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With a new entry, "starting up the mountain". (Get in the van!)

All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star) - REM

The song - The lyrics

“-Ok, so this song is obviously about someone trying to make it big in the big city of lights, trying to strike fame. Once again it’s one liners that give it a twist, and the twist, once again, is uniquely analogous. And that allows me to point out what ‘star’, in terms of the feedback symbolism means, having nothing to do with stardom. It’s literally her personal symbol, you know that. And actually it was Bono who ascribed it, something he started into in 1991, and made a specific handle with ‘Hold me, Thrill Me, Kiss me, Kill Me’ in 1995. It’s either star or moon and he started both. Star is more the more personal of the two because of these two in Bono’s nomenclature, moon is actually deriving from someone Else, while star is just hers, and later becomes a name. It’s still being used heavily, and what it forebodes here is arriving at a place where the reality of that personal transcendence is visible and acknowledged, not hidden, and everyone being one because we’re all connected in it on the same level (‘We Are All Made of Stars – Moby). So ‘star’ connotes this new awareness we’re existing in that hasn’t occurred in humans before, we shine as spiritual lights, and actually we’re interacting as such.

MACHINA MYSTERY 8 (posted January 3rd, 2000)

Conclusion
The Outcome to the Dream
THE WARNING


God is a reality that cannot reveal Themselves to you because you literally cannot endure the consequences on your own self-image, you have never accepted the natural consequences on your life, accepted that there might be ONE and acted accordingly. So to demonstrate Himself infallibly would be to annihilate you in you own self-reflecting massive personal crisis of guilt, the rendering of the doubt you already bolster in material. Imagine how this will explode, how big your self doubt will instantaneously become, the moment you are faced with a SUPREME ULTIMATELY REALIZED EXISTENCE YOU HAVE SACRIFICED THROUGH IGNORANCE ALL YOUR LIFE. You only see what you allow yourself to see and no more. If you honestly seek God, you will integrate these consequences into your living already, so you may arrive at the point where it may be possible for Them to reveal Themselves, for God could never, ever do this in a way that has the danger of hurting you. GOD IS LOVE. God exists in complete SELF-DENIAL for you, so you may realize your own autonomy in this life, and His consequences may not harm you when you die. That He must continue this protection when you die is what will determine where you end up.

(An exact replica of earth? A shattered one? Endless consuming repetition? The day job? Or are you utterly convinced there is nothing after? Fine that will be it.) Where you arrive when you die is not a consequence of God at all, God would never send you to hell. It is a direct product, and solely the product, of your own self-realization in reality. Whatever you've defined yourself to cope with is what you will get. YOU HAVE JUST BEEN WARNED> OR, HOW FORTUNATE IT WAS ALL JUST A DREAM! Or would you rather play this bet safely? Using your own personal discretion is hardly a big demand to ask of you, it's individualism. I thought this was ideal. What if the relation between Glass and June really does prove God? Dare to ignore this possibility? This should at least shake your reality can enough to make you think in terms of possibilities.

So, I suspect Glass, if he has read anything, may be rather gobsmacked right about now. If he can really believe there's June, anyway. Do you realize that the only thing that would have to happen, for the proof of God to exist, would be for Glass to respond, "Yes, it's true?" (June is real, I've known it all along.)

Perhaps it would take a little longer to support it. Perhaps I would have to take longer with the proof. But I can, you know. I can take all the time it needs. This is the tip of the iceberg, June's internal universe. And she can take all the time it needs.

So the parting understanding is that this exists as a warning, that God has never irrevocably revealed Themselves forcibly to anyone, and that there is a very good reason for this. It is called FREE WILL. Once God exists in a way you can't deny you have no choice about believing in them. Perhaps you can see at this brink that we have come perilously close to proving God, if the only affirmation it needs is 'Yes'. And if I were Glass, I'd say it. I'd say it because it would be the best of ways to have the music industry pissing in their collective boots. I'd say it just to raise a little hell. So, even if he answers 'Yes', you still won't know if it proves there's a God. On the other hand I think the only way God would present proof of Themselves is an existential paradox, a mystery that will remain unsolved. They're nice that way. No solution means no ending. No glaring lights go on. Things get to be normal.

