tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49227117128237349812024-03-16T01:12:44.207+00:00One Monkey, One TypewriterThis is the home of Leo Stableford on the world wide web.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger239125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-15582684724956989382023-08-17T14:47:00.004+01:002023-08-17T14:47:54.004+01:00The Chao of Discordia: Four<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlSQ-y0X03nkIdGn7hhOe_bwYlScn6vAvBs9XLgApuEMppYMXVHqZRPX4AdzDyt7ykBnjo6IlXz5ovQYR5pbfuW0bW1RpnONOPHRD1gChzZ5HV9s6-MPvVaHQTHqZIFMDZ7KKGpkE0rE2Qfa69TQGGnP23oKCyuNVoM887FLoq_Jt2Nz8OkgwXsiS9LUEE/s800/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlSQ-y0X03nkIdGn7hhOe_bwYlScn6vAvBs9XLgApuEMppYMXVHqZRPX4AdzDyt7ykBnjo6IlXz5ovQYR5pbfuW0bW1RpnONOPHRD1gChzZ5HV9s6-MPvVaHQTHqZIFMDZ7KKGpkE0rE2Qfa69TQGGnP23oKCyuNVoM887FLoq_Jt2Nz8OkgwXsiS9LUEE/w400-h300/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-4.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">FOUR</p><p>1. The chao is a cornucopia. The more issues forth the more still remains. The chao is the source of all that is. </p><p>2. Where there is a sharp edge it is rounded,</p><p>Where it is tangled it is unravelled,</p><p>Where it gives light it is dim,</p><p>Its nature enfolded,</p><p>Dark as ocean depths it endures</p><p>3. It has no progenitor,</p><p>The chao is older than gods.</p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-33023350397107535082023-07-31T15:34:00.002+01:002023-07-31T15:35:19.985+01:00The Chao of Discordia: Three<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEith8ZnkqPtiHWyRdxQDPa9xLwHB-4KAZKTrHX71UN7FV3fFso5sHim41W1fngohqRbGueQklic4sVZrjwiOjaYsr2TAHim00i4hcC6Fk3c4avYeQFq7WmTa1LhN_dcDfNIVANKN3ZWYt3gWU1ovxbADIcYe0owGmx-ABjS_mfLjccTQEjtMTfRBJ57SjgF/s800/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEith8ZnkqPtiHWyRdxQDPa9xLwHB-4KAZKTrHX71UN7FV3fFso5sHim41W1fngohqRbGueQklic4sVZrjwiOjaYsr2TAHim00i4hcC6Fk3c4avYeQFq7WmTa1LhN_dcDfNIVANKN3ZWYt3gWU1ovxbADIcYe0owGmx-ABjS_mfLjccTQEjtMTfRBJ57SjgF/w400-h300/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-3.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">THREE</p><p style="text-align: left;">1. If you seek not to excite rivalry among your fellows, treat all among them, wise and foolish, as equals, for they are. If you seek to avoid thieves, do not prize or promote material objects. To avoid greed and addiction and embrace a peaceful mind, ignore those things that promote greed and addiction.</p><p style="text-align: left;">2. A pope in the exercise of their power, empties their heart of the illusion of desire, fills their bellies, tempers their dreams, strengthens their core.</p><p style="text-align: left;">3. So the people can be innocent of the illusion, remind them of the illusion. For those who think they know better, remind them that they are preoccupied with an illusion and it would be foolish to act on such false preoccupation. By acting within one’s own reality tunnel without infringing on another’s, all may live in peace.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-64078463878501325182023-07-18T16:15:00.003+01:002023-07-18T16:15:18.261+01:00The Chao of Discordia: Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkstibLq3kIQeg7WLmYdu-XxDwhIcagAaElKk0NNdtzwbLX4J31jHADPYn_KWBLYE3fsb2KcLptFD-bo3ZhqtjAqGqrqse-3dXm68nwswOFnwAS-HQuU3bmlzOfoAmAMUNDj2QLUBW3FE_7jsV2wNoJK39f29LsIWOtNQ3RjZhX8cw-pvtiiMwP0ZimP6/s800/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkstibLq3kIQeg7WLmYdu-XxDwhIcagAaElKk0NNdtzwbLX4J31jHADPYn_KWBLYE3fsb2KcLptFD-bo3ZhqtjAqGqrqse-3dXm68nwswOFnwAS-HQuU3bmlzOfoAmAMUNDj2QLUBW3FE_7jsV2wNoJK39f29LsIWOtNQ3RjZhX8cw-pvtiiMwP0ZimP6/w400-h300/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-2.png" width="400" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;">TWO</p><p>1. All people in the world know what makes them feel safe and in so doing they know what they believe will threaten that safety. When they know the beauty of the Eristic then they can conceive of the Aneristic</p><p>2. Perceived reality depends on duality:</p><p>Being or not-Being are created in our growth; difficult and easy are created according to our own process of discovery; Long and short exist only where the context requires that contrast. High and low are matters of our own perspective; the harmonics of tone and voice are a result of our own biological wiring; leading or trailing are based in an illusion of hierarchy.</p><p>3. Therefore a pope manages affairs without action; preaches doctrine without words</p><p>4. Shit happens and a pope understands that to be the case. They create but know they do not own the creation. They create but neither advertise nor claim their creation. For their action they claim no credit and for that reason the credit for those actions cannot be taken from them.</p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-90513951294128927582023-07-14T14:32:00.006+01:002023-07-18T16:10:27.563+01:00New Partwork - The Chao of Discordia: One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ymIhjjkQNr8oIhzjf610i5hvqx1ait34komkLSPS3YpgYT943p2UijUqE5CTcHZp6tTJwdaxDhEVDG1CJYdTbauhNEVjgMxqrbUOAQzF-7LAeMeR4IPGhM7cuPRDXqNjyJwi-G3GEFarOGUpAX5WBGgMAtX5wvLGjTXDxO90hgf4BOvxNo0kNPQ-e6YL/s800/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ymIhjjkQNr8oIhzjf610i5hvqx1ait34komkLSPS3YpgYT943p2UijUqE5CTcHZp6tTJwdaxDhEVDG1CJYdTbauhNEVjgMxqrbUOAQzF-7LAeMeR4IPGhM7cuPRDXqNjyJwi-G3GEFarOGUpAX5WBGgMAtX5wvLGjTXDxO90hgf4BOvxNo0kNPQ-e6YL/w400-h300/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-tao-1.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">ONE</p><p>1. The chao that can be understood is not the infinite chao. The chao that can be named chao is not the infinite chao.</p><p>2. The infinite chao is the originator of the Eristic and Aneristic. She who is named Eris is the mother of all things.</p><p>3. One may attempt to strip themselves of illusions to perceive an objective reality. But the illusions we create make up all the meaning in reality. So we can never truly perceive objective reality</p><p>4. Objective reality and our reality tunnel, for this reason, are pragmatically one and the same to each person. Aspects of objective reality are given different names as a person apprehends them. They can both be called a lens to view the infinite chao. To understand the lens is the key to harmony between yourself and the maelstrom of infinite chao</p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-59438068006270690892023-03-23T11:25:00.001+00:002023-03-23T16:18:39.704+00:00____________ is hard...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFADeAv6-ULwDw-3bO73qqqCVuUa0YRftVRJnPYF81tgHyCMbTfus3b7LR7MXBKSIasno8dU2nl9B2B2drX8uZv5_CpHpG3Td_3g3vHqkCPMKf_Bvdhsw-O1P4NORuqCj2kkdrq8Fv7TD50BaUVmbsuWhdJ8KEv2h0XwM9VgOHM4YTLaftYhSgXFVhQw/s800/ls-com-starfall-period-is-hard.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFADeAv6-ULwDw-3bO73qqqCVuUa0YRftVRJnPYF81tgHyCMbTfus3b7LR7MXBKSIasno8dU2nl9B2B2drX8uZv5_CpHpG3Td_3g3vHqkCPMKf_Bvdhsw-O1P4NORuqCj2kkdrq8Fv7TD50BaUVmbsuWhdJ8KEv2h0XwM9VgOHM4YTLaftYhSgXFVhQw/w400-h300/ls-com-starfall-period-is-hard.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Were I the kind of guy who took risks on having huge amounts of tat manufactured and then tried to sell the tat at profit I would totally have hundreds of miniature whiteboards made with "________ is hard" written on them. It's a genius parody of all those secret vision boards that shallow airheads pin pictures of lambos and mansions onto. We could just single out the thing that we're struggling with and write it in the space provided.</p><p>Your amateur "is hard"-er could start easy with "life". Almost always true from a subjective point of view, everyone's life literally is hard, from where they're sitting. The feeling that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Place" target="_blank">"Everything is fine"</a> is only ever a transient moment, as the words in the ring remind us <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass" target="_blank">"This too shall pass"</a>. The feeling that our life is a vista of dark, forbidding woods, unsettled waters, and threatening, all-consuming tundra would appear to be our natural state of being, scanning for threats, mentally rehearsing worst-case scenarios.</p><p>However, to someone accustomed to our natural anxiety spelling out that "life is hard" is, therefore a tautology, unhelpful and banal. So, we might re-consider, attempt to trap one of our difficulties on our miniature whiteboard. Name the demon and thus entrap it within our cutesie-poo dry-wipe summoning board.</p><p>"Parenting" is something else we could say is hard. In fact, I often think that people often look with pity upon their fellows in the midst of a small human rearing exercise. There's been a current cultural movement to actively excuse people from being entirely on-point with regards housework etc. when they are attempting to usher the next generation into civilised society (which civilised society they have in mind is a tricky one to answer at this stage in history).</p><p>The thing is "sailing around the world alone on a yacht" is equitably hard, as parents and lone sailors evince a similar level of habitual bedragglement and mental wear and tear. The way we treat our intrepid maritime adventurers however is entirely different to the parents. Who cares if there's a small pile of clothes forgotten in the corner of a maritime adventurer's berth? These people are heroes! They have achieved! They must be celebrated!</p><p>The reasons for this are easily hidden in fallacies of common experience and perceived social good. Make no mistake if an experience makes you look and feel like someone who's just sailed their own course round <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Horn" target="_blank">Cape Horn</a> then you probably are worthy of the same amount of kudos. So, yeah, don't let those others belittle your efforts "Parenting is hard" and you shouldn't let that get you down, you're doing a bang up job.</p><p>Of course, one of the reasons that parenting gets on the board is that being a parent inevitably means thinking of something other than what's best just for you right now. In fact, that's one of the challenges of being any kind of caregiver. So, just once in a while you might want to get hyper-specific and put "Updating my blog" on the whiteboard. Not because you don't have anything to say but just because you have been so busy and finding time to spew verbiage into the journal is a challenge that escapes your grasp.</p><p>So there you have it. A profound moment of homespun philosophy reduced to a snivelling, self-pitying shaggy dog story of an excuse. "Apologising for not updating the blog no one reads" would have to go on the whiteboard in really small letters which would probably indicate that you've skewed the specificity far to far into the particular zone. So, probably best to stop there.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-11589776924275833342021-11-11T12:55:00.003+00:002021-11-11T12:55:33.819+00:00A Word on "Woke" and anti-"Woke" sentiment.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP6QTljhTOntDZBQtQlxOMxXw55tUmH5-Inom3JRVIBhyphenhyphenS80ZSXH2sz9kyI4kXIXoijo_oILi3lz6KXI4310gL1dbFsGtJKvTtSZpOdYC0aq9ag4L_TGDPlK0rB_mxFw9o9O-ywFJFYYd-/s800/ls-com-starfall-period-woke-not.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP6QTljhTOntDZBQtQlxOMxXw55tUmH5-Inom3JRVIBhyphenhyphenS80ZSXH2sz9kyI4kXIXoijo_oILi3lz6KXI4310gL1dbFsGtJKvTtSZpOdYC0aq9ag4L_TGDPlK0rB_mxFw9o9O-ywFJFYYd-/w400-h300/ls-com-starfall-period-woke-not.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>A minor news trickle today tells us that <a href="https://deadline.com/2021/11/john-cleese-cancels-cambridge-university-talk-woke-rules-1234871320/" target="_blank">John Cleese has cancelled a planned talk at Cambridge University because he disagrees with the University's "woke rules" that led to them blacklisting another speaker who had previously performed an impersonation of Hitler</a>. He's not wrong that people should not be unfairly blacklisted because they criticised something as close to objectively evil as it is possible to be through the medium of parody/satire.<div><br /></div><div>However, in damning such actions as being "woke" Cleese has fallen into a pernicious trap that many people seem to be struggling with at the present time. What he objects to is the performative and arbitrary actions of people with a poor understanding of what is required to respect others. Essentially, performative virtue signaling.</div><div><br /></div><div>The concept of being "woke" is completely different. It is, and should always remain, a term that means being conscious of systemic bias and abuse towards minorities embedded in culture. To be woke if you are part of those minorities is to be "on guard" against the inevitable inequities and injustices that will infect your life. If you are part of the privileged majority to be "woke" is to be aware of the systemic inequalities and to make reasonable efforts on a personal level not to be part of the problem.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is an understandable confusion to conflate being woke with acting out performative virtue signaling. There is a conversation about how to assess another's actions in light of the blurry line between one and the other. But going round banging on about how woke is a terrible thing that is a blight on our society is exactly the kind of behaviour that contributes to the climate where woke is even a necessary concept.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, it allows people who are engaged in performative virtue signaling off the hook somewhat. </div><div><br /></div><div>Performative virtue signaling is carried out in bad faith, where as trying to be woke should always be good faith. As a sentient species we are, and I believe always have been, very bad at recognising bad-faith actors when their impact on our lives is at a certain level of abstraction.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I have a pie and someone steals that pie I have no problem with that, I call them a thief and react to that kind of bad-faith action in the way I have systemically deemed appropriate.
