Archive for March, 2005

A Sense Of Occasion

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2005 at 2:41 pm by Stuart Davis

Song Of The Day: Hanging Upside Down / David Byrne

Word Of The Day: Redargue / Blame, reprove, confute by arguement; Disprove.

It’s been nuts since I got back home from being on the road.  “Nuts” in  the best sense- as in the mechanical components which fasten and hold  an apparatus together, nuts like the edible protein rich oil-yielding  woody textured fruit or seed, or the two edible ellipsoidal glandular  organs tucked in my scrotal bell-tower, nuts as in the eccentric folly  that is the joy of life.  First, there’s catching up with my daughter  and wife.  I haven’t had a night alone with my wife since I gave up the tried and true ether rag / abduction combo that netted us so many precious hours alone together.  After a while I longed for a more responsive partner, and now we go with a baby sitter. But no baby sitters as of late. I’ve been trying to catch up with my daughter too, she’s oh so close to saying her first words in IS (the words for beauty and baby, which she says, but the diction is not quite all the way there) the constructed language native to our two person culture of weird (by the way, I’m changing the name of the language to Isara,  which is a combination of “Is” - (infinite present tense verb of being, which in the language has a different definition which is “the Mystery, visible and invisible presence which inhabits and informs all phenomena, etc etc”) and “Ara”, which is just another way to tell my daughter she’s God. In the good sense, not that her ego is God (that’s her dad’s pathology, let’s not pass it on…), but that, as my mystic web master remdinds me- to live into the Reality behind the appearances. As the new name of the language, Isara (which is pronounced IHS-ahrah, not with a “z”, but an “s”) simply dedicates the language to her and is a winking reminder.

Do you see how many parenthetical statements I made in the above  paragraph?  Let’s reel it in.

I’ve also been in the studio, working on the new album, and it is fucking kicking. Working on Easter yesterday, both Andy McEwen and I  were like “holy….SHIT”. This is going to be a different sounding record for me.  At once it both features my acoustic guitar more prominantly and also will be more technized and modern sounding. It’s got the vibe of a self-reflexive robot with a tremdously engorged metallic member making causal-body love to a harem of acoustic instruments, oh look, now he’s penetrated the mandolin, and then he’s groping that jumbo Larrivee, and BAM! nothing but robot-tongue up in that viola… Constructed techno drum parts, computers, LASERS, it’s the future of folk music, I just know it. I won’t be happy unless Pete Seeger hears this album and in trying to digest it feels his intestine drop out his sphincter. I want Joan Baez to hear this album and throw up in her mouth. I want Richie Havens to hear it and throw up in Pete Seeger’s mouth. Wow, I’m getting horny. At any rate, I am really, really liking how this project is coming along. Next week, Eddie Kowalczyck comes in to do some vocals on it, the next week Saul Williams will be in to do the same, then we’re going to send some stuff to Ottmar Liebert to track some guitars. We already had the dude from String Cheese Incident in to do a bass line on What, and we know it worked, cuz we were all like “Whaaaat the fuhq?”. That’s right. Level TWO “fuck” is with an “h” and then a “q”.  It’s the royalty of cuss: Fuhq.

Two more of my fav people and then I’ll stop fuhqing name-dropping. This weekend I’m having lunch with Leonard Shlain, which is too awesome. At the end of April, I’m recording an Integral Naked dialogue with Mike Scott, which I am very, very excited about. You can get tons of his music (The Waterboys) on iTunes.

Before I completely leave off with the studio stuff though, it’s funny how intuition and recording have a mutuality about them. Some of my songs just don’t work on acoustic guitar. I write almost exclusively on acoustic guitar (occasionally I write a new work on the clavichord, but that’s just a nod to Thomas Ciul). What tends to happen when I write a song that doesn’t work with just a guitar / voice combo is I think the song sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I do indeed write songs that suck. In fact I wrote nothing but songs that suck for the first ten years of my life as a songwriter. I’ve written at least 300 songs in my life, and a few dozen of those I really like. Whatever. My point is, a song like Parker Posey just doesn’t do it for me when I play it on acoustic  guitar, but we get into the studio and start kicking synthesizers and karate-chopping Mac computers, and shoving wah wah pedals in the microwave, and HEY- that’s the Parker Posey I was hearing when I wrote the song.  It’s part of a life-long Love / Hate relationship I have with the acoustic guitar. Sometimes, I play a song like Grace on my big fat huge Jumbo Larrivee acoustic guitar, and I’m like “HOLY SHIT- this is the most unbelievably awesome instrument ever”, then other times I write a song like Parker Posey, or What, or Easter, and the songs emerge from the acoustic guitar with the temperment of drug addicted adolescents. The moment they arrive they are shreaking at the top of their lungs, spewing venomous hate for their parents- me and the acoustic guitar. They come out of the acoustic guitar and immediately turn around, take one look at it and yell “I HATE YOU!!” and we’re like “honey, honey come here, we love you, why are you so…” and the song is like “FUUUUUUHHHHHK YOU!  I HATE YOU YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND  SHITYOUFUCKINGSICKPIECESOFSHITYOURUINMYLIFEYOURUINMYLIFEYOURUINMYLIFE LET ME GOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” and then runs out of the room flailing its arms, sobbing. I watched that movie with Holly Hunter and I was like “that’s what those songs are like…”.

