Luckymortal~Yoga

By the way, yes, I've seen the light.

2008-05-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

My eyes are better now. I'm no longer a vampire.

Interesting article:

2008-05-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

from Psychology Today on the Psychology of Meditation is an oldie but a goodie. It should be pointed out that, yes as the article says, you should do what makes you feel better in the end, but not all meditation is equal in terms of the benefits affirmed by scientific review. From my reading, it seems that most research shows that fantasy-based meditation methods that utilize wrote rehearsal, memory or most imagination techniques enhance relaxation (or performance in the case of imagined rehearsal) and can lead some people to feel they've imagined a "spiritual" experience. The many benefits cited in the article involve types of meditation that seek to do the exact opposite, in a sense, clearing out the fantasies and experiencing reality without them.

The article begins with a description of Tibetan life: "...When villagers cook, sew or plow the fields, they do so in a tranquil state. As an approach to life, weaving meditation seamlessly into almost every action throughout the day seems unfamiliar to Western cultures."

So, great, all I have to do is give up all my possessions and move to Tibet, right? Well... "You don't need to quit your job, give up your possessions and spend 30 years chanting. Recent research indicates that meditating brings about dramatic effects in as little as a 10-minute session."

The article goes on to cite a vast swath of benefits from healing heart problems, digestive disorders, infertility, blood pressure and chronic pain, and it enhances the immune system, reverses thickening of the arteries, reduces stress and leads to better acceptance of conditions like cancer. To explain these benefits, the article points out that "(researchers) found that (meditation) activates the sections of the brain in charge of the autonomic nervous system, which governs the functions in our bodies that we can't control, such as digestion and blood pressure. These are also the functions that are often compromised by stress...."

Be back shortly

2008-05-01T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have painful eyes and light sensitivity from a sun-burn over the weekend.

There ain't no yoga or Ayurveda I know of for that. Just dark rooms. And schmaltzy singin'. But that's a kind of yoga I think.

I'll be back when I can look at a computer screen!

Lemon Honey Ginger Green Tea for Cold Relief

2008-04-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

Another good tea that I like whether or not I'm sick.

~Boil 1 quarter inch slice of fresh ginger in 1 drinking cup of filtered water for about 5 minutes (to preferred strength.)
~Pour over a good strong green tea and steep for 4 minutes.
~Add a teaspoon of lemon
~Flavor with honey until just pleasantly sweet.

The result is an excellently flavored tea that is soothing, helps clear sinuses and reduces throat irritation and dryness. Ginger has been found in studies to aid digestion, sore throat, arthritis, nausea and diarrhea and to help congestion. Studies on animals have found that ginger acts as a antibacterial, fever-reducer, pain reliever and sedative.

Optionally, if you have heavy sinus congestion, you could try adding just a pinch of cayenne pepper. Cayenne is also valued in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine for stimulating digestion.

Notes: Not surprisingly, wikipedia provides a fairly trustworthy group-reviewed resource on ginger but the page on Cayenne includes medical claims but no citations.

Ginger

As always, resources on medical, dietary and health studies, which are frequently conducted by vested interests are notoriously biased and difficult to assess. The studies I found on Cayenne, which were mostly more recent, did not seem as trustworthy to me as those sited on Ginger, which had a longer legacy of medical study preceding the modern trend toward close "academia-for-sale" relationships between profiteers and "science."

That said, here is an article on the reported health benefits of cayenne: http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/cayenne.htm

I scoured Google Scholar for a more academic and experimentally verified perspective but found few that I found very trustworthy. Here is a link on "The Health Benefits fo Cayenne:" http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QcmzL4KTCQ0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=diet+cayenne&ots=aey2VTpMuJ&sig=bMKMqv1O6szb7OTz9SNs8PjLeqw#PPA16,M1

Happy Earth Day (a little late)

2008-04-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

So this is my first real experiement with podcasting and it took me a while to make it work. It's a learning process for me, so I'm just trying to figure out how to communicate well in this intimate audio format. I tried adding music and images but ended up just going with the raw recording for now.

Also, I hope you'll forgive me for a getting on the soapbox, I'll try not to make it a habit, but since it's my (B)Earth Day (yes, it's my birthday too)....

Anyway, thanks for listening.

On Cavemen with Spears on the Phone.

2008-04-21T11:46:00.000-07:00

Or perhaps with Spear-phones, a new service from Verizon, no doubt.

A few days ago I wrote about folks taking their work as a life or death, fight or flight sort of matter.

Perhaps those folks should read more yoga blogs: HERE!

Life and Music

2008-04-21T08:50:00.001-07:00

Yoga when you're sick.

2008-04-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

Is it a good idea to do yoga when you're sick?

Sometimes when you're looking for an answer it helps to have another opinion on the information available. Personally, I find it difficult to accept answers I get from vested interests and I just want an objective opinion on the info that's out there.

So, for what it's worth, I researched the question, and here's what I found:

The enduring "conventional wisdom" about exercising when sick is the "neck rule:"

If the symptoms are above the neck, it's ok to exercise, but take it easy.

If the symptoms are below the neck, rest is a better option.

And the main idea: listen to your body, take it easy.

So while I think that's great advice, when it comes to practicing yoga, we might consider some other factors. Personally, I believe there are mental and willpower benefits to keeping a regular daily practice. But that doesn't mean I do two hours of strenuous asana practice every day. That wouldn't be yoga. Yoga is all about listening to the body and practicing accordingly:

Breathing. So long as you can breathe mindfully, you can do yoga. Remember: use effects function. I often find when I'm suffering from a cough, that my ribcage is sore and locked and my breathing is very shallow. A few minutes of mindful breathing tends to help make me feel a little better. In addition, some research, such as this study on motion sickness suggest that breathing exercises can help control nausea.

Restful stretching. A wide variety of research available on the google concurs that mild stretching leads to relaxation which in turn strengthens immune response. Other resources suggested that stretching can give some relief from body aches associated with being sick. When I'm sick, I take a very mild and restful "yin" approach to yoga, such as the asanas described at www.Yinyoga.com

Some other resources include: A discussion at yoga forum.

Mysore Musings. Another yoga blog tackles the issue

I hurt people with the phone.

2008-04-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

I've been calling to ask property owners about short term leasing.

They get very upset, very impatient with me. Some have all but attacked me on the phone. I can hear the blood beating at their temples. I can hear their eyes twitch.

Because I ask a question?

I just have a problem and I want to find a solution to it.

But he feels an attack--his autonomic nervous system raising his blood pressure, flooding his body with platelets, adrenaline, in case I try to jab him with the sharp end of a lease agreement or something.

Ready to fight! ready to fly! In case that phone call turns deadly.

Always cavemen everywhere, at work, at home, on tv, banging at our doors with spears.

Feeling better.

2008-04-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I seem to be on the mend.

Just FYI (and because I noticed a conversation about this elsewhere,) yes, I find time to practice asanas every day, even when I'm sick. Usually it makes me feel much better.

But I also try to relax and not over-do it. For example, I usually substitute a larger number of low intensity isometric weight-baring poses, such as cat/cow (link gives a basic explanation) or simple lunges for isotonic movements and high-intensity weight baring such as arm-balances.

That way I end my practice feeling strengthened but not depleted.

My personal feeling is that it's bad to over-do it when you're sick, as I think it's counter productive.

I have some personal theories (based on self-experimentation) about glucose and immune response, which I'll research and post about later.

My hypothesis is that the body switches to a different system of metabolism during sickness, which is why I (for one) don't tend to feel hungry when sick....

Of course, animals go into a cycle of low appetite and low activity as well. There's probably a pretty good evolutionary basis for this--if you are sick, it's probably a good idea to stay hidden in a bush someplace rather than searching around for a bite to eat. But there might also be some immune-related causes for this behavior as well. My personal hypothesis is (in part) that high blood glucose (perhaps by triggering insulin response) can impair healing. So body tries to keep blood glucose down (giving us that sick "daze".)

Anyway, I'll research my theory and see what I find.

Also, I'll be rounding out my writings on Virabhadrasana this week by posting an interactive summary of my writings and a list of web resources on the subject.

Later.

Healing Music Link

2008-04-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

The "collective consciousness" at work in the yogic blogosphere, perhaps.

The Accidental Yogist wrote personally and far more eloquently than I, on the healing power of music.

This is interesting to me.

Vibrant Breath

2008-04-11T15:39:00.000-07:00

Today, I'm sick as a dog.

And remembering as I try to breathe, that use effects function.

Which is just one reason I love singing. Singing is cross-cultural yoga.

Taking time to use the breath mindfully, and produce a nice confident sound (no matter what it sounds like) seems to make much of the problem of congestion and sore throat go away, and at the same time, the connection with breath reminds us that, most of the time, being sick is totally unrelated to being happy.

Here's my favorite yogic mantra from Western culture: Euripides Epitaph from the 5th century BC.

It's one of the oldest, known pieces of written music in the world that we can actually read.

Here's my sick voice singing it this morning in an English translation:

As long as you live, live in love
Let nothing trouble you.

Life is too short.
And time takes its toll.

Just sing like this: exhale out all your air and wait. At some point before you turn blue, your natural inhalation cycle will kick in. Just watch that breath in. When it reaches the top, you'll feel a natural suspension of your breath, that's when you sing. Don't squeeze the sound out like toothpaste, let it ride that smooth exhale. When your muscles start to clench, stop, exhale all the way and let the natural inhale start again. Just sing! Enjoy that natural breath cycle that happens when we sing. Just relax and sing, damn it! The sound of your voice is a reflection of who you are at this moment. That can never be ugly.

look

2008-04-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

Always just before the pen touches

thank you.

Yoga and "Willpower"

2008-04-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

Or:

"Ego depletion" and "effort."

Anyone who's tried to keep a yoga practice knows that sometimes it takes "willpower." Interestingly, recent studies are validating the yogic perspective that "willpower" is more complicated than just "making yourself do it" and secondly, that it's a muscle that we can strengthen.

"Will power" or "active ego," as psychologists call it, is a limited physical resource that draws on blood sugar or glucose. When you perform a task that requires "will power," it can use up your reserves and leave them empty when the desert menu arrives at the table.

One of the foremost researchers on willpower has been Dr. Roy Baumeister at Case Western University. According to one of his studies, (link to .pdf) participants who used will power to not laugh at a funny video had lower blood glucose levels and had less ability to exert willpower (subjects in a test group were allowed to laugh and their glucose level was unaffected.) When they ate a simple carbohydrate that returned their glucose levels to normal their willpower returned as well.

But at the same time, research by Baumeister and others has found that successful small efforts, such as removing "um" and "like" from your speech, can strengthen your um, ability to exert willpower in, like, other areas, such as diet.

So staying that extra breath in Warrior 2 might help you fend off that delicious, mouth-watering chocolate cake. And keeping a simple daily yoga practice could help you accomplish other goals.

Interestingly, this research seems to validate a yogic, holistic approach to effort such as that found in pantanjali's yoga sutras, the Buddha's "right effort" or Daoisms teachings on "wu wei."

Firstly, in the context of this research, it's not surprising that Pantanjali and the Buddha make a connection between effort and diet. I remembered that this after noon after I ate white bread and jam and tea with honey, making me feel really sluggish. Those simple carbohydrates convert to glucose rapidly (in around 30 minutes--maybe less with our modern ultra-refined sugars.) Too much sugar can cause an insulin spike, keeping your body from using the glucose, willpower food (not to mention brain and muscle food.)

Secondly, the research backs the philosophy of regular, daily small steps. Not only is it a good way to accomplish a goal but it builds willpower in the process.

Finally, this research might suggest a back-door approach to willpower. Research subjects experienced a willpower drain when they needed to exert "active ego" over habitual, automatic activities. That suggests this:

Why not work to make desirable activities habitual and automatic?

Indeed, that's the approach favored by the Daoist classics as well as Buddhist traditions like zen. Again, that takes a daily, small steps and an attitude of working with your intrinsic nature, not exerting willpower over it.

Additional articles:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/how-to-boost-your-willpower/

Glycemic Index Diets:

http://www.annecollins.com/gi-guide.htm

Clove Tea--delicious tea for mouth pain relief.

2008-04-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I had a pretty bad problem with oral cankers. I can't tell you how many doctors my mom took me to about it. The advice was always the same: they're a virus, there's nothing you can do. The only relief was an expensive antiseptic spray or cough drops that taste bad and make your whole mouth uncomfortable.

But these days I go to the kitchen cupboard instead of the medicine cabinet:

Clove tea.

5-6 cloves, non-irradiated strongly preferred.
1 drinking cup of water.

Boil cloves for 5-10 minutes to desired strength. Steeping is not sufficient, cloves need to be boiled. Note: more cloves can be added for strength.

Flavor with honey or possibly lemon for a very pleasant tasting tea. Adding a little milk is nice but seems to slightly reduce the effectiveness, which can be good if you only need a mild tea.

You can make it strong enough to make your whole mouth numb but I find that a mild tea works perfectly to take the edge off any mouth pain or discomfort.

I notice the relief immediately after a few sips and by the time I slowly finish the cup, I've forgotten about the pain.

