tomorrow i go under the knife...an internal knife. i'll be doing another ten-day silent mediation retreat at dhara dhamma, the vipassana center in shelburne falls, mass. it's kind of like internal self surgery, where you peel layers of mental encrustations from your essential self. you do this by simply sitting still, concentrating on sensation, watching the mind and the body almost as if you were an outsider looking in. i'm looking forward to diving in again.
i picked up a copy of orwell's 1984 before flying home from texas. somehow i'd never read it. it's eerie how many of the book's themes have manifested. perhaps it's actually a virus introduced to the ruling elite through prep school english classes so that when they eventually come to power they exectute the prime directives without knowing it.
along these lines, i was introduced to a movie in texas called the secret. it's getting the same kind of exposure as "what the bleep do we know" did. the production is melodramatic and focuses on material gain (do you want a car, money, a relationship?) but its message intrigued me. the message is that we attract whatever we imagine. our thoughts form the world around us. if we think negatively, negative things will be attracted to us, and conversely if we visualize the positive, we will attract the positive. this is not a new idea. i've encountered it in my yogic and buddhist studies, but i was happy to have the idea refreshed.
the concept that we are what we imagine is simple but i find it profoundly challenging and sublime. if all that is necessary to bring everything i want into my life is the adoption of a positive state of mind, why the hell don't i just do it? maybe nike is onto something. i normally go about my life thinking that my thoughts are essentially private and inconsequential, little electrical storms between my ears. but, if in fact they're coming attractions, as einstein called them, then a bit of discipline is called for! if it's true that what i think will manifest, i should not want to think about awful things too much. but, the irony in this early 21st century is that when i turn on the tube, read the paper, am confronted with an advertisement, i find that what happens in my head most often is negative. my habit is to exclaim in disgust that everything's going to hell. the refrain at the diner i frequent for breakfast is "isn't that just awful." it seems to me that if we really want to change the world, we first have to toss out notions that we're inconsequential and replace them with beliefs that, despite our relative tinyness in the universe, we are intimately connected and individually powerful and that what we collectively think creates our collective future. in orwell's 1984, the most important goverment branch is the "thought police." the slightest indication, even a facial gesture, that indicates a person is thinking about anything anti-status-quo brings on their demise. it is as if those in power know the potential of thought to alter/create the future and so they do everything in their power to control it so that it meets their needs (to stay in power).
what's so different about today? our media makes sure we're kept in a state of perpetual fear which, not unlike the thought police, enforces conformity by repeatedly focusing us on the negative. it would be fascinating to study a place where news, internet, any communication, for some reason, was cut off for a period of time to see if the events in that place would turn for the better or worse. do the thinking patterns of humans tend toward the negative or the positive? if it is true that we are what we think, how amazing would it be if everyone managed to reject hatred—to simply refuse to think it—and instead, when confronted with the awful, responded with a declaration of what would be nicer? how different would the world be today had the united states responded to 9/11 this way?
i fly out tomorrow, back to the east coast. some final images of austin...
city hall has a pretty cool staircase in its parking garage with a waterfall. construction cranes dominate the downtown skyline as do naked structures to which they attend—my favorite state of most buildings. sunset from mount bonnell, just around the corner from my aunt's house, is stunning. apparently, the balcones fault caused this dramatic rift into which the colorado river flowed (fact check, please).
last day in austin. my aunt's friend mary margaret was very kind to tour me around downtown austin with a special trip to the architect charles moore's house this morning. i've long been curious about this house having seen it published, and having been influenced by moore in graduate school. it was a treat to actually see this house because, like so much architecture, it's difficult to get a sense of a place from photographs and drawings. this house is especially challenging because, in photographs, moore's sizable folk art collection tends to dominate, but in person—in three dimensions—the complex spatial relationships are clear, inviting and delightful. kevin keim, the charles moore foundation's director, was very kind to tour us around and detail the story of the house. there's more information about the foundation at www.charlesmoore.org.
i took lots of pictures of the modern, too many to post here. you can see them by clicking here. it's genius. designed by japanese architect tadao ando.
i'm writing from the radisson business center, fort worth, texas, open til 10pm, on an ancient ibm keyboard connected to a pedestrian dell desktop with free high speed. i just hopped out of the hot tub in which i chlorinated myself in shorts from the lost and found. the hotel is most accomodating.