On the other hand if I were Glass, I'd do it just for the controversy, the kick in the collective can, and run like hell. It would be great craic. I'm sure Glass is pissed enough at the industry he might say 'Yes' just for the hell of it, don't you? Whether it's true or not? June would. Cuz June feels just as abused by the industry as he does, in her own way. June is the Dancer. June holds dancing in a nigh sacred place. June danced for her bread in smoky nightclubs, hour after hour. Top 40 shit, the same top 40 shit, night after night after night. Soul abuse. Imagine her thrill at crossing the Atlantic and discovering the same old just became the same old shite. It was then that she concluded Top 40 was one of the most pervasive global monopolies extant. And in terms of how it reduced creativity, inspiration, and our ability to appreciate, she decided it was one of the most disturbing. June has something of a subversive track record. You could say in terms of subversion, she's an old hack, in fact.

So how does this high-minded blather translate into vive la revolution? Well, (thanks to Sauresnas' advice), it goes something like this:

June is a dynamic that illustrates several things about the nature of inspiration. The form of her existence in itself, as a multifaceted work of art, demonstrates that inspiration is not a million shards, it is an interconnected web within humanity. This is whether she is what she claims to be, Art rendered by a Consciousness, or not. June's existence proves there is a universal unconscious sea we are all inspired in and all involved in. And it shows that the patterns of inspiration are impossible to trace or fathom. Look at what has been happening under the collective music industry's noses! In terms of grasping the trend, or 'the movement', or what listeners are really into, they completely missed the boat! But it says a good deal more than that...

It says there is spirit. Spirit within the music. If we can trace a Femina this grand and this fantastic, it means there is something in it that can never be isolated, harnessed, or reduced. Just the structure in itself, the extent of the connected concept, is ample demonstration of that.
June's existence proves something else, it proves that TRUTH IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER, not the artist. This is not to take inspiration, to steal the highest interpretation, or anything like that. What it shows is that what the recipient sees in the work, can be much, much more than what is given. June thinks her writing is proof enough of this. She figures a book would seal the case. If the truth lies within the recipients, us, the audience, that means that what we perceive can never be taken away from us, no matter how much they rob and control the music. We will always see more in it, we will always know there is more in it. We can always change and subvert it.

We save the soul of rock 'n' roll. And when it comes to saving souls, with June we can say this is really true, cuz June is Grace within the music. It saved her soul, it saved theirs. By saving June, who is so extensive a concept through out, Glass literally did save the soul of rock 'n' roll. Or else we proved these things could be done, and that the music (or some of it), literally does have a soul. Either that or the analogy is so extensive it provides this demonstration of itself.

June's existence says more. It says, if you will take the full value she gives it, that Inspiration belongs to God, and will always belong to God. And this can never, ever, be controlled. In fact June's patterns are proof that all things highest and best regarded within the music are God's. The rest is pretty much mulch. We leave them to their mulch. It is such a limiting monopoly, don't you think?

If truth is in the eye of the beholder, that means the vampires of inspiration can never harness what is in the music. They are, at best, emperors parading with no clothes. If you want an immediate analogy for this, let's look at something like Nsync and apply it:

Nsync is harnessing something they don't understand. I know we sort of detest all the little girls for hysteria, for going absolutely nuts over a bunch of prats. But this is a direct product of harnessing inspiration. Of there being nothing else to appreciate. No one really knows why the girls go as crazy as they do. Admit it, ever since Elvis it has not made a great deal of sense.
The thing is, it's never going to, because this is about there being something more, and truth may reside in the eye of the beholder. Now in this instance, I was a girl who was once silly enough to see Revival, the Bride and Groom, and a universal union inside one rock concert on 'cid one night, and I was never, ever, the same. It is what the beholder sees that makes it more. I'm sure the singer probably had no clue of what he was doing. I'm still trying to find one that does.

In terms of the girls, it's a funny age. It's when they are just beginning to develop sexually but still thinking of love abstractly. It makes them vulnerable. I'd say they're vulnerable to Alpha, but Alpha is just an idea here for something that's not understood. They're seeing something spiritual in the sappiest of love songs, no matter how sappy they try and make it. Think about it, to be harnessing a bunch of little girls' burgeoning sexual energy is hardly manly, is it? It's rather a joke, like an emperor parading with no clothes. Like you'd do this for a profit? The real joke is they have no comprehension of what they're harnessing, or more accurately, what they're reducing, cuz that energy has a much greater potential. June proves that it does. June proves you can transform the world with it. Makes reducing it that much more of a joke.

