The Telescopes – Hungry Audio Tapes

Life contains an inherent unpredictability field, one of the most vital building blocks if I may be forgiven that clumsy analogy, although all the blocks are vitally important for Gestaltic reasons. But this Unpredictability Field is often – nay, always – overlooked. This is where the creative spirit comes from, those who seem more creative have a stronger manifestation of this field. One effect of this is that being with them makes life more unpredictable! Obviously.  An example here is weather forecasts. Somebody with a strong field will believe that weather forecasters are charlatans because all the predictions seem to be little better than chance added to easily observable patterns that anybody coulld work out given two functioning eyes.

An important distinction must be made here: unpredictability is not the same thing as randomness.

This is why attempts to build life are going so badly; those attempting to build are not accounting for unpredictability as it cannot be reduced to a detailed description. It has no atoms or its equivalents.

Elektro Hafiz – Elektro Hafiz Dub

The beast cannot be vanquished because its demise immediately spawns another – after all, there is a saying about devils that you know. However, to accept the presence of the beast is not to submit.

Similarly, the light will never be vanquished, despite fears of this nature, and the reason is exactly the same but in reverse.

I wonder if this is pointing to the mirror like aspect of perception, which we have so often interpreted as duality?

 

Bill Laswell Sacred System – Dub Chamber 1: Book of Entrance

Todays fire analogy is to do with evidence and hypothesis.

Say a new perspective or idea arrives in your head, howsoever it may get there. This idea can be supported by experience, it may be questioned by experience, or experience may have no relevance to this perspective (the latter condition is highly improbable although theoretically possible).

Think of the hypothesis as a fire. Supporting evidence is fuel for that fire. This is nice and simple.

What, then, about evidence that seems to contradict the hypothesis? Should it be used to attempt to douse the fire, or would it be more properly used if it were instead considered fuel for an alternate hypothesis/fire? After all, an incorrect hypothesis should not need putting out – it will starve for lack of fuel.

Now, I have seen and you have seen people try to feed their fires with something called ‘selective evidence.’ This may cause you to fear that incorrect fires will be burning because the fuel has been hijacked from the correct fire.

I put it to you that if the fuel is not appropriate to the fire, the fire will not gain much from it, and that there is a law of diminishing returns in these scenarios.

My current hypothesis is that if a fire has been burning for a long time, the chances are that the fire has a steady supply of appropriate fuel.

The only way to keep an incorrect fire burning beyond its natural life would be to use an INORDINATE amount of inappropriate fuel. The strange thing is that true fires seem to keep burning in the background. This may seem confusing. No one said perception and discernment would be easy.

 

One Dog Clapping – Hills to Die On

I could write a whole essay, nay dissertation, on the travails of getting this thing over the line due to PC breakdowns, temporary patches, surprise findings of old pcs in a cupboard, etc. I’m not going to, as it would be of very limited interest.

So this is the yin to The Castle is Burning!‘s yang, or vice versa, I’ve currently forgotten which one is which. I call this my positive album, whereby we find the pockets of light in the darkness that are worth living for, and thus also dying for. The tl;dr summary is: love, authenticity, dreams, banishing fear, and variations on those themes.

Once I’ve adapted to changed settings (for which credit and huge thanks go to my friend Chris Hall), I will get on with the next in the series, which will be Alternarratives.

Bonnacons of Doom – self titled

So I did it again because I’d done it before. Remaining yet unconvinced, I tried a third time; indeed, I soon stopped counting.
Then a voice asked me
‘Why?’
Having no answer, I ignored it. If I couldn’t convince myself then I was in no place to justify my actions but since I lacked an alternative, I continued doing them.
and then another voice asked
‘Why?’
‘Because’
replied the first voice, which I was grateful for because I was about to say that very thing. A conversation started which was really boring, so I won’t repeat it here. I tuned it out into background mental chatter.
and then
apropos of nothing
I said
‘Why?’
and the chatter stopped
I’d forgotten how unsettling the silence was.