Additionally, I've read from many sources that cloves may help support a probiotic diet by killing digestive parasites. Many sources also recommend a probiotic rich diet for helping to prevent cankers. In my experience, starting to eat probiotics after the break-out does not noticeably help, but adding yogurt or kefir to my daily diet reduced the severity of outbreaks and greatly reduced recovery time.

Effort, "wu wei" and nature's problem solving method.

2008-04-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

"Wu Wei" is a Daoist term and the translation I like best is: "effortless action." Simply put, if your work feels too hard you probably won't sustain it. A better approach is where your work feels effortless and balanced. I'd like to share some thoughts about "wu wei," because it's an idea that has helped me bring beauty and ease to so many areas of my life, almost wherever I remember to apply it.

The typical metaphor is that of water, which doesn't have to do anything to find it's way to where it's going. It just is. Or you might say wood doesn't have to work to be useful, its inherent properties make it so.

Another metaphor might be evolution: nature doesn't toil to solve it's problems. So those are the two basic metaphors we're going to juggle: water and "nature's problem solving method."

It's no coincidence that water's effort and nature's problem solving method, (evolution) look very much alike and it's no coincidence that the best of human problem solving methods, such as the scientific method look a lot like evolution.

And sages from so many traditions have taught us about this pattern. It may very well be wise to apply it to most of our problems. Here's the attitude as I see it:

1. Go with your natural inclination. Be useful like water, like wood. Follow your curiosity. Our brains are amazing computers: if you're curious about something, there might be a good reason why! Many of us have stopped being curious because we stopped "wasting time" listening to it. So many of our human activities feel like they drain us of our energy. But when you follow your curiosity, it can give you energy Back. Find those things that you jump out of bed in the morning to do. In Buddhism they call that "wind horse." The metaphor is the sun--which, in its burning, creates its own fuel.

2. Reclaim the spirit of playful experimentation and notice how much easier things seem. How?

--Try many solutions. Evolution and water go outward in (seemingly) random directions. That's how they find the best solution. In work, in yoga practice, try new things. Experimentation keeps us from feeling in a rut and you never know when you'll find something new that's a perfect solution.

--Try to make mistakes. Natural evolution explores randomly without labeling its mutations as "good" or "bad." Water fills the low places, not the "good" ones. That natural diversity enriches the whole. One year I set a goal for freelance work to increase the number of rejections I received. Somehow, it removed the stress of the rejection letters and kept me from burning out. I also took more risks in applying for jobs I normally didn't think I could get. And of course, I got more acceptance letters that year too. In Yoga practice, that attitude often gives us the chance to learn new things and remove the critical thoughts that keep us from fully experiencing asana.

3. Permission to be unfocused.
Evolution isn't afraid to pursue multiple solutions to a problem simultaneously.
There's a myth in our culture that a focussed drive in one direction is the best way to be successful.
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
Archilochus (7th-century b.c.e.)

But when I examine all of the people I really admire, they followed their curiosity wherever it lead them. People forget that Einstein, for example, was a great musician, organizer and social activist!

4. Let weak branches wither.
There are, however constraints to following whatever whim you may: time and recourses. Allow yourself to relax and trust that these things will work themselves out if you free yourself to follow your genius. When nature finds some branch of life is no longer successful it doesn't persist in a dead-end direction. It lets that branch wither without attachment. We humans, on the other hand, can build irrational attachments to to an empty mine. We build ourselves a comfortable rut that's so deep we can't see outside it. Rather than abandon it, we would follow that path to disaster.

Don't be afraid to jump the rut. Fear the rut instead.

5. Build good habits slowly, not in some Herculean effort.
The metaphor is the grand canyon, right?

Or in nature, we have the saying "life makes good for life." Nature builds up a food chain slowly, first establishing organisms that convert the basic resources available in the ecosystem--it's minerals, it's heat, it's sun-energy. And as it establishes those, it builds complexity on top of them. Soon, there's a complex ecosystem including microorganisms and bugs and plants that can support, for example, elephants. That is a sustainable effort. But too often, we try to start with the elephants!

But if we can take time out of the equation and do what we love--we can take advantage of conditioning (yeah, like Pavlov's dogs) we can cultivate a love for what we do.

If we do work we enjoy, we learn to associate work with joy. If we start with a yoga practice or exercise plan we enjoy (even if it doesn't seem as effective as we'd like) we learn to associate that effort with joy. That's a foundation we can build on and after a while, we've got the elephants.

(Note: though intended to stand alone, this was part 3 of a series on "effort." You can read the others by clicking the effort label bellow.)

Speaking of "Right Effort..."

2008-04-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

This seems about right to me:

Align yourself with the Universe

It's a blog about doing what you love. That seems like a big step toward the right kind of effort.

Breaking: Earth Hour!

2008-04-03T10:59:00.001-07:00

I'm taking a break from herculean task of exploring "effort" to bring you this breaking news on "Earth Hour," which has organized cities around the world to take a symbolic stand in defense of the earth by shutting down all our lights for an hour.

Ok, so I'm a little late on this one. Earth hour was March 31st at 8:00. Anyway, consider this detour a little interlude on "effort."

Earth Hour. I dig.

When life gets really busy, if I'm not careful, I can gradually slip into a bed-time pattern that's about as productive as beating myself to sleep with a hammer.

Because I keep busy, I tend to use my last few hours, minutes, seconds of every day either trying to "be productive" or completely crashing and vegging out on the internet (we don't have TV.)

While forcing myself to "be productive" can give me a strange masochistic satisfaction, there usually isn't anything productive about it. Usually it just means I spend some time worrying about some stuff that I can't really do anything about and end up going to bed with a mind as jumbled as the cartoon network. Then I don't get as much done the next day because I'm still tired from the day before.

Eventually, all that tiredness builds up and I just shut down. Usually, I try to "relax" by doing something entertaining. The problem is this: playing video games, watching TV or movies or surfing the nets doesn't actually help me relax. Not physically or mentally. It doesn't alleviate the nagging feeling (or rather, autonomic nervous response) that there are vicious cavemen chasing me with spears. It only distracts me from them. When I wake up the next day, the cavemen are still there.

So either way, every night, I end up collapsing into bed, exhausted, like a brief period of black-out before those pesky cavemen pick up their spears again. With no feeling that I've even lived between the rounds.

After a while, it gets easy to accept that feeling as "normal" and we're self-hypnotized into a mindset of getting through the week. From that point, the best thing we can hope for out of life is merely to tolerate it.

Earth Hour wake up call.

Earth hour was so powerful for me precisely because it broke this hypnotic trance. Shutting down the toys and lighting the candles broke me out of the pattern of living that had come to feel so natural, just as our oil dependent lifestyles seem so deeply entrenched.

What was I so worried about? the cavemen didn't catch me. And I woke up the next morning with my mind, body and EYES more relaxed than they had been in a while. Earth hour helped break me out of a pattern and reclaim my life back from the objects (work, "meaning," entertainment) that had come to control it.

When I do get back to writing about "effort," I know that this will be part of it: a balanced approach. Studies show that breaks and naps increase productivity.

And I plan to make shutting down the lights and unplugging at night a new habit for me.

Warrior: Right Effort 2

2008-04-01T12:30:00.000-07:00

(Although this entry on effort can stand alone, you can read part 1 here)

Anytime you settle into a good, deep "warrior 2" pose, something that becomes pretty apparent is this: staying there for long is going to take effort. Staying with those little moments of effort in our practice provide an opportunity to explore the various textures of effort that we can apply to our yoga and to our daily "to do" lists. The question then, is how to exert that effort.

In the Sona Sutta, the Buddha likened the "right effort" to a stringed instrument that doesn't necessarily play better just because the strings are very tight. Instead, the tension on the strings must be right for the specific needs of the song to be played. This sets up a basic approach to effort as a continuum that puts (what I think of as) a military sort of discipline on one end and my college room-mate's dooby-fueled, couch and hoho binges on the other end.

While it seems obvious that some sort of effort is necessary, to me, a "tight strings" approach to effort, or forcing ourselves to do something is not compatible with yoga's values of non-violence, compassion (for yourself!) or to experiencing yoga's most profound benefits.

The basic problem with a heavy handed self discipline is that, for me, it becomes self-defeating. When you start viewing every asana, (or writing or studying...) as an exercise in "strength" or "mind over matter," you're trying to exert your will over your natural inclination. First of all, this kind of approach has the tendency to kill the chance for any spontaneity or joy. And I guarantee you, your "natural inclination" is going to kick your "will's" ass in the end. From my experience, people who rely on that kind of "effort" rarely succeed in their persistence. The problem is, at least for us Yanks, that's the kind of effort we're taught...

The "American Work Ethic:"

Although my mother is in many ways a very enlightened individual, I can still hear her admonishing me not to be "lazy" and saying: "sometimes you just have to make yourself do it."

And that's the American ethic, right? Industry! Enterprise!

Git.

-R-

Done.

But perhaps this sort of approach of "making yourself do it" is really taking the easy way out.

Maybe, "just make yourself do it"

-IS-

being lazy.

Perhaps if we weren't so lazy, we'd instead commit to the disciplined, relaxed and compassionate approach of working diligently to create conditions where our work feels more effortless.

In other words, rather than try to kick our "natural inclination" in the ass, we can find some ways to work with it. The basic approach there is cultivating joy in what we do. Now, that's the RIGHT EFFORT.

In part 3, I'll write about some specific approaches that have been helpful to me.

Warrior: Right Effort, part 1

2008-03-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

Related to the idea of "being grounded" and to "fierceness" is this idea of effort.

There are plenty of stiff days when I'm forced to think of this idea of effort on my first forward bend. Heck, there are days when just getting out of bed takes effort, right?

And the warrior poses, because of their relative simplicity, give us a chance to explore the various textures of effort we can bring to our practice, our everyday lives and even getting out of bed.

"Effort" traditions:

In Ashtanga Yoga, the idea of effort is embodied in the first two limbs of Patanjali's 8 fold path--Yama and Niyama can be roughly understood as: effort and relaxation. This also corresponds to the 6th step in the Buddhist "Noble Eight Fold Path," "right effort." While Pantanjali takes a more restrictive and arguably more ascetic approach than the Buddha's "Noble 8 fold path," the basic idea is the same: do things that create a life conducive to a experiencing fulfillment: a peaceful, non-violent, healthy mind and body.

Or as the great Dorje Dradul of Mukpo described it:

"The sudden flash is a key to all Buddhist meditation, from the level of basic mindfulness to the highest levels of tantra. But it is not enough just to hope that a flash will come to us; there must be a background of discipline."

In other words, you won't find instant enlightenment for sale at the bookstore or at those expensive spiritual retreats. If you want to experience the peace, health, stillness, and special insight of the present moment, available through yoga, you have to make the effort to create the right conditions for it.

But while these paths usually deal with WHAT we should be directing our effort to, in order to create those conditions, I'm interested in HOW we exert that effort. As it turns out, it seems that the "WHAT": and the "HOW" might be the same thing....

I'll explore more on effort in part 2....

Ahimsa Shoes

2008-03-31T11:21:00.000-07:00

Ahimsa Shoes.

Nope, not yoga shoes, just old friends made new again.

In our modern disposable economy, when things go bad we're supposed to "GO SHOPPING!"

But hiring a professional from my community to repair a well-made pair of old shoes gave me an opportunity to make a mindful choice toward non-violent foot-wear.

These particular old friends were a conscious buy from the start. They were well-made shoes in a classic style that never gets old. But more importantly, they're the flat, hard, thin-soled shoes that Alexander teachers and yoga teachers alike, both recommend. Yes, I paid a little extree for them at the time, but it was worth it to know they weren't made by child-laborers in Thailand. And that all that is difficult to find in today's current fashion market.

By choosing to repair old shoes instead of buying new, I:
--opted out of an industry that depletes our resources and puts children to work in sweatshops over-seas.
--strengthened my community by giving my money to a local professional who takes pride in his work.
--helped my feet by stepping into a comfortable pair of shoes that are already broken-in, and perfect for my feet.
--made 1 happy cow.

And all for the low price of $45! That's a huge savings! And now they look more beautiful than ever for the careful, hand-care they received--it's quality that shoes, I mean shows.

A new pair of shoes has never made me so happy, not to mention my community, my planet and my feet.

Connecting to grounding energy in Warrior Part 2

2008-03-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Because it's relatively simple, the warrior poses are excellent poses for experiencing this connection to that grounding energy.

So it's no wonder to me that the "Warior" asanas are named after the demon Virabhadra, as this grounding energy, not to mention that well-developed lower body strength has long been prized by martial artists, bar-room brawlers and competitive athletes.

That "energy" is how we experience the "structure" and the "power triangle" defense teacher Mark "Amimal" MacYoung talks about in his books on violence:

Let us categorically state: Martial arts poses were developed to create structure. If these poses are correctly taken, the body's own skeleton, tendons, joints and muscles will "lock into place." When this occurs your momentum will be delivered into your opponent.