today i visited two museums with my aunt and two of her friends, owen and judy. one museum i've seen in pictures, heard about for decades, the other is completely new to me. the first is the kimbell, designed by louis kahn. i once told a newspaper reporter that i thought architecture was at least 50% about photons. the kimbell is a testament to that notion, as is the second museum, but that comes in the next paragraph. kahn's design of long parallel barrel vaults slit at their apex to allow light to penetrate and be washed upon the vault's interior surfaces produces some of the most beautiful museum lighting i've ever seen. the light is made especially beautiful by kahn's use of travertine marble and highly finished concrete.
next we crossed the street to see the modern designed by tadao ando. the entrance is a modest and calm composition of glass, metal and steel. it's not flashy but, kind of like a good movie, the first minute of your experience whets your appetite and foreshadows the interior, which is one of the most beautiful museum interiors i've seen. i said to my aunt, "you can't take a bad picture in here." five wings house the art and sit in a reflecting pool. each is punctuated with a giant Y-shaped column supporting its cantilevered roof. there is perhaps twenty feet between wings and you can step out into a brightly lit floor to ceiling glass atrium at the end of each and observe people in the other wings looking at art. with so many panes of glass interacting you see reflections of the museum, people and art overlayed with what you are seeing directly. it felt like i was looking through memories and though the people i could see in the other wings were many panes of glass separated from me, i felt a closeness to them.
earlier in the week i visited friends michael and rebekah in wimberly. they had a surprise for me which turned out to be a session with glenda bell, a sound healer, who surrounds you as you lay in relaxation with vibrating metal and crystal bowls. when these bowls begin ringing together the sensation is, well, just amazing. my bones vibrated, my pulse quickened, the sound moved through and around me. at the end she placed a couple bowls on my chest and abdomen. i was high hours afterward.
after just arriving, i drove a rented car east to houston, where my friends garrett and sarah live with their two kids. i've not seen them since they were married. garrett graciously toured me around houston, showing me the great and the banal, both of which i love, and which seem to be freely intermingled in houston. it's refreshing to visit a place which zoning has not homogenized. i've come away with an aesthetic appreciation for houston. some of the highway interchanges take your breath away.
tomorrow, dallas.
i'm flying to texas tomorrow to visit family and friends. i haven't been to austin in a long long time, more than 30 years, i'm not quite sure. i'll be visiting my aunt, uncle, cousin and friends michael and rebekah, as well as friends from architecture school in houston, garrett finney and sarah newbery and their kids. i love to travel. i especially like airports. to me they're almost like meditation centers. i like the time alone to read, contemplate, people watch and the perspective from 30,000 feet. why are there so many undeveloped subdivisions out there in the middle of nowhere?
i've been indulging in a bit of television watching lately. not actual television with commercials and showtimes, but queer as folk on dvd with pause, fast forward and bathroom breaks. two of my roomies, javi and justin, have been watching it and i've become hooked, consuming three episodes at a time. i've found myself intrigued by the coldest, perhaps least likeable, character in the show. he's skilled, intelligent, handsome, wealthy but he holds expressions of love at arms length, either ignoring them or slashing them with his wit and cynicism. it is television, but still, i wonder, could someone really be so cold, so abrasive and calculating and not lose everyone? even with this question in my mind, i'm find myself drawn to this person. i feel that though he's difficult he is also human and in his own way is being genuine acknowledging (or not) his difficulty with love. and like this character, brian, i'm know that deep down i have a hard time believing i'm worthy of love--i feel silly typing that out, melodramatic--but i know it's true and i know it's why i have sought out yoga, meditation, counseling and even some friends and lovers. pema chodron says that we, in the west, have lots of trouble with self-love. we doubt ourselves, sometimes hate ourselves, mistake indulgence for self-compassion. this baffles eastern practitioners, especially the dalai lama, who don't understand this western trait. it makes for good capitalism! sales of self-help products, including mid-life-crisis objects and holier-than-thou paraphernalia are high. so, while the other characters in the show seem to have more going in the self-compassion department, i deeply respect the challenge brian is up against and empathize with him.
for those of you who haven't seen my "award winning" video about the president and his pals i produced two years ago, here it is on youtube, called "powers of bush." just press play.
the awards were minor, but it was fun touring it around. it played on vermont public television and i recently re-used it in another video piece called howls for saddam with music by bill le page. maybe it'll get famous on youtube. tell your friends!
some friends have seen a similar kind of image on michael moore's website, but it ain't mine. that image appeared at just the same time i was producing this video. it always seems to happen that ideas pop into the greater consciousness simultaneously. i just read that autism was discovered independently by two researcers in different countries and both gave it the same name!
i've disembodied my PowerMac G5 and taken it to be resurrected. resurrection takes 7-10 days and requires a $65 deposit. it may require additional time and/or materials, at additional expense. in lieu of waiting, i have purchased a replacement machine, a bit faster, more memory, dual processor which will arrive friday if all goes well. i pondered buying a brand new machine, but then realized i'd have to buy a new version of final cut pro (video editing software), new photoshop, and god only knows what else, for something like $2000.
