Into the Void

Rethinking personal evolution.

Post-modernism is about creating a synthesis encompassing, integrating, and synergizing the existing, mutually exclusive domains of religion and science. A new spiritual paradigm, if you like buzz-words. Most of us have evolved far beyond the pre-industrial, that is, agrarian, monotheistic religions. Blind faith stopped being relevant before WWII, so you practically have to drop out of modern society to avoid moving to the next level. But don’t tell the poor devils unless you want a bloody Crusade right here in the US.

The atheists would claim that we have a god-shaped hole in our heads that we must fill with something, and this may be true. Now all the geeks don’t know what to do with this need for spirituality – or even exactly what it is that they’re needing!

KW has some great ideas, but he expressed an opinion in an interview that evolution is a sudden transformation rather than a process of gradual adaptation to the environment. I don’t agree that intermediate, incomplete forms are necessarily incompatible with survival. The universe doesn’t need miracles, *we* do.

To me, this idea that the Universe will bring you whatever you want if you are spiritual sounds a whole lot like the Protestant Work Ethic. If you work hard enough or if you believe hard enough, God will grant you grace. And all of your basest desires.

Look around you. There are a very few beacons shining above a sea of ignorance. Check out SoundsTrue. There are some excellent materials there – you just have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

In my opinion, we will achieve enlightenment only when humanity physically evolves enough to provide us with appropriate organs for it. I’m just burning karma until then.

Darwin loves you, man.

Technorati: post-modernism protestant+work+ethic blind+faith atheist transformation law+of+attraction burning+karma sea+of+ignorance spiritual monotheism pre-industrial darwin

My take on the sixties:

I was born in 1957, 12 years after WWII The Big One ended. The Korean conflict came between the two events. As far as I can tell, I’m being labeled “Baby Boomer” only so that folks my age will fund the real boomers’ greedy retirement plans. Even as we speak, they are quietly moving their funds are from investments that have become UNSAFE due to their profit-taking. They don’t leave their money in the stock market as they get older. My group still does, and it will be disastrous. Stock Market “adjustments” are seen as inevitable, but when there is an adjustment it means that somebody is taking somebody else’s money. Who do you suppose it is? The poor? Not bloody likely. I used to think the stock market was a gamble. Now I realize that the game is fixed.

Many of these boomers were, as young adults, the hippies about which my friends speak so glowingly. The hippies headed for the hills when things got tough. Most of what you read about the culture of the ’60s was invented by students at Ivy League colleges who never knew the difficulties of living off handouts in the city. Free love was a farce – it wasn’t anything near free for the women – or girls – who got pregnant.

The Beatles brought a small vision of the world to public view, but they weren’t at the forefront. Not EVEN. They were Pop Icons at the tail end of the whole mess. The whole hippie thing had become a farce by the time the Beatles rolled out Sergeant Pepper’s.

So as a kid I heard many Great Ideas from my friends’ older, college-age siblings. Age of Aquarius, be-ins, freedom, evolution, revolution. But I watched the body counts in Viet Nam rise night after night on TV. I saw minorities fighting to be recognized not even as equals but as human beings. I saw the cops beating Blacks and college students and pretty much anyone they didn’t like the looks of to a pulp out in the streets. I lived in the aftermath of three assassinations. The Great Ideas vanished into thin air, leaving my generation with an intellectual wasteland.

The media doesn’t let that kind of information interfere with big business these days. There was even a ban on showing the rows of coffins from the Afghanistan and Iraq dead. I would watch that. Someone has to bear witness.

I suppose I should get more proactive. I’m too easy to silence, I’m mentally ill. I can be taken against my will into a hospital, drugged, zapped, whatever. Just say the word “anosognosia.” There are no political prisoners, no prisoners of conscience, only mental patients. My only recourse is to donate to the charities that are doing the real work. I don’t fool myself into thinking that throwing money at the problems will fix them. Money only generates more money – if the problems were solved, the charities would be out of business. I can only hope that they help a little bit.