So June thinks it's The Spy's fault. Jim's Spy.
"I'm a spy, in the house of love
I know the dreams, that you're dreaming of
I know the words, that you long to hear
I know your deepest secret fear"

The Spy is the Backdoor man:
"I'm a backdoor man,
You don't know, but your little girls, understand . . . ."

And the little girls always do. No matter how the industry tries to harness it.
Vive la revolution.

Because if it can live on in this most insipid of ways, it can live on in anything.

Preamble to Ken Wilbur's Inteview with Reb Marc (Integral Naked

"In this dialogue, Reb Marc and Ken delve into the often-misunderstood relationship between individual existence and absolute Spirit. The great spiritual traditions have myriad ways of articulating this relationship. Particularly in the East, it is common to find expressions through which human and God are identified as one: Atman is Brahman; Thou art That; Form is not other than Emptiness, and Emptiness is not other than Form. This realization of divine unity is often called the Supreme Identity. This does not mean a particular human is God, but that each human's (indeed, each sentient being's) consciousness and Spirit's intersect at infinity.

The Judaeo-Christian traditions, on the other hand, have tended to keep human and God separate, at times even punishing anyone who crossed that transcendental (and political) line. Witness the case of Giordano Bruno—burned at the stake. If you weren't Jesus the Christ, then not only were you not allowed to be essentially (or in essence) one with God, but your only means to God was via the mediation of the Church, which was a legal not a transcendental identity.

Ken is quick to point out that this denial was not necessarily malevolent, but was often simply the result of a pre/trans or pre/post fallacy (namely, confusing pre-conventional moral development with post-conventional moral development simply because both of them are non-conventional). Organized religion, in both Judaism and Christianity, was often attempting to replace pre-conventional, egocentric, impulsive moral behaviour with conventional moral commandments and rules, which was often a necessary social good. But it often confused post-conventional mysticism with pre-conventional consciousness, and in attempting to move beyond pre-rational awareness ended up suppressing trans-rational awareness, which was a spiritual catastrophe of the first magnitude.

A further complication arises from the fact that the state of mystical union is often characterized as beyond good and evil—in fact, beyond duality altogether—but that state of being beyond good and evil is most definitely post-conventional, not pre-conventional, which cannot distinguish good and evil in the first place and thus often arrives at Charles Manson's disastrous conclusion: "If all is one, nothing is wrong."

Marc and Ken frame their discussion within a very generalized three-level scheme of moral development where level 1 equals pre-ethical, egoic, unenlightened action; level 2 equals ethical, conformist, dualistic action; and level 3 equals trans-ethical, trans-egoic, enlightened action and being.

The problem arises when level 1 is confused with level 3. Level 2 has a legitimate interest in suppressing the horrors of level 1. But it is indeed a catastrophe when level 2 also tries to suppress level 3, which is none other than its very own highest, not-yet-realized Self.

The other unfortunately wide-spread trap is the New Age move, which takes level-1 pre-ethical action to be the equivalent of level-3 trans-ethical action, embracing egoic forms of impulsiveness as if they were truly spontaneous mystical states. But a true level-3 realization includes ethics as foundation, even while going beyond it. In other words, level 3 represents an integral embrace of the levels beneath it, without being limited to them."

