Balance

And then there was pain.

The push that balances the pleasure. Motion, perhaps, is a distraction. It is the pressure that is the energy of the act.

Hurt occurs from crudity. Deft pressure balances.

Balance is pleasurable. Balance is the stability that occurs when opposition changes equally.

Grace

It is through dance that I have discovered grace of motion through space, and it
Is through music that I have learned the grace of motion through time
Sound and bodies can coordinate or tumble
The difference between grace and folly is intent

It is the grace of motion through time that allows me to realize my strength of intention
Intention guides our progress through time
And despite the myriad swirling smokestacks of civilization whose billowing winds whisk through our senses
Making forward looking and determined behavior seem impossible, if not just very unfounded
It is the realization that life is nothing more than motion, in space and through time that allows me to
Advocate my grace as a possibility for survival

If not by the clear study of motion through time, then how is it that we are expected to build across this avenue of invisible motion
Its pitfalls occur in its subtlety


It can be seen most easily from a distance - the past or the future
And yet it lives as close as can be, in the invisible suction of change as vacuum is filled -- The articulation of change through space
As the entire contraption hurdles through some unknown place know as time

A place that does not exist in our place
A place where our place exists in its entirety

The basis of human culture, religion, social mores is nothing more than hearsay and fearful mass collusion
Every creed, every dogma, every practice moral, intellectual, or spiritual is a function of someone thinking
And someone doing, and in most cases a separation or at least a magnification of one of these elements

And in the end it is a shouting match among proselytes of their version of the story
Credibility becomes the basis of truth, of guidance, of style of motion
But every claimant has a story, and every defendant an argument
And I am assailed by their highly disputable spasms

Motion, however, is indisputable
And motion with grace is by definition how god moves

Motion means change in some dimension
Dimensions exist with respect to motion

I was born with hunger, with thirst, with a serious oxygen addiction
I was born soft, vulnerable, easily damaged by forced conflict with my space
I was born needy
And in motion

Need is the gravity of time
The singular force that interconnects
Need is the basis of motion
Motion is the basis of existence, awareness, life

In stillness there is no motion
Motion defeats stillness
Need is the suction that robs a vacuum of its stillness

I was born small and as I continued to nurse my needs I became larger
Space was my nemesis
I needed it, I would take up more and more of it
But as I arrived in it, it had all been claimed

The very ground on which I was ejected onto this planet had someone's name on it
The very building which protected my naked wet body from the cold evening wind of the bicentennial Florida summer
Had someone's name on it
The very people whose minds and hearts and bodies had rendered my infant form had someone's name on it
And so it went for all space I would ever come across
Named, sorted, claimed as though it could be

But what did it mean to be born
It meant motion
Motion of my parents bodies to grow to the age they could produce me
Motion of union, motion of gestation, motion of birth

I arrived with the lungy sound of fear
I greeted it all with the only motion I knew then
Writhing and crying as the struggle continued
With me unwittingly occupying a space that had already been claimed

My body is my prison if it always lives in someone else's space
Or is it my mind

As my childhood withered into my adolescence, and those sour fruit began to ripen into early adulthood
I would realize the more sinister undercurrent to all of the claim of space

I would realize that motion describes change over time
Change in the three dimensions that define space,
Or change over the four dimensions that define space and time

By aligning my intentions, focusing my present behavior on the present obstacles
That defeat them
That is to say, becoming aware of the pressures on my motion
The reality that as the land on which I was born and have on every day since lived
Belonged to some other consciousness in motion that claimed it
I now realize the equivalent occupation on my motion in time

Television arrested my intentions
Like a board smack in the face of a running gymnast about to take leap
Mass hypnosis through mercenary culture builders, cold, bleak, uncompassionate sorts
Who never realized they are their own motion, and thus they are their own space and time

Instead they found comfort in taking mine
"Sure, live in my space but pay me for it"
"Don't think for yourself, think for me"
"Surely the result of our collaboration will benefit at least one of us"

As a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Sikh, or a Muslim
I am a dancer with a troupe
My motion has been arranged for me
And I trample every field I come across with the memorized dance of the ages
To a beat out of sync with my own pulse

Oh yes rhythm, pulse, periodic oscillation
Can I deny that I am a polyrhythm of chemistry?
Could I simply observe my motion?
Could I learn to see what motion I have, where it goes
And perhaps follow it?

