Song Of The Day: Heaven / Live
Word Of The Day: Diaphany / A diaphanous epiphany (EPIPHANY = A manifestation of some divine or super human being; Any sudden and important manifestation or realization, DIAPHANOUS = Transparent; translucent; so light and insubstantial as to be almost transparent.)

What would you consider a legitimate instance of synchronicity (as in two incidents related in meaning and causality, literally CO-incidents, two occassions arising in CO-operation)? Well sometimes trippy shit happens in the creative flow that is so fucking cool it makes me get up and hop around and giggle, and last night was one of those kinds of nights. I have to back us up a bit in the story line to really relate the fun of it. As you may know, I recently wrote a song named "Easter", the lyrics of which (up until recently) were as follows:

In the midst of the perfection
this princess starts bitching
In the arms of Elijah
this infant keeps twitchin'
This master that's teaching
is a pupil repeating
This boxer loves headlines
but he couldn't take a punch line

Somebody slap me
I can't stop laughing
suicide is back in fashion
But all ascenders end up sinking
and it makes love wonder
what we're thinking

Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
bury that bastard
You're two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you're Jesus
proving you're Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter

Right posture, right poses
Too bad what's under the robes is
still cross-eyed in the witness
and searching for suchness
Back home God's diamond
puts a diaper on the daughter of

a mystical martyr
who triggered a seizure
from making believe that
his body's a disease

He's wishing
for a World where
his vapors would thrive
and giving up his life
(as if he were alive)

He would have his wings
if feathers came from crutches
or that
cushion he clutches

Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
bury that bastard
You're two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you're Jesus
proving you're Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter

In the eye of a white tornado
in the pit of a black volcano
in the palm of a human hand
there's a grain of this quick sand

If a reaper has a burden
it's aching from the laughing
at the site of all these seekers
chasing their assassin
Kneel before a butcher
and beg to skip the blood shed
makes a reaper wonder
what the fuck we're thinking

Two crows
sit at the window
keeping a vigil
over your widow
And two coins
drop in a casket
over your sockets
(bury that bastard)
You're two-thirds
ready for Easter
thinking you're Jesus
proving you're Caesar
Easter
two-thirds
ready for Easter

So anyway, it's one of my favorite songs I've written in a long while. But a weird thing began happening while I was on tour the other week, as I was driving and singing this song over and over in my head (often this is how I work through pre-production on arrangements while making an album, just wood-shed in the head for hours each day while driving). I would get two-thirds through the song, and I shit you not, I kept getting interrupted by some woman who would bust in (to my head, just appear in the song) and start rapping. She sounded like a combination of Missy Elliot and Ani Difranco, in terms of her voice. She would bust in right after I'd sing "cushion he clutches" and start singing-rapping the following:

I'm just a girl with a planet inside of
The Daughter of Man
But the men have been fighting me
I bathed my brother and my brother ignited me
Divinity's twins till some Devil divided the
Goddess from the hominid's odyssey
I am
I am that I am
I am an antidote to new age philosophy
an ipecac to this mythic coprophagy
kiss me, I'm a laughing diaphany
cross me, I'm a shrieking cacophany

I had been thinking a lot about Jesus' siblings, in particular his sisters, and specifically his sister Salome (Matthew 13:56 and Mark 6:3 both say Jesus had sisters, they are named in the Panarion and Ancoratus of Epiphanius as being Mary, Salome and Anna (or Joanna), and are cited in the Protevangelion of James, the Gospel of Philip, and the Apostolic Constitutions. Mary and Salome show up in Mark 15:47 and Joanna and Mary show up in Luke 24:10, Mary again in Matthew 28:1) (Mary was only a virgin if you don't count anal...)