However, if I have a concept, an important concept, that if I accept its existence and relevance and attempt to act in the service of, and someone else undermines it by, essentially, being the living embodiment of reductio ad absurdam in regards to that concept I am at risk of losing sight of what that concept is all about in the first place.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have to say that I don't believe that Mr. Cleese ever knew what woke was supposed to mean in the first place, and I don't think he's alone in that. I also think that the previous incarnation of woke, political correctness, suffered from many of the same problems, but also the fact that the concept inherently allowed latitude to bad-faith actors to allow them to muddy the concept. Political correctness even sounds like a bit of a weasel-concept.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is why woke is, essentially, a much better concept. It says know your boundaries, mind your business, don't presume to know what someone else is going through and don't be naïve about the consensus reality of the world you live in. It parcels that all up in a neat concept, single word. It's a concept of deep and valuable nuance.</div><div><br /></div><div>For which reason right-wing concept-jacking of the term to rob it of power is exactly the kind of thing that should be deplored and called out. It's a gift to such people that the range of effects of performative virtue-signaling is so broad from "silly and pointless" to "unfair and hurtful" to "actually quite damaging". It also helps a lot that no one's come up with a nuanced word that means "performative virtue-signaling".</div><div><br /></div><div>It would have been cognitively uglier and harder for Mr Cleese to say: "I believe these rules are an act of performative virtue-signaling and I will not be associated with an organisation that seems to have such lax consideration for those they damage with such arbitrary rules and the real struggles of people whose lives are impacted by real systemic inequalities." It's not snappy, or glib, or quotable. However, it would have been kinder, more accurate and, well, more woke.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-70021608507622943642021-09-06T17:28:00.003+01:002021-09-06T17:28:58.810+01:00Staring Yourself Out In The Third Eye<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjBoNGW7Js7jVQMraxqrgsOU0ihVQnydRrkIuojAhlAgUsRJpHrfWOUNRzljCEwW9RMG2tcmYI1c-Jy8YTzOFgC5oYSpzOJQCxWEmVJ5AFqshOg3vL_Yhdag7PlNDKBgNz_drhDhoDkv-h/s800/ls-com-starfall-period-staring-contest.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjBoNGW7Js7jVQMraxqrgsOU0ihVQnydRrkIuojAhlAgUsRJpHrfWOUNRzljCEwW9RMG2tcmYI1c-Jy8YTzOFgC5oYSpzOJQCxWEmVJ5AFqshOg3vL_Yhdag7PlNDKBgNz_drhDhoDkv-h/w400-h300/ls-com-starfall-period-staring-contest.png" width="400" /></a><p>Here's a pro-tip if you like to maintain a blog.</p><p>Don't, under any circumstances, get into a state of mind where not updating a blog or journal becomes a sort of staring contest with yourself.</p><p>Especially don't do this if your intention is not to kill the blog stone dead. If your attitude toward your blog is that it's a nice place to come and drop some words that may, in the long run, prove to be wise or foolish, confusing or interesting but always challenging and, dare I say it, provocative. If you think: "that's a thing that exists that I believe, on balance, the world is better off for having in it" then maybe don't initiate a game where the aim or reward is to not post anything to that blog or journal.</p><p>It does occur to me that subconsciously this weird hiatus may have served a purpose, and honestly whatever the serf of consciousness apprehends is only what the lord and master of subconscious wants it to apprehend, which is not that much usually. That purpose is that when last I essayed upon this journal I was getting pretty downhearted, to be honest. I began to believe that I had lost touch with what I could post that would be of value to others. I have to be that vague, I can't say "to the world" because I am self-aware that my Discordian Mystic ramblings are not for everyone, and I can't say for "my people" because as true as that might be my people, currently, aren't here, that's the issue. Or if they are they are lurking in the shadows so effectively I may as well be alone.</p><p>You get to reading about the people who used to have long, rambling philosophical discussions from which are born great ideas and great thoughts and what not. That's where I'm at, that's what I want, not all the time, just in a part of time. When I get into a conversation about the whole what and all of it I want to find things in that space only available when two people are trying to connect mentally.</p><p>This here, is supposed to be a waffle against a sounding board. I am supposed to be challenged, given fresh perspectives, hounded, insulted, exalted, told I am right, told I am wrong, told I am spouting nonsense, told I am spouting wisdom. Those thus impacted are supposed to come forth and bring me their own waffle, their own view, chopped and presented the way I do here and I can be their sounding board as they were mine.</p><p>It's the philosophical utopia. I think, honestly, it's a space we could all do with that's become dominated with op-ed forums about hot-takes on issues that press hot-buttons. And it's just another means of manufacturing unhelpful, constrictive bullshit because the topics provoke knee-jerk reactions and without philosophising about less controversial topics you lack the skill to find a way into these difficult subjects.</p><p>Essentially, as a Discordian I am bound to have a take on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel" target="_blank">the whole Leary/RAW "Reality Tunnels" thing</a>, and my take is that it seems like a solid theory. So, we should embrace a chance to do a little work on our reality tunnels.</p><p>But exercising our reality-building powers only in the service of those wires that risk setting fire to the core, or causing a rational short-circuit, or shutting down key rational systems to reboot seems like a terrible way to tune. Surely, we should learn our craft attempting to improve less critical systems. We should learn how to work by working all over the tunnel, not just on the load-bearing pillars.</p><p>I don't see a lot of that shit going on, you know? Or, maybe a bit, often in other Discordian blogs, usually long since abandoned and not so much of entries like that either.</p><p>The other option is that looking too hard at things like our own personal belief structures, the general, non-controversial ones, and our own personal systems of rituals is super-hard because it risks breaking things where things seem to work. It's like spiritual technical debt, we've hacked the system together so mostly it operates "correctly" but there are just these few things that can happen that show up that the system just really isn't working as well as we believe, you know, under the hood.</p><p>Anyhow. My conclusion, on glancing through my last couple of entries is that I was on a more-or-less correct path. And the staring contest has given me distance to see that, if nothing else.</p><p>We need to move on now. And I need to be posting for people who may come through and may wish to access me through other means.</p><p>So, that's the plan. And I'm blinking now.</p><p>Always remember to blink it, or you'll get dust in your third eye.</p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-83731585683100850842019-02-28T13:30:00.000+00:002019-02-28T13:30:17.799+00:00Shhh! Pie Ritual<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I started writing this one about three weeks ago, that post went off on a tangent, so it became the "Discordian Mystic Blogger" post. Putting a bit of clear, blue sky between the concept of the post and the execution of it has had some effect on what the post is actually about.<br />
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The key part of this post is a pretty standard session of mockery of the wholesale adoption of the word "spiritual" by people who like to also misuse the word "energy". It's not kind, but it is important and necessary to those drawn to the magic and the mystic to point this stuff out on a regular basis. As it happens I don't like the magic, the more mystic I get the less magic appears to be a good idea overall. You want to use something you literally cannot know about as the vehicle for manifesting your power physically, go ahead, but disappointment and/or madness are the likely outcomes.<br />
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If you're liable to get butthurt by me mocking something, by the way, remember I'm a practising Discordian, it's part of my devotion to eventually mock EVERYTHING. So today it's "spirituality". My key beef with even using the word can be adequately summed up by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality" target="_blank">having a look at the semantic nightmare that is the Wikipedia page for the term</a>. It's become one of those words whose connotations are so broad as to render the term effectively meaningless.<br />
<br />
The litmus test is that I could if I so desired, describe myself as spiritual, but you could put me into conversation with another person who described themselves the same way and we would have nothing in common whatsoever. The other key point, in my recent experience of these things, is that more and more self-described spiritual people have a mandatory love of crystals that I do not have.<br />
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Of course, the very nature of the catch-all vagueness that is "being spiritual" means that I don't have to and that if you do then that's also fine. It's a bit, however like being agnostic. Being agnostic, at this time is a series of negatives, you are not-religious, not-atheist and also not-spiritual, probably.<br />
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I guess that if you are spiritual and agnostic, that might be fine. If you are religious and spiritual, that's allowed but, I sense, frowned upon by the religious side. If you are atheist but spiritual I think that means you go UFO-spotting(?), or ghost hunting, or believe in bigfoot, I mean that it is theoretically possible, but very confusing.<br />
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So it's possible to be spiritual and for that to mean almost anything. It's weird, it's the club for people who aren't joiners, like, at all, but seek a sense of belonging with fellows they cannot identify (because, trust me, it isn't "everyone else who's also spiritual") and also with some higher power that falls outside or beyond the definitions of a higher power enshrined in any sort of organized mass-religious organisation.<br />
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This, you see, is why I would identify myself as a Discordian Mystic. I was going to go for "Shaman" but apparently being a shaman necessarily involves communing with spirits you believe in (and it really doesn't matter whether I believe in spirits or not I am confident that I cannot reliably communicate with them directly) and also experiencing altered states of consciousness. People experience an altered state of consciousness every time they dream (or whenever they rewatch Videodrome), but I suspect this is not what the phrase is intended to encompass. So, I'm withdrawing my Shamanic application form.<br />
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Mystic, on the other hand, specifically being one, is not a common thing but encompasses a vagueness that I have just been taking pot shots at "spirituality" for exemplifying. As this is an extreme example of my own semantic hypocrisy and demonstration that my ego is out of control I will naturally throw myself into this dubious role whole-heartedly and so deny the weasel-word spirituality even as I attempt to bolster my edginess by planting a flag in the term "mystic".<br />
<br />
Awesome.<br />
<br />
But why all this jumping around from foot to foot, wrestling with what or even if you believe? I think it's important that everyone has this struggle. I think that it's also important that it's never a done deal. I think, furthermore, that if what you believe doesn't have the name of something on the menu then you should probably try a bit harder to give it a name yourself.<br />
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Probably not much more to say on that part at present. So, let's move on...<br />
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My relationship with Tarot cards began a good while before my relationship with Discordianism. One of my great advantages growing up was that, for a variety of reasons, my parents didn't really believe in anything, and yet both had an interest in things they didn't really believe. It is in this manner that I read some Tarot books and, eventually, Piers Anthony's Tarot trilogy, an obscure work that has <a href="https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-piers-anthony-made-me-lose-my-religion-1747365116" target="_blank">had a profound effect on some people</a>.<br />
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As it turns out Discordians did as a social group eventually get round to producing <a href="http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/archives/2002/07/04/the-ancient-discordian-deck-second-version/" target="_blank">their own stab at Tarot</a> but the project status is currently half-baked, like most Discordian things. It probably doesn't help that the pope in charge of this project decided to make up their own card schema, which takes the piano of the Tarot deck and turns it into a key-tar. Piers Anthony added a suit and some Major Arcana cards in his work, which is kind of like when Holly in Red Dwarf decimalised music with the new notes "woh" and "boh".<br />
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Not that I'm really offended by people making stuff up, that would be the bad kind of hypocritical, not like the hypocrisy from further up which is the good kind, follow? But if your Tarot isn't 78 cards, 22 Major 40 Pips, 16 Courts then it isn't really a Tarot deck in the same way that a keytar isn't a grand piano.<br />
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Recently, and for reasons of permanently evolving karma I have been drawn back into my Tarot studies, and have found myself refreshed with a new sense of purpose in the endeavour. So, this entry is like an introduction to my Tarot Journal, which I have been filling out since the 6th of February and which I will be adding in (back-dated for entries before this one) to my regular blog from this point.<br />
<br />
Why?<br />
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Well, there's a lot to the answer to that question. I'm sure it will all come out in the wash. In the first instance, though, I think it is because I would be keen to get people talking about the Discordian approach to Tarot work. Are people who like Tarot interested? Are Discordians? Are you?<br />
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Could be that this is the latest in the series of failed attempts to get a proper discussion going on here. But, as usual, I have cheated in that the discussion topic helps me roll forward even if nobody else has anything to say on the topic.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-17709510635486734122019-02-14T16:47:00.000+00:002019-02-14T16:47:46.289+00:00The Loneliness of the Discordian Mystic Blogger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Last year I spent a lot of time exploring my options with regards to producing audio content. Overall, it went well, the biggest barrier being the time needed to actually record the raw audio, once that's done editing can be achieved here and there on an ad hoc basis.<br />