As an aside, while MacYoung seems to be an expert on hurting people, his approach is about as "non-violent" a fighting method as you'll find--deglorifying violence and the "hero" mentality and emphasizing avoiding it instead.

And while we're on the subject of expert people hurting, I have to mention competitive fighter Benny "the Jet" Urquidez (why is it that hurting people earns you a cool nick name?) While I now have trouble with any sport that glorifies violence, Benny's body intelligence is masterful, and images of him in action have deepened my understanding of this grounding energy. If you don't mind the violence (after all, Virabhadra wasn't exactly all bubble gum and roses)here's one of the less violent clips of Benny available on youtube. Check out this "structure" he always comes back to--that's our "warrior" pose, no?

Feeling it:

Here are some tips that have helped me get in touch with this grounding energy:

The wall.

1. Breath. Take a high warrior position (like Benny in the video) with the front foot about an inch from a wall.
2. Allow your back leg to bend a little (which helps to feel the flow of energy) and let your upper body feel relaxed.
3. Breath. Relax.
4. Place your hand against the wall like an open handed "punch." Push. As you push against the wall, you may first feel your core tighten into a relaxed toned condition and your posture adjust appropriately to convey the force from your body into the wall. This will be your ideal posture for virabhadrasana.
5. Once your core is engaged and your body stops shifting, you will start to notice that same energy transmitting directly from your feet, (probably especially the back foot) into the wall.

Yes, this may all seem very mundane at first: "I'm pushing the wall and I feel the force in my body, so?" Well, yes, it's very mundane, but this experience is putting you in touch with you innate kinesthetic intelligence and focusing on this transference of energy has brought great mindfulness to my yoga practice.

In Virabhadrasana.

Now that your on your mat, how to cultivate this feeling in the pose? This helps me:
1. Visualize doing your warrior in the ocean with a giant wave approaching you. Take your pose and then strongly visualize that wave pushing you, let your body prep for the wave and direct that energy into the ground. Again you should feel your core and your essential protecting musculature energizing and your non-necessary muscles relaxing. Now rise up from that rooting energy and make sure to keep your torso erect. That's how I find my ideal warrior.

2. If you want to get into the spirit of Virabhadra, you can also visualize enemies pushing you from all sides--don't let them push you around! Let your body prep for it. But hey! Most importantly, relax and remember to treat those imaginary peeps with compassion!

3. Take a Tai chi class, especially one that does "push hands" practice. Tai chi and yoga are very complementary, to me. And "push hands is all about feeling the flow of this energy (again, look for the "warrior" poses:)

Connecting to grounding energy in Warrior, part 1

2008-03-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Prana--life force.

In the Hindu philosophy of yoga, all living beings have a vital energy force called "prana."

As someone with a rationalist temperament, I was a long-time "prana" skeptic. I don't like to believe in things that can't be proven to me with scientific methods. To me, it's a dangerous road, choosing to believe something simply because you want to: once you start making those leaps of faith, where do you stop?

So as I studied "prana" or it's apparent taoist counterpart "chi," I was frustrated to find these systems of "energy" and their explanations frequently contradictory and unsatisfactory. For example, there doesn't seem to be much consistency between the different kinds of "prana," what they do and how they relate to the "elements."

But for me, this remains: the reported experience of so many sensitive yogis and sages, with highly cultivated body awareness. And I have my own experiments with their teachings and so I have my own direct experience with some small part of this "prana" or "chi."

When my practice is good and I'm really in my body and aware of the flow of energy, strange things happen. This is a silly example, but, I'll go to open a heavy door and before I even I touch it, I get an intuitive sense of the door's energy. I'll feel my own energy connect with and, through me, connect downward to the earth and like an electric shock, straight from my hips, when those energies connect the door seems to fly open without feeling like I even moved my hand. It feels like the energy pushed the door. As if there were no muscular effort involved. When I'm that aware, everything feels well-coordinated, smooth, effortless and even a little "magical:" getting in the car, eating, walking and yes, yoga. To the rationalist in me, that "energy" sense is my kinesthetic body-intelligence crunching a bunch of numbers on the mechanics of opening the door, and then conveying that info to my conscious mind in a way it understands: "energy." It's a very real phenomenon. And that physical/mechanical intelligence is just one kind "energy" I've learned to experience in such a real, tangible way.

So it's easy for me to see how these great yogis and sages could reason by analogy and translate their profound experience into the accepted "scientific" language of their day.

From my theosophic world-view, I've learned to accept their intuitive experience of "prana" as truth and appreciate that our human intuition and body intelligence does not speak to us in "ohms," "torque" or "normal force" but instead in this more mysterious kinesthetic language of "energy."

For me, giving up trying to understand this energy and put labels on it and just accepting it has added a real beauty and utility to my practice.

Feeling "prana" in warrior.

Virabhadra: call him "warrior."

2008-03-26T17:08:00.000-07:00

...because “warrior” sounds nicer than “demon,” doesn’t it?

The warrior asanas, "Virabhadrasana" were named in honor of Virabhadra, the big ugly, googly eyed demon/warrior who wore severed human heads to Dahksa’s sacrifice party. He was conjured by a pissed off Shiva for one purpose alone:

To kick ass.

So to me, Warrior is an excellent representation of grounded earth energy at it’s fullest extreme: fierceness, stubbornness, getting things done, kicking ass and taking names all without breaking a sweat.

You don't get the "fierceness?" Just stay in warrior 2 for 5 minutes.

Still don't get it? Commit to a another 25.

In our western tradition, it could be represented by Taurus, the bull. It is grounded energy, sensual and earthy, body-centered in rest, possibly stubborn, but you know what happens when you piss off a bull?

The warrior poses are an excellent way to get in touch with that same physical-mechanical energy in a very direct physical way and learn a little about our human mechanical instincts and kinesthetic intelligence. And in turn, a deeper connection with that grounding energy can bring greater awareness into your warrior poses and the rest of your practice.

For more on the Siva-lore on Virabhadra:

1. A nice excerpt from the Srimad-Bhagavatam, 4:5:3-17 can be found here.
2. A nice overview including more excerpts can be found here

Warrior Week (the new reason for this blog)

2008-03-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

This week I started a new element to my practice, to set goals toward deepening my understanding, awareness and refinement in specific poses. Toward that goal, I named this week "warrior week."

So I set out to seek refinement in my warriors and I started researching...

and I started taking notes.

And then I realized, I have been writing about my yoga practice for almost 15 years. occasionally when I look at those notes, I'm often surprised to find them interesting: sometimes as personal progress markers, other times because of how boldly wrong those notes seem, and sometimes the notes serve of excellent reminders of tips and lessons, and finally, occasionally I'm surprised by the wisdom I found in the the simple practice of yoga.

And then it occurred to me that these notes might be interesting to someone else too.

So without further ado, Warrior Week, notes on the "Warriors."

Yoga is this: Joining.

2008-03-26T11:15:00.000-07:00

Yoga is this: Joining.

Some say it’s “controlling,” controlling the body with the mind or controlling suffering, pain or desire. It’s taking control of your life with discipline. To yoke suffering and ride it out of town, John Wayne style. Samurai style.

And yeah, the classic texts, the yoga sutras and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika are filled with that: abstentions, observations, controlling the breath controlling the mind, controlling the body: no stuff, no wanting, no senses, no sex (yikes!)

I’m sure somebody needs that, but I think I’ve already got enough coercion in my life.

Others say forget the yoke, forget the control, yoga is joy. It’s ananda, samadhi, bliss. So says Steve Ross, and he’s bad-ass. So says Pantanjali and well, he’s the “father of yoga.”

And, I kind of like that: “yoga” as this bubble of love and light where pain and suffering become meaningless. And I don’t doubt that it’s possible. I’ve known people who were there in one fashion or another. And hell, I’m sure yoga can get you there a lot safer than heroin or crack can.

But I’ve got rent to pay. And whether I’m strung out smack or a love and light trip I don’t think you want me driving. Anyway, I don't think that's what Steve Ross wants me to do either.

So that brings me here: Yoga is joining.

Here’s how I take it, whether it’s joining “earth and heaven,” “Ha” (sun) and “tha” (moon, gives you “hatha”) or yin and yang…

for me it’s about finding your balance.

Heaven energy, or sky, or mind can take you anywhere. It can take you on the love and light trip or to a union with god or exploring infinite internal metaphors of creation—and I don’t doubt that they’re every bit as real and meaningful as my thumb is. And there is infinite wisdom there, yes…

but it won’t wash my dishes.

Or feed me, (unless I’m a real scoundrel—there are plenty in the world today who think they can buy wisdom and just as many who are willing to sell it.)

Anyway, paying the rent takes body. It takes earth. It takes learning to recognize a grounded energy that means you’re right here right now. And to me, “yoga’ teaches us to bring that infinite mind into the grounded now, with just the right balance, anytime you need it.

Now that’s wisdom I can use to pay my rent, wash my dishes and feed myself.

Quick, think fast: you’re in warrior 2 pose. Your arms are killing you and your front leg is starting to tremble. Where do you go? Up into your head, into the love and light trip? Do you “deaden the senses” and swim of into a sea of never-ending bliss?

Quick think again: your family is in crisis, a loved one has died, a friend is in danger, you lost your job, your family needs you… Where do you go? Up into the heavens? Union with god? That sea of never ending bliss?

Or do you come back to the mat? Do you explore the infinite inside this moment? You feel the grounded prana (energy) connecting from foot to foot and up your spine, supporting your shoulders, and that red fiery energy of lactic acid buildup warming your muscles? Do you live in that breath, the basic pulse of life and explore that wisdom inherent in the now? Do you bring that creative mind together with the creating energy of body?

And yeah, what you learn from that moment and what you need to learn will be different for everyone, and every moment: sometimes it’s a shot of bliss, others need a pint of control, sometimes it’s a little abandon and others a little discipline but there’s a joining together that means balance and for me that’s “yoga.”

It’s an exotic sounding word for a simple thing: be in your body, right now. Learn.

At least that’s what I’m trying to do.

NOTE: the Perry Ferrel picture is a postcard for sale at gorey details. And yes, it's very cool.

Rebirth!

2008-03-26T09:09:00.000-07:00

This blog lives!

Here's what I've got planned:

For the time, I'd like to use this blog to post my thoughts on my own yoga practice. I'll be posting my current journal as well as some writings going back about 15 years come April 22nd.

Hopefully, what will follow will be a journal of my own personal theosophical experiments with different yoga traditions including asana practices, "meditiation," diet and other elements of "yoga" practice and related traditions.

Ah, Mighty blog!

2007-10-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Ah, beautiful blog you, it is time for my monthly

Well, or actually, I think my finale.

When I started this blog, I believed in being honest, even if it meant being irresponsible. I've learned that's a sort of violence.

Or rather, I still think that one should be outrageously and irresponsibly honest, but one should be compassionate in doing so, and not violent, as I have often been. I've made fun of people's beliefs, trinkets, religions and their dreams of meaning. Shame on me.

I was not skillful.

Use effects function. What "use" have I practiced here?

So here let the Dude lie in peace. I'll let this blog stand as a tribute to things I thought, and how my society taught me to say them.

I often said them badly. I've disrespected my readers with hasty writing and careless speling.

So, Please be compassionate with me should you read something here that immaturity moved me to write. Especially if you happen to be reviewing me for employment at your fine fast food establishment, or the Nobel Peace Prize or some such thing.

I am in the process of creating a few other web pages (perhaps one will be a blog....) that I'll post the addresses to soon.

Over and out,

Luckymortal

Genius cubed: Gould Bernstein Bach

2007-08-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

As they say, not all musicians believe in god, but they all believe in Bach.

Heh. I love this song and video

2007-05-18T20:24:00.002-07:00

Heh. I love this song and video

2007-05-18T20:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDlEXQaMBpk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emyspace%2Ecom%2Fthebirdandthebee

Long overdue definition of "ambition."

2007-03-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

From Wiktionary:

Noun
1. An eager, and sometimes an inordinate, desire for preferment, honor, superiority, power, or the attainment of something. (material copied from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913))

This is the kind of ambition I'm talking about. Not something exclussive to the clowns on the Apprentice. "an eager desire for... something."

I think that if we're honest we all cary around an image of who we want to be. That includes a desire for... "something." Right? The problem is why do you want it? Sometimes the answer is easy. I want to eat because I'm hungry. But sometimes the answer is more difficult. That's becuase the value is symbolic to us not utilitarian. And that's what I mean by "meaning" in life. Not some grandious concept, but simple symbolic "meaning" we assign to the things we want. The mundane thing I think all of us deal with when we look for a new car or a job or a house.

And that's the relation between Ambition and Religion. Both are a matter of believing in something that can't be proven. A leap of faith. It's about believing in something because we WANT to, not becuase it's true. Both are symptoms of the same human need: for meaning.

A day in the life of little Timmy

2007-03-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

"Eat up up Timmy, your poo is getting cold."
"Ok, mom."
"And Timmy! don't you put your fork down on that table! You mind your manners and thrust that fork back into your bloddy eye socket where it belongs!"
"Awe, do I have to?"
"Timmy, you don't give your Mother guff!" Said Dad. "Timmy, you know that bloody oozing eyeballs are a proud tradition with the men in this family."

