway, she's packing up the girls and moving to Tuscany to run a bed and breakfast. The girls will go to school there and the cat will run this place. so she invited me there as soon as I get some free time, which I hope to do come end of summer or early fall. If I can do the Paris thing first for a spell and master the dreaded French, then the Tuscany thing would be a great place to chill in the country and get some serious writing done. (now that's funny! How much more can a fucking person write for gods sake Fishy?!) well I don't consider what I do with these diaries writing. more like regurgitating. But I mean more serious sit down and actually finish something. the diaries just seem to go on forever...
From the mailbox:
-----Original Message-----
From: fatherbloopy@xxxx.com [mailto:]
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 4:09 AM
To: roackaway@gmail.com; fishy@transcendence.com
Cc: vancouver@aol.com; thepoet@hotmail.com; drummerboy@bellsouth.net; pianoman@bellsouth.net; zeke@zachziskin.com
Subject: Re: the jasmine controversy
As for the song Jasmine, don't release it! Lock it away for when we all decide we finally want a hit.
Haha, just kidding.
However, on similar lines to rockaways's solution, there is this thing with a CD burning program one can do. Burn a CD with it and without it and then listen through and decide if it fits or if it really doesn't.
I know I won't have an opinion until I do that, really.
I'm gonna rant right now.
I keep getting into arguments on how The Beatles wouldn't get signed today. My argument is no one would be getting signed if it weren't for The Beatles, but I understand the point they're trying to make.
How can you market a Revolver... featuring Tomorrow Never Knows and Yellow Submarine and the Classical Pop radio #1 Eleanor Rigby and the white-soul radio #4 Got To Get You Into My Life... you know, it's all over the place. The only constant is creativity. It is true,
it was just a way different time then but now it seems creativity only means artist is unfocused, confused, stupid, weird... and makes the marketing people the same way. But I can rest assured Revolver will still be selling in 2010 while Rob Thomas' current album will be in a landfill being converted into the energy used to crank up Revolver.
But then that's another debate... will there still be albums in 2010 or just downloads into our iPod installed in our brains.
Yo Dudes, this is going into the Transcendence Diaries. Bloopy no one could have said it better. You hit it dead on.
You know I have this old girlfriend from high school – you know Vicki who gave me my first hicky from the song? That's a true story as crazy as it sounds that whole fucking song is a true story. We were in ninth grade and boy did I wear that hicky like a proud mofo... anyway, she and I have been speaking lately for the first time in years and she called me late last night and said she just picked up NIC from her local record store and she was calling to tell me that she was so impressed and we were so good and she couldn’t believe it etc.. she said there was a huge difference between swy and NIC. and the music was so fresh and exciting and musical etc... what's funny is that she already owned SWY because of the song Minnie driver... now THAT'S funny. But she heard NIC and just said she couldn’t believe it and all over the place or not it worked for her. so I agree with you Bloop. Though I don't want to do that with the new one because quite frankly I want some fucking money and limos and leer jets and packed houses so if that means we make just ONE album that has all the same style then fine, we’ll do that. and then we’ll come back with our own revolver.
But I will add this: from a kids viewpoint when I was checking out all of my moms old Beatles LPs when I was a kid revolver was always the album I liked the least exactly because of that reason. Because it was all over the place. it never dropped into a vibe. It had too many vibes. I loved good day sunshine but I hated tomorrow never knows because I was young and it scared the shit out of me. I loved Eleanor Rigby and here there and everywhere and taxman but didn't care much for got to get you into my life because it didn't sound like the Beatles. Still doesn’t. so you see... there is something to all of that....
Last screening: cocksucker blues. Hardcore. See if you're a fan of the stones and you're open to ANYTHING. This is rock and roll and there's not much music in It — a lot of cocksucking and drugs to be sure but not a lot of music. there is a reason why this has still never been released. I'll put it that way.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Impeach GW Bush
A respite from the brutal heat of the summer in New York today. cool and breezy thank God Goddess the force great spirit the universe etc.
I spoke at a rather large symposium with several well known congressmen and women on the current initiatives to impeach gw bush and his admin for high crimes under the Geneva convention and Article II, section 4 of the constitution; all the lies that got us into the invasion of Iraq and the unnecessary killing of something close to one hundred thousand Iraqis so far, etc... In a large town hall meeting type of a scenario on the upper west side. Must have been a good thousand people or more there. Candy Rhodes the talk show host was there along with a few other motivated congressional notables from the left. I did my best to rile things up a bit, but in general was bored because each of the other speakers spent over an hour taking the pulpit telling everyone in the giant hall what we all already knew. if we didn't already know all this, then we wouldn’t have all been there. true that. so instead, why not take these one thousand people, brainstorm an action item list and start dividing up tasks that need to be done to actually do something about these atrocities.
