onbeyond

coldplay occasionally nail it:

life in technicolor 2

"There's a wild wind blowing,
Down the corner of my street
Every night there the headlights are glowing

Theres a cold war coming,
On the readio i heard
Baby it's a violent world

Oh love don't let me go
Won't you take me where the streetlights glow
I could hear it coming
I could hear the sirens sound
Now my feet won't touch the ground

Time came a-creepin'
Oh and time's a loaded gun
Every road is a ray of light
It goes o-o-on
Time only can lead you on
Still it's such a beautiful night

Oh love don't let me go
Won't you take me where the streetlights glow
I could hear it coming
Like a serenade of sound
Now my feet won't touch the ground

Gravity release me,
And dont ever hold me down
Now my feet won't touch the ground.
"

taken from the interweb:




Moola Mantra - the Meaning and the Manifestation



The Moola Mantra:



Om Sat Chit Ananda Parabrahma

Purushothama Paramatma

Sri Bhagavathi Sametha

Sri Bhagavathe Namaha



When ever you chant this Vedic Mantra even without knowing the meaning of it - the Moola Mantra itself carries power. But when you know the meaning and chant with that feeling in your heart then the energy would flow million times more powerful. Therefore it is essential to know the meaning of the Mantra when you use it.



The Mantra is like calling a name. Just like when you call a person he comes and makes you feel his presence, the same manner when you chant this mantra, the supreme energy manifests everywhere around you. As the Universe is Omnipresent, the supreme energy can manifest anywhere and any time. It is also very important to know that the invocation with all humility, respect and with great necessity makes the presence stronger.



The meaning of Moola Mantra:



OM :

OM has got 100 different meanings. It is said; in the beginning was the Supreme word and the word created every thing. That word is OM. If you are meditating in silence deeply, you can hear the sound OM within. The whole creation emerged from the sound OM. It is the primordial sound or the Universal sound by which the whole universe vibrates. OM also means inviting the higher energy. This divine sound has the power to create, sustain and destroy, giving life and movement to all that exist.



SAT-CHIT-ANANDA :

SAT means, all penetrating existence that is formless, shapeless, omnipresent, attribute less, and quality less aspect of the Universe. It is the Un manifest. It is experienced as emptiness of the Universe. We could say it is the body of the Universe that is static. Every thing that has a form and that can be sensed, evolved out of this Un manifest. It is so subtle that it is beyond all perceptions. It can only be seen when it has become gross and has taken form. We are in the Universe and the Universe is in us. We are the effect and Universe is the cause and the cause manifests itself as the effect.



CHIT is the Pure Consciousness of the Universe that is infinite, omni-present manifesting power of the Universe. Out of this is evolved everything that we call Dynamic energy or force. It can manifest in any form or shape. It is the consciousness manifesting as motion, as gravitation, as magnetism, etc. It is also manifesting as the actions of the body, as thought force. It is the Supreme Spirit.



ANANDA means bliss, love and friendship nature of the Universe. When you experience either the Supreme Energy in this Creation (SAT) and become one with the Existence or experience the aspect of Pure Consciousness (CHIT), you enter into a state of Divine Bliss and eternal happiness (ANANDA). This is the primordial characteristic of the Universe, which is the greatest and most profound state of ecstasy that you can ever experience when you relate with your higher Consciousness.



PARABRAHMA is the Supreme Being in his Absolute aspect; one who is beyond space and time. It is the essence of the Universe that is with form and without form. It is the Supreme creator.



PURUSHOTHAMA has got different meanings. Purusha means soul and Uthama means the supreme; the Supreme spirit. It also means the supreme energy of force guiding us from the highest world. Purusha also means Man, and PURUSHOTHAMA is the energy that incarnates as an Avatar to help and guide Mankind and relate closely to the beloved Creation.



PARAMATMA means the supreme inner energy that is immanent in every creature and in all beings, living and non-living. It's the indweller or the Antaryamin who resides formless or in any form desired. It's the force that can come to you whenever you want and wherever you want to guide and help you.



SRI BHAGAVATI is the female aspect, which is characterized as the Supreme Intelligence in action, the Power (The Shakti). It is referred to the Mother Earth (Divine Mother) aspect of the creation.



SAMETHA means together or in communion with



SRI BHAGAVTE is the Male aspect of the Creation, which is unchangeable and permanent.



NAMAHA is salutations or prostrations to the Universe that is OM and also has the qualities of SAT-CHIT-ANANDA, that is omnipresent, unchangeable and changeable at the same time, the supreme spirit in a human form and formless, the indweller that can guide and help in the feminine and masculine forms with the supreme intelligence. I seek your presence and guidance all the time.