It goes on and on. I watch Bjork on SNL doing that one song, and then I look at my wooden box with a hole in it and wonder what the fuck I’m doing. Then I listen to Ottmar or Dirk Freymuth and I feel like I’d like to spend the rest of my life with my head enveloped in THAT sound, just the bare, resonating perfection of an acoustic instrument, unadorned, unaltered. That’s the downside of my personality. I think I’m too easily seduced by anything and everything. Musically I tend to fall in love with almost anything. One day I’m engrossed in the sound of the A string on my acoustic guitar, the next I just want to hear voices played backward in pro tools with a delay pedal, then I’m walking home and I see a fender bender and I’m like “that sounded KILLER, how can I capture that for a loop?” then I get home and spend 45 minutes banging on plastic bowls with my daughter, and I’m like “everything else is bullshit”. At one point in my life this fascination with sound got a bit out of control, this was back when I was single, I used to make recordings of myself having sex with girls. With their permission and knowledge, I would set up a recording studio in my house and then record the subsequent coitus. Then I would weave that into music, or not. Just leave it stand on its own. You’d think it would be pretty weird and embarassing for people to have sex with microphones and gear everywhere, but it’s not. You forget about it after ten minutes, and  then you really do get the natural, authentic sounds of people going at it. Why is that interesting? Because every human being is an instrument, there is literally music coming out of people all the time, all day long, every day from birth to death, sex is just one of the most convenient times to capture it because people lose themselves, become a bit more transparent and unihibited, which tends to bring more of the pure expression (music) out, and then moan, speak, sing with real spontanaiety. It’s even better when there’s two or more people doing it, because you have an ensemble. This process totally fascinated me, because in part what we were doing was recording a STATE, and the music that spontaneously emerged from two human instruments in that state. I was also surprised by how ready and willing people were to participate, and not in some shitty way, like let’s do some perverted shit. I mean, I’m a pervert, but in this case I was sincerely taken with the beauty and wonder of this very intimate, private, pure expression as music. After I did that for a while, I became fixated in general with recording STATES and the music that went with them. I wanted to make recordings of people snoring and talking in their sleep, make recordings of people taking a shit, make recordings of all kinds of laughter- a hundred different kinds of laughter, then recordings of people crying -crying at a funeral, crying with joy at the birth of their child, crying in a total break down from the crushing pressure of their life in corporate america, crying from breaking up with their girlfriend, i wanted to make recordings of people dying -the death rattle and last words to come out of their body, i wanted to buy incredibly sensitive microphones and record every kind of breathing and heart beat imaginable, people breathing in their sleep, while meditating, while running, same with heart beats, then weave them into one polyrhythmic loop texture. i wanted to make all kinds of recordings of people speaking in different languages and then scrutinize the minutia of the pitch variation in their speaking voice, teasing out the melodic thread present in all vocalization. i wanted to record storms, rain, thunder, the sound of ice cracking on a frozen lake (if you haven’t heard it, it would surprise you how fucking loud and freaky it is), waves crashing on shores, hail, you name it.  i wanted to record hundreds of human states, environmental states, and weave them all into one opus of BEING. i was going to call the project Observance Of States and use it as a meditative device, where the listener is the witness, simply observing the rising / falling, coming / going of all these different states. i still want to do it.  it’s just such a gigantic task. i’m just trying to finish scratch tracks on my new disc ;-)  I’d need to start over. Once my wife heard one of those recordings of me having sex with some girl, and she was like “are you fucking kidding me? you think I want to listen to you having sex with someone else?” and I was like “Oh.  Good point.” I really would  not want to sit around and listen to my wife having sex with some dude from five years ago, but there’s the male mind for you. I was just thinking this is an interesting “piece”, like we were listening to a cello or a backing vocal I was thinking of using for a song. I had this notion it was all defined by context, and of course it is- as Matt Wrenchler says art is anything with a frame around it, and my mind had a frame around these compositions, but my wife, her context was this: I’m listening to my husband fucking someone else. And she was right too.  It’s both. It’s best for an artist to look at all the contexts, all the perspectives, include as a much as possible in considerations, and then move from there. Before I was a practitioner, I was much more about just pushing people’s buttons just for the sake of pushing their buttons. I thought just provoking people was useful because putting “it” in their FACE would force a movement, would demand they respond. Then I began practicing with Sufis and learned that there is a crucial distinction between serving the evolution of consciousness and just being a fucking asshole, and I was erring on the side of the later. The distinction is this: A Sense Of Occasion.

The sufi teacher I was working with at the time pointed out to me in a most loving but firm way that just eliciting a response, just forcing people to react or move is not going to foster evolution. In fact it may be destructive. If you just push people’s buttons and provoke, much of the time people will move BACKWARDS, or regress. And they’re RIGHT to do this, and you’re WRONG to be such a fucker, because truly expanding the center of being requires stability and security, otherwise it just unravels into chaos or psychosis. If what an artist -or any person- really wants is to cultivate awakening or consciousness in humans and all sentient beings, the first thing we have to acknowledge and study is the mysterious, mercurial way in which development -real development- occurs. This is what the sheik was  getting at with Sense of Occasion, and this is really where the integral (AQAL) approach shines and is very, very useful in real-world applications. In the trenches, working for greater love in the world, AQAL is the best friend I know of. It’s helped me tons in trying to  acquire a sense of occasion, and make my life and art more useful. My favorite way to climb into AQAL is as a infinite play of perspectives. All these perspectives are aspects of one Self, or are selves of Self.

To begin with, there are four main perspectives. Interior, Exterior, Individual, and Collective. All lined up, they look like this:

Interior of Individual (that’s the INSIDE world of Stuart Davis, the individual in question here)

Interior of Collective (that’s the INNER WORLD of my culture, my society, my family, etc)

Exterior of Individual (that’s my body, my phsyical being)

Exterior of Collective (that’s the physical world, the environment, the biosphere, all the physical reality of the Universe)

I’ll follow up on this tomorrow, I have to run but will return with a discussion of perspectives, and I fucking promise to make the whole  thing rhyme, and oh hell as a nod to Dirk Freymuth I’ll do it in iambic pentameter

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A Sense Of Occasion

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2005 at 2:41 pm by Stuart Davis

Song Of The Day: Hanging Upside Down / David Byrne

Word Of The Day: Redargue / Blame, reprove, confute by arguement; Disprove.

It’s been nuts since I got back home from being on the road.  “Nuts” in  the best sense- as in the mechanical components which fasten and hold  an apparatus together, nuts like the edible protein rich oil-yielding  woody textured fruit or seed, or the two edible ellipsoidal glandular  organs tucked in my scrotal bell-tower, nuts as in the eccentric folly  that is the joy of life.  First, there’s catching up with my daughter  and wife.  I haven’t had a night alone with my wife since I gave up the tried and true ether rag / abduction combo that netted us so many precious hours alone together.  After a while I longed for a more responsive partner, and now we go with a baby sitter. But no baby sitters as of late. I’ve been trying to catch up with my daughter too, she’s oh so close to saying her first words in IS (the words for beauty and baby, which she says, but the diction is not quite all the way there) the constructed language native to our two person culture of weird (by the way, I’m changing the name of the language to Isara,  which is a combination of “Is” - (infinite present tense verb of being, which in the language has a different definition which is “the Mystery, visible and invisible presence which inhabits and informs all phenomena, etc etc”) and “Ara”, which is just another way to tell my daughter she’s God. In the good sense, not that her ego is God (that’s her dad’s pathology, let’s not pass it on…), but that, as my mystic web master remdinds me- to live into the Reality behind the appearances. As the new name of the language, Isara (which is pronounced IHS-ahrah, not with a “z”, but an “s”) simply dedicates the language to her and is a winking reminder.

Do you see how many parenthetical statements I made in the above  paragraph?  Let’s reel it in.

I’ve also been in the studio, working on the new album, and it is fucking kicking. Working on Easter yesterday, both Andy McEwen and I  were like “holy….SHIT”. This is going to be a different sounding record for me.  At once it both features my acoustic guitar more prominantly and also will be more technized and modern sounding. It’s got the vibe of a self-reflexive robot with a tremdously engorged metallic member making causal-body love to a harem of acoustic instruments, oh look, now he’s penetrated the mandolin, and then he’s groping that jumbo Larrivee, and BAM! nothing but robot-tongue up in that viola… Constructed techno drum parts, computers, LASERS, it’s the future of folk music, I just know it. I won’t be happy unless Pete Seeger hears this album and in trying to digest it feels his intestine drop out his sphincter. I want Joan Baez to hear this album and throw up in her mouth. I want Richie Havens to hear it and throw up in Pete Seeger’s mouth. Wow, I’m getting horny. At any rate, I am really, really liking how this project is coming along. Next week, Eddie Kowalczyck comes in to do some vocals on it, the next week Saul Williams will be in to do the same, then we’re going to send some stuff to Ottmar Liebert to track some guitars. We already had the dude from String Cheese Incident in to do a bass line on What, and we know it worked, cuz we were all like “Whaaaat the fuhq?”. That’s right. Level TWO “fuck” is with an “h” and then a “q”.  It’s the royalty of cuss: Fuhq.