The only thing I personally learned from the event (besides my utter shock that over a thousand people showed up for it on a beautiful summer day) was that many of the acts that the bush administration has done in the last two years are actually illegal and he and his entire administration could be impeached and even sent to prison. Good news of course, but I found myself very agitated by the event because truly it seems like the war has already been lost. We play along, I play my part, but in the end it does not appear that much can be done about these dark forces at play in the former-white house. I don't mean the war against terrorism. I mean yes we have definitely lost that war because lets face it we have more terrorism going on in the world now since they stirred up this bee’s nest than we had two years ago. That's for sure. The bees are so angry with us now that we have terrorist attacks going on everyday. AND now WE are committing much more severe terrorist attacks of our own over in Iraq. So even if we win -- (what exactly are we doing there?) -- we still lose.
How long before another attack on America? Well who knows. we can only pray that our government will get even more disciplined with immigration and do whatever it takes to oust whoever the hell is the least bit suspect... but I mean the war that we the enlightened were fighting with the barbarians who have taken over the American government. I mean, lets face it, they won. They're in the white house. they're in Iraq. They do whatever the hell they want to. we the people sit back and watch their insane shenanigans on TV every night and that's that. we have our marches and protests every now and then and it does next to nothing. They did nothing to stop Vietnam and it will do nothing to stop the invasion and occupation of Iraq or any other country. I know I know, I'm a cynic now. once an activist and now a cynic. How quickly I gave up. I know. but truly. If they couldn’t impeach Clinton for lying right on television to the American people and the entire world about his affair with monica. lying right on fucking TV... they're not going to stop bush from lying about a potential threat of weapons of mass destruction from the people of Iraq.
So that's my current stance. Hey if it looks like we ever will win this war, if we even get close to taking any real action besides marching in the streets carrying stupid banners and shouting ‘this is what democracy looks like...” then I'll jump back in, but for now, I'm going to go back to making my difference right here at home and in my own backyard. What really bothered me the most is that my fellow speakers who all had much to gain from promoting these “democratic ideals” kept referring to the impeachment of (republican) Nixon that one of the congresswomen was responsible for that led to his eventual resignation, but they didn't once refer to our failure to impeach (democrat) Clinton. And one assumes it was because the room was full of democrats, and me being one who thinks that they're both just as sinister and dangerous as the other, I felt no camaraderie with their stance. After all, I've said it before. Clinton lied. Period. He should have been impeached. I don't care if he was a republican or a democrat of if he would have been my own father. And no I don't care that he was lying to protect his family or his privacy. He was the president and he lied. See ya. If you all are serious in all your flag waving democracy cattle calls, then you'll cross that political party line and you'll get somewhere in the middle where the rest of the smart and enlightened among you are, and you'll work for real change. If you're just here to hoot and holler behind a podium to preach to the already converted to eventually ask us to donate to the democratic party or any party for that matter, then I'm taking my pale face out to the park to get some much needed sun, a cool breeze, and an iced coffee. I'm not going to be used for political fund raising. You want to impeach bush? Or any other president or social servant who does wrong or breaks the law? Lets do it. But lets get on with it.
In any case, if you are interested the first step is voicing your concern to your own congress-person that you want in on this action, and believe it or not its happening, just not as fast as some of us would like. you can find the form and all the pertinent data here: http://democrats.com/peoplesmailnetwork/50
If you are interested in the actual facts and information that show the criminal acts committed by the dark forces, go here: http://afterdowningstreet.org interesting stuff.
Anyway, after the heated affair I was off with a good friend for some Korean barbeque and then to walk the streets in the village for a few hours before hitting a local producer’s show in the lower east side. Besides scoring some cool vintage Ts, I also happened across a bootleg DVD of the infamous stones movie Cocksucker blues, which I'd always heard about and always wanted to see. Couldn’t believe that there it was just sitting on this table after all these years. Also picked up a bootleg copy of two stones shows in Texas from June of ’72 that the guy showed me on this little TV he had there. And I swear to God it was the best rock concert I had ever seen. ever. It made you all of sudden in one epiphenal moment understand why the stones are the best fucking rock band of all time. I watched about three songs and I just couldn’t fucking believe it. this was the stones?! They were unfuckingbelievable. Like you know, the stones, but good stones. Live. like fucking a no fucking way good. that kind of good.