35 x 40 ft projection on the walls downtown nelson
reclaiming the space for the people
sometimes the world conspires
to involve us in things we never dreamed we would do

all the pieces come together
without effort
as if
it was all written somewhere and
all we have to do
is take part

i started this, but forget why.

there is
no such thing as silence
of nothing and
no sound
everything is in motion and
exhalation of
breath is
making things
happen

"in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god and the word was god"

it sucks to always have to evaluate yourself from some kind of subjectively foisted perspective uttered by people who tunnel vision themselves into unsolvable paradoxes. it's funny how some people can claim to sit, silently for hours a day, resting in awareness, and then hold a nonstop streaming satsang of newagisms which fold in on themselves, crumbling under the weight of their own impossibility. i'm actually full of love for these people. i'm actually stuck in my own concerns for my soul lost and stuck in a sea of questions that these people often just ignore because they are contradictory to what they believe. how can you believe in anything these days? even the ones who say they are getting beyond words need words to explain the beyondness to themselves. even those saying they are beyond language are using language to get there.

lets face it. life's a bunch of living words now. we can stop, merge with oneness, drop out of everything and do nothing, nothing happening, and still we inhabit a world of the wordless word. when will people wake up to the glory and beauty of language? newagers love to rampage against ideas, against the spoken word as if it somehow takes us further away from reality, but mark my words, lovers of language, poets, mc's and mysticos of the magic languages, the reality you inhabit is the reverberation of language in multidimensional form.

don't freak out about speaking. listen to the sound of your words and make sure to be excited about their impacts. think about the others who you talk your ideas to. it's funny how some people will speak in absolutes, without an i pronoun, and it ends up being stifling and annoying, and some people speak incessant i i i i and it becomes utterly selfish. but inbetween there's a language which takes into account both the obejctively observed nature of the impersonal universe, and the subjective personal nature of our individual experience. never lose this. your ego is your art project. create it well. make sure to claim that your ideas are simply what you are feeling and perceiving, try not to speak as if you know what is true. these words themselves are only suggestions. throw them away if you don't agree.

it doesnt matter if it's written or freestyled, there's no rules anymore. who can judge now that the playing field is equalized. i finally saw right thru the disguises that night sitting in the presence of my elders talking conspiracies and destruction and tidal waves and pain and suffering and thought to myself, how hilarious that people are dreaming of these things and wondering why their sleep is p[lagued with the visions. its freaking obvious: millions around the world are being subjected to death and dying and suffering memes. we're being workd by the deepest global fear memes that humanity has perhaps ever known, and how is it that the proponents of light, the very ones most loving in their own minds, are the ones most willing to propagate these myths?

if you start to evaluate the newage form a linguistic perspective it falls apart really easily. it is not logical. the hilarious part is that newagers often combat this accusation of lack of logic by saying we are headed into a world where logic is less important than intuition, or feeling. to me, i just see people reverting to superstition and erroneous belief patterns. every newager runs the risk of becoming excatly what they felt most oppressed by: dogmatic persecution by a rigid hegemony. it's funny how scientists with excitement for unravelling the mysteries of the world, bringing technology we use and love everyday, can be so broad sweepingly criticized for their methodologies. all that really lacks is a deep examination of personal ethics and philosophies. science and agnosticism did not kill god, it actually created a whole new langauge by which we can observe and interact in the glory of creation.

we can't just throw away words and imagine we are somehow gonna just enter a telepathic world. don't you see that it implies an even more complex and powerful language emerging? are we gonna become fluffy puff mutes? sheesh. i'm imagining a whole new language beyond the words we use now, but it isnt that language is disappearing at all. the word if it is god, cannot disappear, in fact, the clarity of its true dimensions will be the most exciting thing in our lifetimes.

so never get down on yourself for reading or writing or feeling neurotically compelled to speak. it's just the self inside you exposing itself to greater fields of play and experience. run wild in it. listen as much as you speak, but don't remain fully silent for too long. silence is a whole lot of everything spent in nothing. there's a universe out there. lets play.

all my life has been one lie or another to myself about what i would become
abut how i would chase my dreams and the connections i had with others
and somehow i also managed to find a way to mess up every one
to be upset at my fate as if i was anyone but the one who chose it
as if i was something important
when i also maintained that i was
nothing really in the greater scheme of things
a small piece of a much larger puzzle
i always hope i can turn around my life
find the strength to rise up beyond my insecurities and habits
to find some kind of place amongst the superhuman heroes i see everyday
people i aspire to being like
in my devotion and work ethic
i seek solace in being dedicated
tho my life is one big inertia
of the gravitational force of heaviness
i pray i seek the solution to my anguish of misdirections
missed trains
and strains of mist i sought to cut through like the haze i was so often enveloped in

i was never fully happy
always some level of fight in me
now whatever the whatever
i have nothing left to fight
and perhaps
in this space of nothing i will find the happiness
i always thought i'd find by winning
is really the best level of accepting that
it really is so much more about
how you play the game.

nothing is ever lost.