Two more of my fav people and then I’ll stop fuhqing name-dropping. This weekend I’m having lunch with Leonard Shlain, which is too awesome. At the end of April, I’m recording an Integral Naked dialogue with Mike Scott, which I am very, very excited about. You can get tons of his music (The Waterboys) on iTunes.

Before I completely leave off with the studio stuff though, it’s funny how intuition and recording have a mutuality about them. Some of my songs just don’t work on acoustic guitar. I write almost exclusively on acoustic guitar (occasionally I write a new work on the clavichord, but that’s just a nod to Thomas Ciul). What tends to happen when I write a song that doesn’t work with just a guitar / voice combo is I think the song sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I do indeed write songs that suck. In fact I wrote nothing but songs that suck for the first ten years of my life as a songwriter. I’ve written at least 300 songs in my life, and a few dozen of those I really like. Whatever. My point is, a song like Parker Posey just doesn’t do it for me when I play it on acoustic  guitar, but we get into the studio and start kicking synthesizers and karate-chopping Mac computers, and shoving wah wah pedals in the microwave, and HEY- that’s the Parker Posey I was hearing when I wrote the song.  It’s part of a life-long Love / Hate relationship I have with the acoustic guitar. Sometimes, I play a song like Grace on my big fat huge Jumbo Larrivee acoustic guitar, and I’m like “HOLY SHIT- this is the most unbelievably awesome instrument ever”, then other times I write a song like Parker Posey, or What, or Easter, and the songs emerge from the acoustic guitar with the temperment of drug addicted adolescents. The moment they arrive they are shreaking at the top of their lungs, spewing venomous hate for their parents- me and the acoustic guitar. They come out of the acoustic guitar and immediately turn around, take one look at it and yell “I HATE YOU!!” and we’re like “honey, honey come here, we love you, why are you so…” and the song is like “FUUUUUUHHHHHK YOU!  I HATE YOU YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND  SHITYOUFUCKINGSICKPIECESOFSHITYOURUINMYLIFEYOURUINMYLIFEYOURUINMYLIFE LET ME GOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” and then runs out of the room flailing its arms, sobbing. I watched that movie with Holly Hunter and I was like “that’s what those songs are like…”.

It goes on and on. I watch Bjork on SNL doing that one song, and then I look at my wooden box with a hole in it and wonder what the fuck I’m doing. Then I listen to Ottmar or Dirk Freymuth and I feel like I’d like to spend the rest of my life with my head enveloped in THAT sound, just the bare, resonating perfection of an acoustic instrument, unadorned, unaltered. That’s the downside of my personality. I think I’m too easily seduced by anything and everything. Musically I tend to fall in love with almost anything. One day I’m engrossed in the sound of the A string on my acoustic guitar, the next I just want to hear voices played backward in pro tools with a delay pedal, then I’m walking home and I see a fender bender and I’m like “that sounded KILLER, how can I capture that for a loop?” then I get home and spend 45 minutes banging on plastic bowls with my daughter, and I’m like “everything else is bullshit”. At one point in my life this fascination with sound got a bit out of control, this was back when I was single, I used to make recordings of myself having sex with girls. With their permission and knowledge, I would set up a recording studio in my house and then record the subsequent coitus. Then I would weave that into music, or not. Just leave it stand on its own. You’d think it would be pretty weird and embarassing for people to have sex with microphones and gear everywhere, but it’s not. You forget about it after ten minutes, and  then you really do get the natural, authentic sounds of people going at it. Why is that interesting? Because every human being is an instrument, there is literally music coming out of people all the time, all day long, every day from birth to death, sex is just one of the most convenient times to capture it because people lose themselves, become a bit more transparent and unihibited, which tends to bring more of the pure expression (music) out, and then moan, speak, sing with real spontanaiety. It’s even better when there’s two or more people doing it, because you have an ensemble. This process totally fascinated me, because in part what we were doing was recording a STATE, and the music that spontaneously emerged from two human instruments in that state. I was also surprised by how ready and willing people were to participate, and not in some shitty way, like let’s do some perverted shit. I mean, I’m a pervert, but in this case I was sincerely taken with the beauty and wonder of this very intimate, private, pure expression as music. After I did that for a while, I became fixated in general with recording STATES and the music that went with them. I wanted to make recordings of people snoring and talking in their sleep, make recordings of people taking a shit, make recordings of all kinds of laughter- a hundred different kinds of laughter, then recordings of people crying -crying at a funeral, crying with joy at the birth of their child, crying in a total break down from the crushing pressure of their life in corporate america, crying from breaking up with their girlfriend, i wanted to make recordings of people dying -the death rattle and last words to come out of their body, i wanted to buy incredibly sensitive microphones and record every kind of breathing and heart beat imaginable, people breathing in their sleep, while meditating, while running, same with heart beats, then weave them into one polyrhythmic loop texture. i wanted to make all kinds of recordings of people speaking in different languages and then scrutinize the minutia of the pitch variation in their speaking voice, teasing out the melodic thread present in all vocalization. i wanted to record storms, rain, thunder, the sound of ice cracking on a frozen lake (if you haven’t heard it, it would surprise you how fucking loud and freaky it is), waves crashing on shores, hail, you name it.  i wanted to record hundreds of human states, environmental states, and weave them all into one opus of BEING. i was going to call the project Observance Of States and use it as a meditative device, where the listener is the witness, simply observing the rising / falling, coming / going of all these different states. i still want to do it.  it’s just such a gigantic task. i’m just trying to finish scratch tracks on my new disc ;-)  I’d need to start over. Once my wife heard one of those recordings of me having sex with some girl, and she was like “are you fucking kidding me? you think I want to listen to you having sex with someone else?” and I was like “Oh.  Good point.” I really would  not want to sit around and listen to my wife having sex with some dude from five years ago, but there’s the male mind for you. I was just thinking this is an interesting “piece”, like we were listening to a cello or a backing vocal I was thinking of using for a song. I had this notion it was all defined by context, and of course it is- as Matt Wrenchler says art is anything with a frame around it, and my mind had a frame around these compositions, but my wife, her context was this: I’m listening to my husband fucking someone else. And she was right too.  It’s both. It’s best for an artist to look at all the contexts, all the perspectives, include as a much as possible in considerations, and then move from there. Before I was a practitioner, I was much more about just pushing people’s buttons just for the sake of pushing their buttons. I thought just provoking people was useful because putting “it” in their FACE would force a movement, would demand they respond. Then I began practicing with Sufis and learned that there is a crucial distinction between serving the evolution of consciousness and just being a fucking asshole, and I was erring on the side of the later. The distinction is this: A Sense Of Occasion.

The sufi teacher I was working with at the time pointed out to me in a most loving but firm way that just eliciting a response, just forcing people to react or move is not going to foster evolution. In fact it may be destructive. If you just push people’s buttons and provoke, much of the time people will move BACKWARDS, or regress. And they’re RIGHT to do this, and you’re WRONG to be such a fucker, because truly expanding the center of being requires stability and security, otherwise it just unravels into chaos or psychosis. If what an artist -or any person- really wants is to cultivate awakening or consciousness in humans and all sentient beings, the first thing we have to acknowledge and study is the mysterious, mercurial way in which development -real development- occurs. This is what the sheik was  getting at with Sense of Occasion, and this is really where the integral (AQAL) approach shines and is very, very useful in real-world applications. In the trenches, working for greater love in the world, AQAL is the best friend I know of. It’s helped me tons in trying to  acquire a sense of occasion, and make my life and art more useful. My favorite way to climb into AQAL is as a infinite play of perspectives. All these perspectives are aspects of one Self, or are selves of Self.