while i was at the apple store i noticed the 23" LCD screens have dropped in price dramatically, making me salivate. i bowed but didn't bite.
what shall i do without a machine? i think i will clean the studio.
there is a fantastic sunrise out my window, crimson. yesterday, i seem to have killed my computer. i have a cold of some sort, yucky throat. today is election day. my car goes into the shop this morning. i have many unfinished jobs.
this morning i awoke with a micro-epiphany: i'm attracted to music because there is little harmony in my life. music fulfills a deep need for me and suggests to me that i might one day find harmony. i grew up in a dissonant family. we all had good qualities and individually we excelled in our own ways but as a family we chafed. coherent dinner conversations were rare. more typically they were fragmented and occasionally upsetting. perhaps because of growing up in this environment, or for some other reason, i can count on one hand the times i've felt completely at ease, harmonious. they have all been after intense experiences which exhausted me, brought me back to an essential self that was profoundly harmonious.
so, as i'm learning about how music works, i feel i'm learning a big life lesson i somehow missed. i'm learning how harmony is built. for whatever reason, as a child i was much more inclined to chaos, and since then have always enjoyed disaster. my first drawings were about rockets exploding, houses catching fire (dad & mom?). in pre school i would paint a nice house, decorate it, the flames would erupt from a window, smoke poured out in the form of black paint and filled the paper as if it were a container until the entire sheet was black. i accompanied my painting with sound effects. i remember the amusement of my teacher. but as true as this state of mind feels to me (in that the world i grew up in felt chaotic and threatening) i have always recognized (sometimes with fear and loathing, sometimes with sappy abandon) the peaceful. deep down beneath all my armor, i am attracted to harmony. it moves me. i can be brought to tears when i turn on the news and hear about nations resolving deep tensions, people making up, an animal being saved.
i see all this tension, resolution, dissonance, and harmony reflected in music in a profound way. i see how that if you start with a note, a fundamental, and build upon that with certain relationships, you get a something that sounds harmonious. and when you put things together that have no particular relationship to each other you get chaos (noise). if i had a fundamental notion about my bedroom or my desk there might be the possibility of some harmony. but as they are, if you could turn them into sound, they would at best be an ugly chord tending toward static.
my advisor in college said to me after i'd had trouble with an architectural design, "you can really only have one or maybe two ideas in a building." he was speaking of a fundamental. i remember watching picasso in a movie create a painting. what impressed me most was how he never contradicted his own moves. he only built on what he'd done, harmonized with himself. i'm learning from music to consider my own fundamentals, listen for them, build upon them and harmonize.
first off, happy birthday brother frank! i have no idea if you read this but i hope you're having a good one.
ever since band in fifth, sixth and seventh grade, maybe eighth too, in which i played the trumpet, and ever since the few piano and guitar lessons i had in my teens, i've always wanted, desperately at times, to understand how music works. i did well enough memorizing notes and chords, but it was always a mystery to me how keys worked, why there were all those sharps and flats, and why, whenever i tried making up tunes myself, they always had a similar sound to them that i couldn't escape from.
it's ironic that i have spent a good deal of my professional life working with music-making machines and still have never figured it out. but, i'm taking long overdue action to remedy this situation. for the past many nights (and some days) i have been moving through a book i found on my bookshelf (who knows when i bought it) called how to write songs on guitar by rikky rooksby. i'm slightly embarrassed to carry it around with me becuase so many people have the impression that i know what i'm doing! but, let me put it out there right now, i don't! (i feel much better.)
after a few nights with the book, i have enough of a grip to see how fantastic the mechanisms behind music are. of course i knew they were magical because i love music and love the way it sends me, but to see how it works...wow! i have tried reading harmony textbooks, and i may try again, but because i had trouble hearing what the books talked about, and because they assumed some proficiency on a keyboard, i felt left in the dark. the rooksby book works for me because he uses popular music on guitar that i know so much better than classical to demonstrate chords, chord progressions, arrangement, rhythm, melody and lyrics. when i see a chord progression i often can play the song in my head and hear what he's talking about. if i can't, i go to the iTunes store and listen to a free clip of the song, which, most often, is the part the rooksby calls out. very handy.
it's exciting to begin understand how the simplicity of a seven-note system (scale) translates into nearly infinite possibilities, almost like dna. i feel like i'm a kid looking up into the night sky and trying to grasp it all. beautiful and sublime. so, what does this have to do with flowers?