you know you are weird when you have zero friends
the illusion begins where reality ends

can't seem to login inproperly to the networks
and this gets me thinkin about proverbs
the proverbial tower of babel
language rocking the screens
platforms just dont seem stable
but im able to note a bend in the trends
with all the facebookin goin off the deep end
it depends on frame of reference and the real time expense
of waiting for all these people to come to their senses
i been waiting anticipating and im stating
with these observations we'll need no debating
its clear everyone is participating
of the internet explosion and network relating
i been visionary you know this
how far can i throw this
lyrical curve ball so i can begin to show this
fascination with profiles and personal blog styles
we're watching kids gettin younger going hogwild
connecting at a pace exponential in space
it expands to see which platform will win the race
they twiiter the death of the facebooking crowd
the facebookers are clueless and i wonder aloud
whats the problem? where's the money? this shit's stopped being funny
full 3rd party application every second beginning to stun me
where's your sense people?
you are what you eat information complete
what you ingest becomes the evidence of ruling elite
you get no support for these sites
just type away rights
post your pictures and your friends in informational bytes
this is scathing its a scandal its happening now
big brother is here and you all are like "wow!"
let me post this pic of me blazin a phatty fo yall
get stopped at the border and wonder whycome?
smarten up peoples step into the digital age
no one can hide and the whole place is a stage
grandstand play a fool
make your profile look real cool
lose a couple thou at poker and virtual pool
your phone going off as you walk down the street
every storefront bombing you with etheric tweets
buy this buy that consume dont worry about doom
complete online immersion will be here real soon

i'm being blown away by the speed of transformations these days. it's surreal to imagine myself 3 decades ago as preteen with no real sense of the size and scope of the world and all its open options. this swing towards the birthday season always gets me into a contemplative space regarding who i am, where i have been and where i am going. arguably every day is like this, but at this time of year its the equivalent of taking stock, doing inventory, scanning the current space and admiring/gasping at the details of a life lived uncompromisingly free.

the notable eras:
i miss the naive days of: my skateboarding teenage highschool and early university life. i sooooo miss being able to throw off the shackles of anything too intense by hitting the downtown pavement or mountain hills with a board. there was something extra special about that time because, even though i will do those things now, then, it was as if there was nothing to be concerned about, no sense that there was time slipping away or moving quickly. nothing seemed to be at stake. every day was an opportunity to lay waste to a curbside, or loft an air off whatever lips we could find back before you could build jumps without gettting kicked off the mountain. thems was the days.

hierarchical power status: best rider is king.

girl situations were simple: likely did not have one. if you did, you were utterly beyond stoked and dumbfounded. this could potentially come into conflict with homies but it was a no brainer choice!

homework: how hard is multiple choice? honour role anarchist. i loved that shit.
music: hardcore, punk, early gangster rap, psychedelic folk, hard metal
food: no limits or distinctions. a totally indestructible digestive system
poltical stance: fuk that
art: writer/poet/ painter/
pasttimes: skating. snowboarding, partying, drinking coffee, smoking, getting into trouble with jocks
direction in life: no future. today is the last day of your life to nail that frontside kickflip to handrail.
philosophy: mix of existential, optimistic spiritual (the god of skate), anarchist (fuk everyone except my friends), poet (only the intelligent will survive), weird (if people are weirded out by it it must be pushing the boundaries), exploratory (lets try it and see if it's fun), funny (nothing is sacred yo, everything is a joke. the most scared thing in life is the freedom we have to make fun of it).

lets do uncatchable crimes!

i could name probly four or five of you in my friends list who could wistfully remember those days. awi? slasher? what ever happened to all of us. occasionally i catch the odd posting from people in the network that i remember. see gig posters that meant the world to me at age 19. i could tell you the top 10 playlist artists:

NWA
public enemy
SNFU
NoMeansNo
Young MC
ICE T
metallica
bob dylan
sonic youth
the smiths

i could tell you the truth that even though i was beginning my life as a prelaw student at U of C that truthfully i just wanted to snowboard. that i couldnt give a fuck about politics or getting a career, or building a future. i hated injustice. i marched when the gulfwar broke out. i slam danced for a freer world. i read the literature of the globe and wrote epic journal entries. i learned to drive a car and got one of my own. i moved in with my first love. i had sex!!!! holy shit that was fun. i tried drugs .. holy shit that was crazy. i tried on every philosophical religious spiritual poetic linguistic artistic system on for size. i shunned all things math. i lofted a fuck you to the bastard corporations. i bought my pants at value village. my belt was a rope. the most expensive items i owned was my car and my snowboard in that order. i was a dishwasher/ waiter / driver. life was simple.

make no mistake, i was not a redncek. i was not a nihilist, and i knew what was up. i just felt like everyone older than 30 had it all wrong. i was sure things were gonna change and until they did, i was gonna be found knee deep in the powder or full on downtown skating.

i'm not saying those years were the best of my life! i'm saying that if there was an era i could relive for a minute,. to feel the weight of years and the impact of my actions a little less, it would be then, and i would tell myself the secrets fo the future. i would tell myself to know that what was coming was incredible. i would have told myself to dream even bigger and to have no fear that what i was stoked on was going to become huge. i would have encouarged myself to be even more fearless, and even to imagine a future within the industry of the skateboard snowboard generation. it's funny how it's countercultural stance at the time made it hard to imagine a future in either sport, when now you can be a multimillionaire celebrity doing it. back then it was such a badass way to be that didnt harm others but definitely did not imagine itself to be anything of a career plan.

nowadays i find myself trying to get back to my riding roots. i attend snowboard films full of hard core teens looking to be the next terje hakonsen, looking for board sponsors. i made a mental calculation that i was not only the oldest rider in the room, but that i had been riding for longer than 95% of them were old. crazy. you never think about growing old when you are young. especially then, when there were no elder role models in the whole scene. it's not like i ever could approach someone like me when i was 18. people like me did not exist yet. people who had seen a generation and thru, and an industry spring up to become a force to be reckoned with in the business world, as well as an uncompromising approach to life. airs got bigger, rails got larger and the skillsets went so far beyond my capabilities that all i can do now is just strap on the board and float free down the pow. i marvel at the kids and their flexible indestructible bodies, but i also know that there's very few places that they go that i will not. i wont huck off crazy dumb shit, but i'll drop into some scary steep shit. just to remind myself that stayng young is merely a matter of attitude.

i have some leo friends in my life so occasionally i check out the leonine horroscope to read them their week. brezny said:

"Leo (July 23-August 22)
"I may not love you," wrote R. R. Doister, "but I can certainly love my fantasy about you." Personally, I've been guilty of embodying that attitude toward certain people in my life. There have also been allies to whom I could have said, "I do love you, although I love my fantasy about you a little more." And it has even been the case on numerous occasions that I've been proud to declare, "I love you even more than I love my fantasy about you." What about you, Leo? Where do you stand on the issue? This is an excellent time to get on the righteous side of the great divide, which is to say: Adore your special people for who they really are more than for your fantasies about them. "


it's amazing how time will rearrange our minds
and the truth of the past will somehow take new shape in the now
how recollecting the past we can imagine there were indicators at the time
of depths deeper than there ever was
we can walk back thru those scapes and pretend there were omens
somehow directing us towards a present moment reality
as if the past was some mutable thing to form into the foundations of our current myth
and don't you see how
easy it has been to love our fantasies more than the truth of the people themselves
i am guilty of this
and now have set straight my considerations
seen the truth of my exes and love the real person they are even more now
than i did when i was
in love with them
ready to die ready to fight for that love and
some people i
have had the odd feeling of realizing that i was in love with the anger they stirred in me
loved to hate them
more than i really cared about the saftey of their dreams
or the sanctity of their sanity
so it goes when the allies i choose decide to cross my path
they become fearsomely aware of what it is
to face a cold mirror
unwilling to alter the reflection to look pretty
and if they fuck with my career or friends
i get pretty medievally real
im not proud of this part of me
but i live with it

i know myself that i am no fantasy
and have said so many times to many people that i am not the saint
i am not the genius or visionary or whatever moniker i have been given to live up to
i have not thrived on creating myself as anything but a person who
can hopefully face his own reflection without flinching
knowing that no person can ever know the true me
and that living in my own truth is way harder than resting back in the outward perception that others
may have of my endeavours
as if my community self was somehow more real than the me that has to sit in my own skin
and know the lies i have told myself to just get out of bed some days


the dangerous pronouns have always led us down tangled paths
i know when words are not directed at me
know that my scarred heart has not healed from the arrows and bullets launched at it
by people who have claimed to love me
when really they loved what they thought i might complete in their lives
such is love so often
a kind of self gratifying reflection where we tend to
imagine the other person somehow completes us
or can provide us something
or is like us in some mystical way
we continue to tell these crazy mythologies about our lovers and our loves
our crushes and our hopes
or crushed crushes and our personal nemeses
somehow it ends up looping back on itself
and in our happy moments of believing ourselves elated by love's discovery
we remember how much depends on our own imagination
our own willingness to tell a story about what any interaction means
or what it could mean
and maybe too often we forget to be truthful and really feel for a moment
the exactness of a momentous feeling of rawness
the colour of leaves without an assessment of the place they hold in our self important lives
the quality of our actions as they have implications upon those around us
the very air we breathe
integral
no wondering about what has beens might have been nots and changed way sign scaping
all this water under so many bridges i
reach another birthday reminder of the pathways i have walked
know the place that people hold in my heart
know my true friends
and know that in these declarations
that the truth is more fun
than a bag of hammers.