Last screening: the corporation. A MUST SEE. Be warned now: this is no light-fare easy watching Saturday night flick. This is hard core. Documentary about the birth and history of the corporation and the harm it can and has caused to the earth, the animals, the environment, and humanity itself. Couldn’t make it through the whole thing. just too depressing. Such as:
*the milk in America was and still is being poisoned by growth hormone being injected into the cows here in the states. the government knows about it and doesn’t care. In every other country in the world it is illegal, but in America, it is still legal. The culprit is of course Monsanto. The same company that gave us agent orange and DDT, both poisons. Although the company is still allowed to exist and still poisons the milk supply. But only in America.
*In American there is a cancer epidemic. 1 in every 2 men gets cancer now. and 1 in every 3 women gets cancer in America. Due to poison chemicals in our food supply, pollution in our air, etc. but everyone walks around and acts like they don't know what's causing it. The hospitals doctors and drug companies of course profit enormously from this. they are having a field day with our current epidemic of cancer. that's not their fault of course. its just a byproduct of the fact that we allow ourselves to be poisoned to death here in the states regardless of what we know to prevent it.
*every living system and every life support system on the earth is now officially on the decline according to the latest research. Great news.
*by 2025, twenty years, two-thirds of the worlds population will not have access to fresh drinking water thanks to pollution from big corporations. Again, great fucking news.
*it goes on and on. a truly devastating onslaught of harrowing and depressing information.
again don't see this movie if you're looking for a good pick me up after a hard days work.
And I'll tell you, it occurs to me as I'm sitting here typing away, what in the hell can we really do about any of this at this point? If I were an alien from another planet and was looking at the human race, specifically the American portion of it, I would say, hey in 2000 you had na opportunity to vote in an environmentally friendly president and you passed it up. in 2004 you had an opportunity to vote for an anti-war president and you passed it up. so you wake up one day and you discover that you're killing a thousand people a day in a country half way around the world who posed no threat to you, you're torturing people in your prisons in the name of God knows what, you're air is poisoned, your forests are being destroyed and sold off tens of thousands of acres a day to Asia for lumber, you’ve denigrated your environment so bad that in less than twenty years more than half of you won't have access to safe drinking water, and more than half of you are statistically guaranteed to get cancer in your life. it’s only a matter of time... but what the hell do you silly humans expect?
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Special magic that NIC seems to posses
July 23
Really good news today. got a call from a well known marketing company that Nothing is cohesive is being serviced to a very exclusive tastemakers list of A-list actors musicians and industry folk as one of the “latest and most important breakthrough artists and products out there today.” what good news. I knew we did it. I love that album. I really love it. I think we really made something special there. small perhaps. intimate. But special. Its easy to give up on your work if it doesn’t become an overnight sensation in three months. Seriously. that tendency is always there. just to move on to the next album and abandon the old. But not this one. we’re going to stay loyal to it because we really believe in it. the biggest challenge from an indie-perspective is how to get it into as many hands and ears of potential fans as you can on such limited budget... not easy. advertising and promotion is everything now in the music world. if peeps don't hear it, they can’t dig it. plain and simple. So the challenge is always trying to find creative ways to get the music out to more people so they even know it exists. but slowly NIC is getting into the right hands. The buzz has been good and continues to be. I must say that I always smile when someone calls and raves about NIC. Because I just love it myself as a fan too you know. [and I'm not saying that because I was part of making it. because I don't say the same thing about SWY. I like that album. But it doesn’t have that special magic that NIC seems to posses. I hope we pull that off with this new one. I pray we know what the hell we’re doing with it. time will tell. If you're a regular reader, you'll know long before its ever released, because I'll keep you posted if I like it or not. if its shit you’ll know long before it hits the streets.]
LAST SCREENING: the five obstructions. This is a new film with these two brilliant Danish filmmakers ... Very good. very creative and inspiring art film. will give you gobs of ideas and days of creative juice if you're an artist. If you're not, you may want to pass on this one.
Current spins: Postal service, Slint, Death cab for cutie, Codeine.... just checking out this whole genre if you will. these bands have all built good solid if not household names for themselves. I had checked dcfc before and didn't get it. still don't. there's Emo I get and Emo I don't. I like what Chris carraba and dbc do. he's a hometown boy. Maybe that's part of it, but I don't think so. I just think he's a good songwriter with a cool unique voice. But most of this other stuff I just don't get and don't care to. would like to. as an artist you're always hoping to get off on some new thing. you're dying to. you need to for gods sake. And as music lover too. you want to discover some new treasure. But I haven't found it in any of this stuff. I just have no idea how people are into it... so thoroughly without songs of merit. And some of the most boring and predictable arrangements. This is kids music. really simple and predictable. The only thing I can think of is that people who like this music just don't know a lot of the music that preceeded it. they don't know what's out there so for them maybe this is the best that they’ve ever heard. godspeed to them that think this is the shit that they soon discover the really good music that's being made out there. because there is just so much damn great music being made these days. but these bands are not it.