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I have other thoughts on that but <a href="http://theeightieskids.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">you know where to keep track of those</a>.<br />
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As a consequence, and due to other relevant factors, blog output was low. The chief and most important factor in dialling back blog output is pure and simple. Blogs are pitched as public online journals but they're really a low-effort format in talk followed by Q&A. To date no low-banter, interaction based format I've engaged in has attracted the attention of anyone interested in bantering.<br />
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This, actually, is the problem with both the blog and the podcast. Neither are supposed to dwell in splendid isolation, existing in and of themselves. Both do. The big problem with this being that once you have learned to please yourself with these things then the work is done and further work may only be completed via the vehicle of interaction.<br />
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The podcast suffers from this far more than the blog, podcasts are supposed to spawn a web of in-jokes, correspondence and helping each other get better. Blogs may just end up being public, online journals but some are vastly improved by being rallying points for various communities.<br />
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I can understand that this doesn't look like the rallying point for a community, maybe for "fans of Leo Stableford - author" I think that's what author blogs are supposed to be, but I'm not really that bothered about that.<br />
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This is supposed to be a Discordian, Philosophy, Mysticism, Spirituality blog. What's really funny about that is that it kind of became that during the era in late 2017 we shall call "The Great Content Glut of 2017".<br />
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The lesson this teaches us is that "Clear communication is very hard". I actually don't know for certain why no one ever comments on my blog. My last post about top 10 albums was pure initiate a conversation about music fodder. It was, if truth be told, aimed at my more musically minded friends and they did comment upon it upon my personal wall of social media interaction, but it wasn't the treasure trove of interesting observation and opinion that I was craving.<br />
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I took a quick skim through some of the product of the Content Glut just now and future me had questions and comments to pass on to past me, no issues. This is what leads me to believe this blog is not so much "read" as "parsed by advertising bots".<br />
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Now, don't get me wrong, I don't by any means think of myself as an approachable guy. I feel that close personal connection to the assertion that "I'm a weirdo" in Radiohead's DNA-targeting opus "Creep". The thing is, I am writing this obscure strangeness in order to attract other weirdoes, those who cannot help but ask a question or post a comment. If not here then on some publically-available social media timeline.<br />
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And yet, barely anyone ever does. I do not, and have never had, the skill of "reaching out" across the void to create a space, safe or otherwise, for philosophical-mystical-Discordian banter. Having said that, I note this is something I have in common with virtually all other publicly posting Discordians I have encountered.<br />
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Maybe Discordianism, for some weird reason, discourages thoughts, input and all but the most *birdsong*-posting of meme-laden banter. I'd ask for thoughts but, well, see above.<br />
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This post hasn't turned out at all like I thought it would. In fact, I should probably save the post title and image I had for an actual post about the title I had come up with. Sorry, have devolved into meta-stream-of-consciousness. Catch you soon. Transmission Ends.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-65921082524917522212019-01-03T13:27:00.000+00:002019-01-03T13:28:53.166+00:00My Top 10 Albums of 2018It used to be the case that producing a top 10 albums of the year if you were not the NME or similar was just a cute way to get a conversation going with your musical friends. In all honesty, that's all it still is, however, the advent of the interwebnet, streaming and digital distribution channels has levelled the playing field, now the NME's top 10 albums of the year are much closer in the value of their cultural capital to your own personal musings than they would have been in days gone by.<br />
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Mass market taste makers of yore are pretty much as lost as anyone else when it comes to distilling the embarrassment of cultural riches that litters our digital pastures in current times. It so happens that I buy all my new music on <a href="http://bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">Bandcamp</a>, so all of my albums of the year come from Bandcamp. Does that mean no good albums were published anywhere else? Well, possibly they may have been from a purely aesthetic standpoint, but there's more to the act of selection than pure aestthetics.<br />
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My Top Ten isn't just a list of awesome new tunage that filled my ears and imagination with joy in 2018, the delivery mechanism via the Bandcamp platform is the most direct connector of artist and fan community. The amazing things I have heard via Bandcamp and the way of supporting the artists who produce that amazing material directly are a statement in themselves. The medium is the message, never has this been so true.<br />
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The power and influence of Bandcamp in certain musical "scenes", particularly synthwave and downtempo, cannot be underestimated. Bandcamp has delivered a mechanism for uniting fans and content creators the like of which has never been seen before. The platform ends up being more than just a storefront, and yet, in functionality that's exactly what they are, a fan is forced to venture into other social media in order to take the engagement with their favourite artists further. What Bandcamp sacrifices in social networking features it more than makes up for in the power of doing its one job incredibly effectively. On a weekly basis, the storefront serves up a steady diet of all the new music you can possibly stand and it shapes the audience priorities in the music market.<br />
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I have been a Bandcamp user for three or four years now and slowly it has become the only place I go for new music. That might sound like a list of my favourite albums of the year might be restricted in sound or scope, but if I bought all my albums of the year from the same brick-and-mortar store you might not think that, even though it would necessarily be closer to the truth. In the physical world the choices of other humans consciously or unconsciously curating the content I can view as part of my choice change the ultimate choices I make.<br />
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There are still barriers to my discovery of new music via a store like Bandcamp but they are restricted to problems the artist has communicating to me, the consumer, that there is something on their profile I might like to listen to. All the other intercessions of cultural curators, philosophical and commercial, are pretty much removed. That distils the important power of the Bandcamp process.<br />
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That said, let's dig in. The albums are arranged alphabetically, so although it's a top 10 that's where the hierarchy ends, these are 10 amazing cuts and none are better or worse than others. Also, the bar this year was stupidly high. These 10 just represent works that managed to travel that little bit further, reach that little bit higher, but so, so many others came so close. The artists included should know they did something above and beyond to make it into this list because the competition was crazy hard.<br />
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<h3>
30 Years Later - An Akira Tribute</h3>
<div>
No less notable for being a multi-artist "theme" album for 14 artists to pull their absolute A-game for a project just tells you how lovingly they all embrace the granddaddy of the cyberpunk anime genre. Crossing between cyberpunk, darksynth, synthwave, industrial this collection could have been all over the place, an incoherent grab bag. The fact that it is so tightly focused on delivering that Akira experience tells you how far that movie has penetrated the cultural soul of huge amounts of modern technological society. Every track on this album is rich with the thrum of electronic creativity and the dystopian visions that are a staple of the various genres they exemplify.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=704210139/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://synthspiria.bandcamp.com/album/30-years-later-an-akira-tribute">30 Years Later - An AKIRA Tribute by Synthspiria</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Antwerp</h3>
<div>
A monster synthwave release for being at once so on the nose in terms of synthwave albums but also so accessible to newcomers to the genre. The stroke of genius in this album is the fusing of the neo-retro synthwave vibe with a nostalgic approach to composition that layers samples and sounds like proper old-skool house or hip hop tracks. The result is an album that sounds both new and old in two different ways. The synthwave movement has always sought to draw on the soul of 80s electronica to give the tunes a beating nostalgic heart, but the revolution here is to strip down the sound whilst improving the clarity of the production. Dropping nods to break dancing, Terminator, Ferraris and Donkey Kong is just the icing on the cake, there's nothing sly or subtle about the execution from that point of view, the breakthrough is that this is a synthwave album that actually has something to say about synthwave as a scene and the scene's obsession with the neon-drenched vistas of the 80s as viewed through a cyber-rose-tinted marketer's bio-augmentation visor.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=702613771/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://timeslaves.bandcamp.com/album/antwerp">Antwerp by Enzo Van Baelen</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Creeper</h3>
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An epic collision of sparse-ish techno, head-wobbling bass and horrorsynth make ZombieNick one of the most distinct voices in modern electronic music. In Creeper (as with his previous release "Dead Boy") the attention to detail in the creation of a sinister, threatening electronic soundscape is partnered with a deep love of throbbing bass and insistent drum loops that deepen the general atmosphere of paranoia and dread. The result is a sonic experience as at home in a slasher movie as in the night club, although it has to be said I've never actually visited a night club that would have the balls to put one of these tunes on because, don't doubt, this is the electronic music equivalent of a really harsh horror movie. Something about the sound is deliciously, I don't know, off and that's what the horror fan savours even as the inner clubber throws its shapes in response to the incessant, pounding beat.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2068053046/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://zombienick.bandcamp.com/album/creeper-album">CREEPER (ALBUM) by ZOMBIENICK</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Death & Glory</h3>
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Like many of the albums on this list the heart of this release is the fusion of elements to create something a cut above. Somewhere inbetween darksynth and techno Lazerpunk delivers an all out sonic assault layering harsh square bass and pounding drums to devastating effect. The secret ingredient in Death & Glory is the heart poured into the release. The physical release of the album comes with a notebook "commentary" outlining the personal nature of the album and the emotional energy bleeds through into the music, no doubt. There have been a fair few harsh dark synth releases this year but what makes this one stand above the rest is the sheer catharsis on display. Death & Glory alternates between outpouring, cleansing and maniacal glee but one thing it isn't, ever, is laid back.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=482241524/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://lazerpunk.bandcamp.com/album/death-glory">DEATH & GLORY by LAZERPUNK</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Infiction Soundtrack Remixes</h3>
<div>
This was not a pick I expected to be making as the albums of the year drifted together. It's an album of remixes and my rational mind told me that an album of remixes couldn't compete with original work. In most cases this would be the correct call, in order to ascend into the "best of the year" territory the work has to be on another level. So, it's a very good job that InFiction's work on several well-known (and some not so well known) movie score pieces did in fact manage to surmount the restrictions usually due to reworks like these. The key is in the balance between preserving the beating heart of each piece whilst, at the same time, creating something fresh on each and every track. You still recognise moments from the The Thing, Escape From New York and Hallowe'en 3 but now they are re-puposed, clean, danceable, something other than they were. InFiction clearly approaches each work with love and respect and these shine through in the finished products.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3621721576/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://infiction.bandcamp.com/album/soundtrack-remixes">Soundtrack Remixes by InFiction</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Invaders</h3>
<div>
Every list of this type needs an "Invaders", something that strategises from a different playbook. In addition to marking out its territory as "not-your-average synthwave album" Invaders inhales a great dose of 50s sci fi grandiosity, faux-soundtrack playfulness and operatic sturm and drang. The result is a theremin-laced sucker punch of synth insanity, giddy in its aspiration and its bare-faced cheek. So many synth releases are intended to be soundtracks to B-movies you can only wish really existed, but Invaders is the only one where you can almost see the chiarascuro of the majestic cinema screen as the flicker of the otherworldly images play before an audience agog, held in a trance by this tale of black saucers and the band of fighters who resist their waves of destruction. A confection, a narcotic, an outstanding aural carnival.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4126728191/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://blood-music.bandcamp.com/album/invaders">Invaders by Hollywood Burns</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Lost Track</h3>