Could I decide that god is not found in the dusty pages of old texts
Or the hardened hearts of bead pushers and cronies
But rather in the lust of my own heart
In the passion of my own fingers
In the tears in my own eyes
Could I hear god in the curl of my laughter

Or in the synchronicity of wind from heat from light from stars and earth
The story of creation that examines what is as a sign of what is rather than something else
Could I recognize my worship in the choices of my every action
The compliance of my behavior with my intent
Instead of the rehearsed motions of some detached prayer

Could I define spirituality as the motion of my spirit
The direction of my movement through time

Could I look at and see light
Or must I sculpt a hole in the darkness and hope something good lies beyond its edges?

I am an arrow in flight that dies when it hits the ground
And yet upon me is no mercy from the air in which I move or the
Challengers that wish to rape my momentum

And so I surround myself with drums and things with tune
Dancers, poets, and songstresses
Lovers of aroma and hugs
Kindness and compassion
Plants and humans and stones that make music with light

And I view the environment - the ground and the air and all of its leeches
As a garden to be tended
It is a garden of community, of strength and cooperation
It is a garden of behavior
It is a garden of light and sound
It is a garden of touch and warmth and coolness to stir the still air

All around me I see a garden full of weeds
Plants whose boundaries lie gone or unchecked
I see a garden full of opportunity, full of spaces to fill with
Colors that bring their own bloom, provide their own sustenance
And freely help the needy

And I am so needy
So full of inability to cope
So full of necessity without ability

I can’t make oxygen
I can’t make food
I can’t make water
I don’t even own any space with which to dispose of my own body’s waste

All of it comes from some place else
Some other part of my garden that I’ve never worked
Some part of my field where the memory of persistence lives on
As the struggle for survival spins off looms of wispy fruit
That gets brought to me in boxes and bags via ships and trains and trucks
By weathered faces and chafed cuticles, parts of people I’ll probably never get to know complete

But what is my thanks for the masses that provide
What is my thanks for the ground that wombs the seed I found
What can I make that I need
Or am I destined to the mercy of the anonymous

The decision of what is self and what is not self is the basis of identity
To decide that parts of self are not self is an error
To decide that parts of not self is self is an error

Identity is required for motion
I am in motion
So what is my identity?

I am an instrument and a weapon
I can make ease and suffering
My breath can massage sound
Or rupture safety
My push can find order
Or topple it
My direction can be toward or away from
The light or my shadow

Like the wind that ripped holes in the roof
Of the house where I lived
Like the rain that entered those
New doors
Like Shiva's fungal army that climbed from the earth
To flourish and digest the white chalk
That walled my life's most early years
And reset everything to where it started

I am the soft limestone sand that kept me lifted
In the horseshoe with the screens and the pond
I am the sun faded garden hose that took my grip
I am the wonder that introduced the two
The hope that drove the conversation
The upset that remembers and revisits

I am 12 acres of jungle and cinder block and fear
I am the coward unable to listen to the trees
I am seashells and seabirds and water snakes and game fish
I am the master of yeast and bottles and bees

Stare

Stare at the window
Closed by the dark
Stare at the place
Where no fire was sparked

Stare at the closet with hangers unhung
Stare at the pages of songs never sung
Stare at the future
Like ropes made of salt
Tempting to reach for
Until fear grinds a halt

Stare with dry eyes
In moments when they are
Between spillage of feelings
And closeness gone afar

Stare intently like flames
Ripping through burnable flesh
Stare like you mean to
Disassemble this mess