[“hold on...” I morph into two, turn to face myself, “how the fuck did you do that?!” the first Fishy asks himself, (fascinating that last one really... for then, who am I if I am writing about the two other Fishy’s? a third Fishy? must get to that one later), a string of drool falls to my lap, too much vicodin tonight perhaps. “perhaps, but that's not my point.” “well get on with your point for fucks sake because I must say you have me a little freaked out at the moment.” “I know I know. I can see that. But listen man, isn't the whole idea that there is no way you can qualify what is good or bad art objectively? I mean, those are your words. especially with music. you just got through typing that ‘you hope these other people get on with discovering what the “good” music is, because its certainly not what they're listening to currently. As if to say that what you like is indeed the “good” music. But this goes against everything that you seem to stand for. I'm not sure I get it. that's all I'm saying. hate to frighten you like this, but I just felt that I had to say something.” “fine. Fine. I see what you mean. you’ve definitely got a point there. if I agree with you, will you go away?” “well I can’t really go away per se. after all, I'm you.” “well, will you at least just get back inside me and shut up then? because I'm quite freaked out and frankly I thought I was done with this piece five minutes ago. Its three o'clock in the morning and the last thing in the world I want to be doing right now is debating the philosophical merit of objective criticism of art and music.” “good enough. Just take it back then. I'm tired too. [and frankly, I, the third Fishy, the stenographer of these schizophrenic debates so it seems, am quite tired myself].” “o.k. good enough. You're right. there is no good or bad music. I like what I like. Other people like what they like. Point made. point taken. But I'm not taking it back about what I said earlier about Andy Warhol. That's shit art and you know it.” “I'll give you that one old boy.” “Good. agreed. And please, For Christ’s sake please don't ever do that again.” no answer. good. it appears that he may be gone.]
O.k. so that's that. you can’t like everything. But in other news I am still checking out the dandy warhols and I'm really liking what they did. I enjoy this guy’s writing style. Their guitar player is really good, writes good hooks. good keys. good road music. not that I need road-music right now being land-locked on this island, but I imagine if I ever leave this island again one day I will take a dandy warhols CD with me. no, hold on, there's no such thing as, or need for, CDs anymore... right right. what I meant is that I will make sure that I have at least one or two of their albums in my little ipod.
Really good news today. got a call from a well known marketing company that Nothing is cohesive is being serviced to a very exclusive tastemakers list of A-list actors musicians and industry folk as one of the “latest and most important breakthrough artists and products out there today.” what good news. I knew we did it. I love that album. I really love it. I think we really made something special there. small perhaps. intimate. But special. Its easy to give up on your work if it doesn’t become an overnight sensation in three months. Seriously. that tendency is always there. just to move on to the next album and abandon the old. But not this one. we’re going to stay loyal to it because we really believe in it. the biggest challenge from an indie-perspective is how to get it into as many hands and ears of potential fans as you can on such limited budget... not easy. advertising and promotion is everything now in the music world. if peeps don't hear it, they can’t dig it. plain and simple. So the challenge is always trying to find creative ways to get the music out to more people so they even know it exists. but slowly NIC is getting into the right hands. The buzz has been good and continues to be. I must say that I always smile when someone calls and raves about NIC. Because I just love it myself as a fan too you know. [and I'm not saying that because I was part of making it. because I don't say the same thing about SWY. I like that album. But it doesn’t have that special magic that NIC seems to posses. I hope we pull that off with this new one. I pray we know what the hell we’re doing with it. time will tell. If you're a regular reader, you'll know long before its ever released, because I'll keep you posted if I like it or not. if its shit you’ll know long before it hits the streets.]
LAST SCREENING: the five obstructions. This is a new film with these two brilliant Danish filmmakers ... Very good. very creative and inspiring art film. will give you gobs of ideas and days of creative juice if you're an artist. If you're not, you may want to pass on this one.
Current spins: Postal service, Slint, Death cab for cutie, Codeine.... just checking out this whole genre if you will. these bands have all built good solid if not household names for themselves. I had checked dcfc before and didn't get it. still don't. there's Emo I get and Emo I don't. I like what Chris carraba and dbc do. he's a hometown boy. Maybe that's part of it, but I don't think so. I just think he's a good songwriter with a cool unique voice. But most of this other stuff I just don't get and don't care to. would like to. as an artist you're always hoping to get off on some new thing. you're dying to. you need to for gods sake. And as music lover too. you want to discover some new treasure. But I haven't found it in any of this stuff. I just have no idea how people are into it... so thoroughly without songs of merit. And some of the most boring and predictable arrangements. This is kids music. really simple and predictable. The only thing I can think of is that people who like this music just don't know a lot of the music that preceeded it. they don't know what's out there so for them maybe this is the best that they’ve ever heard. godspeed to them that think this is the shit that they soon discover the really good music that's being made out there. because there is just so much damn great music being made these days. but these bands are not it.