What was immediately evident in the voice of this woman who kept busting into my song Easter was that she was Jesus' sister, in the divine sense. Christ was the Son Of Man, and this was the Daughter Of Man. The second coming of Christ in feminine form has been a theme of my music for some time, so it was no surprise that was emerging (the song Easter is basically about how this practitioner who thinks he's the shit for chasing the ether in causal and nondual bodies and states is such an escapist fucker, while his awakened wife is a living Buddha / Christ on Earth, working in the trenches for love, getting her hands dirty, and showing up fully for the sake of all beings, in short it's about the seduction of spiritual by-pass men fall prey to). I'd also been reading a lot of Leonard Shlain and dunking myself in some of his very cool ideas about the feminine divine and its story in history. I've personally felt for some time that the second coming of Christ will be an emergent feminine awakening in the collective. Basically we've had Big Mind for thousands of years, but we're needing Big Heart to awaken with it. We've had lots of emptiness, void, suchness, etc, but we've lagged a bit behind in the realization and embodiment of that in form, in body, in being, in communion. When I say feminine, of course, I don't mean "women". I mean the feminine dimension that is extent and intrinsic to all beings, men and women, that has been to a large degree marginalized, repressed, or supplanted as a result of the imbalanced hyper-acceleration of masculine (left brain) capacities in human beings. We've been very externalized, linear, agentic- and the development in these capacities is FUCKING AWESOME. It's just dangerously out of balance with communion, linking, relational, interior modes, etc.

Anyway.

So the voice of this woman keeps busting in on the song Easter, and she's the Daughter Of Man, she's the counter-part to Christ, his perfect inversion, and he is hers. And one of the lines she sings is "Kiss me, I'm a laughing Diaphany, cross me, I'm shrieking cacophany". And I'm like "what the fuck is a diaphany?" She sings it over and over, each time that word, and I'm like "I don't think that's a word", and she's like "I'm a DIAPHANY, it's DIAPHANY!!!" So, whatever. I search my brain, but I'm pretty darn sure that's not a word. Diaphanous is a word, I know that, and epiphany is a word, but I'm sure what my brain is doing is making up a word, a hybrid, because it loves the way 'laughing' sounds with 'diaphany' and 'cacophany'. But I am a tight ass about such matters. I don't like to use a word in a song unless it's really the right word, or if I'm making one up, it has to really convey the intended meaning fairly well. That's what signifiers do, they are signs pointing to that which is signified.

So, back at the hotel I start researching the word Diaphany. The first place I go every time is always The Oxford Shorter English Dictionary. Really the best dictionary, without anything even coming close in competition, except the Complete Oxford English Dictionary, but that's 27 Volumes and rather bulky to place in a normal sized home. The Shorter OED is two massive volumes, about a million words. It has totally kick-ass etymologies, and a depth in detail and history that all its competitors (Websters? are you fucking kidding me?) don't even attempt. There's only one dictionary, that's the OED. So, I look up "Diaphany". It's not in there. Just as I suspected, there is Diaphanous, and there is Diaphanie (A process for imitating paintedor stained glass by means of coloured paper), but no DIAPHANY.

I go back to the song Easter, and try changing the words to "Kiss me, I'm laughing Diaphanous" or even "Kiss me, I'm a laughing Diaphanie" but it doesn't work. The girl who is singing this part to me in my head is like "Listen, the fucking WORD is DIAPHANY. Use THAT WORD or go fuck yourself." I go "but it's not correct gramm..." and she's like "SHHHH!!!!".

And I have to admit, every time I sing the song, that is clearly the right word. But when I'm outside of the song, I have a guilty feeling. I mean, I KNOW it's a word that is supposed to mean a combination of Epiphany and Diaphanous, but no one else is going to know that. I could use the word Diaphane, but that doesn't fit the rhythym / vibe of the song. What's really cool as I snoop around is finding out the root of the word Diaphanous is from the Greek 'Diaphanes' - to "show", which is a very feminine origin in meaning / semantics.

So, I don't give up. I start searching around on the web (sometimes, in desperate situations, we must put down the OED, and search the internet. Yes, the internet.).