Stare with deep breaths
Stare behind you as well
Stare with your ears
And see what you smell

Stare at the memories
Unleashed by past staring
Stare neglectfully of
The shame you might well be carrying

Stare in my arms
Pressed neatly to my chest
Stare at me staring
And offer nothing less

Under the Iron Sea

Resolve. Finally. That's the song. And it's on the new album. I've heard it exactly 3 times. Twice today on MySpace. Once in Berkeley, live last year [Brewnote Blog: May 7, 2005: Keane @ Berkeley]. What's been true about each experience is a swell of intense emotional attention that turns me into a windsock for four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. And they didn't studio-ize it. They didn't stuff it with crunch and sizzle to appeal to the dulled senses. Instead they left the silence, and offered me the most stimulation pop has to offer. Like colored flashes of lightning casting brilliant momentary silhouettes of something splendid, intense and wonderful, only to leave me alone and heavy to ponder it in the darkness of the deftly untouched space in the sound. Thank you Keane, I have waited so long for this new album.

Music Has Value

Music has value. Standalone value. Perhaps music's value is obvious, but even what's obvious requires notice. And notice requires perception. I don't mean attention, I mean perception: the clarity of mind such that its daily life is its daily rebirth. Stasis is an illusion created through repeated identical changes. Music has value like protein or calcium or air. We are tumbling bubbles of cloudy water with plenty of assumptions choreographing the tumbles. Life, or consciousness, or fractal animation, is change that guides its past, whereby all future decisions necessarily incorporate all previous decisions. A seed, for example, assumes moisture. A plant assumes light. An animal is born to assume the availability of food it can eat. And an intellect capable of deciding things assumes a basis on which to decide. Music caters to this assumption.

Gurus

Today I shook the hand whose sound has shaken the spirits of humanity. I humble myself against my own egotism. This has nothing to do, I assure you, with ego.

Last night, tabla Ustad Zakir Hussain and his ensemble cast of strings and percussion squeezed tears from dry eyes, and offered rumble and stillness while God was watching.

The classical tradition of music from North (Hindustani) and South (Carnatic) India brings with it a minimum of 800 years of chronological practice. Until the 20th century it was an oral tradition, passed from heart to heart and mind to mind. It's integrity was ensured through rigorous procedure, etiquette, and discipline. And those who devoted their lives to it, whether by their own inclination or the force of their dynastic legacy, became its single embodiment. They were the rare breed of humans who possessed skills and faculties no other could have without a lifetime of change. And they were born into the lap of those most fit to change them. They were a species that required more than 9 months of gestation, spending their post birth lives in the constant womb of their guru-sisya relationship. From here they deliver the stories of our lives in a way only their lives could allow. And they themselves would one day become gurus, offering both discretion and generosity in how, what, and who they might teach their musical ways.

For this reason, celebrity holds no bearing on my impressions. These are not teenagers with an agent and a marketing budget. These are lifelong soldiers, warriors for the human condition, battling with their musical arts and their earthen instruments, while still carrying disciples to carry on their work. It is not the artist that brings the awe, it's the invitation of beauty that only such a gifted artist can enact. And that beauty is what we are, and what we need, and what we hear so clearly in their magnificently respectful hands.

I spit on the floor as I say the name Ryan Adams, and beg forgiveness of my teachers for positing that name in the same space as theirs. But his concert ticket that I regrettably purchased and used last week was on the US capitalist market for just over $40. That, as it happens, was the same price the market would tolerate for last night's showing of the masters. In my mind, that means that those who have money feel that these two events are equivalent, and for that, I weep for the mercy of everything sane left in our future, and pray that the worldwide estheticide done in the name of scalable profits founders against the potency of life.