[“hold on...” I morph into two, turn to face myself, “how the fuck did you do that?!” the first Fishy asks himself, (fascinating that last one really... for then, who am I if I am writing about the two other Fishy’s? a third Fishy? must get to that one later), a string of drool falls to my lap, too much vicodin tonight perhaps. “perhaps, but that's not my point.” “well get on with your point for fucks sake because I must say you have me a little freaked out at the moment.” “I know I know. I can see that. But listen man, isn't the whole idea that there is no way you can qualify what is good or bad art objectively? I mean, those are your words. especially with music. you just got through typing that ‘you hope these other people get on with discovering what the “good” music is, because its certainly not what they're listening to currently. As if to say that what you like is indeed the “good” music. But this goes against everything that you seem to stand for. I'm not sure I get it. that's all I'm saying. hate to frighten you like this, but I just felt that I had to say something.” “fine. Fine. I see what you mean. you’ve definitely got a point there. if I agree with you, will you go away?” “well I can’t really go away per se. after all, I'm you.” “well, will you at least just get back inside me and shut up then? because I'm quite freaked out and frankly I thought I was done with this piece five minutes ago. Its three o'clock in the morning and the last thing in the world I want to be doing right now is debating the philosophical merit of objective criticism of art and music.” “good enough. Just take it back then. I'm tired too. [and frankly, I, the third Fishy, the stenographer of these schizophrenic debates so it seems, am quite tired myself].” “o.k. good enough. You're right. there is no good or bad music. I like what I like. Other people like what they like. Point made. point taken. But I'm not taking it back about what I said earlier about Andy Warhol. That's shit art and you know it.” “I'll give you that one old boy.” “Good. agreed. And please, For Christ’s sake please don't ever do that again.” no answer. good. it appears that he may be gone.]
O.k. so that's that. you can’t like everything. But in other news I am still checking out the dandy warhols and I'm really liking what they did. I enjoy this guy’s writing style. Their guitar player is really good, writes good hooks. good keys. good road music. not that I need road-music right now being land-locked on this island, but I imagine if I ever leave this island again one day I will take a dandy warhols CD with me. no, hold on, there's no such thing as, or need for, CDs anymore... right right. what I meant is that I will make sure that I have at least one or two of their albums in my little ipod.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Stealing Music
July 21st, 2005
On the phone with itunes today about how one great they are and have been for us and two how awful they are at the same time because its so easy for people to just hand each other a stack of cds and have their friends burn them into their itunes system on their hard drives. We talked for about an hour about it. they tried to get me to see how much better it is now than a few years ago when people were just downloading for free. And I see that. but I also see how easy it is to grab your friends cds and burn them into your system. shit I'm DOING IT!!! and lately I've really been questioning it. I mean, after all, we are still stealing. Say what you will, but we are still stealing music. its one thing to borrow your friends CD for a few days for a free listen. but its another thing to take it forever into your hard drive... man but its just so fucking easy... how can we stop it? should we stop it? can I as a music lover stop myself even? its true that if I get the new lcd sound system from polar bear, and I like it, that I will go buy the rest of their back catalogue, BUT I'm still getting that new one for free and putting it into my ipod. Interesting. Perhaps one day we will find a way to stop it. get the control out of the hands of the consumer and back into the control of the people who actually make the music, the artists and labels who are spending the time energy and money on making the product. in no other industry is their such potential for such rampant stealing of product. imagine for a moment going into a grocery store and being able to just fill your basket with food and walk out of there without paying all because we have found a way technologically to do so without getting caught. So we justify it to ourselves because after all we aren't getting caught or getting into trouble... this is what's happening in music right. or imagine sneaking into a movie theatre to see the newest craze just because you can. most people wouldn’t because quite frankly they'd feel like losers. What's ten bucks for a movie? So what is the difference with music? well, I don't know. I'm asking myself the same questions. Because I'm just as guilty of it still and I make my own living from selling music. so why would I partake? Why? because I can get away with it. Crazy.
I am still knee deep into this process I have chanced upon whereby I am searching for past transgressions, misconduct, wrong-doings and healing them one by one....