The flesh burning hot coals were particularly flesh-burningly-hot that morning on the way to the "Plato School of Coal Mining and Personal Dismemberment." The smell of his burning callases wisked TImmy away to a magical place in his memory. He thought of the day when his grandfather came up from the mine amid a pirade of flesh searing, moans and dancing ponies. Timmy admired his grandfather's devotion to duty. As was expected, after a life of toiling for the Lizard Man boss, Gramps severed all of his limbs but his left leg and hobbled out of the mine to present them to the Boss. Someday Timmy hoped to make the family proud: somehow he'd find a way to even chop off his left leg: now that would really be something.

A few years ago, the family wasn't so sure about Timmy's father. He went through a rough period where he got into some trouble, and we weren't sure he was going to pull through. He went off and became a musician, and gave up good honest dismemberment work altogether. When he came back to the fold the whole family was so proud. Timmy imagined how the same might happen to him. What if he didn't get into the Academy? He imagined how he might turn down a wrong path, the feeling was so VIVID. Eventually, perhaps he'd come back to the mine, and take a wife. Maybe he'd even become a councilor for troubled youth who were headed down the wrong path. He'd be able to really understand those kids. Maybe he'd even become a famous councilor, and lead a whole generation of kids back to the mine...."

Ambition:

2007-02-28T12:47:00.000-08:00

"Because the creator of the universe of the universe just dumped us out here in the middle of fricken nowhere, and nobody has any idea what we're supposed to be doing."

So, if you're out there God, now would be a good time for boomy god voice, or burning bush, or something. You gotta teach someone how to pilot this rusty ol' hunk of rock....

So in our little corner of the Blogosphere, folks have been talking about ambition. And it's such an interesting subject to me, that recently I've written about 60-70,000 words on the subjet. And to me, what ambition, REAL ambition is about, is trying to find some way to give life meaning.

Because, frankly, if this is just a pleasure cruise, I want my money back.

But the problem is most people can't see how life can mean anything without buying into a whole lot of nonsense that noone can possibly prove. I guess you've just gotta pick something or other to beliee in and stick with it.

For example, GOD can give your life meaning. Its easy, you just join his club, and then you try to get more people to join the club under you, and if you get enough people to sign in this life, you get a Brand New Mercedes M-class when you die. So life HERE has meaning becuase you can get level up points for the next world. Cool!

The problem is, firstly, no one actually knows what the parking is like in heaven, or how good the public transportaion is, or how the Mercedes handles on milk and honey. And secondly, if some dope tells you that killing 1000 Arabs gets a lifetime of free oil changes, you can't prove him wrong.

And there are all different kinds of road maps that people use to find meaning, not just religion and as far as I can tell, they're just all the blind leading the blind. Here are some examples:

There's the famous, "keeping up with the Joneses:" OR: I don't know what the fuck I want, but if I'm doing better than that guy down there, I must be doing ok. The problem is the guy down there is looking at the guy down the street from him, he he doesn't know what the fuck to do either.

And there's the similar: "My dick is bigger than average" roadmap. People feel ok so long as they know that %50 or so of the people are a little more fucked than they are: "Got a car, a dog, a house and a family. Hey, I'm living the american dream."

The "whose your daddy." Where people feel ok, so long as they beat there parents. Whatever that means.

But if "winning" the game doesn't make you feel like your life was meaningful, you can try to find meaning through conflict and pain. Win or lose, conflict makes life FEEL meaningful. So everyone's going around poking themselves in the eye-- if they learn to see again, "they've overcome the odds" and if they don't, then they have a damn good excuse for being miserable-- at least they've got a place that way.

My favorite is the "prodigal son" roadmap. People do their best to make their lives all shitty. IF they pull through, they become a kind of hero. If not their lives are filled with meaningful conflict for years to come! It's win/win, hooray!

then there are the ambition. It's just the same? What's the most ambitious thing you can think of? Becoming the first NObel prize/ Oscar winning/ best selling author/ President of the United States of America? Prove to me that that means anything.

What will the perfect Job, house, car get you? Happiness?

Then I have a short-cut for you. Quite a while back psychologists started studying the brain chemistry of happiness. They did a bunch of tests on a bunch of people and were able to establish the peramiters of human happiness. Then they did a test on this buddhist monk.

Holy shit! This guy must have brain damage! He's off the scale in every way-- they thought they'd found the happiest most content man in the world, and that it must have been a biological gift. But then they did some other Buddhist monks, and they found they all had the same kind of happy content brain damage!

And they don't own shit, have family or drive sweet cars.

And yet, I'm writing this novel... this meaningless novel... Why?

So what do you want, and what does it mean?

And as a final thought Touche to Scott on Complacency. In my book I call this the "belief paradox." Believing in the sort of things that can give life meaning always leads to people doing shitty things to other people. But not believing in that sort of thing makes people the weak willed tools of the people who do believe those things.

What are we to do?

Stand back children, there's enough heaven to go around!

2007-02-27T13:48:00.000-08:00

It is the secret power of Ambition that it makes us all both charlatans and fools.

And I am a charlatan and a fool.

Meme

2007-02-05T11:40:00.000-08:00

Taken from: http://patrickmurfin.livejournal.com/

I never do these, but you know why I like this one:

Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book. (Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.)
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 people.

Here are my results:

In groups of four, list all the problems you see in this neighborhood. Next to each problem list a solution. Share your problems and your solutions.

Jesus, do you hate me?

2007-01-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

Awe, This video reminds me why I LOVE Morrissey. Somehow I missed this one when it came out. Only Morrissey can be so touching and so funny at the same time. I think that it's because the songs are sincere, but Morrissey's sincere way of dealing with things is this sardonic humor. Anyways, This video is both hilariously funny and very moving.

I have forgiven you Jesus:

"No, you're the cow fart" "No, YOU'RE..."

2006-12-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

Fuckin' A, does that cow have a jet pack? That's fuckin hella! Where's my jet pack cow? I'll ride that bitch to the laundromat fuckin' space cowboy style, yeah. Yeehaow! And those cow garter belts are HOT!

So, you can look here to see one patent for a cow fart collector, that will save the world, because apparently cow farts = arnie geddon. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/05/patent_issued_f.php

So we have that whole HUMAN CAUSED GLOBAL WARMING THING that broad scientific consensus confirms. Especially important is that "human caused" bit.

But everywhere I look, people are denying it. And somehow a lot of them are using this FOX "news" cow thing as some sort of proof. For an example, look at a recent story at Slashdot where dozens of folks cited this FOX story about cows. Here's one example:

"Who can even make heads or tails of all this global warming stuff? We get reports like this, within a day of getting reports like cows cause more greenhouse gases than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation put together [foxnews.com]"

Yeah there was a bit like that in a UN report, but then right wing news orgs take it all out of context and use it like: "gee folks, what are these environmentalists thinking, cows are worse for the environment than we are! Stupid scientists!" And the worse is FOX "news" who ran the story with citations to OTHER RIGHT WING NEWS GROUPS creating a profound echo chamber of dumb.

What the UN report really said was that the WHOLE of industrialized bovine agriculture, when you figure in LAND USE ISUES (for example clear cutting of rain forest in South America and Africa and other land conversion issues) and industrial processing and feeding and shipping and such accounts for 9% of global CO2 emissions. Which is slightly bigger than some average car DRIVING emissions numbers....

Cow farts my ass.

AND, seriously though, US style industrial agriculture is a MAJOR bad problem for a dozen reasons, to play it up as "gee folks cow farts hardy har," really gets my goat.

Lame "I haven't been posting" post

2006-12-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

Here it is the lame "I haven't been posting" post-- so lame that it even repeats the title in order to fill up space with words to make it look like I actually wrote something here.

Alas, I'm sure that I won't actually write anything worth reading here.

But then again, I haven't done that in a long time.

Oddly, I have TONS of stuff to write about these days.

BUT, I'm using different outlets for that expression. I'm trying to get an easy english reader published. And I'm writing a novel. And singing some, though I've been sick for about a month and that puts a damper on the whole singing thing. I'm really bringing a lot of creativity to my teaching right now, and that's satisfying too.

When I started this blog I declared it an experiment. I wanted to learn about blogging. What do I want to write about? I wanted to eventually have a well focussed blog about... well, something. But what do I want to write about?

So, here's what I've learned:

Happy is boring. I'm pretty dern happy. Yawn.
Sordid sex blogs that deal with the cruelties of the modern dating scene are REALLY interesting.
My love life is happy and stable. Yawn.

I enjoy writing about singing and music in general. However, the things I'm interested in are too controversial to have a large audience and too academic for a blog. BUT I might find some ways to make some of these things interesting....

I enjoy discussion. However, a personal blog is not a good place to have discussion. It's not neutral territory....

I enjoy writing about ESL. Again, small audience, and I'm writing a textbook, so I have another outlet for that.

I have a whole big ball of related ideas about evolution, creativity and the meaning of life, but a blog is not a very good outlet for that.

SO in the near future, I'm going to be rethinking this whole blogging business. And probably it will cease to exist. BUT, in it's place I will probably start some new things.

Such is life.

Morning in America

2006-11-09T13:58:00.000-08:00

In my classes, all of my students for the first time feel free to share their feelings about politics. They're all saying the same thing-- it feels like morning in America, but for real this time. I've heard stories the last few days about reoccurring nightmares of terrorist attacks and nuclear war.... That even the bluest of blue skies has a certain overcast to it. And why should the sky seem blue? We're reminded constantly that we're in an "unending war" or at best a "long war"-- one that it seems we have no chance to win. How can we win a war when we haven't even defined what winning would look like? And everyday we hear "terror, terror, terror" and I realize now that each time I hear that word something perceptibly tightens inside me. And people just want it to end. "The people" see that "the people" all over the world just want peace. A few nut jobs at the top and at the right of the international spectrum want war, but THEY are the crazy ones, not the rest of us! And after this election it's a little easier to see that. And the dark in the sky got a little lighter. And America feels a little bit of hope for the first time in 12 years.

Constitution? We don't need no stinkin constitution

2006-10-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

Thank you "crooks and Liars" for posting this!
Keith Olbermann is one of the only real journalists left. CLICK THE PICTURE to see his take on Habeus Corpus.

Or cut and paste this:
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Olbermann-HabeusCorpus.mov

Jesus camp anyone?

2006-10-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

I think I'll stick to chocolate jesus.

School Shootings

2006-10-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I hate to blog on such a topic, but events will happen....

So I have several mixed and jumbled thoughts about this-- I'll try to organize them as best as I can.

Firstly, as to the Pennsylvania executions, why the Amish? A while back, I got to spend a bit of time with some folks in an Amish community-- they welcomed me into their homes and shared their music with me... Truly, these are the most innocent and decent folks I can think of. They lack the bad Karma that we all create with our violent culture-- and still they must suffer this tragedy.... And so this attack has saddened me more than any other in my memory.

Given that, I offer this up as a second course: I often say that I'm a conservative forced by circumstance to play the role of a liberal, and yet I suppose I'm now a true liberal. And as the definition of a liberal is: "a person so fair-minded that they refuse to take their own side in an argument," I've taken this opportunity to question my beliefs. Namely, my belief that capital punishment is wrong and that it is as horrible an act of murder as any act it is intended to punish-- no in fact it's worse, because it is carried out with the cool self righteousness and calculated self justification of a popular tool of political gain.

I've never understood the popularity of capital punishment. Not until now.

There are no valid "reasons" for CP that have stood up to the test of evidence. Far from a deterrent, it is pretty consistently statistically linked to a rise in murder and in crime in general.

During the Newt Gingrich revolution the major point was that it cost the tax payer less than incarceration-- proven even back then to be a fallacy--
(and since no one believes me when I say this here ya go:
A Duke University study found... "The death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life." ( The costs of processing murder cases in North Carolina / Philip J. Cook, Donna B. Slawson ; with the assistance of Lori A. Gries. [Durham, NC] : Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, 1993.)

"The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level." (Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1988).

"A 1991 study of the Texas criminal justice system estimated the cost of appealing capital murder at $2,316,655. In contrast, the cost of housing a prisoner in a Texas maximum security prison single cell for 40 years is estimated at $750,000." (Punishment and the Death Penalty, edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum 1995 p.109 )

"Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 million per execution."
(Miami Herald, July 10, 1988).

"Florida calculated that each execution there costs some $3.18 million. If incarceration is estimated to cost $17000/year, a comparable statistic for life in prison of 40 years would be $680,000."
(The Geography of Execution... The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America, Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood 1997 p.6)

Swiftly lifted from: http://www.mindspring.com/~phporter/econ.html

Anyway, to sum, there is no "reason" reason for capital punishment-- only a FEELING-- and that feeling logically is summed up like this: there are some things for which murder is a just response.

It has always been easy for me to point out the irony of this statement-- that ALL MURDERERS ALWAYS FEEL JUSTIFIED IN THEIR ACTIONS. There are very few broken pieces on this planet that sit around twirling their mustaches wondering what they can do in the name of evil that day. All people who do bad things think they are doing them for just reasons.

