Song Of The Day: Christ In You / The Waterboys
Word Of The Day: Dvandva (n.) / A compound word, neither element of which is subordinated to the other, as bitter-sweet
Just recorded a dialogue with Mike Scott for Integral Naked. He's an amazing guy, and if you're not a member of Integral Naked yet, I highly recommend becoming one. You actually can get a month free to try it out, but the site has everything you can imagine, a mountain of audio and video from visionary figures from many fields (Science, Medicine, Psychology, Spirituality, Art, Politics, etc). It's about as cool as web sites get. I have the incredible fortune to get to record dialogues with people for the site from time to time, which amounts to conversing with some of the most wonderful people on the planet. I've been a Waterboys fan since I first heard Whole Of The Moon in my car a long time ago, and it sent me into a state. Since then I've been interested to read about Mike, his spirituality, realtionship wiht the music business, and his journey through the human condition. Sometimes when you admire someone's work, you're almost hesitant to meet them, encounter them more directly, because you're worried the authenticity won't be there. It's nearly a syndrome in the music business, we artists tapping into wider, deeper dimensions of something greater than ourselves, but then not quite pulling that down into the body, into the real world, and doing the dirty work after the honey moon. That doesn't mean becoming some "perfect" being, actually it just means being more real about your own humanity, your shadow and so on. I really got a good feeling from Mike, my intuitive sense of him from his music and what I've read was a deeply genuine practitioner and sincere human being who's opened greatly to Love, and that was indeed my experience of him in the hour of our conversation today over the phone. It was a great joy speaking with him. The Presence was felt. He's got a new album coming out this fall called Karma To Burn. I forgot to tell him I have a song called Karma Pyre. Jinx, buy me a Coke.
One of my favorite features of speaking with Mike today was his willingness to allow for pregnant pauses while he carefully considered the question I'd put to him. It takes a certain degree of depth and SPACE -especially in an interivew- to allow for that kind of silence. He simply let there be total quiet at several points in the conversation, and he went in for a few moments to explore and feel what was there in relation to the subject. I just loved that, that silence of him listening to his own interiors before just spitting something out. Almost everyone you talk to -again, especially in interviews- is entirely unwilling or unable to let there be GOOD dead air. There's two kinds of dead air, the bad kind (technical problems, or a blank-out from the person) and the good kind (a strength and openness that allows for a sincere searching in that moment, not just filling the air with words to avoid silence). It indicates something important to me. Silence is almost a taboo in Western culture, especially in public contexts like interviews. It's like death in more ways than one, it makes people uncomfortable on several levels. First, it implies an un-knowing. Second, it carries uncertainty. That uncertainty creates a tension or pressure which is the anticipation of relief. Relief from what? Unknowing. But that's all meditation is, unknowing. That's all practice is, unknowing. Post conventional spirituality is not some resolution of the dualistic opposites (right / wrong, awake / asleep, knowing / ignorance) it's the space that opens beyond them, still including them. Third, it puts us into contact with Presence, Presence we usually occlude through an endless succession of distraction and white noise. Silence is a variety of death, one where we surrender our Story and its ornaments, and enter into the ~?~. I respect a person who's willing to be asked a question and just sit with it. I personally feel our culture could benefit from a whole lot more of that, on both the inverviewer and the interviewee end of things. I know I would really like to grow in this area. I'm a bit of a chatty kathy, I get so excited I about the person or the conversation and I can be too quick to speak, and too short on listening.
In other news, my producer Alex Gibson has been sending me tracks from my new studio album via the fucking AWESOME technology of Macs (and in case you're keeping track, it's: Macs: A+ / PCs: D-). The new tracks are melting my head off. I'm so lit up by what he's doing I'm like giggling and freaking out in my studio late at night with the head phones on, playing the tracks over and over, until finally I'm like "STOP IT, you're going to wear out the FUN. Relax. Play something else." And these are only rough tracks. When I hear what he's pulling together, I honestly think this will be the greatest album I've ever done. Note to readers: This is not an acoustic album. This is not a singer-songwriter album. This is not even a rock ablum. I really wanted a new animal, and that is what Gibson is creating here. It's a Tantric Robot so hot you'll wanna fuck it in the ass, right there in front of the librarian and all...