To begin with, there are four main perspectives. Interior, Exterior, Individual, and Collective. All lined up, they look like this:

Interior of Individual (that’s the INSIDE world of Stuart Davis, the individual in question here)

Interior of Collective (that’s the INNER WORLD of my culture, my society, my family, etc)

Exterior of Individual (that’s my body, my phsyical being)

Exterior of Collective (that’s the physical world, the environment, the biosphere, all the physical reality of the Universe)

I’ll follow up on this tomorrow, I have to run but will return with a discussion of perspectives, and I fucking promise to make the whole  thing rhyme, and oh hell as a nod to Dirk Freymuth I’ll do it in iambic pentameter

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Attention Earthlings

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 at 4:15 pm by Stuart Davis

Hmm…

Can 1,300 Researches Be Wrong?

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Attention Earthlings

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 at 4:15 pm by Stuart Davis

Hmm…

Can 1,300 Researches Be Wrong?

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Being

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 26th, 2005 at 1:46 pm by Stuart Davis

Word of the day: Bivious / Having or offering two ways
Song of the day: Whole Of The Moon / Waterboys

Whole Of The Moon is one of my all-time favorite songs. Kills me. I hear Mike Scott singing that song and my rib cage starts to spread (it’s gotta be Mike Scott though, and the authenticity in his voice, others have covered the song and it doesn’t hit me). Those lyrics? Holy shit. It fills me with the numinous ache of remembering and enormous gratitude for the great lamps I’ve been so lucky to meet in this lifetime; Genpo Roshi, Diane Hamilton, Brother Wayne Teasdale, Father Thomas Keating, Swami Sally Kempton, Ken Wilber, and many others.

Just got back from a five show tour of the Midwest last night. LOTS of driving. My apologies to everyone who went out of their way to get to the Mankato show in the middle of a blizzard and then discovered I wasn’t there. We (me and my nephew Justin) drove 960 miles from Boulder to St. James, Minnesota, fighting like hell to make the show, but it was not to be. Somewhere North of Sioux City the snow got pretty bad, and by the time we hit the Minnesota border it really sucked. A few dozen miles into Minnesota we started seeing semis, trucks, and cars all over the ditches, conditions really plummeted and it was your standard zero visibility road-riddle, we rolled down the windows and literally began to use educated guesses as to where the road might be, mostly based on road signs and their relative position to what we intuited was the center of the road. Tooling along at between 10 and 20 miles an hour, we snaked along I-90 for hours. They closed the interstate at Worthington a few minutes after we had passed it, and that made us virtually the last vehicle on the interstate for the rest of the ride, except those in the ditch. On one exit ramp alone we counted seven cars in the ditch, including a highway patrol car. We saw no serious accidents or anything that looked deeply disconcerting. We laughed and laughed. It was impossible we hadn’t gone in the ditch yet. Like winning hand after hand of black jack, bluffing our way through each curve and turn, surprised anew to find ourselves between the ditches every mile. We got off I-90 and onto Highway 60, and things got worse. They had closed Highway 60 too, but Justin cheered me on “DUDE! WE CAN’T STOP NOW!! COME ON!!” And he was right. We had crossed over the event horizon of this White Hole back when we went past the first road closing, now inertia dictated we keep going until something stopped us. That’s the way it plays out once you’ve put 950 miles behind you, and you only have 20 more to go until you reach the gig (of course we were driving 5 miles an hour, and had been in the car for 18 hours, but whatever). More laughing, we drove right around the blockade and into a the heart of it. At St. James there was another road closed blockade, but this one was different, more of “no, we’re fucking serious, get off the road you dip shit” kind of vibe. We got off. It was St. James, a town with one hotel (a Super 8!), and it was full. Three hours later they had rearranged their guests so as to open a room just for us, which was incredibly kind. All the roads were closed, Southern Minnesota was under a glacial toupee of a gad-gillion ice crystals. After 18 hours of struggling for the prize, I missed my show, it was not to be. People had driven from all over to be there, and I’m sorry if you are one of those who expected more from me. I’m going to buy a Hummer. But you know, we saw a Hummer in the ditch too, come to think of it. My little front wheel drive Honda Accord made it much farther than that gargantuen Hummer. Why? Finess. Why? Agility. Why? Cuz I know I’m not invincible. I respect the ditch. In fact here’s an offering to all who own SUVs and Semis; The rubber on your tires is the same as the rubber on the tires of a Yugo. See? Rubber + Ice = Slip. Period. If I sound snotty it’s because 75% of the cars in the ditch were Semis and SUVs, exactly the vehicles that are supposed to be all-weather, but people think because their driving something big the laws of physics will somehow morph to accomodate them. Rubber + Ice = SLIP. How many fucking Semis have to go in the ditch before these wreckless, self-absorbed ASSHOLES will slow the fuck down and stop very literally endangering the lives of everyone else on the road? Without a doubt the #1 danger in a winter storm -or any storm- is Semis. This is something that has always baffled me. Of all the people on the road, you would think professional drivers would be the most responsible and wise, but the opposite is the case. Categorically, every time there is a storm -snow, thunderstorm, ice, whatever- Semi drivers demonstrate the most amazing disregard for common sense and more importantly the fucking welfare of everyone around them. One after another, they speed by little cars going two or three times as fast as everyone else on the road. And every time they pass us, it’s a total fucking WHITE OUT, or a complete WASH OUT, or an icy, windy SPIN OUT putting us squarely in lap of death or serious injury. Thanks, YOU FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE ASSHOLES!! I hope you get a hemmorhoid so large and infected that you die languishing in fevered convusions while the vengeful teeth of those you imperiled gnash at your putrid soul. Can we all stop for a second and imagine what would happen to an airline pilot or a ship captain or a school bus driver who operating their vehicle with such disreagard for human life? They’d be arrested and stripped of their license. I just want truckers arrested and stripped. Make them stand naked in the middle of the road while we whiz by THEM at 80 miles an hour, mere inches from their fragile human bodies so they can acquire some sense of what they’ve putting everyone else through for decades.

Anyway.