some days it's existential
a cynicism 3 decades plus in the making
combined with a healthy dose of creative optimism
low tech ingenuity
and the ability to live on almost nothing
except the quality of the experience
and the wonder of each day's
miracle

every tale has its own resolution
a fidelity of impressionable events
imprinting their marks on our bodies
time you are a cruel companion
in your exquisite revelation of moments
choices woven from the fabric of yesterday's futures
mother i miss the simple taste of a free afternoon
when the deadlines were't converging
and the spirals weren't so dizzy

it's been a long walk
compounded by the temporal phase shifting
i didn't notice how the leaves just suddenly turned
one day red
the next gone
like seasonal certainty
and i never wanted to anticiapte it
as if not thnking about things
would help them stay the same a little longer
just enough to savour the starlight and that quality of
smoothness your cheek had when i touched it
to live inside that instant
to look closely at the breath's exhalation into
the air
in a cold snap
a photograph can only show
so much detail

somehow i know your life is nothing less than intense
when you creep in its always in some thought of death and life
the mingled senses of the latenight emergencies
and i'm doing my best
to avoid the implcations still
it's why you had to leave

what was it that caused the disalignment
i feel something happened but i can't say what
it was like suddenly knowing you were going to
go and
there was nothing left to grasp at
hard to say how we felt then
numb as we had become to the feeling of loss
to the trust that could never be regained
the questions that could not be left unanswered
instead
they were replaced
with a fresh perspective
but no less
mystery

my achilles heel is equality
that libran sense of fairness leads to my scorpion moon lash out
astro logically i am impossible to argue with
if you have ever tried you know this is true
altho i do not always claim to representing the absolute
i am rarely wrong in the viewpoints i espouse
mostly because they tend to come from wanting fairness over winning
such that every victory is a mix of bittersweet defeat as well
that i should cause pain to reveal the realism
that i should be attacked for truth i attempt really only to show
not to lord over my foes
or to do anything but level the field again
so that play is fair and fun
a collaborative endeavour
living love as a methodology of existence
and understanding that not everything is fun
every story is not always worth telling
and that some folks
will always hate you
no matter what you do
love then
means simply being real
as real as you can
in a world
of actors and posers


the doors to these words will never be closed

love poetry has never been the breadwinning ambition
endless streams of these declarations
what am i hiding?
why have i reacted to accusations i feel are made of my impact on you?
love i am
an impossible ally
with an exceptional conscience and
unfortunately low willpower
its too easy to get me engaged in debates
i love challenges
i will not tire until the two sides finally see each other
and agree on a plan to just move on from the obstructions
look at the implications of arguments
as if heaven itself was suddenly soured by the lack of agreement on the terms of its definitions
as if we didnt have something more fun to do than fight
isnt it weird how many ages it has been that humans battle each other
for reasons they still dont understand?

see
do you think you really want the poetry?
it confuses you more than it ever solves riddles
it is love deeper than you can imagine
this is the raw moment of heartfelt expression bleeding itself dry on the page
love
this is a reminder to clear the slate after every uncomfortable encounter
it was just another human misunderstanding
wide eyed and hungry to be seen for what we really are
to be loved with no conditions or boundaries we
fixate on things in others
really just parts of ourselves we wish to learn and develop and
these encounters of challenge are painful places of humble acceptance
where i lay down my swords eventually to accept the extents of my failure to perfectly love
when in all my heart i invoke a day when we are able to offer this to all of humanity:
a love so enormous that mountains are its playground and its measure is in aeons
we forgive ourselves these tiny fractions of our lives
where we forget how great it is to simply be breathing

how crazy it is then
that we spend even one precious moment of eternity
being upset
after all its an incredible miracle, daily
the mistakes we make are masterpiece encounters with splattered hearts
all the scars we wear of our past lives
and the makeup removed to show us
what we look like underneath the clothes and the body
stripped of our disguises
and the stories we tell about ourselves

it is
this love
this place
the unconditional acceptance of all that you are...
the choices you make
inspire me to be more kind to be more giving
to remember to photograph the sunset
and make sure to catch you at the moments when you are the most beautiful
to believe that
by showing you the right you have to be seen as an immaculate expression of authentic self
no matter what mistakes you make
or how embarrassed you are
about how you acted or i acted
love
to step beyond all this means to just laugh
or to float for a moment in the bliss of so many photographs that we will have of time
these heart breaking reminders of how we may be the last generation to grow old
to feel time slipping away on us
and the urgency to remain calm
as the oxygen and air
wear us away
the earth body we live in disintegrates and we see ourselves in the mirror
with wrinkles and tears
a lifetimes worth of creases from laughing and screaming
acting and dreaming
love
imagine how much this will be what you remember at the end of days
how the poet was the one who saw to the depth of it all
and felt there the poignant sadness of being so devoted to this illusion
that this grand life we choose and style with our bare hands
will only have so long to exist:
we want to sprinkle our lives with glories
and not be angry at how pain is inevitable
death is the absolute we are taught almost from birth to fear
can you imagine how this love i am talking about,
the one that sees how all the anger and fear for the millenia of human existence
has been unecessary
if only we see
if only we feel
if only we dance
and become
something else

