Dan Mangan

http://vimeo.com/26908213

I recently discovered Dan Mangan and he has quickly vaulted to my Top 5. This video I came across while exploring his site (http://www.danmanganmusic.com/website/).

I also watched him play in Victoria on Nov.10/2011, it was a great show. I went with my friend Brian; check out his tumblr blog (http://brianvanwyk.tumblr.com/post/12635961728/dan-mangan-finished-his-tour-in-victoria-tonight) for a few shots from that night, and plenty of his other outstanding works.

http://vimeo.com/26908213

Jacek Yerka

Jacek Yerka- The Apple Cake Recipe

I just stumbled across this artist by accident; he is both very prolific and very thought provoking. 

Poetry in Commotion

Poetry is a study of the human mind and the complex mass of linkages that comprise it. When writing a poem, ideas seem to flow into each other; one leading to the next. Often times two seemingly dissimilar subjects come together and seem to, all of the sudden, bring each other new meaning. Is this caused by forced juxtaposition, or is the recoding of them whilst writing a sudden recognition of their tie?

Rocking Riotously 'round

...running through reality like a rocking horse, entering a race already underway; heels kicking, front feet reaching, stamping, never advancing. Working ruts beneath rockers, thoroughly entrenched in the here and now, striving for a destiny defiant of all undetermined inevitably. Digging deeper with every more obstinate roll; fortune not but a faintly fraught notion dancing like dice, unseen but heard, tinkling toward the edge. Imagined? When the dice drop, all bets are off as the game races on...

I think a tattoo is in order...

I think a tattoo is in order,
An unplanned (eventfully)eventual order.


Memories that flounder in that torrent racing by,
captured in the moment, fleeting, glinting in my eye.
A life unlived as I live on, through flight, through pits and falls,
A life forgotten as new paint bleeds o'er drawings on the walls.

My body is my vessel, right? My spaceship through this life,
on which I'll slap a stick-er two, to keep the light alive.
The light I see, the light I feel, the light that means I'm here,
A lightning bolt? Heck why not, perched just behind my ear.

A story board to tell my tale, selfishly I'll write,
upon my body, head to tail, of moments that feel right.

Communication- The Lack of It, The Frequency of Time, and The Evolution of Eventual Thought

The power of words are often belittled by the commonality of their occurrence. Words are thoughts and words create thoughts; language, with its ability to display complex emotions, thoughts, and ideas, is a central reason we are where we are today. The ability to express what we are thinking to others invokes a response, voluntary or not, in the people we are speaking to. Here the problem lies; in a world suffering from mass communication breakdown, how will our knowledge grow and be passed on as swiftly and effectively as it has been? We are suffering from attention deficit disorder that makes it nigh impossible to concentrate on a single thought path, especially one being relayed to us. We communicate with more 'isms' than we do articulations, ever blurring the lines and misinterpreting tone and therefore meaning. We are slowly losing each of our communicative senses, in the sight of facial expressions and body language, and in the hearing of tone rather than the (miss)interpreted sound and meaning of it.

We are steadily being drawn further within ourselves as we are left with the state of our own emotional minds to direct us through a widening abyss being formed around each of us, between each of us. To often we are caught pointing and laughing; in genuine humour, in judgement, in prejudice, in assumption. So often in fact, that we end up pointing at ourselves in the same way, in a more harsh and scrutinous light, infecting our thoughts with the highly contagious disease that is negativity. This black and bleak inward reflection causes a more paranoid wide-eyed view of the world around us. Since we mostly have our own opinions, views, and experiences to rely on, we can only assume that our onlookers are scrutinising us in the same harsh light. The paranoid android and wide-eyed sardine effect.

Our world is being created by a collective view (consciousness) that is limiting our brains to view the parameters of the world as we know it. This helps to explain cultural differences found around the world; originally defined mostly by geography but now that those geographical limits are being removed via ease of communication we are experiencing a global melting pot and losing the diversity seen clearly in our histories.