Ryan Adams was an outrage, unspeakably self-induced, dramatically masochistic, hardly believable, and purely a waste of time and money. True, there are innumerable actors of ego who claim music as their victim, and rape and violate the sanctity of something pure and self-sustaining with someting tainted and parasitic. But Ryan Adams has talent. And his show was as heart-wrenching as the clubbing of a baby fur seal. It was shameless, needless, and should never happen again.

My teacher is Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Let me say that again so I can be sure it's real. My teacher is Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, the greatest living sarode player and one of the handful of elders of the Hindustani classical tradition, a living spirit forged by the masters before him to teach and deliver what none of us would ever hear without them. Think about this: recorded music has existed for only a century, and in the hands of the common public for half that time. Thus for nearly all time, the musician was the source of music. And the music that lasted a millenium showed its strength in the character and talent of those who embodied it.

Khansahib describes the force by which he took in music, from the age of 3, thousands of hours of practice, tireless unscrupulous criticism from his teachers, and the unwitting role he would inevitably play as one of the sole keepers of something needed by everyone he would ever meet.

I am not qualified to biography Khansahib, nor would I aim to do so here. The reason I mention this is to color the perspective I have regarding the respect I feel for him, my teacher, as well as those like him: men and women who were born into music, lived only music, and generously play and share their magic unique lives.

Today I sat next to Ustad Zakir Hussain, Ustad Sultan Khan, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and the entire crew of the Masters of Percussion. I felt and realized at some inconspicuous moment during my morning class that the sultry animal of music whose classical form I've been suckling from these past 2 years was suddenly present in multiples. I didn't feel like asking for autographs, or taking photos, or even trying to get the attention of these amazing musicians. I only tried to show in my face and my eyes and my posture how much I am grateful to them for what they have done, and what they have yet to do.

How or why could I tell them my story: that I was so fearful of life that I hid from it and beat it from me when it came too close, until I found music and it convinced me of something completely different. It convinced me that individuals are alone only if they don't communicate, and that we choose to live among others so that we can communicate and thereby pool resources, minimize hardship, and induce mutual strength, and that when we do this we are rewarded by a feeling that we call love. And that love, and its spectrum of nine emotions, can be elaborated and understood, clinically and technically, and that its stories can be remembered and told, gently and artfully, and that because of their sacrifices I was able to learn.

Tomorrow I will audition for Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, yet another phenomenon of human sacrifice and musical prowess. He may decide to teach me tabla, and if so I will have yet another inconceivable mercy bestowed on me. Having wandered into the Ali Akbar College of Music with nothing but a desire, I had no idea what I would find. The access to the depths of this vital school of study is so available, that I cannot imagine turning away from it. On the contrary, I hope that my future will be lit by its fire, warmed by its sound, and fueled by its teachings. Today I am closer to understanding yet so far away, and I thank my gurus for helping me along.

Just Walk Away

Last night I found myself inflamed with frustration as I was unwittingly defending esthetics from someone clearly without attachment to anything important. There are parts of this city where even the land is not land, and yet those who live on it pride themselves on the fact and compete financially to assure this dubious affiliation. It did not surprise me that my partner in this absurd debate also participated in the aforementioned group hallucination. But this is not about criticism, it's about value. Before a bitter end, I just walked away.

So often over the past years I have found myself lost without a guide, seeking a reality which includes stability and strength but without a knowledge of the origin of such things or a sense of how to choose a path that would lead to them. The "big picture" is commonly associated with a God on a throne, a ruler in the sky, or a message without a justification. I refused to accept a consensus of seizures. That is to say, everyone else seemed to be jostling with acceptance, but if we are to believe what helps us, then there is no help to be found in any of this.

So where to begin? Pragmatism and truth go hand in hand - truth being that thing which is present, which describes what is present, or which in much the same way offers value through benefit.

"Is it raining?" "Yes, it is"

This could be truth, and I can accomodate. This also could be a lie and I would have planned ineffectively. There can be opinions on the subject, but for purposes of deriving benefit in terms of my understanding and my actions I accept that in this case truth is something unequivocal and valuable.