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Sometimes, on the other hand, it's all very simple. This is the ultimate boiled down, energetic boom bap release of the year. The rhymes are clean, the flow is smooth and the beats and loops are just divine. There's really not much more to add on this, it is a paragon of the beat-maker's art, it might not be modern hipster-hop but it is a succulent treat for fans of the old school.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1139161009/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://klauslayer.bandcamp.com/album/lost-track">Lost Track by Klaus Layer</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Rabbit Junk Will Die: Meditations on Mortality by Rabbit Junk</h3>
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Any year in which Rabbit Junk offer up a release that release will likely find its home here. Rabbit Junk, to a certain extent, remind me of The Prodigy, or rather, what the Prodigy eventually evolved into, the good news being that RJ have started at that point of delirious creative flow that other artists have to warm up to. The collision of influences from rock, industrial, EDM and even pop are always mindful to remain on target. I have listened to too many albums where it sounded like every track was by a different artist or one artist struggling to find a sound, RJ's sound is the polar opposite of that. From day one it is clear what the sound was always intended to be and the only real difference has been in the increasing skill of application. For which reason Rabbit Junk Will Die amazes not just because of what it delivers but because of what it promises for the future.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1454284531/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://rabbitjunk.bandcamp.com/album/rabbit-junk-will-die-meditations-on-mortality">Rabbit Junk Will Die: Meditations on Mortality by Rabbit Junk</a></iframe>
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<h3>
Sinner's Syndrome</h3>
<div>
Words like "outstanding" get bandied about a lot in lists like these, and rightly so, really. All the releases on this list are outstanding in one way or another. They are my 10 outstanding releases of the year and, even in bandcamp land, that's 10 releases out of a buttload of releases. It's rarer to employ the word "remarkable". That's what Sinner's Syndrome is.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
The layers of old and new collide and combine to create something utterly unique. It's an album of your classic late 90s downtempo trip hop vibes, a la Portishead/Massive Attack/DJ Shadow/Herbaliser but it picks through a 60s blues/rock/pop theme cleverly and carefully to sound like the soundtrack to the more upbeat, hipper reboot of Twin Peaks. Simultaneously it riffs on cultural notes from rock-a-billy, to psychobilly, to hip-hop (natch), to plunderphonics, to classic soundtracks, to kitsch pop, jazz, blues rock and lounge. And it's not just the sheer breadth of the influences, either. It's the expertise with which they are blended, layered and fired out of your speakers with a mean attitude and a mischievous confidence. Sinner's Syndrome is a contender not just for one of the best downtempo releases of the 2018 but must surely want to elbow its way into the all-time Hall of Fame for slow beats and cheeky jazz samplage along with Endtroducing and Very Mercenary.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4201357265/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://moderator.bandcamp.com/album/sinners-syndrome-2">Sinner's Syndrome by Moderator</a></iframe>
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<h3>
T2</h3>
<div>
There had to be some balls-to-the-wall industrial in this list and Cyanotic hammered out a space for themselves with this album which, technically, is a remix album of their 2017 release "Tech Noir". It's one of those cases where the remix album refreshes the original and goes on to elevate the material to an entirely new level. Incorporating elements of Drum and Bass is the masterstroke here, which, in some cases, could result in a mess but are thankfully applied with the right touch to be always production appropriate in this instance. Slamming jackhammer beats and anguished vocals twisted by synthesizers make T2 the BIOS for an extremely angry robot with a program to kill.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4273903475/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 470px; width: 350px;"><a href="http://cyanotic.bandcamp.com/album/t2">T2 by Cyanotic</a></iframe>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-30872673889578443572018-01-24T13:43:00.000+00:002018-01-24T13:43:03.149+00:00Gone Podcastin'Just in case you were wondering I am currently back at the mic with the all-new 80s Kids. I shall attempt to post news etc. everywhere but you might also want to keep an eye on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RevengeOfThe80sKids/">Revenge of the 80s Kids facebook page</a> and the <a href="http://theeightieskids.blogspot.co.uk/">Revenge of the 80s Kids official page</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-40091826131964896382017-12-01T12:47:00.000+00:002017-12-01T13:22:38.678+00:00Creativity<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxpkRPgbhuL87aSEAtudr27xS7I_O-zJRHTPYw0dJ2rfeeHfIK6zzEU4ViqLWKtRZQ7Gw3v0V-XC-bb4XIxyJUYh3vI1UkZyxnE6vTU7q1dVX9zsRIYPoinDbtEAD9PYSZP4HU1-5D3KH0/s1600/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-creativity.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxpkRPgbhuL87aSEAtudr27xS7I_O-zJRHTPYw0dJ2rfeeHfIK6zzEU4ViqLWKtRZQ7Gw3v0V-XC-bb4XIxyJUYh3vI1UkZyxnE6vTU7q1dVX9zsRIYPoinDbtEAD9PYSZP4HU1-5D3KH0/s400/ls-com-starfall-period-disco-creativity.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo montage includes a photo by Cliff Johnson on Unsplash</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Here's the thing disco kids, you aren't what you think you are and, more importantly, you may be what you think you aren't. I was convinced for a good three weeks once that I was a cicada but turned out I was a philosopher having a dream I was a cricket, so not even delusional in the correct frickin' language.<br />
<br />
In other, more relevant news, <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/740270" target="_blank">I've written novels, although I'm not actually a novelist</a> and <a href="http://leostableford.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/im-not-blogger.html">blogged although I am not a blogger</a>. I am, however, a "creative", and because I spend a lot of time in front of the keyboard I got the impression I was some kind of writer.<br />
<br />
I did go to acting college and I learned to act but realised that I liked the idea of regular Monday to Friday 9 to 5 work, so I didn't pursue it further. I still hear interviews with actors talking about the jewellery they keep close to remind them of the family that their career is deemed more important than and don't regret the call I made.<br />
<br />
Then, for a while, I hit my stride with <a href="http://theeightieskids.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">a podcast I put together with some long-time co-conspirators</a>. Check it out, although I can't tell you where in our archive to begin because I haven't yet put my finger on where the quality bar hit "peak" so you'll just have to peruse for yourselves.<br />
<br />
The really important thing is that nowhere, in any of this, did I particularly consider myself a Discordian. If you're creative then unacknowledged Discordianism is only holding you back. As recorded elsewhere I had cause to reconsider my relationship with all things Erisian <a href="http://leostableford.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/dont-believe-everything-you-read.html">round about the end of summer</a>.<br />
<br />
Once you start to engage with your own spiritual engine things go a bit nutty. Since September I have published an epic tome about alchemy, Vodun and Celtic bugaboos, and re-invigorated my love of audio recording projects. This ongoing process has generally instigated a new lease of creative life.<br />
<br />
Of course, that could have happened without a newfound respect for ultimate chaos, but... you know... that's kind of the point of ultimate chaos. I could bore you with a rundown of weird little quirks of coinkydink that prompted this repointing and repurposing but these are my omens, not yours, all can be rationally explained away easily enough. They have meaning because they meant something to me. So they aren't really for sharing.<br />
<br />
If you are creative and think you are not Discordian I would submit that you are probably wrong about that. Ultimate chaos is the wellspring of magical creativity. It's probably the wellspring of a lot else, but I am creative so that is how it works for me.<br />
<br />
Don't fall into the trap of thinking that chaos gives a gift intended to make you wealthy. Chaos understands that wealth is a system that is anti-chaos and will only be issued to those <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid">who will burn it on a remote Scottish island in tribute to chaos itself</a>. The gift is the gift and I would far rather be fecund than loaded, loaded would be nice but to be barren of fresh ideas is beneath dead to me.<br />
<br />
Chaos does for me. It did for me when I didn't embrace it consciously but it performs better, in my opinion, now that I do. I don't know what will happen next with any great certainty but I do know that I have read the stars in the sky from the deck of my sloop and set a heading for peculiar waters. Whatever happens amongst those isles unseen may throw up a lot of experiences, but the experience of being bored won't be one of them.<br />
<br />
Sri Syadasti,<br />
<br />
The MonkeyUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-60243812206352929182017-11-23T13:06:00.002+00:002017-11-23T13:10:21.688+00:00Audio<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvsND895gOAEszDMz7KceCoAkGlMlAFAIVM7c_1RKBNHNyklOtboa5vlN8UUuMV6R5F20m7ddUNkCW8k-EaR33dy2XHmCsuVcb5-o9dBMOLa1lA6akidcIeMey5DEe1qDgIqovDevEc0q4/s1600/ls-com-starfall-period-audio.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvsND895gOAEszDMz7KceCoAkGlMlAFAIVM7c_1RKBNHNyklOtboa5vlN8UUuMV6R5F20m7ddUNkCW8k-EaR33dy2XHmCsuVcb5-o9dBMOLa1lA6akidcIeMey5DEe1qDgIqovDevEc0q4/s400/ls-com-starfall-period-audio.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo montage includes a photo by Kai Oberhauser from Unsplash</td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
An inciting incident occurred recently that has re-kindled my energy with regards to posting audio content. I have always loved audio content of all sorts. For a start, audio content is the only way I get to read books, filling in the time I drive to and from work.<br />
<br />
Audio content is what helped train me to fall asleep promptly. Audio content is great when you're too ill to get out of bed. Audio content is exciting, vibrant and, when well produced engages the imagination because you're having to supply the visual content using your mind's eye.<br />
<br />
There's a curious alchemy between book readings and radio plays. I don't prefer either* but I love them both to be what they are for different reasons. I love to listen to the Hitch Hikers Guide radio serials and I recently took in The Complete Sherlock Holmes read by Stephen Fry. This is what ears were made for.<br />
<br />
So, in short, expect audio content in 2018, some you can probably guess at, but I am hoping to surprise you too.<br />
<br />
*but I'm not a big fan of audiobooks with an identity crisis who hire in any more than one actor beyond the narrator to voice "characters", make up your goddamn mind.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-55617236888576332662017-11-19T16:00:00.000+00:002017-11-23T13:09:42.494+00:00I'm Not A Blogger<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJyheVAOQO5tfrPi1BdNBRRDL2Gjtj3kEAI_muwt35vMzhyphenhyphenfN1dRMoOfhXW6BcLm5o3fuQA5Ddfghb8SYcQrGcrtI7o1-uaqCQmWvNBwYx7ns6V_7xXDXQaM4B6DUaQE7C2Peul1WLSLVP/s1600/monkey-books.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJyheVAOQO5tfrPi1BdNBRRDL2Gjtj3kEAI_muwt35vMzhyphenhyphenfN1dRMoOfhXW6BcLm5o3fuQA5Ddfghb8SYcQrGcrtI7o1-uaqCQmWvNBwYx7ns6V_7xXDXQaM4B6DUaQE7C2Peul1WLSLVP/s400/monkey-books.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo montage includes a photo by Glen Noble from Unsplash</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
No, seriously, I'm not, however much this particular internet artefact may attempt to convince you otherwise. I have a blog, sure, conceded and admitted. But I am not a blogger. Bloggers, to my mind, are people who devote their time and attention to producing blog content of a quality where that content stands alone. The blog, as Hamlet would probably say if he knew about blogs, is the thing*.<br />
<br />
My blog is not the thing. If I'm honest I don't think novels are the thing either. I love writing novels but, of late, I like writing them in order to have material to turn into audio books. Audio content, ah, well, that might very well be the thing... more on that to follow.<br />
<br />
All of this is a roundabout way to lead up to me saying that the days of "three massive content pieces every week" are going on hold now. However, dear reader, you should not presume a return to the days of "one post a year" because that's no good either.<br />
<br />
I think where we want to be is regular check-ins and progress updates and maybe two serious content pieces every month, tangentially riffing off the content I have going on at the time.<br />
<br />
So, I hear nobody clamouring to know, whither Discordianism? Is that last year's news. No, not at all. I credit my recent good fortunes in the well-spring of chaotic creativity entirely to my renewed interest in the Erisian principle and the Holy Chao. Since re-discovering Discordianism I have got Starfall done and published, pulled some eyeballs into this blog, which, at the end of the day is a blog, in the original sense of the word.<br />
<br />
For those now puzzled, what I mean to say is, the early days of blogging allowed the blog producer the liberty to be as random as they wished to be in the content. It's only in later times that you have "food bloggers" or "tech bloggers" or "society bloggers". The idea in the early days was that a blog was an ongoing public journal that would go from cabbages to kings.<br />
<br />
I am still running this joint on that basis, people are queuing up to tell me I'm doing my marketing wrong, but I've come to realise this misses the point. If I wanted to "market" with the objective of selling as much as possible indiscriminately then I guess I could. But that's not the kind of doodad I make.<br />
<br />
I have never made a secret that the things I cherish most are things like my copy of Over The Edge which I bought after the system had lived it's short beautiful life and passed, long since, out of print. I love it because it speaks right to the core of me. So it took me 15 years from first publication to find it and embrace it, so what. I am the message in a bottle guy. I don't want a thousand bottles to reach a bunch of randoms, I want one bottle to reach the right person.<br />
<br />
That's not a way to get rich but it's the way to connect nodes in the great global chaosphere. And that's what I am looking to do. I am a mystic, not a magician. It's all about understanding, it's not at all about power. For which reason, I realise I need to devote the little power I have carefully and, currently, the blog is sucking up too much resource. So, expect less carefully crafted content bombs but I am here, and I do check this and you can reach me, not that anyone has.<br />
<br />