Looks something like this. [this is from a letter to rockaway I sent him today to help him deal with a recent problem/conflict he is having with a guitar player in town]
Bro, breathe deep and check this out. And when you feel in a secure place, ask yourself what is your responsibility in this..... take a piece of paper and gently and lovingly write down each different incidence of misconduct or transgression that you feel like you committed against Tony; and then other people regarding talking behind their back (since this is what you are upset about him doing to you).... write down what you did, write down why you did it (to get attention or approval etc.... to feel better than others... to feel cool in the moment), and then let that all go. acknowledge it, feel sorry for it, see what and why you did it, see how it affects your life, make amends if you feel you can or want to, and then let it go.. this doesn’t make Tony right in the situation, but it allows you to clean up your part in it. it allows you to be clear. it allows you to free up more of your own attention/creating energy. And usually it helps you see the bigger picture of why you would create something like this happening in your life. after this, then lets see how you feel about Tony. And then lets see how he is showing up in your world.... o.k.? good luck and may the force be with you. love, Fishy
So yes this is what I am doing STILL. day after day I spend a few hours late at night doing it. things pop up in my mind. Based on the integrity rundown from Avatar basically. One of The questions is “list any current conflicts you are in.” so I am through with present time and now I am working on my high school and junior high school years. I look for anyone that has a charge for me. anyone that my attention sticks on. even though this is years and years ago, you will find that there are still plenty of people that if you feel into it have a charge for you, that when you think about them you feel bothered for some reason. They can be people that you know you transgressed against in some way and just never bothered to look into it or acknowledge it, or they can be people that you feel have hurt you in some way. usually if you look deep enough you will find some point where you did something to them OR some point when you did a similar thing to someone else. sometimes they are small things. like ‘I moved the ouiji board piece and pretended that it was moving by itself with my friend David and all these years I have felt like a liar....’ you cannot believe the sense of freedom and release and relief you feel from this! its fucking mind-blowing. We hang onto this stuff in our consciousness forever it seems and then we act and react based on how we feel about these things but very subconsciously... we don't even know this stuff is still there....
Sometime they can be big things that we just repressed. Things we don't want to look at. things we are still justifying. Things we are still trying to find a way in our mind of not remembering or rationalizing why we did it. Picking on your younger brother or sister, or making fun of some other kid in school to try to make yourself feel cool. or man I'm not going to list anything big here but I have found tons of little things from high school and junior school that I am not too proud of.... things that have been there all along and that I have been living through... it has helped so much free up my attention and energy. I feel so much more relaxed, softer, more myself, less on guard, more able to look people in the eye and be myself. little by little everyday I am letting it go and becoming more happy to be me. it feels like enlightenment. It feels amazing. great stuff.
I spoke with little Havana today and she asked how my love life was doing. I told her I was sort of seeing this older woman, and last night I had this opportunity to be with an even older woman. I Googled her today and found out she was about 60 or 65. She was aghast. ‘What?! what are you doing Fishy?!’ ‘you know, I just want the experience. Its so crazy. but c'mon I want the experience of that. how awesome that is!’ and she asks me ‘whatever happened to your fetish girls?’ ‘oh I'm over that phase now. I'm into the older women now.’ she tells me “They should make a planet out of you Fishy. you are your own planet.” Use that for a song or album title. they should make a planet out of you. hey, can I use that? sure, feel free.
Last screening: the classic, maltese falcon. In my ongoing discovery of Humphrey Bogart. This is one of his most famous classics. He plays Sam spade, the derelict dick with a pension for fast talking people out of cash whenever he sees an opportunity or slugging people just because they did that a lot back then. all these old movies, guys just hit each other out of the blue all the time. A small picture, like all the old movies, but no less dramatic because of that. you can’t believe at the end that he turns the girl in. its great. thoughts: movies are much bigger now, but not necessarily better. Back then the characters had a sense of realness and drama that a lot of times they don't seem to possess these days, though I cannot say why. could it be that we are around now? so we see the bullshit media hype behind the stars all the time like brad pitt etc? so we just don't respect them as much? Whereas with Bogart we weren't around back then so he has become a sort of icon to us because we only see his movies and not the behind the scenes stuff??? I'm not sure yet. but there is such an intensity to him onscreen. You really believe him in his roles. I'm a fan now. maybe that's just what made Bogart Bogart so to speak.
Current spin: LCD sound system, lcd sound system. creative. Addictive. Can’t stop listening to it. reminds of young David Byrne before he got serious. There is a song called losing my edge that everyone must hear at least once.
Also, the BOOKS. This is a great project. Amazing experimental music. get it.
Also, serge gainsbourg, comic strip. My oh my those French were cheesy. You have to hear this stuff to believe it. it is major cheese. I'm not saying its bad. But its everything that sixties French music was... just over the top tongue in cheek campy kitschy stuff... girl back ground singers and all... really silly.