The opportunity for fallacy arrives in the displacement of a truthful description by one that contains no valuable information. Or worse, one that contains harmful information. The negotiation of this difference relies on the intelligence that organizes our senses. It's no accident that we say that something does or does not "make sense." It is in fact simply a higher order overview of visual, auditory, chemical, thermal, electromagnetic, and proprioceptive data that is what we call thought.

As in the example above, it is my senses that verify the truth about rain, and my intellect that uses those sensations to create an emotional position which drives my behavior. Therefore in the state that we seem to find ourselves, I must maintain that a dutiful worship of the senses (where worship means to hold in high regard) is a necessary foundation for clear and rational thought, and the benefit that comes from it.

And so to tell me that a self-made opinion has value despite its complete orthogonality to the data that sensation suggests is an indication that something is gravely awry. And this stubborn attachment to a belief structure that places importance on each person's opinion, regardless of how misguided strikes me as a group therapy session that takes place in every place at once, and has no intention of finding an end.

Of our known 5 senses, only one stems directly from the core of the brain (the other 4 are peripheral adjuncts) in the form of bulbs which scan countless gas molecules for their structure and identify them simultaneously in the form of smell. This behavior is common in many animals and its heritage spans back to the time when single-celled organisms alone colonized this planet, and arguably was the foundation of their ability to detect, adjust, and organize for their survival.

Food, drink, partners, and environments seethe with airborne chemistry, and our ability to inhale it, decipher its codes, incorporate its stories, and adjust our actions for benefit is the backbone of solid intellectualism. There is no rift between art and science, if art simply means worship of esthetics, and science means methodologies for such worship. This is how I take it.

Music, coffee, fresh bread, wild flowers, earthworms, maple sap, sandalwood each have distinct codes mapped to their textures, flavors, and vibrations in light and air pressure. When we detect their codes, we learn something of them, and what we learn becomes a utility. We are after all a dependency in the ecosystem as well as a dependent. And the links must be valid to offer structure.

When a man in a lab coat creates a scent, it is a real scent no doubt. But what does it tell you of the thing its been associated with? In my assessment nothing that can be trusted. Wheat has a scent. But scentless mass-produced wheat held for months in storage silos grown in depleted soil and processed with low attention per unit volume, and then scented by said lab coat aims to hide the truth of the story. Why should old wheat smell new? Shouldn't I be allowed to decide that I'd rather eat new wheat by being given the chance to detect the difference? Any way you look at it, the scenting and flavoring of food amounts to bold faced lying. And its impact on my health and well being is by design suboptimal. For just like things with quick energy tasting sweet and things with rich abundant energy tasting fatty and thick, it is these signs that we use to feed ourselves, interact with others, and build a reliable framework in which to operate.

It is therfore entirely relevant that I avoid lies which harm me. Starbuck's is a lie. McDonald's is a lie. Everything cosmetic is in some form a lie. Why would you eat ugly food wearing makeup, when beautiful food exists? Particulary when ugly often means unhealthy, unsafe, or undesirable and someone is choosing to bring this to you while covering up their tracks to avoid notice.

*sigh* There is a simple answer to complex questions, but the glut of misinformation makes sifting through it taxing to say the least. Starting with the basics is a valuable way to restabilize the foundation, and eventually lift the topmost intellect to a useful and dominant position.

If this is not a valuable thing to worship, then may someone's God help us all.

Swirl

I am the swirling behind a burrowing animal, neither the animal nor the dust, I am the animation of their confluence. And I accept my parts.

Behind Dumpsters

You were born in Bakersfield, California not long after the end of the second World War, when peace was meant to be suddenly available to all. You never heard that story because your father kept most of the control of the tv, and wasn't a big current events buff, to start with. His pastimes included being chronically drunk, beating your mother, and once in a while raping your younger sister. He beat you too when he was feeling more bold.

You listened to music a lot: country, folk, and some bluegrass, and kept friendships only with those you'd never meet.