this poem began with you
and will return to you
as you asked for it
and as you wish
the stardust will remind you
sometimes there are bigger fields of play
just outside the door
so often we believe that what we want now
is what we will always want
we find that what we get hung up on in the moment
is but a blip in a path beyond
opening our hearts to compassion
like the buddha suggests
empathy for the essence of human fate:
to be stranded from infinity thru forgettting
and feebly learning how to perfectly love all parts and facets of ourselves again
love
forgive me if i stumble over the emotions i react to
the fear i have of causing sadness like the sadness i myself have endured
my challenge is not even as much with any person
as it is with the language that creates such separation between souls
when at the core we share such a common root
there is virtually no separation between beings
this is why
you
are beautiful and brave
for being willing to open up and know
no matter what happens
love itself
will never let you down

every once in awhile i get on a cynical, almost mean, streak ,where i find myself evaluating the culture around me in ways which some might argue are semi intolerant. i deem them as being realistic and valid. it's not always easy to solve the connundrum and at times like this i almost seem to care less and less about the schisms i cause. i will admit to understanding that negativity (as criticism often is labelled) causes tensions, tensions cause unrest, people get upset and yada yada. people like me make everything bad for everyone. we shoot down faulty logic, we ask questions, at times i am willing to take on this role, and to be disliked and even deemed arrogant for opinions which i state, emphatically before uttering them, are opinions.

today is one of those days. and the target is dubstep.

let me begin by saying that music is music and that the merits of it, by my own estimation, lie in how it makes me feel. i have a very eclectic taste, enjoying everything from grungy and dissonant indie rock, to twangin whiskey soaked hilbilly blues, to bangin hard nuskool tech breaks. i like little bit of it all and i feel my tastes have been shaped by a keen ear and a very open mind when it comes to the tunes. i am also a dancer at heart and extremely influenced by anything that causes my body to get down. the tirade begins here. dubstep, for me is generally none of those things. i will state that i do have dubstep tracks that i like, and even play out as a dj, because heavy rumbling bass is fun for a few lower chakra minutes, but the entire genre of dubstep and its subsequent rise to an undeserved king of the heap of current electronica actually epitomizes, to me, everything that went drastically wrong with digital music culture in general.

i need to make one more disclaimer here. i still feel very strongly that digital music culture is a legitimate and powerful world shaping force. there are vast quantities of incredible music out there, so the following discussion in no way demonizes or devalues the medium itself. digital culture is changing us right down to our cellular structure, how we see and interpret the world are being deeply influenced by the advancement of this technological experience. it is here that my issues begin, and here where i remain to keep evolving my own relationship to it as i evolve my human self along with itechnology.

where the fuck did dubstep come from? i mean that metaphorically, not actually, because there is a bigger wikipedia article on it than there is for electronica as a whole. it's a sign of the times, that history as we wish it to be documented is no longer simply the story of the winners. it is the story of those who have the most time on their hands to enter in data. dubstep quotes its roots in a number of harder edge ghetto music genres like ragga, jungle, grime and dub. the roots are not the issue. dubstep is perhaps the first genre to truly suffer from the ubiquitous nature of the the proliferation of music software. simply put, we are entering the age when everyone is a dj, and many are becoming producers. notice that qualifiying words like, competent, skilled, or even "good" are not used here. the notion of quality is being drowned by quantity and right now the kids are stuck in a media paradox which hopefully will lead us back to quality music. dubstep is not quite it. already, however, it has placed itself into the dialogue of cultural evoltion. it sees itself at the pinnacle of a crest. many feel like that crest died a long time ago and that we are simply waiting for another wave.

along with being a nebulous genre music wise, dubstep seems to be even more nebulous in its production of exceptionally talented producers. a scene no more really than 5 or 6 years old, sprung up overnight due to the multimedia spread of its memes and its attitude on a global level. memetic amplification has long been an obvious trend in the digital world. it has become remarkably easy for ideas to become viral. hype and promotion spawns new generations of kids who see their scene as the first of it's kind to exist..and indeed it is. what the majority of scene oriented dubsteppers seem unaware of is how quickly they will find the fastpaced evolutionary trends will subject them to harsh awakening when people wake up to the fact that they dont have to listen to shitty music to get the powerful feeling of being part of a movement.

a point worthy of mentioning here has to do again with the opinionated nature of writing such an article. i feel i need to distinguish the difference between people who genuinely are aware of music and its genre straticfications, able to dissect music for crtitique as well as enjoyment, and those who are following trends, into what is the current flavour of the minute. those who truly espouse dubstep as a genre of music tend to be able to produce many worthy track within the genres expansive parameters. like all genres there are gems amongst the shite. the scensters, these days, seem more and more able to stomach the crappy production of genres like dubstep and "electro" ( a misnomer of epic proportions, doing a great disservice to an earlier genre of electronic music stemming from the brekbeat tradition). in facty it seems often that the average scenster now is not even really aware of what the word dubstep refers to, much less understanding its roots in jamaican culture and its birth as a splinter of harder ghetto music from the grimy corners of south london. for most people, genres are markers of status and the average clubber might be hardpressed to pick dubstep out of a shitmix of many grungy grimy hard bass gangster music.