I made it to the next show, in Madison, and it was a magical night. My body was quite out of sorts for the first 45 minutes, but that’s inevitable after 23 hours of driving. Show was stellar, speaking of stellar there were some astronomers there, which made me happy I’d put a line about dark matter into the new song “Good Weird” or “God’s Weird” or whatever I’m going to call it. I played it all week, it was great fun. From Madison I went to Rockford for the show at Kryptonite, where I was joined by rad chad phillips on bass and we shared the bill with Stendeck. Stendeck is one of these dudes who plays drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, turntables, horns all by himself using loops and stuff. One man band. He’s really good. He’s also a Buddhist and this our second show together at Kryptonite, and the club calls it “The Battle Of The Buddhists”. I decided to start off my set by forfeiting the battle to him. I’m more of a surrendurer than I am a conquerer. I lean toward French on the War Dial. While in Rockford I did yoga for a couple hours with my friend Tamara (thanks!) which was very helpful. I need to bring yoga back into my daily physical workout, because my pelvis is turned. It has become tilted a bit down and to the right. It’s the natural consequence of having a libidinal drive so vesuvian it literally alters the assembly of my skeleton, we’ve all seen how one little river carved the grand canyon an in a similar manner the alluvion flow of blood to my huge boners has reshaped my lower body -but that’s not the point- the point is I have to fix it, because it will cause all sorts of back pain and shit down the road. Yoga is the most effective means, probably in combination with a chiropractor. I’m trying to one thing in my life that is preventative, not reactive, in terms of my overall health. Well, that’s not totally true. I quit smoking, drinking, and using drugs before I killed myself with it. And I started flossing before my teeth fell out. I stopped having anonymous, promiscuous sex BEFORE I was even in a committed relationship. But, with this turned pelvis thing it’s important to deal with it now. I do work out every day, but doing crunches and lifting weights doesn’t put my pelvis back in its place. Tamara was kind enough to help me make friends with the singular bliss torture that is holding an asana. I’m going to do my best to incorporate it into my daily groove now. From Rockford I was off to Chicago. I got to hang out with my brother (lives there) which was AWESOME, we hardly ever get to hang one on one any more and I miss it a great deal. I was joined in Chicago (we played Schuba’s) by Chad Phillips on bass once again, and it was a really, really kick ass show. Every thing was basically a perfect ten. My new friend Fabris’ (spelling?) was running sound, and it was PERFECT. Chad played a flawless show, I felt very good about my body, voice, emotions, spirit, and presence during the show, and the audience was just killer, full house on a Tuesday night and they were so cool. This was one of those nights where it is just magic. Most of the night I was just bathing in the atmosphere, feeling the warm, mysterious gift of it all. I really am continually amazed this is what I get to do for a living. It’s been twelve years now without any “real” job, just shows, touring, and making art the way my heart wants to. I feel deeply grateful and this week it had me thinking and feeling a lot about the precious humna birth. In the Buddhist tradition there is a teaching to the effect that being born into a life as a human being is really a miraculous, incredibly rare gift, because the human body is the only one in which a sentient being can realize full awakening. Animals cannot fully awaken because they are still too locked in lower realms, and even beyond us angels are said to envy and regard human incarnation longingly because in the heavenly realms celestial entities cannot fully awaken without a body. Human incarnation is the only form where both heaven and earth are brought together in one point, in one place, the transcendent and immanent united, and in that very rare condition a sentient entity can really fully awaken, because that realization can include ALL of it, we really have inherited heaven and earth as humans. The Bodhisattva vow is to awaken for the sake for all beings, everywhere at all times, and continue working until they are all free. We take a vow to awaken as fully and as quickly as possible in this precious, rare opportunity of human incarnation, because this is the way we can be of most use to our innumerable twins, populating the three-fold Dream (or tri-kaya gross, subtle, causal realms) in all directions and dimensions infinitely. The three-fold dream (that’s just a term I’m making up, I’m just saying it has waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep domains) is just a dream, but unless we are lucid dreaming, all dreams are experienced as “real” and we are powerless to influence or change them. In waking up from the three-fold dream, we become able to operate more effectively within it and help ourselves and others (twins in the Self). This is the game of being. This is what IS. So we are really in a very rare, blessed condition in being human. Not only to awaken in the Mystery, but to work most effectively for Love. And I really experience music and art as one of the most miraculous, ineffable livelihoods a person could possibly be lucky enough to have in being a practitioner, in working for Love. My sense is that if humanity is able to keep moving forward in our development through future centuries and millenia, art will play an increasingly indespinsible role in balancing and integrating our interior treasures (spirituality, psychology, emotionality, etc) and our advances in outer realms of technology, material sciences, and social systems. I think that as we develop, our hunger and love is going to get bigger and more inclusive, and we’re not going to settle for compartmentalizing our humanity into fractured pieces. The either / or approaches, the broken this / that binary methodologies that have characterized so much of our search until recently our going to give way to more and more inclusive modes of consciousness that understand its ALL part of the picture. ALL of it. We can still specialize (music and art in my case) and also be supported and invigorated by exploring our place withing this ten-dimensional tapestry of all disciplines, all domains, all realms (Self, culture, nature, mind, body, spirit). “WE” is the way of the future. And this is really what had me LIT UP like a solar lantern driving back after my last show in Quad Cities (great show, thanks to everyone who came!). I was listening for the first time to Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness 10 CD set, and it sparked my fuse like it does every time. I think when centuries and millenia pass, Ken’s work will absolutely be included as one of the all time great human contributions to the mandala of IS. Not because he so much invented something new, but because he so fully, lovingly ushered in a deeper, wider cognition of what IS. In all its meta-narratives and its particular details, his integral model is -without a doubt- one of the most stunning works of ART i will ever know in my life. It is an artwork of the highest order I can imagine, simultaneously showing us our selves, our world, the invisible and visible miracle that is this Universe, and also reshaping it by show us its possibilities and inviting us, asking us to unfold, live, and love into that as fully as we can. Of course Ken is one of my closest friends. But you’ll have to take my word my feelings about his work just don’t come from our friendship. It was long before I ever met him that I read Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and more than anything else I’ve ever read it blew my fucking head off, and things have never been the same, not in my art, spiritual practice, or what I feel it means to be human. After that, after I had dedicated my album Kid Mystic to him, we became very close, but his work enriched my life before our friendship did. His audio CD series Kosmic Consciousness -which I listened to in unbroken succession while driving from Quad Cities back to Boulder- left me drunk in a sense of wonder once again, not over what a genius he obviously is, but over what an unspeakable miracle it is to have been given a life, to have known what it is to give and receive love, what a magical puzzle it is how things change, grow, and evolve. It is the most sacred puzzle this prayer of birth, life, and death, and I thank Ken and all of you who remind me every day to celebrate and nourish the privelege of Being.

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Being

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 26th, 2005 at 1:46 pm by Stuart Davis

Word of the day: Bivious / Having or offering two ways
Song of the day: Whole Of The Moon / Waterboys

Whole Of The Moon is one of my all-time favorite songs. Kills me. I hear Mike Scott singing that song and my rib cage starts to spread (it’s gotta be Mike Scott though, and the authenticity in his voice, others have covered the song and it doesn’t hit me). Those lyrics? Holy shit. It fills me with the numinous ache of remembering and enormous gratitude for the great lamps I’ve been so lucky to meet in this lifetime; Genpo Roshi, Diane Hamilton, Brother Wayne Teasdale, Father Thomas Keating, Swami Sally Kempton, Ken Wilber, and many others.