For some inexplicable reason you chose to endure this and call it life, and smile when other people told you about their lives, and wonder, and be confused, and forget, and accept. And then one day, the sound of your mother screaming was too much to take, and the soft blankness that had taken over your sister's once beaming young face drove into you an argument that was so clear it became an action before it was called up for review. And though you never actually fired your father's gun at him, you did stir in him a fear that you would, and those who were meant to protect and serve you, once again failed.

Jail proved to be a tougher-than-expected experience, and you rarely spoke about it to anyone. As a more mature young man you still cherished the gifts of support music had offered you and like a baton needing to be passed you learned how to play the guitar so that you could comfort your selves in the warmth of others and excuse yourself from stopping the flow of what had come your way.

Music helped you find joy, and then calm, and then eventually love in the arms of a woman. You had food, and pleasure and protection, and most of all hope. You lived together for the years that you would later reflect on as the best of your life.

Today you live behind two dumpsters in the alley between an apartment building and the back of a strip mall. Once in a while someone pours a bottle of bleach all over your spot to make it tougher for you to live there. Your eyes burn. You're not sure if it's the bleach.

You feel dirty most of the time. You are dirty. Water is hard to come by, and your own waste follows you around unless you can think of what to do with it. You are ashamed to urinate on the street, or anywhere in public for that matter, but most establishments with public restrooms don't even let you in their parking lots, let alone their facilities. You cringe when you think about your bowels.

You're dirty and you wish you could get clean. And as you consider this, you are embarrassed by the choking odor of your own sweat and the layers of grime you've absorbed from the street on which you spend most of your time. And you wonder why people sneer at you, as though you've chosen this condition. Sometimes you want to shout, "I'll get clean if you can give me some water, or at least give me somewhere to put my dirt!" But you don't shout. You sit quietly, eyes low, avoiding a connection with everyone, especially yourself.

You try to remember the moment when people began to look down at you. You can't. You try to forget the moment that you agreed with them. You can't. You plan to stand up, get a job, and go back to a life of stability and peace that you once imagined. You can't.

You have grown children, but they come looking for you only when they fear you might be at your worst, and even then their alms prove contrived and short-lived. Love is not a word you use in common parlance, though a part of you hangs motionless, too frozen to adjust. You're 50. You're sick. Your skin is rough and weather beaten. You get beaten up for no reason. Stabbed even. Sometimes people give you blankets or money. Both are gone before it's over, stolen or spent, you aren't sure what you're paying for.

And then one day, you see a young man in a business suit walking by your spot to get to his garage. And he looks at you as though you could teach him something. And you do, and he learns. And when for the first time in so long, someone asks you what you have to say. This is what comes to your mind:

Click on photo to download AAC audio (11:36/16MB)...

History Search and Replace

I'm confused so perhaps I should destroy you.
I didn't understand, so I think I should ignore you.

What is that? Speaking again?
Surprising me with the unknown?

Now I have to banish what
I'm too afraid to be shown.

There are witches in the forest,
and in the mountains,
and on the sand.

Witches will come to get you
unless you crush them on their land.

Excuse me but didn't you hear?
We want none of what you have to say.
Just because you've been there
doesn't mean you get to stay.

Oh shit, what's this,
behind two lurk four more.
Tighten up those windows,
lock up your heavy doors.

Sharpen up your knives,
stock up food, and masks, and fuel.
I'm about to let you know that
you've been neighbors with a ghoul.

There are witches in the forest,
and in the mountains,
and on the sand.

Witches will come to get you
unless you crush them on their land.

I'll burn you down to ashes.
Plucking out dissent leaves flowers grown my way
-- in polished semi-circles for me not you to play.

And in their centers we'll tell stories
through smiles we took from God.
And be sure to laugh and join us
Or we'll clip you with a nod.

There are witches in the forest,
and in the mountains,
and on the sand.

Witches will come to get you,
unless you crush them on their land.