song of the day: Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing / Stevie Wonder
word of the day: prelapsarian / pertaining to the condition of innocence before the fall of man (theol.), innocent and carefree.

last night driving to the movie store to return my blessed, sacred copies of Six Feet Under, i heard Stevie Wonder on the radio singing Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing, and it just BLOWS ME AWAY like it always does, like so much of his stuff does. what is it about Stevie? authenticity, that's what it is. but it's one thing to have authenticity, and another to have real Depth. then i started thinking about what i said in my previous blog, that our intensity of feeling in music experience doesn't necessarily have anything to do with innovation, doesn't necessarily reflect anything about the greatness of the work. but often it does tell us something. i think we need a new category in the innovator, translator binary discsussion. cuz people like Stevie are not necessarily innovators (i'm talking about mechanics, systems of structure, production, arrangement, etc) but he's definitely not merely a good translator, in my view. he's like an incredibly resonator. the dude is a divine tuning fork. i listen to him and i can feel the mystery in my bones, muscles and blood. his authenticity is the kind that makes me feel like i'm witnessing some rare Cosmological Event when i hear him sing. like a super nova or something, but it's not because he's necessarily pushing the envelope of musical dimension (although he's certainly a TEN in the musical category of translation), but his power, presence, charisma, and humanity all entwine in a way that FILLS ME UP WITH LOVE. whether he's singing somber, heavy songs (Evil) or his ebullient, uplifting tunes (Isn't She Lovely), i just feel like this PERSON singing is really the real deal. it's coming from a place in him that is so brave, vulnerable, powerful, and he's got the voice and body that makes it explode. he's a Godhead resonator.

i think it's an important thing to consider. especially because every person's experience of what a Divine Resonator is will be different to some degree. because people are so infinitely unique, enigmatic creatures, i really think that what touches us deeply, what reaches inside of us and makes contact with our secrets, hopes, and wounds will depend on who we are. for me, Stevie Wonder is PURE HEART and THROAT chakra radiance. but i know for other people they may make that same kind of connection with very different artists. some people listen to Tool and it opens them that way, some people listen to Marilyn Manson and feel set free, and i think i get why. i'm not saying it's the same experiences, but that the combination on the tumbler is different for each person's Heart vault. in fact it changes for each person all the time. a song may crack you wide open when you're 15 and not hit you at all when you're 39. there's a lot of variance.

but even so, there seem to be some artists that hit a lot of people in a certain way. Stevie appears to be one of those kind, and then you have all sorts of others like the Beatles, U2, Bjork, and even though i tease bands like Radiohead for being seized in postmodern shoe-gazing, i do think the reason they are so passionately supported by their fan base is that they're very inventive and they do speak to a very real condition in gen X, Y and Z. people are beset with a malaise, they know that so much of what they're fed is bullshit, and it makes them sick. but they are not aware of something to step forward, to step INTO. radiohead is a band that speaks to that. i think U2 is even better because they recognize and express the suffering and joy of life, and see the One inhabiting them both.

with resonators, i think it's a matter of their depth of realization. if we were to use spiritual teachers as an analogy, we could see that what they're all pointing to (the Absolute, the Truth, Divine Reality, whatever you want to call it) is the same, God does not change in relation to the teachers, but the teachers have varying degrees of realization. someone like Ramana Maharshi is perhaps more transparent to the Absolute than David Koresh. and in music, maybe Stevie Wonder is a transmitting and embodying a bit more of the Unknowable ~?~ than someone like Fred Durst, that punk ass bitch ain't got no love. i sentence him to a year locked in Stevie Wonder's heart. that ought to do it.