Finding One's Own Voice is a Journey

Finding one's own voice as an artist is a journey. If we don't begin that journey then we will not, not surprisingly, find 'it'. And the voiceless artist is ...?

My friend Sambhodi Prem recently posted this video on his FB page - about Osho answering a question in darshan about 'creativity'.

"If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings. Otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copy. It will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual. ... You cannot create as part of the mob psychology. The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path. He has to be a drop-out from the mob mind, from the collective psychology."

I understand one of the facets of this rebellion is the fact that we are all (ALL OF US) innately creative, i.e. it is natural ... and to be 'natural' in this society is to be automatically rebellious ... because creativity is against both despotism and nonsense ... and stupor.

Being 'creative' is also a surrender - to that energetic that 'inspires' us, moves us. (Where does 'that' come from? And, what is it?) I know this to be completely true in my life. I write down what I am given to write down. Then ... I become a writer. Then ... I use techniques and craft ... and so on. I call it 'Polishing the Diamond'. I polish it. but I did not make it.

It is also one of my duties as an artist to not become submerged in the collective cloud of thoughts thought by the human race, as described by Ernest Holmes, most of them thought habitually. Otherwise, how can I be original, since I will be blindly (to mix a cocktail of metaphors) thinking thoughts that everyone else blindly thinks? Otherwise, how can I write 'healingly', counter-balancing the negativity and shallowness that is the stuff and fiber of many stories?

All that, and more, is part of finding voice. Finding one's own voice is a journey. Finding one's own voice is a rebellion. And then ... that rebellion must transform into a revolution.

And, rather than me having the last word, I will, with joy, give the last word to Lady Gaga.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the Light within you!

What Did Dialogue Sound Like Back Then?

We will never know how Handel's music sounded when conducted by Handel himself. Similarly we will never know how the soldiers in both armies talked to each other on the day before the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Or, what two senators sounded like as they walked together through Rome in 44 BCE; or indeed, what Latin sounded like in any regions of the Roman Empire. Same is true for the Picts, who halted the Roman invasion into what became Scotland. Same is true for Troy. What did Helen sound like when she spoke to Paris?

And going back ... and back ... and back ... into the little 'history' we really have. Buddha. And back ...

What if ... Well ...

"By the 19th century, linguists knew that all modern Indo-European languages descended from a single tongue. Called Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, it was spoken by a people who lived from roughly 4500 to 2500 B.C., and left no written texts. The question became, what did PIE sound like?"

There are two brief recordings of Proto-Indo-European, just published. Reconstructed by Dr. Andrew Bird, and for all to listen to at Archaeology magazine.

Here is one, a fable called 'The Sheep and the Horses' -

Both this fable and one called 'King and God' are described and can be heard at Archeaology magazine.

We write and read stories set 'back then' - before we have recordings. I write stories in the English language - it's what I know. I make my characters, 'back then', talk in a kindaEnglish. I do some technical stuff around dialogue. Change the names of concepts that we know and use. Introduce new psychological concepts. Play with spelling. Make dialogue more like the way we speak - breaks and repitations and non-semantic sounds and pauses ... and so on. It is still basically English. I can declare that the psychology, the very mind, of my characters is radically different. Which I believe to be both true and inevitable. I try and change the music of the language and dialogue in my stories so that it does not sound like what I hear around me in everyday life; so that it expresses more of what I believe minds were like 'back' then' in my stories.

And then the same is true for music that 'they' played 'back then'. What did the music of those who built Stonehenge sound like? I would love, just love, to hear it. Of course, for telling stories it only matters that we get to a sense of it imaginally, a sense that we can tell into the fabric of our story.

I'm writing a story about Stonehenge right now. And I am listening, amongst others, to Meredith Monk. She makes music with voices that is not of our everyday here-and-now time. And then I take off imaginally from herThere.

Namaste! I bw to and honor the Light within you!

Wheat Belly – Let Us Together Gut the Belly of the Beast of Hypercapitalism

I write fantasy and magical realism. Right now I’m reading a fantastical and terrifying science fiction story of the destruction of the human race. Except it is a true story. And that is even more frightening …

Yesterday I bought Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis. My chiropractor and healer (strongly) recommended it to me.