This is where my continually stumbled upon theory arises, centered around light and wave lengths; where 'The Paradox Of Time' (Philip Zimbardo & John Boyd)* is actually caused by differing human frequencies, rather than their placement and priorities in time.

The times I see this are in conversations where eye-contact is involved versus those where it isn't; its almost as if there is an invisible light, or energy, passing between us when we connect through eye contact, making it easier to transmit what it is we are feeling, and the meaning behind it. I noticed this after my first run in with death; it rocked my world, so much so that it seemed to put me on a different plane; thirty seconds felt like two minutes, everyone seemed overly removed and self reflective(i am unsure of whether or not this was caused by me making them feel uncomfortable, however, as I understand that I was pretty consistently coming across as a crazy person), and my thoughts raced so fast I could barely hold on to them, unbeknownst to myself, as I often believed I was experiencing true revelation in the form of complete thought. The last point is still a confusing one for me, because I still maintain that fully formed thoughts were occurring and being recognized by my own self, but they were at too torrid a pace, too high a frequency, for me to possibly relay or record them. A lot of what I was thinking and attempting to convey was completely new to me; I remember very vividly the feeling of taping into the well-spring of original, or is it eventual, thought. The theory of a collective consciousness seemed like an appropriate way to describe it, although at the same time it didn't quite ring true. To me it seemed as if I was happening upon frequencies that ran through my mind like a freight train; imprinting themselves, possibly physically in the form of new neural path-ways, on my mind.

This brings me back to the idea of original versus eventual thought. Are the thoughts we experience the end result of the creation of these new neural pathways? Or is thought itself the creator of said pathways? (Is this what getting older is?) Entropy defines the universe; if the universe is infinite then the reach of our thoughts should be boundless. If the universe is finite then there would theoretically be an end to original thought; unless, of course we simply continue to loop through all of the possibilities over and over. I feel like evolution disproves this in the form of our ever growing brains, however. If a neural pathway is in fact a 'thought' then for us to have experienced all of these thoughts before we would have to have ancestors with brains to rival, or out do the size of our own. The scale of our evolutionary timeline could also just be a touch off. There is then, of course, the possibility that thoughts we don't experience could have existed in generations past, and that they aren't just continually accumulating and being passed on from generation to generation. This I also believe to be unlikely, at least now in the modern age with recorded history and the wealth of accumulated knowledge that is the Internet, because it was the passing on of knowledge about tools and different survival tactics that saw us survive where other hominids did not. It would, however, be interesting to see a modern man try his hand at surviving the middle ages.

I must stop here for now. I find myself getting overwhelmed, again experiencing that frequency run through me, making me feel tense all over, nearly vibrating, when in fact most of my muscles are relaxed. I wonder if that is ever the cause of an aneurysm? The scientific reasoning for those types of happenings often feel far to sterile to be true, or maybe that is just hopefully naive.

I apologize to anyone who read this in it's entirety... It was a rather scattered rant, or series of.

*The Time Paradox is not a single paradox but a series of paradoxes that shape our lives and our destinies. For example:

Paradox 1

Time is one of the most powerful influences on our thoughts, feelings, and actions, yet we are usually totally unaware of the effect of time in our lives.

Paradox 2

Each specific attitude toward time—or time perspective—is associated with numerous benefits, yet in excess each is associated with even greater costs.

Paradox 3

Individual attitudes toward time are learned through personal experience, yet collectively attitudes toward time influence national destinies.

The First World Connundrum

Simply living in the developed world pushes you towards over consumption and encourages us to live beyond our means. This structure comes from the top where everybody can afford everything and development is ever encouraged. Down the ladder it becomes a matter of 'staying with the times'. For a lot of people that means spending far too much updating to the newest of the new, relying on credit to keep up... when in reality they are forcing themselves deeper and further behind. This will never stop as long as corporate tyranny is the idealized form of economic governance; especially since it is the people at the top who are racking in the profits from both the credit purchases and credit debts.

