Song Of The Day: Head Over Heels / Tears For Fears
Word Of The Day: Moxy / If you have to ask, you don't have it

It's been an intense week. Left Boulder on thursday, drove 13 hours, crashed like a corpse in a hotel bed, woke up, drove a few more, did the show in Mankato (it was the smallest turn out we've had in many years, wonder where every body was?)- had a blast, drove after the show to my parents house a couple hours away, woke up, drove to Duluth 3 1/2 hours away, did the show at Beaner's (full house)-had an atomic evening of joy, went and hung out at my brother's house, took a sauna in the Swedish Master lodge he constructed with his own bare hands, talked about the Mystery with the family and friends for the night, woke up, had a coffee with brother Scott and nephew Justin, drove to Ely, did the show there (awesome turn out, thanks Deb and Michael Monroe and Brandenburgs and Brett for making it all happen-WOW), got to bed about 4AM, woke up at 6:30AM, two hours of sleeping then drove four hours to Minneapolis for a photo shoot with Sheila Ryan, arrived at noon completely, totally exhausted beyond measure, sleepy, starving, wasted, but the shoot was incredible! I am radically stoked for the artwork on the new album, we did several different kinds of shoots, you'll have to wait and see the new promo to find out what we did, after the shoot, I had my first hour of free time in about a week, and I went to see Star Wars episode 3. What can I tell you? Fantastic special effects, and embarrassingly bad script writing. Simply some of the worst, stilted, flat, one-dimensional dialogue I've ever seen on screen, and if it were another film by another director I would have walked out in the first ten minutes. It was like watching rehearsals for Space-Days Of Our Lives or As The Space World Turns. More cliches than you can track. How weird to see Natalie Portman beset with lines that you literally cannot redeem. The film DOES redeem itself in the last half hour, and it is interesting finally in that last bit, a bit of humanity comes through, and I do give Lucas props for making a movie this dark. But I still feel like this is the third star wars film in a row that was made focusing 95% of the resources and imagination on eye candy and effects, and a paucity of interest or concern for the interiors and character development that are necessary to create a good STORY instead of a sequence of stunning visuals. It still feels like characters are super-imposed onto exteriors- their interiors are a nagging afterthought, feels like they were added as finishing touches. The saddest thing about Star Wars, and Lord Of The Rings, and many others of their ilk, is the missed opportunity they all represent; instead of being employed as some of the most powerful instructive, entertaining tools in history, they collapse back into pre-fab dualism: The Battle Of Good vs Evil, the Dark and the Light. Lord Of the Rings had Schmegel, and Star Wars shows Annakin (Darth Vadar) being torn between the two, but neither of these films ever take the leap beyond, to give the public a taste, a knowing wink, that if we go deep enough, the battle between Good and Evil is not ultimately resolved in EITHER of them. duality, opposites, and the chronic binary addictions of human beings are a function of our limited perception, and it would be nice -oh so nice- if, even for a brief moment, either of these mega-narratives would have been brave enough to ever so briefly dunk us into that possibility, open our perspective up just for a moment to glimpse the Unity behind and beyond all of these seemings locked opposites. The war between good and evil is resolved when the perspective of the one in "battle" evolves beyond either of the opposites, but still manages to include and embrace them. I haven't seen the Matrix, so i don't know if it does this, but I can tell you the only two films I am aware of that consciously do this are Thin Red Line (through the perspective of its main character "Witt", who's name I am guessing is a contraction of the word "Witness"), and I Heart Huckabees. It's bizarre that a film like I Heart Huckabees, which will undoubtedly be overlooked or dismissed because it's a comedy- goes (literally) INFINITELY deeper into this Koan than Star Wars, Lord Of The Rings, or any of their kind EVER have the guts to. I Heart Huckabees stands as -I kid you not- probably the most NonDual popular film ever made, not only exploring and celebrating the dance and tension between good / evil, form / emptiness, understanding / illusion, but also brilliantly releasing us into the true freedom of an awareness and direct experience that is beyond the either / or syndrome that plaugues virtually everything else we see in theater, t.v., books, and magazines. It is an immeasurable act of Love that I Heart Huckabees dares to reach for an actual, truly trans-rational resolution to these endless splits and divisions. All the more telling that it's a comedy, and doesn't even take itself seriously, and manages to laugh us into the realization that World of opposites is an ineffable Unity -but not any Unity that can be conceived or apprehended intellectually or cognitively - "not one, not two", as the mystical saying goes. Huckabees is Sufism brought to life before our eyes, perfect for this culture, this time, but diving head first into the deepest, most vexing questions of existence, leaving us knowing that its not existence vs Non-existence, or Reality vs Illusion, or Good VS Evil, they are all agents in the same Mystery, and our release doesn't come from being entrenched in any one of them, they are all aspects of an "I" that includes all perspectives, times, locations. As a side note, isn't it curious that Naomi Watts has now been in two of the greatest Mystical fimls in history: Mulholland Drive and I Heart Huckabees. Mulholland Drive (by my guess) takes place in the Bardo (Lynch has been a meditation practitioner for decades), and Huckabees is a Sufi masterpiece. Watts is without a doubt one of the most active and effective Mystery operants on Earth today, and has probably done as much or more to encourage real Awakening as most "spiritual" teachers in the last century.