song of the day: accidentally like a martyr / warren zevon
word of the day: copromania / obsession with feces

oh my. i fell so very ill a couple nights ago, and have been flat on my back for the last two days and nights. this was yet another stomach flu i caught from my daughter (she's got a way with these things) although it didn't hit her quite like it did me. when she had it, she would just suddenly throw up out of nowhere, then get a look on her face that said 'hmm...that's odd.' then go on playing with her blocks. but i'm not so poised in sickness. i was puking my guts out for 18 hours, fever, chills, diahrea- and when those fireworks were over i was still flat on my back for the next 30 hours. but through every phase, i was moaning moaning moaning. moaning is certainly the best part of being sick. followed to its deepest reaches, the moan is actually a form of chanting. an authentic moan / chant is the product of an altered state, but it's an altered state which cannot be artificially induced- not drugs, or booze, or even torture will summon this special music from the pit of a person's belly. see, a real moan / chant comes from your hara, that's why being sicker than fuckshit is actually a rarefied form of yoga- and the moan / chant is its sound track. the moan / chant is the sound produced when a person assumes an alchemical asana. performing such an asana is only possible when the body is battling an illness sufficient in scope to elicit deep bellowing from its subject. when fighting such an infection, the body inwardly assumes a series of millions postures through microbiotic, cellular processes while outwardly the greater corpus remains quite still (corpse pose=very sexy), this micro / macro complementarity is a transformative Volcano- it's Vesuvius to your little Pompeii of identities. i know some of you are thinking 'well, what about the moaning you do when you're puking cuz you drank so much, and you're doubled over the toity, petitioning God for a reprieve.

it's not the same.

the moan emitted from a truly sick human is singular. the moaning one hears from a drunk is that of over-indulgence, self-inflicted toxification, it is a misery we invite by ingesting man-made agents. nothing wrong with that, but you can't get a moan / chant from that combo, those moans are the sound of the ego marinating in its own bile. that kind of moan comes from the gut, from the belly, or the chest, or the head, but never from the hara. put succinctly, that moan is not musical. it is music, but it is not musical. the difference between that which is music and that which is musical is something that's tricky to define, but easy to perceive. one of the most obvious examples is guitar solos. most guitar solos are merely music, they are not musical. and that's because most guitar players are people who play music, not musical people. a musical musician is actually quite rare. it's a matter of depth, not facility. here are some examples:

Lenny Kravitz: Music
Led Zeppelin: Musical
Schoenberg: Music
Beethoven: Musical
Fiona Apple: Music
Tori Amos: Musical

this distinction extends,

Cindy Crawford: Beauty
Marilyn: Beautiful
Rebecca Romijn: Beauty
Queen Rania: Beautiful

or,

Jerry Seinfeld: Humor
Stephen Colbert:Humorous
Eddie Izzard: Fucking Humorous

Adi Da: Awake
Ramana Maharshi: Awakened
Aurobindo: Integrally Awakened

or

Stuart Davis: Mind
Suzuki Roshi: Beginner's Mind
Genpo Roshi: Beginner's Big Mind

which brings us back to:

Spoiled Child: Moaning-Pouting (music)
Drunken Frat-Boy: Moaning-Puking (music)
Fevered Practitioner: Moaning-Chanting (musical)

the Moan-Chant has its own methodology- which is more remembered than learned. when a non-practitioner becomes fevered and wickedly sick, they more or less go delirious and ride the ride till its done. when a practitioner gets sick, they are reacqainted with an art / technology first cultivated by shamans thousands of years ago. those visionaries, who recognized the fevered state for what it was- a PORTAL- laid down a morphogenetic groove in the subtle landscape that's impossible to access (much less explore) without the assistance of bacterial and viral envoys. and how do you call forth these guides? by moaning-chanting from the center of the Real you, ever more deeply entering the illness. the tunnel is the ladder. when the Big Sick sets in, we can drop the facade, melt the personas, and there is our window. it is only present a short while, held open by fever. if we rest as Witness we may find ourselves in the Choir, moan-chanting a strange, exotic celebration of the Kosmos. it's in B-Flat, the pitch sounded from the point of all places. submerged in the Nexus of all Notes, you resume your place in the primary pitch. all matter, mind, and meta-matter/mind is condensed frequency, the entire World of form is a miraculous feat of compression from an anonymous Producer. that's how and why we moan-chant. the natural response to our intimate encounter with the Primary Pitch is to amplify it, and in doing so we are the sound of the One expressed through the Many. you won't remember the Moan-Chant unless you recall it through the riddle of a fever, and once recalled it is plainly evident you never left it, couldn't forget it. no shit. and even if we've experienced years of meditation and its concomitant states, even if we've spun with the sufis, chanted with hindis, dropped acid and watched The Wall, fasted and prayed in a sensory deprivation chamber, dunked our head in an upright bass while Jaco Pastorius droned low E for days- even if we've done all of that, it won't add up to what happens when a practitioner gets sick as fuckshit and starts Chanting the Wordless Poem of suffering and healing, birth and death- the hymn of every human born.