Western ideals(as if),

will-full ignorance(same dif),

water supplies and

winter weather wanning worldwide.

Corporations, successful ones, are beginning to recognize the need for innovative people that create the questions needed to find answers. Poeple that believe in self development as an important part of their career and preferably work around their own interests along with the interests of their children.

Was there a lack of forsight in the early corporate era,

where progress, development, and the american dream

were the prevailing interests of the time?

Or was it simply a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding,

prohibiting the foresight to predict problems such as global warming?

Is it conspiratorial or naive to believe otherwise?

This model should promote the most positive growth towards a new and sustainable future; one fruitful for the corporation, the employees, the consumers and the global public. Concentrating on preventing problems from arising, rather than fixing them as they occur.

Face the book why don'tchya?

Facebook and Internet chat may be closing us off from the physical world, but, it is my belief (now) that it also opens up a new world of communication never before experienced. Who is it that thrives in internet chat-rooms? Why people that can't express themselves in the face-to-face. A whole new avenue/ niche has been opened and created for human interaction. It is not my belief, however, that we are all meant to communicate over this medium (interneters have essentially developed their own language). We need to maintain our roots to the physical/natural world in order to stay grounded.

There's a lot of shit to do in this world and (luckily there are) lots of people to do it.
There's a lot of shit to enjoy in this world and (luckily there are) lots of people to enjoy it.

The Urgent Human

Are we afraid to commit to being human? Or just afraid to 'grow-up'? Maybe our thoughts on growing up are simply to narrow, or to simple... Do you really invite further complexity? Of course! It's what we crave! Our current evolutionary course, a path set by our earliest, dreaming ancestors as they branched from the tree, lifting us above, beyond the branches. The timbre of those dreams ... dreams lost in the drone of urgent humanity, of humanity unleashed, of new growth.

Urgency come ruin.

Pursuit of Intelligence

there is a roil of mumblings rumbling downhill, rising at the last kick of this precipitous age. intelligence grow(n)s as we study and learn in the infinite abyss; gathering understanding and enlightenment, even from darkness, defining nothing to the n^th degree...

the urgency of humanity driving, ever inviting further complexity as the known world grow(n)s, continuing to fold back on it'self, lifting us above branches formed by ancestral delight in the fanstastically essential wonder of discovery. the timbre of those dreams lost in the drone of new growth...

the gravity of which drops from our minds like that fateful apple,

forgotten on the ground once cherished as home.

forgotten, this ground dweller, with humanities humble begginnings, as the race presses towards the fragile precipice of the finish line...

what happens when the race is over?

Unheard whispers

Sometimes I can imagine the whisper of my soul finally finds it's escape;

a thump and jump off the trampoline lining the floor of my stomach,

the force of which causes my feet to stretch the fabric of the world beneath me

(reminiscent of a water drop reverberating back up for one last glimpse of space before it dissolves into its pool of restful disillusion, rippling the surface of its world with diminishing memories of it's flight)

wending it's way through the cyclonic path in and around my wind column, passing by my heart gaining momentum in the way sound is wont to do as it nears its calculated barrier, and finally the thunderous pause before!

Hanging in all of time...

Maybe next time.

ex factor

The existence of science and it's purpose is to explain the origin:

of the universe, of movement, of pattern,

of humanity, of culture,

(expression?) of thought,

(expression?) of being,

(expression?) of self,

of expression, of existence.

Is the route of expression brought on selfishly of selflessly? Is it to present ourselves as we wish to be perceived, or do we express our own personal perceptions? Is there a disconnect from ones own self? Of course... But, is it any more pronounced in this day in age or were our Britt(colonial... hehe, colon) ancestors more driven by their lot in life and relation to others?

We seem to have more outlets for expression than ever before; even if those very avenues have the potential to carry us away from ourselves, from our quiet centres yearning to be free.