Duck and cover, they told us as children. There was the constant threat of nuclear annihilation brought on by the hatred of my elders for folks just like us on the other side of the world. In the ’80s they told us to dig a hole in the backyard, lie down in it and cover yourself over if there’s a nuclear strike – dig your own goddam grave. “With enough shovels” was the slogan. This stupidity was successfully imitated in the aftermath of 9-11 Homeland Security told us to seal off a room with plastic and duct tape to protect ourselves from terrorists. I don’t think it will protect you, but it will definitely keep the smell down. Fear is a great strategy for controlling the populace.

I sat at work one night at 12 or 14 years old with a gun on the desk in front of me and the simple instructions: “If any <n -words> try to break in, shoot ‘em.” Camden was burning just a few blocks away. It was happening in cities across the country, the black people were looking for a better life. The owner left me to mind the store. The only <n -word> who showed up was a business associate that I’d known since I was a baby. He sat with me until the boss got back then ripped him a new asshole for leaving me there alone.

“Backlash, Backlash, Who do you think I am? You raise my taxes, freeze my wages, And send my son to Viet Nam. You gimme Second-class houses, And second-class schools, Do you think all colored people are just Second-class fools? Mr. Backlash, I’m gonna leave you with the blues, yes I am.” – Langston Hughes, Nina Simone “Backlash Blues”

Backlash Blues didn’t get much airplay when it would have mattered. Now it’s used in a Lexus commercial to sell luxury automobiles. Langston Hughes would have seen the irony of it. A better life, indeed. I’m not sure whether a commercial with a good-looking African-American man grooving on the blues is supposed to be targeted for African-Americans. It motivated me to run out and get some Nina Simone CDs. I don’t want an SUV, thankyouverymuch.

So when I was a kid the air was bad, the rivers were full of poisons, raw sewage, and rotting fish. The Potomac river, backdrop to so many National Monuments, was so polluted that if you fell in the cops would take you off to the hospital. Rivers caught fire, the bald eagle was in danger of extinction. Our food was full of pesticides. The drug companies gave pregnant women Diethylstilbestrol (DES) and Thalidomide. Every species was manifesting serious anomalies from teratogens in the environment. EVERY species. Much later, William S. Burroughs drew attention to the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl with typical brutal honesty in an interview in 1986 in which he said, “Let me ask you one question, Doctor: You want your daughter born with two cunts?” He was referring to a condition known as “uterus didelphys.” Being born with two vaginas is also a side effect of maternal DES use.

The erstwhile hippies didn’t notice. If they did, they didn’t give a rat’s ass.

The Space Program, it turned out, wasn’t about our destiny among the stars. It was a non-war strategy for beating the Russians by outdoing them technologically. Reagan continued the strategy with space weapons programs in the ’80s. “Star Wars” was all about bankrupting “The Evil Empire” as he called the U.S.S.R..

Reagan also invented “trickle-down economics” which, as far as I can tell, involved giving all the money to the wealthy and the large corporations so that they can piss on the workers.

My generation lost hope long before Reagan came along. We smoked pot and listened to music. At the tail end of the boom, we were overcrowded everywhere we went and there were few jobs. On top of that, periodically there were gas crises with far-reaching economic effects, including stagflation. Stagflation is the situation I quoted above, where prices increase but salary doesn’t. More and more, we either lived at home until we were 30, in roachtraps in the city, or in group houses with four or more people. We were occasionally chased out of town with new zoning laws by the former hippies, but that’s another story for another day.

The American Dream has always been about taking care of the kids born right after WWII The Big One. It was used, along with religion, for keeping us quiet and obedient, at least until we figured out that it was all a big scam.

Suddenly the ’60s have become this Utopia. They are being totally rewritten. It’s very hip these days to pine for a Golden Age that never was, whether you pine for the ’60′s or for the post-war enthusiasm of our grandparents generation or for a mythical pre-industrial garden.

Maya, the world of illusion. Insanity is being able to see through the illusion. Insanity is rejecting the false values of your elders. So they tell us. It’s up to us to keep looking for the truth no matter how much they tell us to turn back to a glorious past that never was.