dubstep, along with the hipster sentiment it embraces as a following, shows the darker side of youth boredom and angst, a scream into the dark sides of the underbelly of what 50 years or so with out major threats to 1st world security, 40 years since the last "real" war and a loooooong time past when most kids had to work hard at anything at all. these are the supreme beings of leisure, the followers of pleasure and power. these are disposable income spenders and credit card pros ready to party like the whole world is gonna be gone tomorrow, because, well, that's what the media tells them is happening now. we fucked it all up. so lets rage!

dubstep seems to be a deep rumble from the existential crisis that we are left with in being told that humanity, as a species, is such a failure that it fucked up its home planet beyond repair. it rarely, if ever, feels optimistic or fun in outlook. dubstep is like the house wrecker party you used to have before you left a rental suite from a shitty landlord. and it sure isnt how i want to celebrate the end times: with a cynical fuck you going out howling and wailing and scared. shitting one's pants is not always a positive quality in music. maybe this is the closest we come to really being warriors now. fighting our way thru 14 hours of sub shattering bass at like 60bpm. its like slowly going into a coma. a car crash happening frame by frame. note by note. and you are following it, as the dj is rewinding it back to the beginning again so you can enjoy the buildup before that pummeling bass goes back to shattering plaster off the ceiling.

i guess some people are gonna say they love that. but do they? what our bodies are hardwired for is often a mystery. humans have an odd relationship to pleasure and pain. the subjectivity of the subject makes it almost impossible to truly judge. i can say that if the technology itself is being set on fire while the music is playing, its a good indicator of what its doing to you biologically. sub frequencies have scientifically demonstrated effects on the body (need citation) as well as piercing high end frequencies. in the energetic frameworks these are 1st to 3rd chakra frequencies. raw power, primality, sex , fight or flight reflexes. these frequencies are deeply familiar to our biological bodies as our dna continues on carrying the information is has gleaned over millenia of transference. dubstep is all lower chakra music. it's fighting and fucking music with a rare glimpse of heart.

the intelligence that it attempts to bestow upon itself is humourous. they are given an A for effort and ingenuity in terms of describing their profession. there is an attitude that dubsteppers have espoused which makes the scene so ripe for a cultral backlash. its ascension is not backed up with a truly deep traditon in music. its haziness in terms of definition allows just about anything bassy to don the terminology, and as a result a night of dubstep could range in all forms of tempo, in many styles but remain consistently pummelling in bass. this sort of variety is awesome if you could predict it, but often tends to be wholly chaotic, an almost prerequisite to dubstep production and djing. the harder the better, the more dissonant, the more rough and tough, abrasive and huge wins points. he genre's value lie in the realms of power and sexuality as it often tends to lack intellectual substance, and the entire genre suffers at its own hands as a memetic scene, portraying itself as avant garde and revolutionary, with a message that is neither of those things. this trend played out, albeit much more slowly, with drum and bass, as well as genres like garage, and like oriented music which priveleges a feeling of abrasion and dissonace, an anger and tension a frenzy even of heartbeats and spastic motion.

to cut things short or to really hit home pointwise, the genre lacks playful fun, unless you count trying to outdo each other in hard darkness as "fun" and playful. the genre seems to be an injoke amongst the producers and dj's and a soundtrack to a hard gangster life. perhaps this is where the judgement comes in, because it seems to offer nothing in the form of hope for evolution out of the murky depths of nihilistic despair. tonally the music is discomforting and abrasive, often played waay too loud, occasionally resulting in damage of sound equipment due to inexperienced or innebriated djing. the genre breeds a type of contempt which, albeit perhaps warranted in a world full of lamenss, is also simply reflecting rather than transforming the hegemony it attempts to subvert. it's aim is not quality or beauty, rather the extent of ugliness or darkness is often the yardstick by which the value of the music is determined by its proponents.

this may only be an opinion, but tell me honestly, do you like being sonically assaulted during your weekend off from the assault of everyday life? if we are what we ingest, both physically and mentally, then what do we become when producers of shitty music make us eat their angsty shit? isnt it time we kinda just let dubstep crawl back to the filthy muckhole it slithered out of?