Anyway, the argument for CP then is always that it isn't about LOGIC, its about the FEELING that it would be cruel to take the possibility of a revenge murder away from victims. And of course, that I couldn't understand because I've never been a victim.

Well, for the first time, I find myself FEELING that if this guy hadn't killed himself, then he deserves to be brutally killed.

(But then another even more reptilian part answers: "no, death is too good for this guy-- too easy." In fact, I really resent that he killed himself. Such a cowardly way out....)

But for the first time I understand-- I intuit how easy it is to just say: a fuck the bastard-- hang em. It's so easy and it feels so good....

Finally, where's the big government response? I feel more personally attacked by this then by 911-- so where's my "war on violence as an appropriate response?" Because that's what I feel attacked by-- our cultural instinct to respond to any provocation with force. I'll bet we'll find out that whatever this guy was thinking-- he wasn't some monster. He was a decent family guy who was good to his wife and kids but he was infected with this idea that's very ordinary in our culture-- that violence is a justifiable response-- a JUST response even....

We go to movies and we're supposed to cheer when the bad guys get killed-- the more brutally the better. And people tell me all the time that Bush was right to bomb people and take revenge for 911, nevermind that the people who did it all died, and nevermind that justice was never even an issue: quoth Rumsfeld " we don't have enough evidence to convict, but we have enough evidence to bomb." So how are we supposed to argue when some fucked up guy thinks he's got to go kill some little girls for some messed up thing in his head? Hell, grab your gun buddy, it's the American way!

That is the fucked up shit we need a war on. We're makin' real bad Karma baby, real bad.

Chocolate Jesus

2006-09-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

Quote of the Day:

2006-09-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Heard on my local NPR station this morning: "We will now suspend our regular schedule of "intelligent talk" to bring you the President's speech."

THIS JUST IN

2006-09-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Millions of 20-somethings spat out their morning coffee this week as composed anchor men and women announced in stony seriousness that Saddam Housein had declared in court: "I will crush your heads." The imprisoned ex-all-powerful-dictator, in apparent effor to prove he's "still got it" extended his forefinger and thumb in a menacing gesture known all too well to fans of Saturday Night Live.

According to witnesses Saddam, held up his hand, squinted and repeated in a sqeeky voice: "I will crush your head, and yours, and you too! Ha ha ha! 'Aaaaa noo not my head!' Yes you tooo!"

Saddam expert Nassredin Hodja, a witness, said of the defendant's tactics: "it was really weird."

In Washington, a triumphant Donald Rumsfeld announced "we've found them, we've found the weapons of mass destruction!!!!!" Officials used a projector to show these rare satelite photos proving once and for all that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction.

Others believe Saddam's tactic to have been a successful attempt to attack the homeland. 2o-something Jerald Snatch recounted his memories of the fateful event: "Yeah, I was just doing the crossword puzzle, and my girlfriend listens to NPR or some shit, and then I couldn't believe what they were saying: 'I will crush your head!' Next thing I knew there was coffee coming out my nose. And that was my last clean shirt."

There are still no numbers reflecting the economic damage done by this week's staggering drycleaning bills.

Oh, my dear little bloggy blog...

2006-09-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

I so rarely feed you these days....

Pity.

Pity.

And so much to write too! But just so busy!

So first off, here's news in my world:

Just finished another run of Reagan's Children stuff. I think it went really well and I got a really bad picture of me in Time Out, which is cool. Tonight I'm singing in Milwaukee in another new work Karl Jenkins' Armed Man. I'm very excited about that! And on top of that, I start teaching again this week and I'm really excited about that!! And I just got a new beer (Fat Tire) and a biodynamic port ("Bouteille Call" the coolest name for a wine ever!) to try, and I'm excited about that!!!

So basically that's got me thinking...

Life is good. It's good on all fronts.

And now, this is the tiniest thing, but it's still there:

BUT

It's just this thininess of always wanting more, wanting this dream of something that can't exist...
or can it....
and if I make those perfect circumstances exist, will I want...

just a little

More.

In other news, today's listening:

Audra Mcdonald's Seven Deadly Sins. Very interesting pieces composed for the singer. If you want some tunes, look here. When you click on the link, it will be on the 1st hour installment. I could do without the bits of Audra explaining the pieces, but she IS charming. I'm still not convinced that she belongs on the Met stage.... The word is that she will be featured in a leading role at what used to be the benchmark opera house of the world. It is an interesting attempt to bring opera to a wider audience but I'm afraid a misguided one but I'll try to keep an open mind-- We'll see....

Wow. 4 opera clips.

2006-08-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

So, I considered myself an actor long before I started singing, and it was as an actor that I came to be a singer. I was already getting paid to do straight theater when I went to my first opera. At that point, I hated musical theater, and I expected opera to be even worse. I hated that it was all mugging, and the movements lacked any purpose and there wasn't really any acting at all....

My first opera was a choir (which I was not in) field trip, and I only went because I had crushes on half of the girls in the choir.

I was blown away.

Not because of the music, which I didn't really get, but because of the acting-- real acting!

Later, when reading "writings in restaurants" I discovered that the guy who many consider the most important modern acting teacher agrees with me. As I read more, I learned that David Mammet writes over and over again that he finds the acting in opera today consistently better than acting on film or on broadway. This is because what most opera singers do is direct and simple and there is a reverence for the script and for the text. The good ones don't mug or try to show off their acting they just f@ckin' do the thing!

SATAN! I'll start with the most accessible one: Yep, this is Sam Ramey playing satan. Opera was often the Marilyn Manson of it's day. In this piece Satan mocks god, and even gives him an obscene gesture! How do you think this went over in ultra catholic Italy?

OTELLO. Next most accessible-- Placido Domingo is just plain exciting. English subtitles.

Old School PUNK ROCK! This clip is vintage punk rock to me from the costumes to the irony, raw emotion and open mockery of the audience. The clip is a play within a play-- the commedia dell'arte stock plot mocking the cuckold husband. The actors are husband and wife performing a show as husband and wife. In both cases, the husband has just discovered that the wife is having an affair. the actor no longer finds the show so funny, but the audience doesn't get that he's gone off script, "bravo!" The wife keeps trying to return to the show as if nothing happened.

OPERA REVOLUTION. For hundreds of years it has been opera that led the way. The two major revolutions in acting technique in the 20th century were led by opera singers. The first was Feodor Chalyapin, who was the father of what became known as the "Stanislavski Method" after the man who wrote down Chalyapin's teaching. The second was lead by Maria Callas. In the early 40s, Callas brought renewed realism and even vulgarity to the stage. Legends abound about the real-life touches she brought to scenes such as taking off her shoes after a party-- revolutionary at the time. Her controversial performances were to inspire a revolution in acting that would eventually reach Broadway in the late 40s and Hollywood in 1951 with Marlin Brando.

Though she was known for "dominating" an audience, here she brings simplicity and honesty to what was a "dead" repertory at the time:

THE REAGANS ARE COMING! THE REAGANS ARE COMING!

2006-08-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

September 8th and 9th at 10:30 at night, and Sunday the 10th at 9:30PM. I'll be singing the role of Michael Reagan (! yep that one) in a cabaret featuring excerpts from a new opera called Reagan's Children. The picture above is from the premier of the show a few months back. I just got the recording from the premier and it sounds pretty good. Take a listen to the Michael Reagan aria: Meditation.

Webeyoo!

2006-08-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

You know how when you're on vacation you work more than when you're "at work?" Right. Well I guess I'm not really on vacation at all, I just have a different work schedule.I just updated my singing web page. Because I find most actor/singer web pages to be really silly, I resisted certain design elements for a long time. But in the end, I decided that my page needed to look more "professional."

So I think this page looks more professional, but I've still managed to avoid some of the design elements (as well as some of the technology elements) that I hate most. The page is more definitely more "dramatic." Also, there are certain expectations of what a "classical singer" should be, and I've tried to "brand" the page a little more "classical" or "opera singer."

Take a look and tell me what you think. Did everything render well on your browser/OS? If the page looks like butt on your computer, I'd really like to know!

I have discovered the meaning of life and it is....

2006-08-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

The quilt.

I have it on good hearsay that the creator of the universe really, really likes a good quilt. So much so that he created this little ball of quiltin' materials we call "Earth" just to add to his collection.

The Mysteries of Life Explained AT LAST:

When he created two of each animal, he had one of two things in mind-- 1. food for quilters. 2. Keep the quilter population down to prevent disease and famine.

Sharks were invented because the creator of the universe hates soggy quilts.

As for humans, he had one thing in mind-- makin' babies, and makin' quilts. In fact, my sources say that the reason for human frailty at the beginning and end of life is to provide an incentive for quilt making. Human suffering, to provoke comfort quilts.

All the rest of us here are just an elaborate support structure for the chosen ones.

Was Ronald Reagan right when he claimed that god created aids? If so, why would god do something like that...? hmm....

Old song do again

2006-08-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

More of the same-- with more to come-- this bit moved to the front page from comments....

I recently read an article in some Music Journal about this (I'll try to remember which one.) It was a poorly designed "experiment" but their findings we're interesting none the less. Some Mid-west University Choral group made 2 recordings-- one where the singers sang with a good singer's formant response and the other with the singers formant taken out in the "choral technique" taught at their school. Then they did a survey and asked which people liked better. "Overall" (their methodology was deeply flawed) 55% or so of participants preferred the "choral" example. However when they broke down their findings:

Listeners with no musical training slightly preferred the "operatic" example.

Listeners with Instrumental training strongly preferred the "operatic" example. The more musical training they had, the more they favored the "operatic example."

Only Listeners that were trained in the "choral tradition" of that school (the vast majority of survey participants-- hence the flaw) strongly preferred the "choral" example. And the more choral experience they had the more they favored this example.

This would seem to suggest that the "choral" sound is a learned preference... and quite an "acquired taste."

Old song new again

2006-08-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

On my new project: (this post is about getting some things straight in me cluttered head.)

So, I've rounded up a sextet of singers to get together and sing through some music, and I have to say, I couldn't be more excited. To start with, the singers are some of the best singers I've worked with, and they all have absolutely bee you tee ful solo voices.

More importantly, I've wanted to do this for a long time, "I've got artistic vision up the butt" and for the first time, I get to be as experimental as I want to be.

Firstly, I've really come to believe that while sometimes someone needs to call shots to get work done, centralized decision making in art crushes full artistic subtlety and color. So the most wildly experimental thing that we're going to do is allow all of us to be ourselves and make all of our decisions artistic and otherwise democratic. My feeling is that by encouraging and accepting everyones input we can make ourselves a truly unique group. And so completely democratic approach will be our guiding principle.

A second idea that flows from the first was one of the principles that helped me pick the singers. In addition to being great operatic voices, all of the voices in the group have something in common. I've noticed all of these singers "tuning formants" to achieve vocal colors. The overtones in a voice help determine the color of the voice. One way to categorize singers is by saying that they have "consonant formants" or "dissonant formants." "A singer with "consonant formants" will "tune" the overtones in the voice to enhance the fundamental pitch: so if they are singing a C3, they might have strong overtones at C4, C5 E6 and G6. A "dissonant voice" on the other hand would sing a C3, but tune the overtones to C#4, C#5 E6 F6 and F#6. Obviously, a dissonant voice has a lot of very obvious clanky ring to the voice that makes it very distinctive, while a Consonant voice generally sounds prettier, warmer and more pure and the ring sounds "blended in" to the to one seemless vocal tone. However there is a third group. Many of the greatest singers on record (Hans Hotter, Domingo and Nilssen are good examples) instinctively "tune" their formants to achieve different colors and effects. This is something else that our sextet has in common: though they generally tune on the consonant side, I've heard them change tuning to achieve effect.

Applied to ensemble singing the implications are obvious. If I'm standing next to a singer, and we are singing exactly the same pitch, and have exactly the same vowel sound we're still going to sound like crap if my strongest overtones are on a C# and his is on a C. If you're a singer you know exactly the feeling I'm talking about-- you can actually feel the overtones in your voices fighting with each other.

So, too often, especially in the midwest, "Choral blend" has come to mean taking all the overtones and hence all the color out of the voices. What you get is "in-tune," yes, but to me, utterly bland, each voice losing it's beauty-- the musical equal to the borg.

Instrumentalists talk about the same thing. In some symphonies, each member of a horn section is required to play the same horn, and with the same style. While in others, members play with their own uniqueness-- their own choice of instrument and style, each member taking turns giving their unique color to a phrase, while the others "shadow" to enhance that player's sound and let his color shine through. So in a way, I want to try to use a traditionally instrumental technique to a vocal ensemble.

With the voices that I've assembled I think we will instinctively achieve this-- beautiful blend and intonation-- chords that "pop" and rich beautiful, three-dimensional and unique vocal sounds.

Thurston, That's not apple juice!