Just got back from a five show tour of the Midwest last night. LOTS of driving. My apologies to everyone who went out of their way to get to the Mankato show in the middle of a blizzard and then discovered I wasn’t there. We (me and my nephew Justin) drove 960 miles from Boulder to St. James, Minnesota, fighting like hell to make the show, but it was not to be. Somewhere North of Sioux City the snow got pretty bad, and by the time we hit the Minnesota border it really sucked. A few dozen miles into Minnesota we started seeing semis, trucks, and cars all over the ditches, conditions really plummeted and it was your standard zero visibility road-riddle, we rolled down the windows and literally began to use educated guesses as to where the road might be, mostly based on road signs and their relative position to what we intuited was the center of the road. Tooling along at between 10 and 20 miles an hour, we snaked along I-90 for hours. They closed the interstate at Worthington a few minutes after we had passed it, and that made us virtually the last vehicle on the interstate for the rest of the ride, except those in the ditch. On one exit ramp alone we counted seven cars in the ditch, including a highway patrol car. We saw no serious accidents or anything that looked deeply disconcerting. We laughed and laughed. It was impossible we hadn’t gone in the ditch yet. Like winning hand after hand of black jack, bluffing our way through each curve and turn, surprised anew to find ourselves between the ditches every mile. We got off I-90 and onto Highway 60, and things got worse. They had closed Highway 60 too, but Justin cheered me on “DUDE! WE CAN’T STOP NOW!! COME ON!!” And he was right. We had crossed over the event horizon of this White Hole back when we went past the first road closing, now inertia dictated we keep going until something stopped us. That’s the way it plays out once you’ve put 950 miles behind you, and you only have 20 more to go until you reach the gig (of course we were driving 5 miles an hour, and had been in the car for 18 hours, but whatever). More laughing, we drove right around the blockade and into a the heart of it. At St. James there was another road closed blockade, but this one was different, more of “no, we’re fucking serious, get off the road you dip shit” kind of vibe. We got off. It was St. James, a town with one hotel (a Super 8!), and it was full. Three hours later they had rearranged their guests so as to open a room just for us, which was incredibly kind. All the roads were closed, Southern Minnesota was under a glacial toupee of a gad-gillion ice crystals. After 18 hours of struggling for the prize, I missed my show, it was not to be. People had driven from all over to be there, and I’m sorry if you are one of those who expected more from me. I’m going to buy a Hummer. But you know, we saw a Hummer in the ditch too, come to think of it. My little front wheel drive Honda Accord made it much farther than that gargantuen Hummer. Why? Finess. Why? Agility. Why? Cuz I know I’m not invincible. I respect the ditch. In fact here’s an offering to all who own SUVs and Semis; The rubber on your tires is the same as the rubber on the tires of a Yugo. See? Rubber + Ice = Slip. Period. If I sound snotty it’s because 75% of the cars in the ditch were Semis and SUVs, exactly the vehicles that are supposed to be all-weather, but people think because their driving something big the laws of physics will somehow morph to accomodate them. Rubber + Ice = SLIP. How many fucking Semis have to go in the ditch before these wreckless, self-absorbed ASSHOLES will slow the fuck down and stop very literally endangering the lives of everyone else on the road? Without a doubt the #1 danger in a winter storm -or any storm- is Semis. This is something that has always baffled me. Of all the people on the road, you would think professional drivers would be the most responsible and wise, but the opposite is the case. Categorically, every time there is a storm -snow, thunderstorm, ice, whatever- Semi drivers demonstrate the most amazing disregard for common sense and more importantly the fucking welfare of everyone around them. One after another, they speed by little cars going two or three times as fast as everyone else on the road. And every time they pass us, it’s a total fucking WHITE OUT, or a complete WASH OUT, or an icy, windy SPIN OUT putting us squarely in lap of death or serious injury. Thanks, YOU FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE ASSHOLES!! I hope you get a hemmorhoid so large and infected that you die languishing in fevered convusions while the vengeful teeth of those you imperiled gnash at your putrid soul. Can we all stop for a second and imagine what would happen to an airline pilot or a ship captain or a school bus driver who operating their vehicle with such disreagard for human life? They’d be arrested and stripped of their license. I just want truckers arrested and stripped. Make them stand naked in the middle of the road while we whiz by THEM at 80 miles an hour, mere inches from their fragile human bodies so they can acquire some sense of what they’ve putting everyone else through for decades.

Anyway.