Now I'm off to start cooking some audio, it'll be ready in 2018 so you have plenty of time to clear your ears.<br />
<br />
Sri Syadasti,<br />
<br />
The Monkey<br />
<br />
*Which has sent my mind off onto a tangent where I imagine proto-emo grandaddy of all emo kids Hamlet writing long screeds into his LiveJournal about how Claudius is a bastard and Gertrude just doesn't get him. "Oh, God," he would write, "my soul is a cavern of inky despair. Ophelia caught my eye in the courtyard earlier. Doesn't she know she's a popular girl? She and I could never have a meaningful relationship because all she cares about is lipstick and flowers. Going to hang out with Laertes later and listen to some My Chemical Romance. Mood: Contemplating The Void."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-40989864714547301812017-11-03T13:51:00.000+00:002017-11-20T10:22:42.918+00:00Review Copies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/740270" target="_blank">Starfall's been out now for ~2 weeks</a> and very rapidly I've found out that I don't want to give people the option of getting a copy free. Actually, that's not quite true, free as in beer I can handle as long as I know who wants a copy.<br />
<br />
I worked a long time on Starfall, over a decade, in fact. Over the last two weeks "people" have stopped by my Smashwords page and chosen to "Pay What They Want" for a copy and none of them wanted to pay anything.<br />
<br />
Here's what I think about those people who don't pay anything for the book. First, I suspect they're screen scrapers, procedural bots who hoover up anything that's not nailed down, digitally speaking. Second, I think that if they're not, they're worse.<br />
<br />
I take free books when those books are marked "free". If I were to release a free book, and I have, I would say, this is free, enjoy it. Pay what you want, on the other hand, means "not nothing". Or at least it does to me. There are many albums on indie music site <a href="https://bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">Bandcamp</a> that are marked "Pay what you want". If an artist wants you not to pay for their music then they add **FREE DOWNLOAD** to the album title. Then you can take the music for free.<br />
<br />
No doubt there are some people who take Pay What You Want music from Bandcamp for nothing. I am not one of those people. Even a nominal fee for the music is a way of saying that the work was worth something to you, the listener. Taking Pay What You Want stuff for a sum of zero just makes you look like a giant, unthinking content hoover.<br />
<br />
I am not saying that those people - if they are people - who took my book for free are not going to read Starfall. What I am saying is that I don't believe they are. I find this to be like baking a bunch of delicious cookies and taking them out into the street to offer them to people. If the people believed that I was trying to poison them fine. But this is more like people are taking the cookies but they just snatch them on the way past, no eye contact, no greeting, no sense that they are aware that the human being that baked the cookie is standing, you know, right there at all.<br />
<br />
Then, it's like those people throw those cookies away, after taking them, without even looking at them or smelling them or detecting that I threw a dash of vanilla in. Like the cookie was good enough to take but not good enough to eat afterward.<br />
<br />
That's what I don't like. Take my book for free, or, at least for a like on my Facebook page and a message that says "Hi, I would like a free copy of your book because it looks interesting and I am happy to go on your mail list about future releases." If you want to not pay money for the book on that basis I am totally fine with that.<br />
<br />
But I am not fine with you taking the book for literally nothing as if I am just a book writing machine that needs no more acknowledgement than a kettle. Sometimes I write things for a bit of fun, with a "take it or leave it" kind of attitude, then I will say, hey, just take a copy, that's fine. Starfall, in particular, is not one of those projects. I worked too damn hard on that book to have people not even say "Hi" when they have a copy gratis. So that is no longer an option.<br />
<br />
If you don't want to engage with me but you want to read the book now the price is $4. A $0 copy is for people who are happy to like my facebook page and go on my mailing list.<br />
<br />
Grump over. Have a nice day.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-3547657543503248752017-10-31T18:02:00.000+00:002017-11-20T10:22:34.709+00:00Vodou Cymru<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Wild Welsh Vodou came to play,</div>
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From the top of the Beacons to Tiger Bay.</div>
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This land can be darkened with trouble and toil,</div>
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Countrymen take comfort in the breath of hwyl.</div>
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Raise up your voice, through the valley it rings,</div>
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Reawaken our loa, our gods, our kings.</div>
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Thrill to the ancient, earth-born song</div>
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Invoke the dragon-spirit that was once thought gone.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Sweet, clear harmonies the druid's song,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
No invader kept them silent long.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The bards soothed souls when they raised a harp,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Told epic stories with wits, razor sharp.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
The land hears stories, on tales it feeds,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Myth and magic, words and deeds.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
One thousand spirits from the heights to the deep,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Dwell in rich, dark earth where the rhythm sleeps.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Hear the old ones call, whispers after dark,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Pay the piper at the gates of Cwmdonkin Park.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
There's a sprite or two that will grant your wishes,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Pay due respect at the fortress of the fishes.</div>
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<br /></div>
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'Neath a bone white moon tread the coastal way,</div>
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Hear the call of the mermaids, raging surf in the bay.</div>
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Feel the weight of ages, nearly sets the soul mourning,</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
But the song of the earth awakens new dawning.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-88820212429202671492017-10-26T13:03:00.001+01:002017-10-26T13:03:51.363+01:00(Mis)Adventures In Mysticism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGerkbYifcCH3qqvpHfjwkl04gwItoOReZdLByHm3UTToNaVh-ygKr_RxOA15EsckB6BktvyVJT6VG_1NaolP2fj5agyPTUla-3_Ndlp2tRAgWqz9DhNB55HMDLUmi5DJSplAfZVEPjh-S/s1600/ls-com-pineal-gland.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGerkbYifcCH3qqvpHfjwkl04gwItoOReZdLByHm3UTToNaVh-ygKr_RxOA15EsckB6BktvyVJT6VG_1NaolP2fj5agyPTUla-3_Ndlp2tRAgWqz9DhNB55HMDLUmi5DJSplAfZVEPjh-S/s400/ls-com-pineal-gland.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The word "mystic" gets thrown around a great deal. Or, at least, it does by me, when I'm in a certain mood. In the end, though, what does "mystic" really mean? Does anybody really know?<br />
<br />
As it turns out, yes, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism" target="_blank">Wikipedia knows</a>. It's not like love, or culture, or Winnebago, it's not one of those words that defy sensible definition. Mysticism is a case in a world where so many things appear to be more "edge" than "case".<br />
<br />
What's really weird about getting the meaning of mystical (at least the definition of the word) all tied down is that I didn't understand what it meant before. In a metaphysical realm so often rife with double meaning, vagueness and general goal-post moving matters of mysticism appear to be relatively straightforward.<br />
<br />
As always, it doesn't take long before the deception provided by appearances becomes obvious. The bit we can be sure of is that mysticism is about making a connection to something. What the something is, ah, that's the rub.<br />
<br />
If you're going to be glib about it then you can say it's about making a connection to God, capital-"G" and walk away ensconced in a cocoon of meaningless sophistry. Don't get me wrong I'll sink a pint with the bearded sky daddy any time he wants to get down to my local boozer, but the entire concept is as easy to forge a mystical connection with as any arbitrary non-god-like person on the planet.<br />
<br />
There are plenty of non-god-like people already in the boozer, so why wait for bearded sky daddy to leave cloud mansion? They don't like him down the pub anyway, the management maintains burning bushes are a health and safety violation. Besides, his wallet is always "unfortunately" burned to a crisp in his lower branches.<br />
<br />
The first question that springs to my mind in the matter of mysticism is "what do you mean by connection?" Say we're limbering up for "the big one" (whatever that turns out to be) so we decide to start small by making a connection to another human being. How do we do that?<br />
<br />
If the goal is simply to speak to them then a simple "Hi" will suffice. Although the aspirant may feel the experience, if it is that, is on the underwhelming side. It has to be that "connecting" with someone is a deeper experience than "greeting" them. At this point, I can imagine many readers groping around to find a genital-themed experiment to try next.<br />
<br />
Let's just leave that be. You can definitely get happy by slapping another person on the wobbly bits but are you "connecting" to them? A soup of mind-altering hormonal responses says yes. But good luck charming the infinite ineffable into the sack. The clue is in the name, the ineffable must, by default be un-eff-able. This whole business is like eating an entire chocolate trifle when you're hoping to gorge on chocolate cake. A trifle is not a cake, they both taste nice but once you're hungry again the craving for cake will resume.<br />
<br />
So if we're not talking about talking with a person, and we're not talking about practicing dubious personal hygiene with a person, then how do you "connect" with them, in the mystical sense?<br />
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All of a sudden the scale of the problem becomes apparent. At least a person exists to be connected with. When it comes to the mystical experience the other end of the mystic telephone is connected to something we can't comprehend.<br />
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With mounting disappointment we realise, the mystic experience is about doing something that is ill-defined with something that you have no physical evidence even exists.<br />
<br />
Did I mention that <a href="http://leostableford.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/starfall.html" target="_blank">I wrote a novel?</a> Did I further mention that the novel is out this week? (Oh, come on, you didn't expect to get off without the sales pitch, did you?) As it so happens and entirely coincidentally the revelations at the heart of the mystic experience are a crucial component of the antagonist's journey in that very novel. Crazy, ou quoi?<br />
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Of course, he gets it almost entirely wrong, he doesn't know what it is he is communing with. The wretched fool screws up the relationship and when the relationship entirely takes place in the metaphysical beyond, well... stars will fall if you follow my drift.<br />
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What is super-bizarre here is that I only realize that I wanted to talk about the pitfalls of frail humanity experimenting with the mystic experience right now. I wrote the novel a decade ago. It is possible to want to talk to your audience about something and not even know what that thing is.<br />
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There's a connection for you. The storyteller is trying to connect to the story reader through the medium of the story. The story, for its own part, comes from, somewhere, out there, beyond. Ask any author and they will tell you, they write down the story but they tend not to create it. At some point, the author is a "receiver" of the story from... from... where? Where in Hades does the story actually come from?<br />
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Sounds to me like the author, in that act of creating fiction is connecting to something vast and undefinable. Once they're connected like that they bring back messages. Like a broken Oracle the author is trying to communicate truth by spitting out thousands of lies. The art of writing is to pare down the lies and to tip the wink to the reader what they are so the reader can sift out a truth it would have been impossible to find were it not for the fiction.<br />
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It's not the only way to get there, but that definitely sounds like a mystic experience to me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-7271596824777209852017-10-22T20:28:00.000+01:002017-10-22T20:30:06.078+01:00Starfall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Two major things happened in 2006. The second most important of these was that I began the novel whose cover you see above as a NaNoWriMo novel in the November of that year. The more important one was that I met the woman who was to become my wife and I dedicated this book to her.<br />
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For eleven long years, she has berated me for releasing novels dedicated to other people, but never one dedicated to her. Well, at last, she will have to move on to saying instead: "It took you over a decade to release that book that's dedicated to me." So, that's something I guess.<br />
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Why so long, why did No Dice RPG, Shadow Cities, Three Chicago Shadows novels, The Elias Anomaly and the first volume of Tales From Bridgetown beat Starfall to print? Because I wanted it to be as right as it possibly could be and I set myself one hell of a task to achieve that.<br />
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Over the past month, I have been writing about Vodun and a little about Celtic Myth (more on both to follow, I am not done), and it has made me realise that I was either inspired or an idiot to combine both of these topics into one volume, especially as I also touch on actual events from the history of the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border from Roman times on, handle the tricky business of casual domestic abuse, and try to wrap it all up in a tale about gods, alchemists and holy fools taking a long journey into a curious state of metaphysical awakening.<br />
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That kind of thing takes a while to bake. I am not saying that I did it perfectly. I think Starfall is a challenging book, sometimes I think it is too heavy for anyone to actually finish reading it, then I consider its various nooks and fascinations and I wonder whether I am too unkind to my own work.<br />