Music Download: Red Bird & the Meatheads

Got an mp3 in an email from a friend the other day. As you can see above, Windows Media Player made an excellent visualization for the song, which is called Red Bird & the Meatheads.

it is about my birds. he would like me to tell you that the goofy voices are his singing what the birds yak. he does a good job. i am serious when i tell you that any resemblance to a parody of bob dylan is unintentional. it is magic, this song. i really believe that. he did it in twenty minutes & i– & this is me, remember, hyper-critical & knowledgeable about every perfect thing– i have rarely heard anything this accomplished done in even twenty hours or twenty days. me, i am yakking myself too much, so i will just send the mp3.

he would like me to tell you it is called “red bird & the meatheads.”

Technorati: music, mp3

According to an article in May 23, 2007 N.Y. Times, there will be a series of free folk festivals on Governor’s Island in July. Folk singer-songwriter Harry Chapin of “Cat’s Cradle” fame will be reanimated for the occasion.

Thanks to Ted for the hard copy.

FilmSpot: Ozzy Osbourne

I bit the head off a live bat the other night. It was like eating a Crunchie wrapped in chamois leather.
– Ozzy Osbourne

Woodwarbler’s JazzGrass stream. The music starts about a minute into the stream after the tail end of the previous show.

My friend Brian Aust has a new radio show called Woodwarbler’s JazzGrass at WGDR Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. I took a quick listen before writing this post and wound up listening for a half hour! What is JazzGrass? you might wonder. It is an eclectic mix of Old Timey Bluegrass that evolves into Jazz later in the show. Brian is a great guy and Bluegrass music is just plain fun. Kind of like speed metal for country boys.

In case the link above doesn’t work, go to the WGDR music archive page and select April 30,2007 at 1935 (7:35PM) Eastern Time. The show is 2 hours long. The show is available for download, too, for download to your mp3 player.

I’ll update this link when I hear that the show has become a permanent institution at WGDR. Drop a dollar or two in the hat while you’re there.

Public radio needs your help. But that is a topic for a huge rant about large corporations owning all the media outlets in town and taking wonderful but less popular music genres off the airwaves in the name of profit. Not to mention pooling all the news outlets into one incestual mass of mediocrity.

less people less idiots ©: The Christ in Christmas

While transcribing audio notes this morning I googled song lyrics from some songs I heard on WPRB, the Princeton University radio station, shortly before the holidays. Odd lyrics, too, at least as I noted them.

Tied you in your kitchen chair and broke your legs and from your lips allelujah

Those aren’t really the lyrics to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, of course.
The DJ on WPRB played Jeff Buckley’s cover version of the song. It’s too bad I didn’t transcribe the audio notes to my future self before the holidays. I would definitely given my husband Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” CD.

The best link for the song turned out to be a sermon by the Rev. Billy Bob Gisher on less people less idiots ©. I completely agree with his tongue-in-cheek sermon.

Gisher: Good Christians you have work to do, you should be reaching out to witness or at least help these people, show them some love…but what are you doing? HAVING PISSY FIGHTS OVER NATIVITY SCENES!
There are people who need your help, YOU HAVE GOT MUCH BETTER THINGS TO DO!
(Crowd says AMEN! AMEN!)

Greetings from the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
I picked Sunday this year because the lineup was lean on self-involved whiners errrrr hell, I’d better come up with another name for it. But if you’re my age you remember when the best folk music had a political edge or perhaps some biting social commentary. You didn’t hear Phil Ochs making a career of singing about his personal problems, did you?
Anyway, I came today because there was a lot of blues in the lineup. David Bromberg, Shemekia Copeland. The folk fest audience is pretty responsive so Shemekia had us clapping and singing along.
This year they’ve been showing videos of past performances between sets. I had actually seen a few of the original shows which seemed strange until I realized that this is the 20th or 21st of these I’ve come to.
The final set is Hot Tuna. I’ll update when I get home.

Thinking about The American Dream.
You wouldn’t look at me and think Money. I can’t afford the trappings that would take me up a level.
Did that make sense… you have to act like you belong to the club before they’ll let you in?
The American Dream requires that you spend spend spend the future and hope that future earnings pay the debt. To even get in the game requires access to credit, doesn’t it?
Megadeth did a song about this called “Foreclosure of a Dream.”
Did anyone notice that they just brought back the 30-year T-bill? That’s right, your grandchildren will still be paying this administration’s debt 30 years from now.
It’s also enlightening to look into who exactly owns the U.S. Public Debt. What would happen if our foreign investors demanded repayment? What would we give them?