opinion

remember when i used to think my life was a superlative example of evolution?
i got schooled so quickly looking back on the notebooks from aeons past
lifetimes of trips and excursions through metamaze of mind and spirit
all the trap doors i fell down and had no idea
it's time to begin
time to return to the loftier goals
now that the absurdity of the emotional outbursts have proven their illusion
and a new illusion is the standard fare for healing
of course the pain of the story gone wrong subsides into the treacherous territory of
new love
new myths spun from the silkenthreads of our dances together
magical lover or something or other
i aimed even higher than cupid did with my arrow
and shot the sun
now its pouring direct photons on me from way way out
goddess this is so laughable
you don't even know who i am writing this to
new sweetness at the edge of time the humour is in how much you really don't know
i feel old sometimes just thinking about the nonstop procession of life's undeniable characters
that night
entheos
i ditched the doctor and her sister and wound up in the woods somewhere at a table with
someone who said a million words in a look
and even tho right now i am thinking about that
about the moments of emptiness i felt dj'ing my set
or in the beer can camp with the pirate cool kids
living the polarity to everyone else around me if they only knew
if you only knew what universes i have spun from these fingertips
if you could have seen me leaping from granite cliff to cliff in the suntanned daze
of the mushroomed youth
as if the whole world was eden
and i had no choice but to wump
i'm not so different inside
playful elf from the future meets scouter forest amphibian
the rambles the brambles
the trips back to the coast where the houses of glory wrap their tendrils around me and i sink in
to life's symphony of friendly voices
soul beings on the path to something
this high way
this brazen attempt to decode the unbreakable cypher
soul spirit is it you or you or you or
where are you ?
i thought hadu was the one
but her destiny is unspeakably intense
a healer fit for a chief
me i am
the stargazing advisor to the alchemist
i am the wandering troubador and intergalactic spy
my sense of this life is bizarre
i have no idea what amnesia i have undergone
to suddenly wakeup in the middle of the dream and realize the whole thing has been
a story
a mimed out set of actions and reactions partly freeform partly written
who knows?
you know its a relief to let it all hang out
to sigh and sip in the evening's sweet air
i know the feed will inform you of something here
and as usual you will wade thru the mixed metaphors and the breadcrumbs and get confused by the pronouns
nothing and everything changes here
this is waveforming space
on
beyond

the ravens are taunting me today
guides and symbols they are
messengers of immanent eschaton
the shadow warriors waiting patiently for the moment you aren't watching to
disappear
vanish
leaving no clue of your totem it seems
forever since the eagles have been around i
watch the sky for them saw them
over pulpit rock yesterday morning with binoculars from the kitchen window
but they were too far away to focus in the old lenses
is it my totem i lack
or my totem surrounding me?
eagle medicine raven medicine
last year the eagles lived in the trees outside my window
and the ravens reluctantly shared the sky with them
remember that hike up to mount daniel when all the baby eagle chicks were flying for the first time in their lives?
maybe 20 or more in the air
you and me also
seemed fitting you thought you were raven clan when we first heard of it
were certain in your tricksy ways to be the blackbird
singing
the night was never dead tho was it?
that moment's arrival a lifetime of waiting
by the campfire and nestled into the nook of that giant cedar
i felt inside my pure heart the eagle's endless virtue
the stern observation of reality and still life at sunrise
and you wanted to sneak smokes after everyone else had turned in
raven spirit waiting on the rocks in the morning for the scraps and crumbs leftover from the human feast
i hear the eagles like living around the dump
but they don't eat garbage they
feed on the things that feed on garbage
whereas the ravens they will eat pretty much whatever they find
scavenger beings ready to steal
bold thieves will even take fire from the gods
but accidentally drop it into our hands
i feel the days mist today
heckyll and jekyll are on the power wires
and their mysterious 3rd friend is in the tree and they are all watching me
wondering where
the eagles are

you wish to focus the beam
beaming mind teeming with gleaming
crystalline thoughts you're schemin
dreaming of how to peel yourself off the ceiling
reeling this has to be a new kind of feeling
a new kind of dealing
now its just a matter of keeping it real

certain things will always seem to set me off. assumptions
made of who or what i am now and was then
i love the creek
did my time there building foundations that people who live there now
don't even realize were built
were done
so done that
so been there
so halled out it was like stagnation intensity
it was a lot of dreams that never seemed to get anywhere
so i moved to the mountains to get a fresh perspective
and lo and behold
things start to move again
there and here
and the happiness i feel here daily reminds of of when i arrived there
before the stalkers and the haters
before the madness that descended on my own slice of heaven there
yeah it pushed my buttons to think that i eventually had to leave because of that kind of shit
which i guess i am bad at dealing with because
it kept haunting me
taunting me for some reason
kept digging in at my personal happiness
consciously or subconsciously it was pulling me and my lovers and friends apart
dividing me against myself
pulling my community onto the drama
and now i think back on it
hear how lovely it is there
how happy some people are to not have me around there to be a challenge
as if just being me was a challenge to some people
so i hope their slice of heaven
is gorgeous and real
like i used to love about my life there before the dramas
and i hope the thoughts of heaven and its ease
are also reminders of what had to be sacrificed
to get there.