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This is a novel that can't not exist. Too much time and love and power have been rolled into it. It stands alone as the only novel I know of that makes heroes of practitioners of Vodun, and I don't really know why that is because nothing I have read about that spiritual practice since has led me to think they are unworthy of being heroes. In a way, what makes them interesting is that the loa are more than heroes, they can be champions of life and defenders of the human condition, but always know that they have secrets and duties and they must fulfil those as well. It means that they are difficult, dangerous heroes and those tend to be the better kind.<br />
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Also, the book takes a good long look at a kind of Western spiritual exceptionalism, via an examination of some of the main points of the alchemist's work, the loa of Vodun are the perfect counterpoint to the pomposity of the dry, arcane spiritual man's club of alchemy. I am not kind to alchemy in this volume, although I am careful to make it plain that most of the alchemy performed by characters in the novel is nothing of the sort.<br />
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In case you worry that I am spoiling the novel for you, rest assured, that I am not. I have merely become aware that Starfall is a book that would benefit from a guided tour and I am the most qualified to be the tour guide.<br />
<br />
Working on Starfall has led me to the conclusion that if a book would not benefit from the addition of annotations and a study of its mythos and philosophy then it is not a book that I would care to read, and certainly not one I would care to write. I see too many authors now concerned solely with fun, and product, and sales rankings, and selling, selling, selling. I would like people to buy this book, I think it is well worth the time and energy someone would invest in reading it, but people buying Starfall is not the point, I don't think it ever has been.<br />
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I am not even sure you can confidently say that any artistic creation has one, definite point. So I am glad that Starfall exists beyond one point or another, so I can hope that each person who comes to it finds their own point in this strange conjuration of spirits, gods, and monsters.<br />
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(P.S. If you are here on the 22nd of October then, congratulations, you have won a special internet no-prize for actually finding the book a little prior to "official" publication. I will not attempt to drive people here until the 23rd)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-8758416704680075202017-10-18T13:00:00.000+01:002017-10-18T13:00:13.860+01:00About Messing With Magic...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In my study of magic, I have found that the biggest question to be answered is "What is magic?". Of course, I have studied magic only really as a storyteller but I think that the problems for someone making an explicitly fictional narrative that includes magic are exactly the same problems that beset someone seeking to define the term in any internal narrative of the world.<br />
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The journey starts off easily enough. Magic is a means of achieving the impossible. So, five hundred years ago a man flying was magic, since the invention of the aeroplane the matter of which part of flying is magic has become context dependent. Magical flying is now more like "levitation", whereas flying at all has been ossified into science and engineering.<br />
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Science is a big problem for magic because science allows us to achieve the magical "within the rules" thus rendering the accomplishment non-magical. We can scientifically turn lead into gold in a particle accelerator but achieving this effort "within the rules" means that the cost is prohibitive.<br />
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For this reason, magic becomes any means of circumventing the rules. It is an action that has no equal or opposite reaction. It is a reaction that happens without a preceding action. Magic is any violation of the rules of natural philosophy.<br />
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Herein lies a big problem. The rules of natural philosophy are pretty handy at our size and scale. They stop us melting into walls, boiling away into space, they create some really handy reality-shaped boundaries. Sure, get small enough and all those rules go away, the quantum universe, in an immediate sense, is where the magic literally happens. The next problem becomes that in this framework "magic" and "roiling inferno of ultimate chaos" are one and the same.<br />
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By this time I wouldn't blame you if you were all at sea as to what magic actually is. A lot of people are similarly confused. It's an easy thing to say "I want to wish really hard and have a bunch of money materialise in my bank account" but how would that ever work? If you have the answer you either have magic, the fruits of hard work and good fortune, the wages of sin or you have an insubstantial and unfulfilled wish.<br />
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Magic, in short, is the ability to manifest will without having to fill out the paperwork and avoiding all the problems of playing a system that affords you your very existence.<br />
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As with any essentially worthwhile endeavour magic is a very risky proposition. Stories about magic must present the danger of magic because otherwise a reader's story sense will tingle and fantasy will quickly be rendered idle. People who wish to perform magical acts in the real world tend to be desperate or to understand desperation.<br />
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I've been writing about Discordianism, and also about Vodun in recent times. Magic is a meeting place for the two disciplines. The sister school of enchantment for Discordians tends to be that thing called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic" target="_blank">Chaos Magic</a>. To an outside observer, Vodun would appear to include within it the practice of magical acts, hence the offshoot into the Westernised sensational shell artifact, voodoo.<br />
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Repeatedly those with an interest in Vodun, or Vodou but no route in or reason for are told by those who practice that their pursuit is without form and therefore their goal an impossibility. From what I can tell you do not use vodun to achieve something, you practice vodun because that is part of who you are. For this reason, I am a Discordian. I do not do Discordian things to use Discordianism to achieve an end. I am a Discordian because that tells me something about who I am.<br />
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Chaos Magic is, quite explicitly a method of practicing "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(paranormal)#20th_century" target="_blank">magic</a>" where the individual has the aim of "utilizing supernatural forces". The key word here is "utilizing", not "acknowledging", "interacting with" or "contemplating" but "utilizing".<br />
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This is where I have a problem. Science is the practice of utilizing nature to achieve ends within the rules set down. When science gives us an atom bomb we realize we have really "used" nature. The destructive force of an atom bomb is a direct view on what happens when you uncork the quantum universe and up-end many of the rules of reality. The results are not pretty, not controllable and useful only for purposes that satisfy the darkest shadows of our unconscious minds.<br />
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The atom bomb is what happens when we "utilize" nature in a cynical manner. The idea that we are anywhere near ready, as a race of organisms, to "utilize" anything that might count as "supernature" is completely laughable.<br />
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The more I study Vodun and Vodou the more I perceive there is an inherent layer of spiritual respect baked into it. People are people and some of them will always try to cut a corner or achieve something "off book", but in Vodun you say "please" and answer "thank you", not things one has to do in science. The idea of treating nature with respect sounds like hippy crap, but look where not doing so leads, boom.<br />
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From a personal point of view I would like to say "hello" and "how are things with you?" and "what can I do to leave things in both the visible and the invisible world better than when I found them?", I am beyond "what's in it for me?" because when I used to ask that the answer has traditionally been "not much" and, besides, even with all that not much I have to acknowledge that I currently have more than I need in most aspects of life anyway.<br />
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What I want is to connect, and, where relevant, to improve. Other than that I don't want anything. So, I fulfil my karma and, if that karma will include an interaction with the unknown, then I will deal with that too. And if I were to hand out advice about attempting to fill a hole with magic this, or supernatural that I would ask myself, what's the nature of the hole? Nine times out of ten, in my experience, the matter of filling it will not depend upon the supernatural.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-75661987673824681792017-10-09T02:00:00.000+01:002017-10-09T13:42:11.009+01:00Early Encounters With The Horned God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I grew up in Wales and I read all the <a href="http://2000ad.com/" target="_blank">2000AD</a> I could lay my hands on, so <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernunnos" target="_blank">Cernunnos</a> was going to be an obvious gateway into the world of Celtic myth. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_God" target="_blank">Horned God</a> is a tricky one, for sure. He is the easiest way to understand that there's more to life than a binary categorization of things into good and evil.<br />
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It's a long way to get from one place to another, for sure, and through a tangled wood of myth-making, shadows and appropriated truths. I am just over forty years old so I was of an age to be reading children's literature in the early 80s. This was a long, long time before Wikipedia so, although I can send you straight to reasonable definitions of all the things I mention here, you have to understand this is a modern luxury.<br />
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I think my first encounter with the Horned God in any sensible shape is with the inclusion of the character <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herne_the_Hunter" target="_blank">Herne the Hunter</a> in the 1984 adaptation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masefield" target="_blank">John Masefield's</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_of_Delights" target="_blank">The Box of Delights</a>.<br />
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Which, obviously I can now just show you via YouTube. As you can tell it's a bit of a head-bender, even now, adapting the transformation battle from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanes_Taliesin" target="_blank">the myth of Taliesin</a> and adding a strange interlude into the flow of the plot of the story. Naturally this would lead to an inquiry about who the hell that Herne the Hunter guy was from any nine-year-old boy. The problem is that in 1984 the available adults around me had lost touch with the notion of the Horned God, and tended to view the world as a series of dualities.<br />
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The matter was further confused when I encountered <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner" target="_blank">Alan Garner's</a> Bresingamen books, at the time there were two <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weirdstone_of_Brisingamen" target="_blank">The Weirdstone of Bresingamen</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_of_Gomrath" target="_blank">The Moon of Gomrath</a>. The 20th Century was a wild time for children's literature. I think a lot of stuff got past editors who might have questioned the completely insane trips through philosophy and mythology that occurred in these volumes because it was "for kids" and hence didn't need to be coherent and were allowed to be disturbing in a deep place where lives the soul of man because it had been trivialised. (Trivialised in the heads of the marketing bods at the publishing houses, the writers showed every signs of taking this stuff very seriously.)<br />
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The Moon of Gomrath introduced me to<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Hunt" target="_blank"> the Wild Hunt</a>, which in some places was thought to be lead by Herne the Hunter. Somewhere along the line I got introduced to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(god)" target="_blank">Pan</a> from Greek Mythology as well. I remember asking my grandmother for some explanation of the Wild Hunt and she couldn't do much better than explain that it was a "third force" in the book beyond the forces of good and evil.<br />
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I think that's doing pretty well without going into the exact idea of expanding out from a Tolkien-esque allegory into a new space in which myth connects the human soul to the very well-spring of magic and creativity. Much apart from anything else I think those concepts are troublesome to me even now, let alone when I was nine and I think my grandmother, despite her love of weird fantasy fiction, would have thought that notion beyond the pale.<br />
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Right at this moment it seems obvious to me that as a budding writer of fantasy and horror, living in Wales from the age of 7 until I left at 20, that I would develop a fascination with the lore of the British Isles and, more specifically, the mushy corpus of "Celtic Mythology"*. One of the most fascinating things about the Celtic mythology specifically was that it served as an inspiration for authors like Garner but rarely was it adapted in the way that, for example, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Lancelyn_Green" target="_blank">Roger Lancelyn Green</a> wrote The Tales of Robin Hood. Robin Hood is a fascinating folk hero for different reasons, in that his story is believed to be tied down and defined; this is impossible. Green also wrote of King Arthur, a figure who edges into the Celtic realm and preserves this idea that his myth cannot be definitively captured or set down; this is true but it shouldn't stop us from trying, in fact in the struggle to attain an impossible definitive telling of a tale is the well from which all storytellers should draw.<br />