Last screening: DIG. This is the best. It’s about the bands Brian Jones town massacre and dandy warhols. This is the best rockumentary I have ever seen. it’s a must see!!!!! Really good. critics and observers were right about anton. He deserved the bad rap. He comes off like an asshole and an idiot. his band seem cool. but their music doesn’t sound very good. the dandies on the other hand made some really great music in their time. I don't see how Courtney was influenced by anton at all... or intimidated by him. he was better, wittier, classier. Maybe he was just influenced by his personality.... that whole art for arts sake thing... which can be a potent aphrodisiac, but in that case one often forgets to actually pay attention to the product or output itself. Such was the case with Andy Warhol. Where his asthetic influenced generations but his art (what art?) just never lives up the hype. But his cult of personality was something to behold and to be reckoned with.
by the way: this is really cool: fucking humans. We are cool.
(In Case of Emergency)
Following the disaster in London... The Ambulance Service has launched a national "In Case of Emergency ICE)" campaign. The idea is that you store the word "ICE" in your cell phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency".
In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly look at your mobile phone and find out who your first contact should be and be able to contact them.
It's so simple that everyone can do it. Please do. Email this to everybody in your address book, it won't take too many "forwards" before everybody will know about this, and it will become an international practice. For more than one contact name use: ICE1, ICE2, ICE3, etc. It really could help the emergency services in doing their job.
On the phone with itunes today about how one great they are and have been for us and two how awful they are at the same time because its so easy for people to just hand each other a stack of cds and have their friends burn them into their itunes system on their hard drives. We talked for about an hour about it. they tried to get me to see how much better it is now than a few years ago when people were just downloading for free. And I see that. but I also see how easy it is to grab your friends cds and burn them into your system. shit I'm DOING IT!!! and lately I've really been questioning it. I mean, after all, we are still stealing. Say what you will, but we are still stealing music. its one thing to borrow your friends CD for a few days for a free listen. but its another thing to take it forever into your hard drive... man but its just so fucking easy... how can we stop it? should we stop it? can I as a music lover stop myself even? its true that if I get the new lcd sound system from polar bear, and I like it, that I will go buy the rest of their back catalogue, BUT I'm still getting that new one for free and putting it into my ipod. Interesting. Perhaps one day we will find a way to stop it. get the control out of the hands of the consumer and back into the control of the people who actually make the music, the artists and labels who are spending the time energy and money on making the product. in no other industry is their such potential for such rampant stealing of product. imagine for a moment going into a grocery store and being able to just fill your basket with food and walk out of there without paying all because we have found a way technologically to do so without getting caught. So we justify it to ourselves because after all we aren't getting caught or getting into trouble... this is what's happening in music right. or imagine sneaking into a movie theatre to see the newest craze just because you can. most people wouldn’t because quite frankly they'd feel like losers. What's ten bucks for a movie? So what is the difference with music? well, I don't know. I'm asking myself the same questions. Because I'm just as guilty of it still and I make my own living from selling music. so why would I partake? Why? because I can get away with it. Crazy.
I am still knee deep into this process I have chanced upon whereby I am searching for past transgressions, misconduct, wrong-doings and healing them one by one....
Looks something like this. [this is from a letter to rockaway I sent him today to help him deal with a recent problem/conflict he is having with a guitar player in town]
Bro, breathe deep and check this out. And when you feel in a secure place, ask yourself what is your responsibility in this..... take a piece of paper and gently and lovingly write down each different incidence of misconduct or transgression that you feel like you committed against Tony; and then other people regarding talking behind their back (since this is what you are upset about him doing to you).... write down what you did, write down why you did it (to get attention or approval etc.... to feel better than others... to feel cool in the moment), and then let that all go. acknowledge it, feel sorry for it, see what and why you did it, see how it affects your life, make amends if you feel you can or want to, and then let it go.. this doesn’t make Tony right in the situation, but it allows you to clean up your part in it. it allows you to be clear. it allows you to free up more of your own attention/creating energy. And usually it helps you see the bigger picture of why you would create something like this happening in your life. after this, then lets see how you feel about Tony. And then lets see how he is showing up in your world.... o.k.? good luck and may the force be with you. love, Fishy
So yes this is what I am doing STILL. day after day I spend a few hours late at night doing it. things pop up in my mind. Based on the integrity rundown from Avatar basically. One of The questions is “list any current conflicts you are in.” so I am through with present time and now I am working on my high school and junior high school years. I look for anyone that has a charge for me. anyone that my attention sticks on. even though this is years and years ago, you will find that there are still plenty of people that if you feel into it have a charge for you, that when you think about them you feel bothered for some reason. They can be people that you know you transgressed against in some way and just never bothered to look into it or acknowledge it, or they can be people that you feel have hurt you in some way. usually if you look deep enough you will find some point where you did something to them OR some point when you did a similar thing to someone else. sometimes they are small things. like ‘I moved the ouiji board piece and pretended that it was moving by itself with my friend David and all these years I have felt like a liar....’ you cannot believe the sense of freedom and release and relief you feel from this! its fucking mind-blowing. We hang onto this stuff in our consciousness forever it seems and then we act and react based on how we feel about these things but very subconsciously... we don't even know this stuff is still there....