2006-07-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have ever been to Lake Geneva Wisconsin, I'm sure you're familiar with the old tales of "Thurston," the zany sea monster the locals just love to hate. FOR RARE ACTION FOOTAGE OF HOT THURSTON ACTION, CLICK HERE

Not content with your run-o-the-mill sea-monsterin', Thurston has a penchant for light hearted gags that have kept lake Geneva chuckling for over a century now. Some locals can even remember back to the early 20th century when "T" dressed up as John F Kennedy and attended a swank LG party. When he came, he brought 13 hookers, but when it was time to go home, there were only 12 left! The next morning, party goers overheard Col. George Williams himself chuckle: "Thurston, that's not my bath towel, that's a dead hooker, now how am I supposed to get dry!" Thurston's knack for clever costuming and hookers has left others wondering if it was really the ex president who spoke those famous words, "ich bin ein Berliner," or if there could have been a certain sea monster behind the humorous blunder.

New visitors to lake Geneva may wonder about the many "lake boats" that never seem to move. (Such as those pictured here.) Residents say that these "lake boats" are actually large scale fishing tackle, designed in hopes of catching a glimpse of Thurston in some real authentic sea-monsterin'.

Finally, if you're lucky enough to get a first hand glimpse of Thurston, just take my word for it: if he offer's you a cup of apple juice, and it's warm, and tastes like sea water, do NOT drink it.

still more vintage footage of Thurston, is that a cup of apple juice?

Research

2006-07-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

So I was doing some research, obviously, and found this...

FORM ELVIS!

2006-07-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

Has Fowltron met his match?

Can the world handle this much chicken?

2006-07-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Coming to a computer near you....

Laptop Lambshmop!

2006-06-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

Check out the new Eurotech Zypad. One step closer to that iSkin implant I've been waiting for....

Office Space Wouldn't Take Me

2006-06-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

We had office space. The movie about the life draining suck-jobs that my generation got stuck with: waiting tables and the big cube florescent light bath. I had a few of those jobs. 6 bosses. 2 of them were named Kenney and Denney. MS excel melted my face off all day long. One time, My Big boss, the boss of all my bosses came up to my office (at least I had a private office...) and said: (and this is gods honest truth)

BB: "Look at what Denney did with this spread sheet, this is good."
Me: "erm, actually, I uh... I did that."
BB: (not hearing me) "yeah, Denney, he does good work, try to do it like that from now on."
BB: "And Friday is "jean day," do you know what that means?"
Me: (stunned by the obviousness of the thing) "it means I can wear jeans?"
BB: (slow and inarticulate, again not hearing me) " It means you get to wear jeans... it you want to."

What frightens me is that we (talking 'bout my generation) may be the lucky ones. With all the ultra-crap life sucking cubical jobs going over seas, what work will future generations hate doing?

Whole generations of kids coming of age in fast food and Walmart?

Maybe this MSI video gives an idea... is it any surprise it's so angry? EDITED FOR A BETTER VERSION OF THE VIDEO

Innocent When We Dream

2006-06-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

Speaking of the conflict between our public and private selves....

I'm getting near done with the novel I've been writing for a couple of years now. Though I'm taking a brief break from writing, the novel is now fully conceptualized and mapped out and it's about 300 pages right now-- I still have a couple of important scenes to write, including the climax, but those are already fully imagined in my noggin. But basically, I expect to have a draft to burden willing friends and loved ones with by the end of the year (if I can get a break from singing work....) And, I'm really enjoying writing it- or rather, watching it write itself at this point. For a long time, I wasn't entirely happy with how the initial idea was playing out as it grew in complexity-- then quite suddenly, everything just fell into place, so that almost every word is a reflection of the 1 deep theme. I like my characters. They surprise me. But most of all, I feel like I wish someone else would write this story, because I'm really excited about reading it.

When I started this book, it was a sort of Zen Meta-technique to free my singing from the burden of self criticism. Like a straw man for the inner bully: "hey me, look over there-- that piece of garbage really sucks!"

But now, I think I might try to get it published.

Which brings back the conflict. Basically, I satirize just about everything in crass fashion. So I'm wondering about the consequences of having my name on it.

Is it different because it's fiction? There are a lot of people who put their names on controversial works of art....

And what about what I say on this blog? Where is the line of acceptability for public discourse? Our society's unquestionable "givens", Emotion, Sex, the inner machinations of human instinct? I once heard a famous singing coach explain the subtext of an art song to a class by explaining that "I think we all have rape fantasies, that's what a lot of music is, a metaphor for rape fantasy."

What about the "just plain weird?"

Now believe me, it was completely a-sexual, but last night I had this dream ( I blame this on the video for "Danger! High Voltage!".... All I can remember is this: I discovered I could tell the future with my penis, and I was really envious of Ted Danson, because his penis was a better, erm, divining rod than mine.

Just remember what Tom Waits says:

"We're innocent when we dream, when we dream we're innocent..."

Jack White is the man

2006-06-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

The punk rock formula: Energy + simplicity= awesome.

Heard it last night and knew immediately it was a JW song-- but I thought it was a new Raconteurs song. Looked it up. really cool video to boot.

This song is sure to be a big hit.
Edited to add:
I;m a huge dork. Yeah, it's going to be a big hit, in 2004. In England. Apparently this song came out in 2003, and I just never heard it until last night. But I'm not alone, it wasn't added to youtube until this spring. And I guess Detroit rockers "electric six" deny the involvement of Jack White with their band, which is classic Jack White. From what I understand, Both parties, Jack and Electeic 6 deny even knowing who the others are "Jack White, who's he?"

Blog identity crisis

2006-06-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

I think that more people are going to be experiencing this....

A conflict between their public person and private and how that plays out on the internet. A friend recently felt the consequences of this conflict, and it's made me ask a lot of questions. I've always wanted my blog to be an extension of who I really am-- no border between the private and public, and even professionally I've always felt free to speak my mind. Lately, however, I've started writing several things, and then stopped because I'm not sure what some future prospective employer might think-- what if they aren't above judging me unfairly?

In the meantime, I've been publishing on a VERY anonymous public blog that to my knowledge, (thank you site meter) I'm the only one to ever have seen the page. I think because of some of the content, blogger has chosen not to list it.... so what's the point of that. And as for blogger not listing it, I just don't get it-- it really isn't much worse than the "monkey sex" thing on this blog-- the obscenity is purely philosophical, and yet it's not included in the blogger directory or the "next blog" list. Oddly, if I just wrote a pornographic sex blog it would have had 700 hits by now! Go figure.

what to do what to do.

won over

2006-06-05T12:27:00.000-07:00

I admit it. I've been won over by the Student Prince. Who care's about the plot, and that the jokes aren't funny, the show is just plain cute, The music is fun fun fun. What else do you need in a little musical. The chorus is awesome. THis should turn out to be a great show!

And easy.

Quick note on politics

2006-06-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've always tried desperately to to avoid talking politics on this blog. I used to have a political blog, and it just stopped being interesting to me.

However, in the post below, I got on a slightly political tangent, and now I think I need to clarify my political position, so here it is:

I consider myself to be a sort of conservative, but I feel the modern "conservative movement" has been nothing less than a national disaster.

1. The "religious conservatives" in the movement are radicals. They wish to rewrite American history and American law to build a fundamentalist state. It seems quite the opposite of "conservative" to make such radical changes.... Furthermore, it is far from libertarian and anti-governmental to have such government involvement in religion.

2. The Republicans have created the most aggressive redistribution of wealth in human history-- in the upward direction. Far from capitalism, the economic platform of the Republican party is Corporate Mercantilism, (better known as fascism, though that word is now defined as "not the US.") Capitalism is the absence of government involvemnt, corporations and monopoly. The Republican party favors a strong concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the government construction of strong corporations and monopolies as an instrument of stability and security. This is not capitalism and it is not conservative.

My earnestly conservative opinion would favor returning to a more capitalist model, getting the government out of peoples lives, eliminate deficit spending and avoid non-humanitarian "nation building" which is almost always simple exploitation. Here is a Libertarian party idea (VERY CONSERVATIVE!) that I love: Replace welfare and all non-education social programs with a $10,000/ year check for life for every citizen. This includes ending corporate welfare, right down to tax payer subsidies of the business costs. Corporations make bigger demands on our infrastructure, pollute more, use more resources and create fewer jobs than small business. If they were forced to pay the true costs of their business, they wouldn't be able to compete with small localized economies. Returning to a more capitalist model would create more jobs, keep wealth local, reduce tax payer burden, keep prices lower and clean up the environment in one shot. On the personal side, it would encourage people to act more responsibly and save their government checks or at least spend them wisely.

So in some ways I'm quite conservative. At the same time, I'm not an unseeing ideologue: For example, I believe in increasing education spending, as it's an important investment in our nations future. And though the conservative in me likes a strong military as a deterrent, our current military spending is mostly a wealth redistribution scheme- giving tax payer money to corporations with little practical return. How much firepower do we need to deter other nations from an unprovoked attack? Enough to destroy the whole world 100 times? 1000? What the heck? I think once you reach the whole "destroy the world 100 times over" line, there isn't a country on the planet that would attack us without there being a reason worth dying for. From that point, the best defense is a foreign policy that doesn't give people a cause to die for-- and right now we're losing on that point!

So current movement conservatives make me into a radical... but who are the real radicals? And that's where I stand.

The Alpha Male: just an idiot?

2006-05-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

You know I fancy myself a philos'pher. I think about things.

So, I've been thinking about how monkeys have a lot of sex.

Now, stick with me, because this is something I spend A LOT of time thinking about, and let me tell you it's amazing how much sex monkeys have. Amazing.

So maybe you don't know this, or maybe you just spend less time thinking about monkey sex than I do, but Bonobos, the type of apes most closely related to us humans, are dirty, dirty funky-love-rocket rollickin' primates. In fact, it seems they are "obsessed with fornication!" as the likes of Pat Robertson might put it.

And we're not just talking your manual-approved "'peg A' in 'slot B'" stuff, we're talkin' all types of sex--no lists here folks, because you people have imaginations, but bonobos seem fond of just about every kind of "jungle boogie" that the most imaginative and unrestrained of us humans can think of and then some.

Got it? Monkey sex. lots of it. I think I got that point across pretty well, so I'm going to leave it for a little bit, but don't go anywhere, we'll soon get back around to Bonobo-bangin' and that's a promise.

So something that really annoys me is when I meet some earnestly cool, smart, philosophical dude, and, because it's clear that I spend some time thinking about things too (mostly monkey sex) they decide to inform me about their own great "philosophy of strength." This is usually a mesh of Nietzsche and Darwin... some Herman Hesse novel from college and whatever they read last all thrown together. The history of western thought, they inform me, is all a grand tribute to the Ubermensch that the dude obviously represents. Through my college days, I often heard this type declaring himself an "Alpha Male," for his "ability and willingness to conquer and dominate, while others will only follow."

To me, this Alpha Male philosophy is a just a complex justification for a selfish, nationalistic, ethnocentric world view. Historically, this "philosophy" of "social Darwinism" was based on an illiterate misreading of the writings of Herbert Spencer popularized by a Calvinist preacher with a political axe to grind. If you want to get into the history of it check out the wiki page on Social Darwinism. However, it's unnecessary for further exploration of our topic at hand:

Monkey Sex.

A misreading or no, the basic expression of this "philosophy" is Darwin's "survival of the fittest" applied to humans and human systems--both as a governing philosophy and as a personal philosophy. On the social end this "philosophy" was and is a justification for the violent European expansionism and world domination: "by wiping out the weak, we were doing nature's work and making the human race stronger!" I've heard plenty of Alphas say. Of course, many Social Darwinists have believed (and many still do) that this European conquest was proof of the superiority of the "white race."

Today, this "philosophy" has had a tremendous rebirth with the "conservative movement," a movement far from being conservative. Strangely, it's newfound popularity is due to its necessity as a binding agent between the two waring factions of the modern American "Republican Party:" the pro-corporate mercantilists and the religious fundamentalists. Though Wacko Religious leaders refuse to admit evolution in the biology classroom, they see Darwin as some extension of "Gawds Own Justice" on the street:

"Nature's remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness."

-- William Graham Sumner, propenent of Social Darwinism, Arian superiority, "free trade" and overall idiot.

Newt Gingrich: Monkey or just monkey-brained?

More recently, Newt Gingrich used to regularly invoke this idea in his "contract with America" stump speech, saying that in the old days there used "hammer and anvil which would fall on the unwed mothers (and apparently other vagrants of society, though Newt really seemed to have a thing for unwed mothers...)" the goal of the republican revolution in his view was to destroy the social safety net and "bring back the hammer and anvil."

As a personal philosophy, it works the same way: by "kicking ass and taking names" and being the Uberdude, you fulfill your natural destiny and make the race stronger or some such nonsense. And since it is "human nature" to try to dominate, it's better to be the wolf than the sheep....

Now, I don't know anything about any of that, but I DO know about monkeys. And sex. And let me tell ya, ya just can't keep the lil' buggers out of the nookie jar!

That is, at least when you're talking about the smartest and most human-like of the super-monkeys called Apes, the Bonobos. The Common Chimpanzee on the other hand, would rather spend their time in the sort of aggressive behavior engaged in by the likes of English Soccer fans, but the Bonobo follows the dictum of the 60 hipster: "make love, not war, man."