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At the time of experiencing this fascination, however, there were frequent times when I felt like I should just give up. It was immensely frustrating to read stories by people inspired by stories that they appeared to know when I couldn't find an "authoritative" version to separate out what was "real mythology" from the poetic licence of the author. Now I know that they only had a little more knowledge than I did and a better idea of how to do research, they were riffing off the same anthropological sources as I was, so, in short they had more idea of how to look for stuff and so had a slightly broader experience of the topic. I didn't appreciate in my late childhood/early teens how slight the older author's advantage was.<br />
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As I grew older still I continued not to have the internet, I continued to experience a surrounding apathy for my own interest in these topics, but I did continue my interest due almost entirely to my love for the stories of Slaine in 2000AD<br />
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Next Time: My Adventures With Slaine and Celtic Mythology<br />
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*Celtic Mythologians tend to attach the lore to Ireland and then add Scotland as a footnote to that, get quite excited about also mentioning the Cornish and leave the Welsh out of it because they have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion" target="_blank">the Mabinogion</a>.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-84361452756942134372017-10-05T13:00:00.000+01:002017-10-06T12:41:02.250+01:00Discordian Vodun Online<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Excuse my concerns all leaking together, but<a href="http://leostableford.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/vodun-in-uk.html" target="_blank"> my post about the difficulty of making a connection to vodun for someone born and raised in the UK</a> took a little more time than I had anticipated. Even so, this would seem like as fine a time as any to mention that I am writing a good deal about vodun at present as it forms the centre of my upcoming novel.<br />
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As it happens putting the book out there now, instead of racing to get it published when it was mostly done a few years ago seems to have been a wise choice. The experience is opening up my experience in ways both Discordian and in a broader spirituality.<br />
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If anyone was in doubt that Eris created the internet then the concept that it is a technology that it puts a white mostly-Welsh guy who rarely leaves the UK in direct contact with an authentic Louisiana houngan and you have to admit that the chaos is strong with this tech.<br />
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Okay, but as we have to disbelieve everything we read how do I KNOW he's an authentic houngan? Well, how does he know I'm an authentic pope? Here's the thing, I know that vodun is deep and serious because it is dangerous. Not just dangerous in an Angel Heart, bite off a chicken head way but in a sanity bending, perception altering way.<br />
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This is the problem the multiple-Pope doctrine of Discordianism is all about. Spirituality should be like knife-juggling or sword swallowing. Before you go to a party and offer to share with everyone your really sweet party trick where you escape from an airtight safe in under two minutes with your hands cuffed you better be pretty sure you're an escapologist. It is evident Houdini was taking more risks than any given vicar.<br />
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In Discordianism the whole Pope thing is an illustration that many religions attach very little weight to the assumption of a place high on the spiritual food chain. This is probably an extended hangover from the times when church and state ran in parallel power structures and any corrupt rich asshole could be a power player in the church wielding dogma as a blunt instrument.<br />
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In reality you don't want to represent as something you aren't when it comes to spiritual matters. As vodun represents an apparent spiritual tradition that treats the world of spirit with the respect it deserves. From what I know you wouldn't want to represent as a houngan if you actually weren't.<br />
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Hell, I don't go to dinner parties and shoot my mouth off about being a pope, for a start everyone is. Deeper, though, my serious consideration of all things Discordian has only begun very recently. I'm not ready to wear the hot dog belt bucket and golden apple lapel badge just yet*.<br />
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There are too many people claiming to be the spiritual hotline at the present time. I do think that the original wave of Discordianism fell at the start of this wave. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan" target="_blank">Marshall McLuhan</a> identified the potential in the mass-media and electronic expansion of communications. But any time before about 1998 was too soon to call the potential power of the internet, which is like the power of the mass media on steroids.<br />
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I think that poets and artists have taken a massive beating in terms of their relevance and purpose these days, a time when people can attain some sort of notoriety by doing something vaguely interesting on YouTube. When you consider that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol" target="_blank">Andy Warhol</a> couldn't possibly have known the scope of his assertion about everyone being famous for 15 minutes you begin to appreciate what that purpose is.<br />
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Warhol's art attracted attention, that attention gave him a platform. If he'd been doing what he was doing now his soup cans would have been on DeviantArt and his aphorisms would have been mashed up with satirical photo juxtapositions and shared on instagram. The tools to be a prophet have been democratised to the point that they have experienced a severe devaluation.<br />
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As anyone can claim to be anything they want when you can only talk to them on social media so the currency of making those claims has taken a hit given all the counterfeit claims. All that's really happened though is a raising of the bar. If you want a platform now building it isn't the problem, the problem is using it amongst the forest of competing platforms that exist.<br />
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The current environment of people screaming in echo chambers doesn't nullify the one whispered thread of actual wisdom. A mass of people listening to white noise does not mean that the message has been compromised. All that's happened is that the terrain has changed. Now the whispered message can be delivered to active recipients, listening itself was passive when the availability of platforms was scarce. Rapidly the business of listening has become active and personal, Discordianism has been right there waiting because Discordianism admits we're all popes and that you have to disbelieve everything you read. These are not just idle statements, they are the pronouncements of a prophet who didn't even know what he was seeing and attained his insight through his own spiritual process of chewing on paradoxes and shifting his own perspective.<br />
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If we are all popes we all have to do that. Active listening is contemplation of the bigger picture. Learning to separate out the wisdom from the white noise is everybody's job. And then Discordianism reminds us "The white noise is wisdom, and the wisdom is white noise, now what you gonna do?"<br />
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From this perspective vodun is another way to approach perception, and as it's pretty unique it's a valuable one at that. I have found my own vodun experiences so far to remind me how little I know and how daunting the change in thought can prove to be. I am grateful. For these are things we should never forget.<br />
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* There is no official formal attire that marks one out as a Discordian**, but if I were to set a precedent it would definitely be the belt buckle and lapel badge.<br />
** And if anyone claimed there was it would be the job of all Discordians to refute it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-66558448254373196142017-10-03T13:38:00.000+01:002017-10-03T13:38:16.232+01:00Vodun In The UK<br />
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I've had Starfall in my "to-do" pile for so long that I forget how much has changed since 2006. When I began the book my concept of Vodun was informed by what I could find on the topic available on the internet. It was very much the only choice. The UK is one of the places on the face of the earth that could not be much more cut off from primary sources for research into the topic.<br />
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To illustrate lets consider that in 2006 Facebook had only just opened its doors to public access. So there would certainly be no chance of joining an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/76948840706/" target="_blank">appropriate public group</a> on the platform to ask questions and learn more. Although the internet was supposed to be the great connecting medium through which we could learn about each other more deeply we have a way to go.<br />
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Even to this day I can understand why those who practice vodun are wary about talking on the public internet. As much as the internet is supposed to be acultural the facts of global politics mean that vodun is likely to be viewed with suspicion through the lens of the haughty anthropologist, the unrelenting skeptic or the mercenary marketing man.<br />
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Not that I saw <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2004/01/13/ross-heaven-637171/" target="_blank">this article</a> from a low-quality British advertising paper at the time, but it sums up some of the things I wanted to stay away from. I want to think about things but I don't want to appropriate them. Vodun is not mine, I don't own it, no one does, but the thought habit of thinking about things studied as things owned is one that I am consciously trying to fight against.<br />
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I studied vodun, and one of the important reasons why I did was that it was going to be something very hard for me to become confident in. I wanted to appreciate without stepping over any lines. I wanted to celebrate the fact of vodun, as much as I could, on its own terms and for its own sake.<br />
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I think it would be fair to say that I was afraid of vodou when I started to look into it. Not in the manner you might expect. I had for it the same fear I had of what people refer to as Chaos Magick, I am dismissive of neither because whatever an individual may believe is within the realm of the possible the harm of disrespecting the practice is obvious to anyone.<br />
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Even if you have adopted an atheist and skeptical framework then you can still detect that those who have stared too long into any abyss emerge from the experience broken. No one can feel comfortable contemplating what someone who has been burned by that spirit fire may have seen and experienced in order to end up in pieces. All that differs is an observer's rationalisation of what exactly they saw and how they came to experience it.<br />
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In the decade since I wrote the core of Starfall white Western society has found the space for some useful consideration of vodou. I like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/07/vodou-haiti-endangered-faith-soul-of-haitian-people" target="_blank">this article from The Guardian in 2015</a>, it manages to cover such a broad amount of topics and aspects from a few different perspectives that it makes for something to consider and digest, rather than attempting to be a satisfactory precis.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is how most people in the UK and America<br />first experience any kind of vodou...</td></tr>
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Having said that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-41048840" target="_blank">I am far less keen on the tone of this piece from just over a month ago on the BBC.</a> This article definitely hits straight into the anthropological tone that attempts to historicise and contain the thing it studies. The Guardian piece has a far more chaotic mood, talking about people, places and even becoming poetic in its turn. Even when it seeks out the word of an anthropological source it selects carefully. The anthropologist Ira Lowenthal is interviewed, it would appear Lowenthal has a hard won grasp of what vodou is all about and can translate for those who do not find it in their blood:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;">Vodou says ‘no, I’m not a cow. Cows cannot dance, cows do not sing. Cows cannot become God. Not only am I a human being – I’m considerably more human than you. Watch me create divinity in this world you have given me that is so ugly and so hard. Watch me become God in front of your eyes.’</span></span></blockquote>
I think this quote captures, in its construction, an important thing that we have to take in about understanding vodou. If you are not part of a historical tradition that is grounded in enslavement, exploitation and degradation then you will take a lot longer to understand the nature of this spirituality. You can have been a beggar, an enemy, or an outcast, you can have been of low rank and status but unless you have been a slave (even via ancestry) you do not have an instant connection to the vodou loa.<br />
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Another interesting connection to Starfall comes out of the Lowenthal interview:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">White people lost their spirits centuries ago. We lost it all. The Haitians believe we used to have spirits, but we were too stupid to keep them.</span></span></blockquote>
In a way this is a central theme of Starfall, the female protagonist, Carrie, is without a spiritual dimension as the novel begins. The antagonist, Thomas Rempstone, trades with spirits but tells himself he is practicing a kind of spirit science. The other protagonist, Dillon, possesses an innate spirituality, but he struggles with it. The novel's central problems are all about the fact that the Haitian loa are unable to understand the spirits of the British earth, in Starfall Britain is home of weak, confused spirits on the surface, below that surface an ecosystem of dark and powerful mystery that the vodou loa see as a real threat.<br />
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All of this spiritual uncertainty and turmoil is, to me, a real thing. Spirituality and the notion of spirits are not easy, you cannot run along a spiritual path. I guess that's why the fate of the UK vodou practitioner detailed in the Metro article above causes me a little intellectual irritation. His spiritual practice now identifies as shamanism. I combed a little through <a href="http://www.thefourgates.org/" target="_blank">his site</a> but he doesn't mention vodou obviously, if at all. I imagine, if pressed, he would answer that he has blended some of the practices of vodou into his shamanism. Maybe that's fine, but it seems off to me.<br />
