war

September 30, 2013

The Real World: Attending To The Here And Now

This is the typical human problem. The object of dread may not be an operation in the immediate future. It may be the problem of next month’s rent, of a threatened war or social disaster, of being able to save enough for old age, or of death at the last. This ‘spoiler of the present’ may not even be a future dread. It may be something out of the past, some memory of an injury, some crime or indiscretion, which haunts the present with a sense of resentment or guilt. The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings the past and the future are not as real, but more real than the present. The present cannot be lived happily unless the past has been ‘cleared up’ and the future is bright with promise.

There can be no doubt that the power to remember and predict, to make an ordered sequence out of a helter-skelter chaos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful development of sensitivity. In a way it is the achievement of the human brain, giving man the most extraordinary powers of survival and adaptation to life. But the way in which we generally use this power is apt to destroy all its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present.

What is the use of planning to be able to eat next week unless I can really enjoy the meals when they come? If I am so busy planning how to eat next week that I cannot fully enjoy what I am eating now, I will be in the same predicament when next week’s meals become ‘now.’

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

~Alan Watts

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September 18, 2013

Deranged Delusions

deranged delusions dance before dawn
daring to be real in the fit of a new day

apologies for carefree freedom rings
ringing but w/no bells, just sound

trees killing themselves in cities
ocean waves rolling tides over white music

but no voices
volunteers borrowing some other country’s sorrow

in the middle of the day, crying
crime of 3:30am prepubescent penal passions

love raining elusively over neo-noir-nouveau fashion
shows

silly salacious serenity says too many faces of insanity
saddam hussein’s feral feeble reminders

of a death invented just so we can stay alive
sublime silence screaming behind bars

bare & naked & nothing else to see in
nonsense

sensing this moment: a now, & now

the end

August 21, 2013 Video

Have You Ever Considered Any Real Freedoms?

“Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others? Even the opinions of yourself?…” ( Colonel Kurtz – Marlon Brando from the film Apocalypse Now )

*Image Credit (work used with permission through CC license)–
“Apocalypse Now – Kurtz” by Sergio Bertolini

Interconnected Posts–

August 21, 2013 Video

What Is More Obscene?

“Murder is illegal, but you take a picture of someone committing the act of murder they put you on the cover of Newsweek . . .what is more obscene: sex or war?” ~Larry Flynt

ONE OF THE MOST IGNORANT TESTS EVER*Image Credits (all work used with permission through CC license)–
“ONE OF THE MOST IGNORANT TESTS EVER” from Robert Huffstutter
“RELATIVISM AND THE THIRD MAN” by Jim Devlin

Interconnected Posts–

August 9, 2013 Video

Melvin (music video)

Melvin has ShizoAffective Disorder. Melvin has no socially constructed ego.

This is Melvin’s daily lifestory. Melvin is fine one moment, and in complete madness the next, then after too much of society’s false conventions, platitudes, consumerisms, materialisms, pseudo-complexities, bureaucracies, frivolous and superfluous laws, governments,  neuromarketed ego need for shopping and other illusions and imaginary things, for too long, Melvin becomes shell shocked and unable to function. . . like a thousand yard stare.

This experiemental, ambient piece depicts the ups and downs, the good days and bad days, the moments when Melvin is “okay” and those moments when Melvin is going through hell. It’s syncopation follows the daily “schizo” moments wherein madness seems to overwhelm the entirety of Melvin’s consciousness and awareness and also those moments of beauty and tranquility wherein the whole of being becomes filled with peace of mind. This Melvin’s dis-ease, this Melvin’s life. Hit PLAY.

Melvin is a term of endearment given to me by my Stephen. So, this one is personal.

More of my music videos.

Credits–
[Clips used from the following footage. Some used with permission of CC license and others available in the public domain]:
“Sand City” by Don Whitaker
“sometimes i want to be a monk” from Daniel J Alex
“War Neuroses — Netley Hospital, 1917” by Wellcome Film
“chicago beach” from doctorfaustroll
“American Look (Part I) 1958” produced by Handy (Jam) Organization
“The Samaritans – Scream” from HallofAdvertising
“Platinum Fashion Mall, Petchburi Road, Bangkok” from Guido Vanhaleweyk

Image Credit (available through public record from the National Archives):
“Thousand Yard Stare” from The National Archives

Music:
“Melvin” by NIKOtheOrb, available for download and Track 1 off future album, From The Mind Of A Schizo, Affected (COMING OUT SOON!).

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August 5, 2013

Invisible Pain in an Imagined Small, Quiet Village

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. ~Khalil Gibran

From The Mind Of A Schizo, Affected:

The Thinker in the Dark -- A5The incessant noise: it burrows through my mind like some kind of advanced technological precision military weapon. And yet if one were to speak of such an occurrence, should it be vaporised simply because it lacks all the evidence of tangible reality? Yet, how does the similarity end? When the bombs are over and the rubble cleared and the dead found then buried (if they are found amongst the rubble) in pieces?

On SufferingI imagine, in some cases at a quiet small village in (allways) a “foreign country” (how insane that phrase!! How belittling and dehumanizing to be labelled such a phrase. *Foreign*, i.e., ‘You do not belong here.’ Which means your death is not only justified but righteous, because you are not human, you are foreign. Your stink, your culture disgusts the pure mind of the True American. ‘How dare you dirty our precious soil with your unwanted and uncivilized feet.’ With a “simple” phrase, entire popuations can be annihilated and the annihilator celebrated as victor! This green color be apt for such a thought: the colour of vomit and scum and shit. That is the conditioned, stupefied humanamatons created through slyly placed neuromarketing and micromanagment).

All the troubles lie on his shoulderWhat tangible reality is left them (in that imagined quiet, small village or that sly-built humanamton)? Is not the continuing pain (or equivalent) suffered silently? Wrapped up in the reticence of truth? Lingering long after the village has been re-built and daily routines returned to normal? Is not the memories weaved into stories? What of that? Does that mean that once the visible violence has been swept up that the invisible also ceases to be? That is not to imply that I compare myself to those who were murdered (on both sides) in war. I only attempt (and perhaps poorly) at an analogy.

That pain can be invisible as well as visible.

*Image credits (all artwork used with permission through CC license)–
“On Suffering” by Hani Amir
“~Painfuless~” by Stuart Williams
“The Thinker in the Dark — A5” by H. Koppdelaney
“All the troubles lie on his shoulder” by Rana Ossama

A gallery of the above thumbnails to be viewed (deservedly) larger and on black: