“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” -Buddha
Whether you are going or staying or sitting or lying down,
the whole world is your own self.
You must find out
whether the mountains, rivers, grass, and forests
exist in your own mind or exist outside it.
Analyze the ten thousand things,
dissect them minutely,
and when you take this to the limit
you will come to the limitless,
when you search into it you come to the end of search,
where thinking goes no further and distinctions vanish.
When you smash the citadel of doubt,
then the Buddha is simply yourself.
– Daikaku
Late Sommer Arcing ….
I have found myself writing again;(not just for the magazine or Turfing) which of course is one of those acts that I do… either well, or poorly. I cannot pretend that I have a great talent at it, as I fledge at it whereas others soar. It is in the elbow grease; don’t give lip service to that which you don’t apply yourself to, right? I am finding that writing down notes as you go is pretty effective; inspiration hits me more often when I am away from the computer than when I am on it. The art of writing out by hand trumps typing for the capture of the pure thought. Typing is like herding words into the corral of structure, whereas writing is like climbing an open face of granite. Perilous at times, but so satisfying.
I have been reading Dale Pendell’s new book, “The Great Bay”. There is a review soon to follow, but suffice to say, it’s a page turner. (I am not going to give it away yet!) It is a complete new direction for his writing, and has already won the “Best Science Fiction” award for the 2010 Green Book Festival. It is very, very good.
I want to promote an event for another writer friend, Graham St. John this Friday in San Francisco for the American release of his wonderful “Technomad”. If you are not familiar with Graham’s work, follow the links below. It is really an impressive bit of anthropological work.
Anyway, on the Caer Llwydd front. Rowan has been working on film weekly since his new quarter started at the Art Institute. We will soon be posting a video or two of his, so stay tuned. Summer has somewhat arrived in Oregon. It is very odd though, unlike any summer I remember here. Intensely warm/hot for several days, then the temperature drops, and everything is extremely cool again. It must be playing havoc with the poor farmers. Life flows on here, every other day there is another film crew working in the house, Mary is in the garden and life is sweet as summer arcs into harvest. Fall, the old traditional Autumn, is but a few days away. How does it go so quickly? We walk together on the street at night, everything is just so perfect and the beauty of life shimmers all around us. Catch your breath, life tumbles on.
I hope this finds you with those you love, doing that which means the most to you, as we swim together through the air…
I hope you enjoy this edition.
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Technomad Book Launch
Anarchist Quotes
Silversun Pickups – Growing Old Is Getting Old (Live on MTV: Unplugged)
The Future of the Future – Robert Anton Wilson
The Daoist Poet: Yuan Mei
Silversun Pickups – “Kissing Families”
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I will soon have a review on Technomad, but meanwhile if you are in the Bay area this Friday, you might consider attending the US launch event!
Technomad Book Launch : San Francisco
Friday, JULY 30th 9:00pm – 10:00pm
1015 Folsom, 1015 Folsom Avenue San Francisco, CA
Book Launch for Graham St John’s Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures. Panel discussion on San Francisco, Burning Man and its contributions to the “Global Tribal Revival”. Graham will read from his landmark book and discuss the contributions that Bay Area groups and projects have made to the international rave and festival
culture, including a panel discussion with: Marian Goodell (Burning Man), Michael Gosney (Digital Be-In, Earthdance) and Brad Olson (How Weird Street Faire/CCC)
The Launch is part of SOUL OF THE CITY: Transforming Metropolis at
1015 Folsom July 30 8:00pm – 3:00am
A benefit for Entheon Village, Red Lightning, Sacred Spaces and Feed the Artists at Burning Man 2010 – Celebrating the Evolution of the Revolution
Cost:
$15 in advance
$10 before 9pm (for Talks/Book Launch)
$20 at the door after 9pm
TICKETS @ http://thesoulofthecity.eventbrite.com/
PERFORMANCE LINE-UP
MAIN STAGE
9:00pm – 10:30pm
Outersect – DJ Set
10:30pm – 11:30pm
OM Live! – Live Act
First Bay Area live performance since Lost At Last for the new band featuring Digital Shaman Om with Kali’s Angel Amy Carr.
11:30pm – 12:30am
Lux D’Coda / DJ Goz – Live/DJ Act
The cosmic muse of Foxgluv is back to enthrall us with potent new magic, morphing into DJ Goz trance grooves.
Niema Lightseed, Prayer Performance
12:30am – 2:00am
AFROLICIOUS featuring DJ Oz – Live/DJ Act
A full on electronic live act featuring Afro-Tropi-Electro-Funk-Disco-House to dance yourself into bliss
2:00am – 3:00am
DJ tba
DOWNSTAIRS – Sacred Sound Temple
– Talks by Graham St John and Radhanath Swami
– Kirtan by Radhanath Swami
– Alan Tower’s Sound Eggs
– Graham Lightfinger
– Healing Zone
– Sacred Metropolis Community Altars
FRONT ROOM:
– CHLOROPHIL
– MODA – Romentum.com – LA
– OUTERSECT
– AIRE REDTREE
BM 2010 Interactive Art Preview
Food and Drink
More info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130737523616731
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BOOK PREVIEW
Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures
by Graham St John (Equinox, 2009)
A cultural history of global electronic dance music countercultures, Technomad explores the pleasurable and activist trajectories of post-rave culture.
“Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures is the most wide-ranging and detailed of all the books on rave. More than the study of a musical movement or genre, Technomad offers an alternate history of cultural politics since the 1960s, from hippies and Acid Tests through the sound systems and ‘vibe-tribes’ of the 1990s and beyond…. Like Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces, Technomad makes unexpected but entirely convincing connections between people, movements and events. Like Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, St John’s book introduces us to unknown heroes, committed geniuses and genuine revolutionaries. Beautifully written, with a genuinely international perspective on electronic dance music culture, Technomad is one of the best books on music I’ve read in some time.” – Professor Will Straw, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University
(Get the book from the Earthdance Bookshelf <http://www.earthdancenetwork.com/page/bookshelf-1>)
Online excerpts from Technomad:
Digital Be-In: http://www.earthdancenetwork.com/notes/Conscious_Parties_and_Cybertribes
Burning Man: http://www.undergrowth.org/burning_time_begoggled_in_the_mega_vibe_burning_man_by_graham_st_john
Graham
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Anarchist Quotes:
Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited–or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society. – Errico Malatesta
I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule and also ruled I will not be. – John Henry Mackay
Anarchism…stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. – Emma Goldman
The political arena leaves one no alternatives, one must be either a dunce or a rogue. – Emma Goldman
The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all. – G.K. Chesterton
For every complex problem there is a solution which is straightforward, simple, and wrong. – H.L. Mencken
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A Wonderful Band!
Silversun Pickups – Growing Old Is Getting Old (Live on MTV: Unplugged)
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The Future of the Future
– Robert Anton Wilson
There was a Fundamentalist Futurist back in the 1890′s who demonstrated that New York City would be abandoned as unfit for habitation by the 1930s. His argument was based on projection forward of population trends, and he correctly estimated that population would grow from 4 million to over 7 million in 40 years. (He didn’t guess it would reach over 12 million by now.) It was then obvious, he said, that the amount of horses necessary to provide transportation for that many people would result in a public health hazard of incredible dimensions: there would be horse manure up to the third floor windows everywhere in Manhattan. This illustrates the most frequent fallacy found in Future projections: the “elementalistic fallacy” named by Alfred Korzybski. The elementalistic fallacy as Korzybski noted, seems to be built into our very language. We can talk about Joe Smith in isolation from his (or any) environment; we can therefore think about Mr. Smith in such fictitious isolation; and in such “elementalistic fallacy” we will always draw wrong conclusions, because Mr. Smith cannot exist without some environment. (He will explode in a vacuum, and without a social world his mind will similarly explode — or implode — or at least mutate shockingly, as isolation experiments have shown. )
Projecting population forward without projecting other factors forward has produced numerous elementalistic fallacies similar to thinking of Joe Smith without an environment. Malthus, for instance, “proved” that population will always increase faster than resources, but this was disproven by technological history, and we now understand that “resources” only exist when identified by analysis and each new discovery in pure science shows us new resources everywhere.
One example: the Newtonian system allowed us to tap 0.001 per cent of the energy in a glass of water; 19th Century thermodynamics showed us how to tap 0.01 per cent of that energy; we can now tap 1.0 per cent. Nobody knows how much we’ll be able to tap in 50 years.
Elementalistic fallacies abound in Future projections (including my own). We are only gradually and gropingly learning to think “non-elementalistically” (in Korzybski’s phrase) or “synergetically” as Bucky Fuller liked to say. I have found one quick way to avoid the more obvious elementalistic and Fundamentalistic errors, which is this:
Whenever I project one trend forward, I then re-analyze the situation, projecting at minimum five other trends forward also.
For instance, lifespan and population have both been increasing in the past 200 years. Projecting these trends forward elementalistically (in isolation) has led to some notable Doomsday scenarios in which humanity overcrowds itself to death. An entirely different picture emerges, however, if one projects these trends synergetically along with five other trends, such as:
The effect of industrialism on population. As documented by Fuller (Critical Path) a nation’s population only rises rapidly in the transition from feudalism to industrialism, then levels off when industrialism is well established in a country.
The emergence of Feminism and self-choice among women, beginning with the 18th century radicalism of Mary Wollstonecraft and now including Women’s Liberation movements in all parts of the world — even dawningly in Islamic nations.
The movement of communication technology into space, with clear trends indicating that “industrial” (or more likely, post-industrial) technology will follow, with workers and then families and then schools and grocers and museums, etc. moving into space colonies.
The continued improvement in birth control technology and the fading line between contraception and abortion. There is already a heated debate, for instance, about whether certain devices — e.g. the IUD — “are” or “are not” abortifacients.
The neuroscience revolution (or H.E.A.D. Revolution — Hedonic Engineering And Development) with its increasing promise that humans in the near future will achieve more freedom from mechanical conditioned reflexes (both “physical” and “mental”) than ever before.
Whenever I try to project all five of these trends even 40 years into the future, I find the “overcrowding” problem seems less likely than New York being buried in horse manure. To get a feel for synergetic thinking, try your own projection, “guestimating” what the next decade will bring in each of these fields, and the decade after that, and so on, to 2029.
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The Daoist Poet: Yuan Mei
Nearing Hao-pa
(I saw in the mist a little village of a few tiled roofs and joyfully admired it.)
There’s a stream, and there’s bamboo,
there’s mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hid, clouded hamlet,
a mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
have to live, to get
that simple.
–
Just Done
A month alone behind closed doors
forgotten books, remembered, clear again.
Poems come, like water to the pool
Welling,
up and out,
from perfect silence
–
Climbing The Mountain
I burned incense, swept the earth, and waited
for a poem to come…
Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain,
leaning on my staff.
How I’d love to be a master
of the blue sky’s art:
see how many sprigs of snow-white cloud
he’s brushed in so far today.
–
Mad Words
To learn to be without desire
you must desire that.
Better to do as you please:
sing idleness.
Foating clouds, and water idly running –
Where’s their source?
In all the vastness of the sea and sky,
you’ll never find it.
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Silversun Pickups – “Kissing Families”