Well, the web will blow your mind, cuz whatever you think you've thought of, someone else has thought of a decade ago and has a web site devoted to it. I put "Epiphany Diaphanous Diaphany" into google, and I get THIS. I just about fall out of my fucking chair when I read this:

“Diaphany” is a combination of epiphany, meaning manifestation or apparition, and “diaphanous,” meaning gauzy and almost transparent. Seeing the divine milieu is a little like seeing the 3-D images of The Magic Eye. What changes isn’t the content of the outside world, but rather the way you’re looking at it.  That’s what we sang about in the song – “find your heart, open up both your eyes” – “both eyes” meaning the eyes of the body, but also the eye of the spirit, the “third eye".

OK. THAT'S interesting. What's even cooler is this is a web site run by some dude who's all about Gay mysticism. He's citing Teilhard De Chardin (who's concept of "Omega" point and "Noosphere" were big influences on me, his book Phenomenon Of Man really killed me) and all sorts of shit. COOL! I have one corroborative coordinate for using "Diaphany" fair and square.

I keep searching, and things get even more confluent and groovy. Further searches of Diaphany on google turn up THIS site.. I just about shit myself. Gebser? GEBSER? You ole' sneaky BASTARD! I love ya'! It's GEBSER, everyone, and he's fucking using the word "DIAPHANY", and he's using it EXACTLY in the way that rapper chick who kept cajolling me in my head SAID it should be used. Anyone who's into Integral stuff will recognize Gebser as one of the great figures in developmental research, and one of the Integral Forefathers. So, here he is, four decades earlier, making up the word "Diaphany" and applying it in this manner:

'Gebser introduces... synairesis "which is an integral understanding, or perception, of reality."

(STAY WITH ME, THIS SHIT IS COOL!!)

More specifically, Gebser notes,

"Synairesis comes from synaireo, meaning "to synthesize, collect," notably in the sense of "everything being seized or grasped on all sides, particularly by the mind or spirit." Whereas synthesis is a logical-causal conclusion, a mental (trinitary) unification of thesis and antithesis (and falls apart because it becomes itself a thesis as a result of the dividing, perspectival perception), synairesis is an integral act of completion 'encompassing all sides' and perceiving aperspectivally."

(HERE COMES THE PUNCH LINE:)

"The synairesis which systasis makes possible integrates phenomena, freeing us in the
DIAPHANY of 'a-waring' or perceiving truth from space and time."

(WHA??? WHA???? Did someone just say DIAPHANY is the free-functioning, integrated awareness which renders phenomena transparent, transcending but including space and time?? OH MY GOD THERE'S MORE...)

By introducing systasis into simple methodology, we are able to evince a new "method" which is no longer three-dimensional. This new method is four-dimensional DIAPHANY; in this what is merely conceivable and comprehensible becomes transparent. DIAPHANY is based on synairesis, on the eteological completion of systasis and system to an integral whole, for integrality is only possible where "temporal" elements and spatial magnitudes are brought together synairetically. The concept which makes possible the "comprehension" or, more exactly, the perception of the "temporal elements" is that of systasis. If we also take into account the systatic concepts, the mere methodology of systems is intensified to synairetic diaphany; and this must be achieved unless we are to remain caught in the three-dimensional scheme of thought."

SOMEBODY GET ME DIAPER AND A PAIR OF SUNGLASSES. I JUST CRAPPED MYSELF, AND THE LUMINOSITY IS BLINDING. WOW!!

After I read Gebser's definition and application of the word "DIAPHANY" -which is not even IN the Oxford English Dictionary- I had to go find the rapper chick in my creative consciousness who is Jesus' sister, The Daughter Of Man who personifies the second coming of Christ. I had to go to her and say

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry for WHAT?"

"That I doubted you."

"Who am I?"

"Some say you are a prophet."

"What else?"

"Some say you are a witch, others say you are the Messiah."

"Who do you say that I am?"

"You are awake. You are love."

"I am that I am."