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I cannot help but feel that maybe he has re-thought representing himself as one who knows the secrets of vodou because he feels that he probably doesn't and, besides, vodou is not as effective a brand for those looking to "find themselves" as the idea of a shamanic retreat. Vodou is for Hallowe'en, donuts, club nights and <a href="https://www.vodunband.com/" target="_blank">psychedelic UK rock bands</a>.<br />
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This casual appropriation is one of the major obstacles for those outsiders trying to build up a real understanding of vodou. The assumed ownership of the term in order to peddle goods and services is the most crass display of what those who don't understand (and probably fear) the spirituality represent. Trivialisation, mockery, ingrained disrespect are all internal barriers that keep people away from the power they are defying. It is those barriers that are inside everyone who does not have the cultural history to just "get it". For me Starfall was a step in the process of learning respect and building that bridge.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-32081141417478182342017-09-27T13:40:00.000+01:002017-09-27T13:40:23.393+01:00Discordianism Vs Alchemy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A bout I'd like to have ringside seats for, as two almost totally unrelated philosophical constructs go head to head in a thrilling fight to the finish. The chances of definitive resolution are low, but it's the experience of fight that gets you there that will keep you on the edge of your seat.<br />
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As you may know <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/740270" target="_blank">I am putting out a book in about a month</a> and, hence, my posts leading up to that are looking at some of the major themes of this work. Although Starfall is not explicitly Discordian (not like some other novels I may be finishing in due course) I did know about Discordianism when I wrote it and I think that my latent Discordianism pokes through if you care to look for it.<br />
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Discordianism, after all is big on iconoclasm and the male line of my family have been pretty iconoclastic for about three generations now in their own way. If you're going to be completely contrary in your world view in the current times it's not enough to, for example, attack religion, you also have to attack atheism as well because the atheist mainstream is where a significant number of non-religious types are at.<br />
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It's also not good enough just to be a "Default Agnostic". Not knowing enough about anything to commit is not a position, it's just lazy. No, you have to be an active agnostic, the type that says: "Not only do I not really know, but neither do you and nor do the people who hate you, or anyone else. Some things in the universe, probably most things, are completely incomprehensible to us, so stop being such a dick about stuff and accept your status as a cosmic fucking insect".<br />
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Take, by way of example, the existence of dark matter and dark energy. <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy" target="_blank">Approximately 5% of the known universe can be accounted for by what we can "see" from Earth.</a> All those galaxies and nebulae we have detected with radio telescopy is a tiny scraping of what we know must be in the universe, there's nineteen times more stuff we can't interact with than we can even take a quick peek at.<br />
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Beings of vast power and incomprehensible intelligence could hide in that 95% really easy, so easy that they're probably not even amused by how they've rendered themselves invisible to us. To claim we know anything about the great metaphysical beyond is insanity, plain and simple.<br />
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Which is where alchemy comes in. The villain of Starfall is an alchemist, I consciously picked on him and his mode of thought as something I really wanted to pull down. Alchemy is, in some ways, like the opposite of Discordianism. Discordianism is a religion disguised as a joke, or a joke disguised as a religion, depending on how many hot dogs you ate in the last month and whether or not the month has a "Q" in it. Alchemy is insanity disguised as natural philosophy. A particular type of insanity also enjoyed by "science" and atheism.<br />
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The insanity whereof I speak is simple to state, it posits as a central position that the human meatganism is capable of knowing everything. It is phobic of the notion that the meatganism simply hasn't the equipment to comprehend the true nature of reality. It is dismissive of all mental attempts to integrate and harmonise with the idea that there's a bunch of stuff we're just never going to know.<br />
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The opposite mental ailment of alchemic insanity is any religious insanity which includes most religious thought. This insanity can be parcelled up as: You don't need to know everything, there are some things being taken care of by the great bearded sky daddy and anyone who interferes with those things must be stopped at all costs.<br />
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The Holy Chao of Discordianism can be thought of representing these two opposites, aspects of the Eristic and Aneristic principle, locked in an eternal self-defeating struggle. So if this model is complete, showing all the polar opposites where the hell is Discordianism?<br />
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Discordianism, my friends, is the diagram itself, existing in the lines that make up the false-image matrix. Any Discordian will tell you that arranging lines and boxes to make meaning is, itself, meaningless. Discordianism is about striving to be optimal while accepting that we have limits, so no passive acceptance of other people's half-chewed reality-cud and no insane belief that we will ever have the ability to conquer reality from the cradle of our stewed meat prisons, just a commitment to not believe what we read and attempt to bring everyone into harmony through active disruption.<br />
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Like I said before, it's a tricky balance to strike.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-75778281983399673682017-09-26T17:40:00.001+01:002017-09-26T17:46:34.945+01:00Evil Genius, Please Hold<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Appropriately enough, perhaps, I have received little to no feedback regards my proposed condition "Evil Genius Syndrome". It is my personal belief that it is a thing, and quite a large thing at that. Seeing as the whole strand kicked off with regards to the much overstated problem of "Impostor Syndrome", where a limited number of successful people feel that they might not deserve the success they enjoy, I figured the reverse syndrome must be far more prevalent.<br />
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My reasoning is based on simple maths. Massively successful people are rare, people more talented than their success would imply must be numerous, stupidly numerous. There must be thousands of us.<br />
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But Evil Geniuses are not joiners, or talkers, apparently. One of the keys to success, it would appear, is that one successful person admits to feeling like a bit of a fraud all the others that do pipe up because their self-esteem can take the hit. When someone says: "Hey, I'm feeling a bit undervalued here, anyone else feel the same?" people don't want to appear smug or bitter or whatever.<br />
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I think that's important. When I say that Evil Geniuses have not enjoyed levels of success one might expect I think that implies they're big losers hungry for power. I mean, that's what an Evil Genius is, right?<br />
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But just as Impostors are not actually impersonating anyone so evil geniuses are not necessarily unhappy with their life lot. This all comes down to success at the thing that gives you money to put in the bank. So many Evil Geniuses have probably made trade-offs to be happier in their life than the continual pursuit of money. Of course, you get to a certain level of success and you don't need to worry too much about the future (maybe a bit, maybe get an accountant, and a financial adviser). But I think there's a lot of clear blue sky between working hard enough to get by and enjoy the non-work parts of your life and being dedicated to work, working hard and getting to a point where you could feel like an impostor early on.<br />
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It's a telling thing, for example, that a lot of celebrities have impostor syndrome. I think if you finally got where you were going after 20 years hard work etc. you would feel like you'd earned your enjoyed success. Then again, these things are not rational. Also, maybe if you've only been on a career path less than a decade you're not that surprised you aren't further ahead with it than you are.<br />
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So, maybe I made a slip up. Maybe there's another reversal in this syndrome. Impostor Syndrome is likely to be felt by people who think they've come way too far, way too fast. Once you're there further success is likely to just make things worse.<br />
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On the other hand being an Evil Genius is far more likely to be something that sneaks up on you. I have been in one career track now for about fifteen years. It's only very recently that I have become surprised I haven't done as well as I thought I might. And is the result of that fear and anxiety? In the case of the impostor, certainly. In the case of the Evil Genius it will range from puzzlement and disappointment right up to anger. And I guess the angrier you are the more you might be mistaken.<br />
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The point is that the true Evil Genius Syndrome is a bit of confusion and feeling lost. You genuinely think, "I am capable of more than this, so why has that capability not materialised?" I think the companion feeling to the impostor emotional state of "I don't believe all this success is because of my wisdom in action and decision" is the evil geniuses question: "Am I doing something wrong?"<br />
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Am I choosing the wrong choices? Have I displayed poor judgement? Am I saying the wrong things? These are the concerns of the Evil Genius.<br />
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I am, in fact, asking those questions right now, about this strand of discussion. I think it's time for the Evil Genius to return to his lab. For the time being it's arrivederci Evil Genius Mondays, we hardly knew ye. Next Monday... probably more Starfall anticipation articles, look out, we could be looking at Celtic Mythology Monday!<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Icon Credits</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Icons made by <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/authors/eucalyp" title="Eucalyp">Eucalyp</a>, <a href="http://www.freepik.com/" title="Freepik">Freepik</a> from <a href="https://www.flaticon.com/" title="Flaticon">www.flaticon.com</a> is licensed by <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" target="_blank" title="Creative Commons BY 3.0">CC 3.0 BY</a></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4922711712823734981.post-88133185084838937282017-09-22T17:35:00.000+01:002017-09-22T17:35:06.130+01:00So What About Voodoo?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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First off, lets call it vodou or vodun, voodoo is a corruption, and there's the rub. Voodoo is the word you use to describe a brand of donut, or a mountain bike, or a club promotion. I've been finding it difficult where to start out with this strand of discussion, after over a decade I realise it should start there.<br />
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Imagine that there was a Jyoodayzm Donuts, or a Katholik Mountain Bike or a Hinndou Club Night. How would worshippers in the specific religions whose names are corrupted there feel about the appropriation and association? Less chilled, I imagine, than practitioners of vodun, as far as I can tell they just don't talk about it, let alone get up in arms about the zany, dangerous branding mark their religion has been rendered to in Western society.<br />
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Having spent some time and done some research I think the reason for that is all to do with the latent power such casual misappropriation delivers back to them. Vodun uses, song, chant, repetition, rhythm, life and sweat to do its work. Repeating its name in whatever context flows that power back to the mighty river, so the practitioners and respectful observers of this spiritual powerhouse will tell you.<br />
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I'm a full on born again Discordian (or maybe it was just a dodgy No Hot Dog Bun round my Friday hot dog), this does not preclude me from also getting my vodun on. But I don't. Am I a non-believer?<br />
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I don't think that's my problem here. Actually if I was a proper non-believer I would have no problem dabbling. I would dabble in lots of things if I were a non-believer, because I wouldn't believe that it could do any harm.<br />
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I think, rather, that I don't have the passion to commit to these practices. I am passionate about my Discordianism, especially as I discover that beyond being a faith it is also a challenge, being a Discordian is not easy.<br />
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In fact I don't believe being an anything is easy, but less honest religions arrive at your door saying that if they dunk you in an adult sized font then the Bearded Sky Daddy will insert his own son into your cardiac region and off you go. I mean, come on, that's a con, right? It's a step away from being a Nigerian prince wanting to put $$$ in your bank account.<br />
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Vodun, like Discordianism, is not easy, and I respect it too much to pretend.<br />
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So, Starfall is my one act of respect to those deities and also to the dark gods that lurk in Britain's past (and more on them later). One of the points of Starfall is that in the world of loa there isn't much difference between the two.<br />
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As I concluded work on the first major edit of Starfall I reckon I could sense that Legba was giving me the nod. It's like Neitzsche said, the mighty things are mirrors. Actually he didn't say that exactly, but the poor guy had his own preoccupations.<br />
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As we get closer to Starfall I would like to return to talk more about the relationship the novel made for me with vodun, but for now the man at my shoulder is telling me to still my tongue and open my ears. So I shall listen.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0