 

Indian Jewelry – Peel It

I left my rainbow in my pocket
I forgot to pack it away
It ended up in the wash
And now the colours have run
I can’t use that rainbow anymore

I left my rainbow on the ceiling
I didn’t make it safe
Now somebody’s been in
And painted over it
We can’t see that rainbow anymore

I left my rainbow in the sky
I thought it would be safe there
But someone blew a hole in one end
Graffiti’d up the other
You can’t use that rainbow anymore

I left my rainbow in the closet
And I don’t know what you’re talking about
I haven’t got a closet
And there’s no such thing as rainbows

Our Solar System – Origins

You’re only dead once

The only way forward is backwards

Can you call someone blind if they don’t see what they’re not looking for?

All that I do know is all that you know
As I was saying to myself the other night

Waiting for the punchline so that we can die laughing

She walked through the hall like an earthquake
I could tell things were about to get real

This time I decided to err on the side of gluttony

If you want to win the war on drugs, destroy all humans
oh, that’s what you’re trying to do

Seeing as it’s my blood, I suppose I should clear it up

Melanie De Biasio – Lilies

So I was looking in the mirror, again
it’s a (bad) habit I have
something new was there today
my reflection seemed to be talking
yet I remain still
I leaned closer, to try to hear

It was an apology
by analogy
for a crime that couldn’t be committed
after all
what I’ve already given you cannot be stolen

So I replied to my reflection
who remained graciously still as I spoke
If I accept your apology
I imply that it is necessary
yet if I refuse it
I deny what you have offered

Dearest mirror
you are not cracked
it is the eyes that perceive you that I question
because they doubt what they see
yet what else could they see?

 

Fink’s Sunday Night Blues Dubs

Gambling for life, then.
Sounds dramatic, does it not?
but if we broaden our definition out to a bigger one
than a mere chemical reaction with added respiration and awareness
then maybe it has more utility as a concept
Is not life a pathway?
What if that pathway should seem blocked?
Then the traveller must decide on a course of action:
remain at the blockage
choose a different pathway
remove/overcome the blockage
The latter is a direct combat, which is a gamble
The first is yielding, or biding time, but always a gamble
But the second is the biggest gamble although it requires travelling in order to know
and the blockage may follow, if it be perceptual

In many ways, words are judgements. The label is a judgement. Yet judgement is an incomplete process; the true goal is understanding. Understanding is much harder, as it may mean the assimilation of uncomfortable perceptions that would prefer to be ignored, hence why it is so easy to stop at judgement.
The attempt to understand is a gamble, as you may end the world as you know it when you understand it.
The good news is that it will be replaced by a more coherent one.

 

Fruit & Flowers – Drug Tax

As if by magic, the floor was clean. Kevni was a fairly average specimen for a lifeform of his ilk, though moderately and comparatively more powerful than his brethren, for reasons not immediately obvious. This was because his ancestors had ballooned into this sphere several significant generations ago and now Kevni and his kin controlled all they surveyed, progressing the natives according to a thing they called a doctrine, whereby one must always seek constant growth of an imaginary consequence. Now, whilst the average reader might immediately grasp the possibilities of implementing such a philosophy for a predominantly spiritual quest, and indeed some families did indeed follow this path, the overall outcome was the most influential were Kevni’s forbears who established what you might term a monopo-fucking-ly and controlled much of the communication. They playfully allowed different modes of conduct within their framework, worded in such a way as to seem intractably opposed when their intended ends were still the same, and these usually resolved into seeming dichotomies of one system demanding that all worked together centrally controlled toward a supposed group growth, whilst their ‘opponents’ utilised the same small number of elite although they made them appear as if they were changeable, and these could then use their people in a much more insidiously exploitative manner. But the object of both was to grow, and grow they did, so Kevni’s dynasty was happy. Naturally, this became troublesome to their landscape, which acted as though irritated. Eventually a glutinous fog descended their world, slowly at first, then gradually more thickly and menacingly. Naturally, there were varied explanations. Those in favour of the perpetual growth model said it was symptomatic of something called a ‘climate change’ and urged everyone to buy replacement products that were ‘environmentally-friendly,’ which actually had no effect on the fog but allowed more of a substance called ‘money’ to change hands ultimately into the hands of Kevni and the gang. Others claimed that the fog was just part of a cycle in the environment that would happen anyway, species-led or not, and that they should just sit it out and not give in to any of this scare-mongering tactics. However, the fog really was quite toxic, and eventually they all died fighting each other for the last habitable bits of land that had resources for living off, which eventually dwindled to none. Not even the family Kevni survived.
Kevin had just applied a cream to a troublesome spot on his shoulder which had begun to bother him recently.