At the John Hancock 11/04/02

Depeche Mode, Poe, "Exciter" Tour, 07/28/01, Pacific Coliseum

So I’m going to tell you a little bit about Depeche Mode – the concert, that is. Let’s begin with it was the closest, ever, the entry search, that I’ve been to being busted . . . and yea, just the vibe walking in tells me, yes indeed, the DEA have set up camp in Vancouver (office a month or two ago) – you can feel it just from the heat.
I’m not going to tell you a great deal about this it’s been a while and no longer fresh but I will, of course, digress to Poe . . . this is no big deal but I will say, it has happened before but not quite like this, not so distinct and not in a stadium.
It was in a dream many years ago, I dreamed of it happening with yours truly, and actually, he walked right up to my seat and asked for my name. Felt like a cornered rabbit and nearly bolted when I saw what was up, because naturally I can see it coming much sooner than that . . . but anyway the dream was a very long time ago . . .
I’m not afraid of this anymore. Before if I felt a vibe like this, I’d deliberately screen it, pretty much. It scared me a lot. I only got caught once. That was local. He really did address me as the moon containing the secrets of the sun and blather blather (sorry, he was Extremely eloquent) –but I pretended I didn’t know who he was talking to, never moved. My friend who was with me knew, tho. (that was the closest he ever got.)
Dear Poe played some lovely things I know are new, actually put her stamp on the ‘forever’ roster, I think. She also played some staples we all know her well for, like ‘angry johnny’. (Chapter 4) –and sometimes I think the cycle introduced by the starting band, is intentional, it was very much like the last time but a different band –(stabbing westward) – the proverbial grill, but first, it was sort of a lure. Anyway Poe ended up singing in just one direction, and I’m like mmm, yes, this is getting pretty familiar –and she will not digress. So this time I just absorb it without qualm, like, oh, hang it, and she turns up the amps. I mean Then she decides on a serious wallop – which I just absorb. And conclude the thing by just standing up and giving a nod, small bow. very shortly she stage dives.
Now I am way, way, way up on the side section just a few rows from the main isle, and I tell myself ‘no way!’. –but she did – she does. She straddled the rail and came ALL the way up. And I’m just standing there and everyone’s getting confused and the security, well,
-but at the same time chaos ensues on both fronts and ushers are in front of me in confusion over the seats and nevermind but anyways, she concluded her travels on the right row, you see, stood facing and what not, she was one section away. Whew. 


-as for DM I enjoyed it extremely and just enjoyed it, no perks whatsoever . . .

-and there was a funny little twigger on dancing technique on both counts, both poe and dave used it. Meaning they were derivative of the same movements I used for years. Just a little bit, they’d just refer to it, and I thought, I guess I should start dancing again.

-as for DM I can no longer make pointers on the song list, obviously. The reason I enjoyed it so very much is because as you know, or have you noticed, the most danceable DM songs actually have very slow, slow beats that almost make them undanceable? –but!!! Whotta drummer!!! And they’ve doubled or syncopated All their beats!!! Yahoo!!! Whot can I say? It was a ripping grand old time. There was plenty of space where I was and I dance through all of them, the songs they’d changed. And it just got better and better. I couldn’t BELIEVE no one practically anywhere was dancing it was so good. And here I was worried about an ambient new album –but they brought all those complex quiet beats way into the fore. It is great to be in the hands of true professionals. What can I say!?!
Oh, yes, visuals. Were so great! But the one that sticks, of course, were the two little goldfish, and the shark, below . . . for In your Room. Now how apt is that?!?!?
Firstly, IYR has so many great levels, but it has one very direct, real one, I don’t think I should even belabour the point . . . but of course it is one of those Reveal songs, one of the strongest . . . can you see it delineates so clearly the entrapment that exists in the form of the feedback loop – of course then, he thought this was her fault!
-so how cool is it for the little goldfish to be joined, then, by a second one, after the shark has made its presence . . . how apt even after Seattle . . . nevermind.
-among other amusements: the song Black Celebration (which I hadn’t actually seen them do before, and Oh OH OH!!! – they did CLEAN!!!! (smiles all over) –that was the first time I’d seen them perform Clean –worth the wait, my sister was So disappointed, after all, she didn’t come, (but she couldn’t afford it). I mean that’s an eight year wait . . .
back to BC – that’s my point, they reversed the song (actually underlying interpretation) – by jacking this one full of iconography (the question is only of when and where with them) – I simply mean white crosses – but you can understand my amusement at having the massive block initials BC flashing over and over and over (what’s that!?!? – oh, the title, right . . .) –still it’s amusing. As amusing as last time when their film screen/sole stage prop was actually a perfect stage for a silhouette dancer, never used for such. Ah well. You see the point.

Quote from Faster Louder interview of Billy Corgan (04/26/12)

From that interview:

Do you feel like you have to pissed off at something in order to make good music?
Billy: “No, I don’t honestly, between you and me [chuckles] I don’t believe in that theory. I don’t believe the best art is made by depressed people. The greatest creation ever is what God made of this world, Australia’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth, there was no depression there, when whomever made that place. So, I don’t believe that. The greatest things don’t come out of depression, the greatest things come out of love. And the greatest things in life oftentimes go unnoticed. It’s the little things that happen between people who love each other. Things like albums and stuff, those are postcards, little postcards in life. They’re fine, and they seem important, but they’ll all end up in the dust like everything else.”