I made it to the next show, in Madison, and it was a magical night. My body was quite out of sorts for the first 45 minutes, but that’s inevitable after 23 hours of driving. Show was stellar, speaking of stellar there were some astronomers there, which made me happy I’d put a line about dark matter into the new song “Good Weird” or “God’s Weird” or whatever I’m going to call it. I played it all week, it was great fun. From Madison I went to Rockford for the show at Kryptonite, where I was joined by rad chad phillips on bass and we shared the bill with Stendeck. Stendeck is one of these dudes who plays drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, turntables, horns all by himself using loops and stuff. One man band. He’s really good. He’s also a Buddhist and this our second show together at Kryptonite, and the club calls it “The Battle Of The Buddhists”. I decided to start off my set by forfeiting the battle to him. I’m more of a surrendurer than I am a conquerer. I lean toward French on the War Dial. While in Rockford I did yoga for a couple hours with my friend Tamara (thanks!) which was very helpful. I need to bring yoga back into my daily physical workout, because my pelvis is turned. It has become tilted a bit down and to the right. It’s the natural consequence of having a libidinal drive so vesuvian it literally alters the assembly of my skeleton, we’ve all seen how one little river carved the grand canyon an in a similar manner the alluvion flow of blood to my huge boners has reshaped my lower body -but that’s not the point- the point is I have to fix it, because it will cause all sorts of back pain and shit down the road. Yoga is the most effective means, probably in combination with a chiropractor. I’m trying to one thing in my life that is preventative, not reactive, in terms of my overall health. Well, that’s not totally true. I quit smoking, drinking, and using drugs before I killed myself with it. And I started flossing before my teeth fell out. I stopped having anonymous, promiscuous sex BEFORE I was even in a committed relationship. But, with this turned pelvis thing it’s important to deal with it now. I do work out every day, but doing crunches and lifting weights doesn’t put my pelvis back in its place. Tamara was kind enough to help me make friends with the singular bliss torture that is holding an asana. I’m going to do my best to incorporate it into my daily groove now. From Rockford I was off to Chicago. I got to hang out with my brother (lives there) which was AWESOME, we hardly ever get to hang one on one any more and I miss it a great deal. I was joined in Chicago (we played Schuba’s) by Chad Phillips on bass once again, and it was a really, really kick ass show. Every thing was basically a perfect ten. My new friend Fabris’ (spelling?) was running sound, and it was PERFECT. Chad played a flawless show, I felt very good about my body, voice, emotions, spirit, and presence during the show, and the audience was just killer, full house on a Tuesday night and they were so cool. This was one of those nights where it is just magic. Most of the night I was just bathing in the atmosphere, feeling the warm, mysterious gift of it all. I really am continually amazed this is what I get to do for a living. It’s been twelve years now without any “real” job, just shows, touring, and making art the way my heart wants to. I feel deeply grateful and this week it had me thinking and feeling a lot about the precious humna birth. In the Buddhist tradition there is a teaching to the effect that being born into a life as a human being is really a miraculous, incredibly rare gift, because the human body is the only one in which a sentient being can realize full awakening. Animals cannot fully awaken because they are still too locked in lower realms, and even beyond us angels are said to envy and regard human incarnation longingly because in the heavenly realms celestial entities cannot fully awaken without a body. Human incarnation is the only form where both heaven and earth are brought together in one point, in one place, the transcendent and immanent united, and in that very rare condition a sentient entity can really fully awaken, because that realization can include ALL of it, we really have inherited heaven and earth as humans. The Bodhisattva vow is to awaken for the sake for all beings, everywhere at all times, and continue working until they are all free. We take a vow to awaken as fully and as quickly as possible in this precious, rare opportunity of human incarnation, because this is the way we can be of most use to our innumerable twins, populating the three-fold Dream (or tri-kaya gross, subtle, causal realms) in all directions and dimensions infinitely. The three-fold dream (that’s just a term I’m making up, I’m just saying it has waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep domains) is just a dream, but unless we are lucid dreaming, all dreams are experienced as “real” and we are powerless to influence or change them. In waking up from the three-fold dream, we become able to operate more effectively within it and help ourselves and others (twins in the Self). This is the game of being. This is what IS. So we are really in a very rare, blessed condition in being human. Not only to awaken in the Mystery, but to work most effectively for Love. And I really experience music and art as one of the most miraculous, ineffable livelihoods a person could possibly be lucky enough to have in being a practitioner, in working for Love. My sense is that if humanity is able to keep moving forward in our development through future centuries and millenia, art will play an increasingly indespinsible role in balancing and integrating our interior treasures (spirituality, psychology, emotionality, etc) and our advances in outer realms of technology, material sciences, and social systems. I think that as we develop, our hunger and love is going to get bigger and more inclusive, and we’re not going to settle for compartmentalizing our humanity into fractured pieces. The either / or approaches, the broken this / that binary methodologies that have characterized so much of our search until recently our going to give way to more and more inclusive modes of consciousness that understand its ALL part of the picture. ALL of it. We can still specialize (music and art in my case) and also be supported and invigorated by exploring our place withing this ten-dimensional tapestry of all disciplines, all domains, all realms (Self, culture, nature, mind, body, spirit). “WE” is the way of the future. And this is really what had me LIT UP like a solar lantern driving back after my last show in Quad Cities (great show, thanks to everyone who came!). I was listening for the first time to Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness 10 CD set, and it sparked my fuse like it does every time. I think when centuries and millenia pass, Ken’s work will absolutely be included as one of the all time great human contributions to the mandala of IS. Not because he so much invented something new, but because he so fully, lovingly ushered in a deeper, wider cognition of what IS. In all its meta-narratives and its particular details, his integral model is -without a doubt- one of the most stunning works of ART i will ever know in my life. It is an artwork of the highest order I can imagine, simultaneously showing us our selves, our world, the invisible and visible miracle that is this Universe, and also reshaping it by show us its possibilities and inviting us, asking us to unfold, live, and love into that as fully as we can. Of course Ken is one of my closest friends. But you’ll have to take my word my feelings about his work just don’t come from our friendship. It was long before I ever met him that I read Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and more than anything else I’ve ever read it blew my fucking head off, and things have never been the same, not in my art, spiritual practice, or what I feel it means to be human. After that, after I had dedicated my album Kid Mystic to him, we became very close, but his work enriched my life before our friendship did. His audio CD series Kosmic Consciousness -which I listened to in unbroken succession while driving from Quad Cities back to Boulder- left me drunk in a sense of wonder once again, not over what a genius he obviously is, but over what an unspeakable miracle it is to have been given a life, to have known what it is to give and receive love, what a magical puzzle it is how things change, grow, and evolve. It is the most sacred puzzle this prayer of birth, life, and death, and I thank Ken and all of you who remind me every day to celebrate and nourish the privelege of Being.

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Stuart Davis Announces… The Rock Auction!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2005 at 10:48 pm by Stuart Davis

Who needs major labels? Take back the music business…

image design by Paul SalamoneStuart Davis is in the studio recording his next musical Love-Nova, and once again he’s using an imaginative marriage of business, art, and community to keep his visionary indie label Dharma Pop thriving in today’s inhospitable corporate climate. As recently featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Dharma Pop has long been funded and staffed by hundreds of investors and volunteers from around the World who so believe in its music that they put their own time and money into it, making Dharma Pop one of the most unique success stories in alternative music. To date, Davis has sold over 50,000 CDs in the U.S. and Europe, without any major label ties and virtually zero distribution. At the center of it all is some amazing music and people who, instead of getting disenchanted with the mainstream, have decided to change it. On his forthcoming 11th album, Davis has added a whole new twist to funding a project- The Rock Auction.

Click Here For More Info.

Like most great ideas, it’s simple; People help Stu make more music by bidding on Stuart Davis music. There are seven ‘Levels Of Love’ in the Rock Auction, each one packed with amazing music and rare collector’s items.

Level One: $100+

  1. Downloads Of Whole Web Site
  2. Two Tickets To A Show

For $100 or more, you receive a password which allows you to download every song on the Stuart Davis web site (125 songs), and you get two tickets to any Stuart Davis concert.


Level Two: $250+

  1. Downloads Of Whole Web Site
  2. Two Tickets To A Show
  3. Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set

For $250 or more, you receive all the downloads on the Stuart Davis site, two passes to any Stuart concert, and a signed copy of Stuart’s new DVD and the new CD upon release (mailed to your home).


Level Three: $500+

  1. Downloads Of Whole Web Site
  2. Two Tickets To A Show
  3. Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
  4. Signed Box Set

At $500 or more, you receive all the downloads, two concert tickets, signed copies of both the new DVD and the new CD upon release, and a complete box set of all ten of Stuart’s earlier CDs autographed. Not even Stuart has that.


Level Four: $1,000+

  1. Downloads Of Whole Web Site
  2. Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
  3. Signed Box Set
  4. Two Lifetime Tickets

Now it gets spooky. At $1,000 or more, you receive all downloads, signed copy of new disc, signed copy of new DVD, a complete signed box set, and
two LIFETIME tickets to any and all Stuart Davis concerts -forever.


Level Five: $1,000+

  1. Downloads Of Whole Web Site
  2. Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
  3. Signed Box Set
  4. Two Lifetime Tickets
  5. Private Concert (Recorded)

It’s personal. For $2,500 or more, you’ll get all downloads, signed new CD, signed new DVD, complete signed box set, two LIFETIME passes to all Stuart Davis concerts, and Stuart will personally come to your private home and perform a concert in your house, which will be recorded on digital mini disc and given to you at the end of the show. You do NOT pay any travel, lodging, or food, price includes everything.


Level Six: $5,000+

  1. Downloads Of Whole Web Site
  2. Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
  3. Signed Box Set
  4. Two Lifetime Tickets
  5. Private Concert (Recorded)
  6. Collector’s Care Package

Wow. For $5,000 or more you get all downloads, signed new CD, signed new DVD, complete signed box set, two LIFETIME passes to all Stuart Davis concerts, Stuart will personally come to your house and do a concert, give you a recording of it at the end of the night (price is all-inclusive), plus you receive a bursting basket of collector’s absolutely unique rarities; Recordings of songs never released anywhere (not even on the site), one-of a kind t-shirts designed for you to give to your friends and enemies, and private bootlegs of out-takes from the new CD.