Wheat Belly is full of stories. The story of the author’s journey as an overweight and diabetic physician is inspiring. He is a physician who did heal himself. The stories of people he has cured, many with multiple and drastic symptoms, are impressive. There is a story telling of one of the many threads of hypercapitalism’s history - the quest for more of this stuff called ‘money’ regardless of the costs to peoples and planet. And then there is the story of the creation of frankenfood modern ‘wheat’ itself, put together, just as Frankenstein was, from bits and pieces of wheat and plant this-and-that.

And so … once upon a time … long before hypercapitalism … there was wheat. And it was good … And then scientists – and this is such a common motif in our hypercapitalst society – as is their wont (of ignorance) decided to make wheat ‘better’, and at the same time make LOTS of this stuff called ‘money’ for a small number of people. Who in turn became privileged and … but that is another story.

On page 25 Dr. Davis tells us – “… these products of agricultural research were released into the food supply without human safety concerns being part of the equation.” And the rest is history. “… over the past fifty years thousands of new strains (of wheat) have made it to the human commercial food supply without a single effort at safety testing.”

I personally believe all the stories in Wheat Belly are true. Including the one that modern ‘wheat’ is bad. I’ve been trending away from it for a long time – I am not very tolerant of gluten. But now I am done with it.

Of course ‘wheat’ is only one component of the American food lobby’s package that they bribe and bully the rest of the world into consuming. Their top-tier package is – wheat, cheese, tomatoes, beef, corn syrup, potatoes, sugar, milk. Just think of the last time you saw an advert for a pizza or burger. ‘Wheat’ holds or wraps it all together, of course.

In passing let me say … We are also doing the same to our archetypes. Exactly the same. Modifying them. Creating hybrids. Changing them … partly, I think, because we are scared of their purity and the purity of their balance, and the fact that purity is Guiding. And the consequences of that modification program, by writers for studios and games, causes much of the paralleled frenzy and deadness in modern culture. There are no effect-less causes. But all that is another story … to be told at another time …

Repeat: there are no effect-less causes. Feed a population a diet of ‘wheat’, and … Feed a population a diet of frenzied, flattened and mayhemic ‘archetypes’, and …

To be a true revolutionary one has to (at least partly, but most definitely) elect and actively choose to live outside some of the currents of the society that we live in. Quite honestly, there is no point wanting a ‘better’ society while financially supporting the entities and processes that create and sustain the factors in society that we want to change. So it is with the American food lobby – which, in sad fact, is the de facto food lobby for the whole world. We, collectively, do need many of us (we don’t need all of us) to fight hypercapitalism by using one of the most potent capitocidal (that which destroys capitalism) remedies that we have – Money. Or ‘Money’. By surgical withdrawal from one part of the hypercapitalist body and application to areas outside hypercapitalism. Funny huh? It's kind of like a fractalled homeopathy, where we take a diluted small dose of what the 1% love, and use it against them.

“Wheat’ is one good way to begin with the American food lobby. Which in itself is part of the larger Industrial-Military-Financial-Spying Complex.

And … but wait there’s more! Not buying the story of ‘wheat’, and plain not buying it, breaks what I call the White Rabbit conspiracy – “One pill makes you larger, And one pill makes you small”. And the White Rabbit conspiracy is … one part sells you stuff that makes you fat, and another part sells you stuff, they say, that makes you thin. One part sells you stuff that makes you look bad, and another part sells you stuff, they say, makes you look pretty and beautiful. And so on … What an elegant and perfectly balanced conspiracy, that is so easy to maintain, so elastic and cohesive, and so well-hidden because it is in plain view, lauded by terabytes of advertising per day.

The oppression of forced ill-health is BAD. As a writer it is good to fight. You may quote me on that. These stories from our ‘real world’ do impact me as an artist. It is time, I feel, to re-read 1984 and Brave new World.

Namaste! I bow to and honor the Light within you!

and below ... I still love this song, and their 'energy', after all these years ...