And that's what's so interesting about monkey sex, or at least bonobo Sex: they make love not war. Researchers say it's now clear that they actually use 'doin' it' as a way of building community and resolving conflict! And from what modern mathematics and evolution theory tell us, it was jism that acted as their social cohesion and supplied their darwinian "fitness." And it was likely the same behavior that paved the way for modern man: the intellectual marvel of an animal that created the pet rock and "Goonies."

Truly remarkable.

For more about that you can start here: http://williamcalvin.com/teaching/bonobo.htm.

See, here's the truth about humans; dude, we're like really, really wimpy animals. Tony Soprano, naked in the woods V a Grizzly Bear: ain't even going to be close. But, put the Grizzly against Tony and a bunch of his burley mob buddies and you got a hit "reality" series.

Anyway, it clearly isn't aggressive dominance that led us to the top of the food chain.

Modern "game theory" has explained that the "fittest" often refers to the party "fittest for cooperation." Models repeatedly show that the old axiom "the nice guy finishes last" just ain't so! In fact, it seems that aggressors usually end up losing first! For a primer on modern game theory, check out the great book: The Universe and the Tea Cup. Or just go play a multiplayer online strategy game like "Wesnoth:" as a mater of basic survival, everyone teams up on the most aggressive players first.

So here's the problem, its not that there isn't social evolution, the problem is in thinking that the World Wrestling Federation represents the apex of human achievement: it's conflating "fitness" with aggression. Evolution is simply nature's problem solving method--it certainly effects humans and human societies and even human ideas. And there are certainly lessons we can take from evolution and apply its problem solving method to our own lives and to our societies.

Darwin's lesson for our lives is not to look out for #1, it's to look out for everyone, and even the whole planet. Evolution's mission for the individual is not to step on others in our scramble to the top, it's to become your own fullest most unique solution to the problem of living-- to fully take advantage of your unique perspective and place in the world. The pragmatic individual will make sure their lifestyle is consistent with an informed view of natural selection, and will be true to their own diversity and kind and compassionate to their fellow beings. The pragmatic individual will understand that nature will prune the aggressors and be kind to those leading a sustainable equitable lifestyle, and they will use that math to their advantage. They will make a little more like the bonobo and a little less like the common chimpanzee.

The Alpha Male mentality and the corresponding modern "conservative" movement is historically, mathematically and scientifically uninformed to start with. But more importantly, it's bad as a pragmatic matter.

It's no way to build a society, and an even worse way to build a life.

CONGRATULATIONS

2006-05-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to my dear friends on their kick-ass wedding this weekend. Not much more to say than have fun in the Aloha State.

I on the other hand will be spending this week in the Rather Frazzled State.

Looking to do some major cleaning and reorganizing of the blog... I've decided to keep the blog front page but also make a page of cleaned up essays and entertainments and informations and so on.... Just an effort to make my thoughts a little more organized and accessible.

The problem is figuring out how to do it....

holy crap!

2006-05-26T06:09:00.000-07:00

I never thought move on and the christian coalition would agree on anything, but I guess the pigs are flying home with the cows today!

Both groups are going to post an add together against the pending internet control bill. And this when I had just given up hope that the internet would remain the free and beautiful thing it is today. I just can't imagine not seeing homestar anymore because it would cost to much for all of those big files to run.... or to search for a recipe and only be able to access those annoying bland recipes from kraft food that require a bunch of terrible brand name corn products.... I had assumed with republicans controlling congress that the end of the internet as anything other than a corporate advertising tool was imminent...

And do I really have the christian coalition to thank for hope?

Armed Man a Success

2006-05-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

The U.S. premier was quite a success, everything I heard from the audience was positive. As for my opinion, I think the work is a great in someways, but not necessarily a great work of art... gah, gotta go, more later...

no time no time...

Dress rehearsal tomorrow for "the Armed Man!"

2006-05-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

I am quite excited, the music that I know has already grown on me quite a bit, and I'm excited to hear the parts I'm not in. Saturday will be the US premier of the new work. In the way of advertisement, take a listen at a small part of the European premier: "better is peace than always war" I especially like the end of this movement.

Nothing but work

2006-05-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

I do nothing but eat sleep work these days, so no blog time.

I hope after this week I will have an hour or so of free time.

Dull dull boy I am right now.

Underpants... profit.

2006-05-07T22:13:00.000-07:00

If you've looked at more than two posts on this blog, then you know that my frequent topics range from singing to bawdy limericks to Mr. Rogers back to Mindless Self Indulgence, around the corner to sociology and politics, insideout to the English language and how to teach it better, up to photography and down to fiction and poetry, nature.... basically I'm intensely curious about everything right down to why it is that that certain kind of guy just can't seem to keep his shirt on... it's like the "as seen on COPS" fashion movement.

Speaking of "as seen on COPS," in the past week or so, the PO-lice have visited our small apartment building 3 times, twice in the same day because of vandalism and once because our neighbors were having a domestic dispute. And it must be something about the flashing lights, because when the cops pulled in the the guys next door all took off their shirts and came to the windows to say "hey, hey, somethin matter fer down there?"

Though from the trajectory of egg splatter it was clear that the eggs were thrown from his back porch, I decide to play it cool and not say anything accusatory:

"Yeah well someone just egged the cars in our parking lot in broad day light"

"Uh, weel we don't got no eggs and you can check"

Right, I mean they wouldn't have any eggs *NOW* would they?

What the heck am I looking at down there?

2006-05-02T18:34:00.000-07:00

The "pictures" of voices down below were made using a program called PRAAT. PRAAT is a tool for speech therapy that shows the different over-tones in a voice. As I said before, almost any sound you hear is actually made up of many different sounds blended together. So when I hear a trumpet, I hear only a single note, but the sound is actually made of many different notes together. The different notes that go into a single sound are what give that sound it's character. This is why a trumpet and a clarinet sound different, even when they are playing the same note-- they are actually producing many pitches at the same time, the trumpet different ones than the clarinet.

And this is also the reason that a tenor like Pavarotti and a Bass like Hines sound different-- the pitches (or "partials" when we're talking about the notes in a complex sound) that make up a bass sound are different than in a tenor voice.

From the two pictures I posted below, you can see what I'm talking about. A dark bass voice has all of the sound energy concentrated on a couple of intense sound clusters. The first dark line is called the Fundamental-- its the pitch we actually hear. A bass voice has a lot of energy put into the actual pitch we think we hear. The line is very dark and thick because a big percentage of the voices energy is here (more intensity-- "santori time"). Then the line above that determines what vowel sound we hear-- this is also dark in a bass voice. Above that there is one more thick band of sound called the singers formant, which adds beauty to the voice and makes it cary over an orchestra. Actually in a bass voice, the "singers formant" is a combination of the third and fourth partial. But you can see that above the singers formant, there is a big drop off in energy. This drop-off makes the voice sound dark and bassy.

You can see a big contrast to this in the Pavarotti picture. The energy isn't concentrated so heavily in a few areas so the bands are thinner(less intense.) Instead, the energy is spread out over 8 strong bands. These additional bands at the top make the tenor sound beautiful and "bright." At the end of the recording of the Pav, I included a couple of high notes to demonstrate what these top partials add to the voice. The first time, you hear the normal note, then in the second, I've significantly weakened these bands at the top of the voice.

Dude, like I totally see your voice right now....

2006-05-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

Gee, I think my old college room mate used to say stuff like that in between 12 packs of ho hos.

This is a spectrograph of the great Luciano Pavarotti singing the last high C in the aria "Ah mes amis." To hear an excerpt of this aria, click here!

Seeing voices

2006-05-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

ever wondered what a voice looks like? Here's one of my favorite singers, Jerome Hines. To hear the selection this spectrogram is taken from give us a click.

In this picture you see 3 dark blue bands. These are the "pitches" or partials that make up the sound of this voice. This dark bass voice is a composite of "pitces" in two main concentrated areas. The bottom one is the pitch you actually hear, called the fundamental. The one on top is called the "singers formant," or ring in the voice. The singers formant is important because few instruments produce sound in this area, so it helps a singer be heard over an orchestra, and adds beauty to the voice. The blue band in the middle determines what vowel sound the listener hears.

Later I'll show a tenor voice so you can see the difference between a high voice and a low one.

Two weeks until break!

2006-05-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

And boy do I need it.

Lots to write about, no time to do it....

Singing my silly head off this Friday

2006-04-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

I will be singing in a concert, 8:00, this Friday at Aurora University, in the Perry Theater, 347 S Gladstone Ave
Aurora, IL 60506 The concert will feature some talented young singers from the Chicago/Milwaukee area. This is technically a private concert but I'm allowed to bring some people, send me an email if you're interested.... The good thing is that, since a private event, admission is free!

Singin' my silly head off this year

2006-04-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

Just got two more gigs-- One US premier and one world premier (maybe.)
I will be singing The Armed Man, by Karl Jenkins in Milwaukee on May 20th, and september 11th, and then in the fall I will probably be singing Michael Reagan in the premier and a recording of "Reagan's Children."

Just when I thought I was going to get a break! But I've already heard some of The Armed Man, and it seems like interesting music...

Exciting stuff!

My Birthday Requiem

2006-04-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Samuel Ramey the greatest singer of the last quarter of a century, perhaps the greatest singer of the modern era.

The K and I went to the Roosevelt University Verdi Requiem, which featured bass Sam Ramey as one of the soloists. Overall, the concert should have been OK. The Chorus lacked the proper beef to deliver a truly operatic Verdi Requiem and there were some problems with the student orchestra, (which was however, also very good.) The women soloists seemed a little under weight vocally for Verdi's writing... but the singing of Sam Ramey alone was enough to raise this concert to a level of greatness.

For those that don't know, Sam Ramey has reigned supreme over the Bass concert and operatic rep for the last 20 years. But that reign has not been without controversy. Even last night, there were apparent weaknesses and paradoxes in his singing-- and yet, he may be the greatest singer I have ever heard.

The Sam Ramey controversy can be summarized by the time when he appeared in Don Carlo with Jerome Hines, in my opinion, the greatest bass of the previous generation:

Interviewer: "we all thought the other guy (Ramey) was doing just great, and then you came out, and it was like we had forgotten what a real bass sounded like."
Hines: "Yeah, they tell me I really made him sound like my boy...."

Having heard both of these singers live, I can attest to this, Jerome Hines, well, eats Sam Ramey's lunch. Hines is by far the greater bass, and yet, Ramey is still the greater singer. In fact, this is the very reason that Ramey is the greater singer.

All great "new art" represents in a sense, a criticism of what came before it. In this way, Ramey's singing represents the perfect critique of the post war generation of singers. The "post war" generation had as it's halmark the great dramatic voices: Tebaldi, Del Monaco, Hines, London, Callas: singers who made great dramatic thrilling sounds, and were not afraid to make an ugly or unhinged sound for emotional effect. Sam Ramey on the other hand seems incapable of producing a sound that is less than exquisitely beautiful. And while the most prized characteristic of the previous of the post war singers was the full ringing heroic middle voice and top, Sam Ramey seems restrained and refined on those pitches instead seeming to blossom in the rich lower parts of his voice.

It was this refined quality that led to Ramey's career as a "bel canto" singer. "Bel Canto" was a term invented to describe the the way the singing of Mattia Battistini perfectly realized the aesthetic of the middle 19th century. It has long been considered a lost art by many, and many were ready to accept Sam Ramey as a new proponent of this style. However, a closer look would show that the post war singers had more in common with Battistini's singing than Ramey does. Firstly Ramey relies heavily on aspirates (ha ha ha ha) to aticulate notes-- something never heard in battistini's singing. But more importantly, the big middle voice and emotionally declamatory style were Battistini's most distinguishing characteristic-- the things that Sam Ramey most characteristically lacks.

So Sam Ramey represents not a throw-back to the past, but a truly new aesthetic and technique-- one which may be more perfectly suited to the modern era than any singer in history. His voice has endless character and beauty. And perhaps his greatest characteristic is that, more than any other singer I know of, his voice sounds the same on recording as it does in the house. In this way, Ramey's technique represents the perfect solution to the modern career of the recording artist/performer.

Happy Bunny day!

2006-04-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

I can't wait to eat that bunny.

Mmm....

In other news, I had a rehearsal for my concert on April 29th. Sick as a dog... It was actually very interesting.... I made myself "sing out" for everything and it actually was pretty good. I take it as a good sign that I can now sing ok even after a week of sore throats, coughing fits and stuffed nose. The concert should be pretty good, although many people missed the rehearsal and others didn't know their music yet.

In other other news, isn't it interesting how we inherit our parents fears. Yesterday at rehearsal, one of the soprani and I walked over to a cafe, a trip that required a nice jaunt over a heating vent. Lisa said she was terrified of them because her dad had fallen through one before. she wasn't there of course, but she has learned this fear from her dad.

Me, I'm afraid of bears and cockroaches. And um...

pigeons.

These are fears that I inherited form my mother. In actuality, I'm not really afraid of any of these things, I think pigeons are kinda cute, and I'd LOVE to see a bear... but yet there is some level where the idea of these things are...

scary.