Level Seven: $10,000+

  1. Downloads Of Whole Web Site
  2. Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
  3. Signed Box Set
  4. Two Lifetime Tickets
  5. Private Concert (Recorded)
  6. Collector’s Care Package
  7. Hand-Made Guitar Engraved In Is

We call this the “Holy Shit” level. For $10,000 or more, you get all downloads, signed new CD, signed new DVD, complete signed box set, two LIFETIME
passes to all Stuart Davis concerts, Stuart will personally come to your house and do a concert, give you a recording of it at the end of the night, plus you receive a bursting basket of collector’s absolutely unique rarities; Recordings of songs never released anywhere (not even on Stu’s site), one-of a kind t-shirts designed for you to give to your friends and enemies, and private bootlegs of out-takes from the new CD. BUT WAIT- here’s the kicker: The concert at your house will be performed on a very expensive hardwood, hand-made acoustic guitar that is engraved in IS (a language Stuart himself constructed) with a phrase of your choice, signed by Stuart and GIVEN TO YOU at the end of the night along with the recording.


Let the bidding begin. To place a bid, or ask any questions, email .

Thanks!

Whether at concerts, on the web, or at his annual Dharmapalooza event where fans gather from all over the World, people have stepped up to support Dharma Pop’s mission to infuse more surprise and depth into pop culture. 34 year-old Davis’ fearless approach to song writing -spanning politics, sex, spirituality, history, science, and love- have made him one of the most critically acclaimed artists of his generation.

“We were blown away by Stuart’s pure genius. We booked him on the show, calls started coming in…”
-Bruce Warren, Producer of World Cafe

“Without exaggeration, Stuart Davis is one of the most fascinating and exceptional songwriters in modern music.”
-San Jose Metro

“Not since Bob Dylan burst through 30 years ago has Minnesota produced such a confident and creative songwriter.”
-Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A rare genius. Whatever you do, don’t miss his work or his performances.”
-Ken Wilber

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Stuart Davis Announces… The Rock Auction!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2005 at 11:42 pm by Stuart Davis
image design by Paul Salamone

Who needs major labels? Take back the music business…

Stuart Davis is in the studio recording his next musical Love-Nova, and once again he’s using an imaginative marriage of business, art, and community to keep his visionary indie label Dharma Pop thriving in today’s inhospitable corporate climate. As recently featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Dharma Pop has long been funded and staffed by hundreds of investors and volunteers from around the World who so believe in its music that they put their own time and money into it, making Dharma Pop one of the most unique success stories in alternative music. To date, Davis has sold over 50,000 CDs in the U.S. and Europe, without any major label ties and virtually zero distribution. At the center of it all is some amazing music and people who, instead of getting disenchanted with the mainstream, have decided to change it. On his forthcoming 11th album, Davis has added a whole new twist to funding a project- The Rock Auction.

Click Here For More Info.

Like most great ideas, it’s simple; People help Stu make more music by bidding on Stuart Davis music. There are seven ‘Levels Of Love’ in the Rock Auction, each one packed with amazing music and rare collector’s items.

Level One: $100+ -Downloads Of Whole Web Site
-Two Tickets To A Show

For $100 or more, you receive a password which allows you to download every song on the Stuart Davis web site (125 songs), and you get two tickets to any Stuart Davis concert.

Level Two: $250+ -Downloads
-Two Concert Tickets
-Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set

For $250 or more, you receive all the downloads on the Stuart Davis site, two passes to any Stuart concert, and a signed copy of Stuart’s new DVD and the new CD upon release (mailed to your home).

Level Three: $500+ -Downloads
-Two Concert Tickets
-Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
-Signed Box Set

At $500 or more, you receive all the downloads, two concert tickets, signed copies of both the new DVD and the new CD upon release, and a complete box set of all ten of Stuart’s earlier CDs autographed. Not even Stuart has that.

Level Four: $1,000+ -Downloads
-Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
-Signed Box Set
-Two Lifetime Tickets

Now it gets spooky. At $1,000 or more, you receive all downloads, signed copy of new disc, signed copy of new DVD, a complete signed box set, and
two LIFETIME tickets to any and all Stuart Davis concerts -forever.

Level Five: $2,500+ -Downloads
-Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
-Signed Box Set
-Two Lifetime Tickets
-Private Concert (Recorded)

It’s personal. For $2,500 or more, you’ll get all downloads, signed new CD, signed new DVD, complete signed box set, two LIFETIME passes to all Stuart Davis concerts, and Stuart will personally come to your private home and perform a concert in your house, which will be recorded on digital mini disc and given to you at the end of the show. You do NOT pay any travel, lodging, or food, price includes everything.

Level Six: $5,000+ -Downloads
-Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
-Signed Box Set
-Two Lifetime Tickets
-Private Concert (Recorded)
-Collector’s Care Package

Wow. For $5,000 or more you get all downloads, signed new CD, signed new DVD, complete signed box set, two LIFETIME passes to all Stuart Davis concerts, Stuart will personally come to your house and do a concert, give you a recording of it at the end of the night (price is all-inclusive), plus you receive a bursting basket of collector’s absolutely unique rarities; Recordings of songs never released anywhere (not even on the site), one-of a kind t-shirts designed for you to give to your friends and enemies, and private bootlegs of out-takes from the new CD.

Level Seven: $10,000+ -Downloads
-Signed Copy Of New Disc & DVD Set
-Signed Box Set
-Two Lifetime Tickets
-Private Concert Performed On A…
-Collector’s Care Package
-Hand-Made Guitar Engraved In Is

We call this the “Holy Shit” level. For $10,000 or more, you get all downloads, signed new CD, signed new DVD, complete signed box set, two LIFETIME
passes to all Stuart Davis concerts, Stuart will personally come to your house and do a concert, give you a recording of it at the end of the night, plus you receive a bursting basket of collector’s absolutely unique rarities; Recordings of songs never released anywhere (not even on Stu’s site), one-of a kind t-shirts designed for you to give to your friends and enemies, and private bootlegs of out-takes from the new CD. BUT WAIT- here’s the kicker: The concert at your house will be performed on a very expensive hardwood, hand-made acoustic guitar that is engraved in IS (a language Stuart himself constructed) with a phrase of your choice, signed by Stuart and GIVEN TO YOU at the end of the night along with the recording.

Let the bidding begin. To place a bid, or ask any questions, email .

Thanks! 

Whether at concerts, on the web, or at his annual Dharmapalooza event where fans gather from all over the World, people have stepped up to support Dharma Pop's mission to infuse more surprise and depth into pop culture.  34 year-old Davis' fearless approach to song writing -spanning politics, sex, spirituality, history, science, and love- have made him one of the most critically acclaimed artists of his generation.  

"We were blown away by Stuart's pure genius. We booked him on the show, calls started coming in..."
	-Bruce Warren, Producer of World Cafe 

"Without exaggeration, Stuart Davis is one of the most fascinating and exceptional songwriters in modern music."
	-San Jose Metro

"Not since Bob Dylan burst through 30 years ago has Minnesota produced such a confident and creative songwriter."
	-Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A rare genius. Whatever you do, don't miss his work or his performances."
	-Ken Wilber

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Rock Auction Payment

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2005 at 5:29 pm by Stuart Davis

Click the above image to finalize your payment details.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Rock Auction Payment

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2005 at 5:29 pm by Stuart Davis

Click the above image to finalize your payment details.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

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