Sometime they can be big things that we just repressed. Things we don't want to look at. things we are still justifying. Things we are still trying to find a way in our mind of not remembering or rationalizing why we did it. Picking on your younger brother or sister, or making fun of some other kid in school to try to make yourself feel cool. or man I'm not going to list anything big here but I have found tons of little things from high school and junior school that I am not too proud of.... things that have been there all along and that I have been living through... it has helped so much free up my attention and energy. I feel so much more relaxed, softer, more myself, less on guard, more able to look people in the eye and be myself. little by little everyday I am letting it go and becoming more happy to be me. it feels like enlightenment. It feels amazing. great stuff.
I spoke with little Havana today and she asked how my love life was doing. I told her I was sort of seeing this older woman, and last night I had this opportunity to be with an even older woman. I Googled her today and found out she was about 60 or 65. She was aghast. ‘What?! what are you doing Fishy?!’ ‘you know, I just want the experience. Its so crazy. but c'mon I want the experience of that. how awesome that is!’ and she asks me ‘whatever happened to your fetish girls?’ ‘oh I'm over that phase now. I'm into the older women now.’ she tells me “They should make a planet out of you Fishy. you are your own planet.” Use that for a song or album title. they should make a planet out of you. hey, can I use that? sure, feel free.
Last screening: the classic, maltese falcon. In my ongoing discovery of Humphrey Bogart. This is one of his most famous classics. He plays Sam spade, the derelict dick with a pension for fast talking people out of cash whenever he sees an opportunity or slugging people just because they did that a lot back then. all these old movies, guys just hit each other out of the blue all the time. A small picture, like all the old movies, but no less dramatic because of that. you can’t believe at the end that he turns the girl in. its great. thoughts: movies are much bigger now, but not necessarily better. Back then the characters had a sense of realness and drama that a lot of times they don't seem to possess these days, though I cannot say why. could it be that we are around now? so we see the bullshit media hype behind the stars all the time like brad pitt etc? so we just don't respect them as much? Whereas with Bogart we weren't around back then so he has become a sort of icon to us because we only see his movies and not the behind the scenes stuff??? I'm not sure yet. but there is such an intensity to him onscreen. You really believe him in his roles. I'm a fan now. maybe that's just what made Bogart Bogart so to speak.
Current spin: LCD sound system, lcd sound system. creative. Addictive. Can’t stop listening to it. reminds of young David Byrne before he got serious. There is a song called losing my edge that everyone must hear at least once.
Also, the BOOKS. This is a great project. Amazing experimental music. get it.
Also, serge gainsbourg, comic strip. My oh my those French were cheesy. You have to hear this stuff to believe it. it is major cheese. I'm not saying its bad. But its everything that sixties French music was... just over the top tongue in cheek campy kitschy stuff... girl back ground singers and all... really silly.
Last screening: DIG. This is the best. It’s about the bands Brian Jones town massacre and dandy warhols. This is the best rockumentary I have ever seen. it’s a must see!!!!! Really good. critics and observers were right about anton. He deserved the bad rap. He comes off like an asshole and an idiot. his band seem cool. but their music doesn’t sound very good. the dandies on the other hand made some really great music in their time. I don't see how Courtney was influenced by anton at all... or intimidated by him. he was better, wittier, classier. Maybe he was just influenced by his personality.... that whole art for arts sake thing... which can be a potent aphrodisiac, but in that case one often forgets to actually pay attention to the product or output itself. Such was the case with Andy Warhol. Where his asthetic influenced generations but his art (what art?) just never lives up the hype. But his cult of personality was something to behold and to be reckoned with.
by the way: this is really cool: fucking humans. We are cool.
(In Case of Emergency)
Following the disaster in London... The Ambulance Service has launched a national "In Case of Emergency ICE)" campaign. The idea is that you store the word "ICE" in your cell phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency".
In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly look at your mobile phone and find out who your first contact should be and be able to contact them.
It's so simple that everyone can do it. Please do. Email this to everybody in your address book, it won't take too many "forwards" before everybody will know about this, and it will become an international practice. For more than one contact name use: ICE1, ICE2, ICE3, etc. It really could help the emergency services in doing their job.
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