Cockroaches on the other hand...

Ughhhghghgh.... creepy.

Sick as a dog

2006-04-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

all week.

Yuck.

Just saw this today and it made me laugh myself into a coughing fit.

from http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

kid 1: Paper beats rock! Bam! I blowed up your rock!
Kid 2: "Bam" doesn't blow up, "bam" makes spicy. Now I got a spicy rock-- you can't beat that!

My blog: apparently about Hitler's crossdressing earlobes.

2006-04-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the magic of sitemeter, I sometimes can find out how people arrived at this blog. And let me tell you, you people think of some Freaky shite!

Here are some of my favorite searches that have brought people hither:

"mom teaching their songs to masterbate" What!? I didn't even know songs COULD masterbate! I mean what does that sound like? Like, could the song I'm listening to right now be masterbating and I don't even know? And what is dear ol mommy song doing encouraging the behavior! Can a song go blind? Hairy psalms?

"Hitler's earlobes" Now this search I get. You see Hitler actually had very cute earlobes. This isn't often talked about these days what with that whole holocaust thingie, but in his early years he made quite a living as a lobe model. See what I mean? What a QT!

"Crossdresser at Walmart" Everyday low prices. Where else?

"Long Division" Sick bastards!

"bill 4437" for dummies" Yup, they got that right, it sure is!

"Lack of Pants" I sure hope that's what this site is about!

Well, off I go to google "Smurf fashion: trousers or bikinis?"

Big day yesterday

2006-04-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

Booked a venue for my story-telling-sing-along-extravaganza in May and signed a contract for an opera and another concert in July-- exciting stuff for me, and also a nice chunk of extra change from the opera. Now I gotta lotta work to do.

The show, the Student Prince was a star vehicle for Mario Lanza, and that's about all I know of it. But it sounds like delightful music and a light comedy in the old MGM sort of style-- if I'm lucky I'll get to do some dancing!

Add on novel

2006-04-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

So here are the chapters of what I intended as a community novel. I'm still open to anyone who wants to write a bit... just post it in the comments.
Here's the novel so far:
chapters 1-3
chapter 4
installment 5
mini bit

Dead again

2006-04-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

The burritos have no taste

What was the name of this place? Reality swims around when you're possessing someone. It feels like the city, with bits of sensation and thought flooding past with jarring fragmentation.

"Well, Come on." my body says. "It's time to go." She sits there quietly. "look, we can't be late, ok? We gotta go now! If I don't show up with you soon...." My body goes quiet. It smiles in a comforting way. She looks up. "Everything will be ok, I say in a paternal and comforting way, but something isn't right. I don't feel assured. I think I feel...

fear.

This isn't getting me anywhere, and I feel if I stay I might be lost... not yet... I need to go back, back to that day....

Poetica Concretica

2006-03-31T13:02:00.000-08:00

A ratio:

Killingly/Livingly=Thrillingly

cheap poetry is a cheap game:
Which is harder on the heart?
Which is harder on the hands?
Harder on the man?
cheap poetry as a cheap game:

These things in a room:
Severed hands
severed head
Limbs apart
the color red
a bomb
a mask
a man in pain (oh god the pain)
the soldiers knife
the thrill
the gory glory
and the pain.

And what's the name of this room?

Across the hall these things in a room:
ecstatic souls
a joyous day
the color white
a dove
and roses
sweaty night
heart in bloom
same in womb
some pointless fight
Severed hands
severed heads
severed hearts
sorry souls
and pain of being apart.

What's the name of this room?

Each room is empty fill it up!
And which is harder on the heart?

postlude concrete

on my desk:
blue bottle
Metronome
pencil
eraser
14 "cd"s
8 markers
nicor bill
ComEd bill
Photograph of my sister
Cell phone
Tea
Note pad
lamp
computer
In my head this poem:

A dead man.
Take a skull.
cover it in paint.
rub against canvas.
skull against canvas.

add on novel mini addition

2006-03-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

Previous chapters down yonder, I'll link to them when I'm feeling less lazy.

CHAPTER 5.1

Yes, this was definitely my funeral. And there's my cousin....

And what is that scratching my nose.... it seems to be a hand...
Dah! get it away!

Nothing happens... I open my mouth to speak and in a strange voice I say, "come now, lets go home."

Very very strange. I would have never guessed from the movies that this is what it would feel like to be... uh, haunting someone, if that's what I'm doing.

I'm fat.

And sweating.

I wish I could be nervous or something but I can't. But I feel...

The strange voice again; "I'm starving lets go get some burritos."

I like pictures

2006-03-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

pictures that k doesn't like. Thank you to Je Suis for the linkage.

Poetic Aesthetic

2006-03-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

EDITED

First let me put a link here: Keri

Before I said something that wasn't really true, that I prefer her prose to her poetry, where it's really just a mater of my mood.

Too many thoughts to try to parse them out coherently here... here are a couple of poems that hopefully do part of the job for me. They were written on the day that the US attacked Iraq.

Our Poetry, My Love, is Death

How today can I write to you
who know my mind without words?

In this jarring age, can I
express, with our shared
lexicon, the beauty I witness in you?

"Mission: Endurring Love" (around the clock coverage!)

"Showdown in LoveTown!"

or perhaps

"Target: LOVE"

Simple words mask our
profound horrors,
Our poetry, my love, is death.

Words have become brutal instruments
of death.
Language no longer reveals or shares
it scabs festering lies and death.

In it's ennui it is death and
even in extremity it is banal:
How many who shit and fuck and bleed
can be erased with one callous
Euphemism: "collateral damage."

So hold me, and listen to my body.
My warmth against your skin.
Confesses one shared future together.
Share your lips, and share with me
what can never be made an act of
war.

Postlude to "Our Poetry:" a Pastoral Dance

In your eyes, my love I see death,
and on your lips I taste it.
And though your breath is sweet
my love, it's daggers to me and death.

And all about your smooth white skin
(which almost seems too white)
is wrapped a chain of skulls my dear
(a chain of endless night.)

And on your fine white clothing love
(which almost seems too fine)
are tiny hand prints, see them love--
much smaller than yours or mine?

I see them hold hands with death as they sew,
(hands with death as they sew!)

And we too hold tight their frail wrists
(as we sow and reap)
and 'round the world the chain goes...

Ah, thank the lordy it's spring break!

2006-03-24T15:32:00.000-08:00

And I'm done with teaching for a week. The last week or so I feel like I've been hanging from the sanity tree by my teeth. Right now I've been learning music for a concert in April, programming a sort of recital at my college, working on some ideas with spectral analysis and teaching and it's just too much.

I think I'm going to pretty up some pictures of voices because I think it's really interesting. I've really learned to literally see the beauty in voices... this week I intend to post some explanations of what I mean....

I murdered my ex wife, what did you do?

2006-03-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

The place: Federal maximum security penitentiary. Even through the dim lighting you can see the grime and grease-stained floors-- rusted bars.

The dark figures of hardened criminals rise and swarm around the new addition to their cell. They swagger and strut menacingly with the body language of sharks surrounding their pray.

Inmate one: Fresh meat on deck boys!

(sounds of laughter. The new guy, LUCKYMORTAL sits quietly but intensely, unmoved by the taunts of the other criminals)

Inmate two: Well, fresh meat, you gonna tell us your name?

Luckymortal doesn't respond, he just continues to sit in silence.

Inmate two: You hear me fresh meat?! I'm talkin' t'you! Why, I ought ta rip you up, just like I did that stupid....

Inmate three: that's right, "Sharkey" here, he killed his mail carrier. Ripped her apart with his bare hands! (some more laughter. Inmate three continues quietly in a raspy voice:) Me, I killed my wife. Stabbed her sixteen times in that black pit she called a heart. What did you do to get here fresh meat? Go on and confess your sins before we mop up the floor in here with your worthless hide!

(finally, luckymortal rises slowly, his face just inches away from the other inmate's. He doesn't flinch, staring at him with his soulless eyes. He spits on the floor. Them slowly and calmly, his hardened voice rasping:

Luckymortal: I conjugated a verb in front of some mexicans

commotion ensues, the other prisoners recoil with shocked expressions of horror. Luckymortal curls his lip with a menacing snear and laughs a cold evil laugh....

This blog drama brought to you by HR 4437, which would criminalize helping undocumented immigrants in any way: including teaching them English. The bill would make such violations of immigration law "aggravated felonies"-- a category usually reserved for the most violent crimes like premeditated murder and rape.

Music Brain Again

2006-03-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm finally feeling better....
but now I'm all up in music brain again and I can't write anything.

A little more on immigration policy:

Firstly, I have to say that I am for a stronger immigration policy of some kind. I think that our current immigration status is dangerous for the American economy for the same reason that out-sourcing is; it turns us into a banana republic. It is a continuation of the ruinous policy of allowing an American elite to sell off our Autarky for personal profit. The end result is predictable and disastrous.

However, the proposed bill 4437 is soulless and cruel and would only push us further down the road to a Argentinean style economy.

This bill is the very definition of fascist economics. It would punish victims (small businesses-- the victims of our national economic policy of destroying small business, and immigrants) while appealing to nationalistic sentiment. It's main goal is to hinder small local businesses while helping big-business, further concentrating wealth in the hands of the ultra-wealthy-- the definition of fascist economics....

Just plain bad news.

Immigration Law

2006-03-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

(Written with help from my English Students)

All over the country, Americans of all colors are coming out to protest a new “anti-immigration” law. The law: HR 4437 the Hastert/Sensenbrenner “Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act” is intended to make America safer. However many people say that the bill will do little to make America safer, and do much to hurt immigrants tourists and the American way.
The new law has already passed in the House of Representatives, and Republicans are trying to pass the law quickly in the Senate, before there is any debate.
Here are some parts of the new law:
 It will be illegal for any person, organization or agency to aid illegal immigrants in any way. If the bill is passed, services like doctors, free English Classes, and shelters and even churches could be used to put illegal immigrants in prison.
 It will make immigration laws “aggravated felonies.” The term Aggravated felony” is usually for the most violent crimes like intentional murder and rape.
 The bill will change the “Burden of Proof.” In the United States, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty. The new law will make the immigrant responsible for proving that he or she is here legally.
 Local governments and police will be given the right to take care of immigrants as they want to without the courts getting involved. All government agencies (even the fire department and hospitals) will be required help find illegal immigrants.
 The government can deport even legal immigrants for minor crimes. These minor crimes will be classified as “aggravated felonies” and will have harsh penalties.
 700 miles of border fence .
 Mandatory worker legal verification through electronic means for all employers phased in over several years.
 Elimination of the visa lottery.
If you want to do something about this law, you can write to your Senators. Also there will be a March against H.R. 4437 - Friday, March 10th at noon at the Federal Plaza (Kluczynski Building), 230 S. Dearborn St. When: 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Come join immigrants from all over the nation in a historic march this Friday, March 10th at 12 noon! We need to send a message to the nation!

Light blogging

2006-03-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

a little longer. I've been feeling a little under the weather. I hope to be back to it by the weekend.

Trogdor Rogers!

2006-03-03T22:13:00.000-08:00

Ah, a nice romantic evening at home....

Wait, it's quality time that's important, right?

Dick Cheney Ninjas karate chopping our children-- oh the humanity!

2006-03-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

An interesting (and looong) article on government intervention in violent video games atIGN.COM And a discussion of the article at slashdot.

Everyone today is worried about violence in the media. "Too many Ninjas karate chopping robots." But worst of all, our children are now pretending to be ninjas karate choppng robots and the fancy graphics of modern video games make their kung fu antics very realistic. And many are now crying out to ban these games, or at least take strong actions to keep them away from children.

As the article points out, Censorship is not new. But let me add a little music history perspective to the discussion. Ancient Greece was a pretty boring place to be: No ninjas. No robots. But even back then, the likes of Plato (in Republic) advocated for censorship of certain music "modes" because the were too... (drum roll please)...

"non violent."

That's right Plato led an effort which actually ended in certain city states (sparta- but not plato's native athens) passing laws to ban certain music modes because they were too gentle and might make young men too "soft" and "sentimental" and hence utterly useless in war.

This leads me to the conclusion that we're missing the whole point of violence in media-- it's not good, it's not bad-- it's about pragmatics. All media has a certain effect-- well, what kind of effect do you want to have? Not good or bad-- it's about skillful use of media or unskillful use of media. The US government has certainly come to the same conclusion. If you ever wanted clear proof that our culture has deteriorated into a sort of comic-book, Science fiction, Klingon-war-society then check out the US Army page here

That's right, the maker of the two most popular extreme violence video games today is the US Government.

Hmm, so what kind of society do we want to have? To me, the effects of violent media are horrible for our society, and according to psychologists, the effects are the same on adults as they are on children!

But are more laws the answer? Well, although the US has fewer protections for consumers and workers than any other western nation, it has more outlawed behaviors than any other country in the world (accept in some people's opinions the few countries with strict sharia law-- though this is debated!) Gee, with fewer freedoms (to act freely and freedom from government intervention in our lives) than any country you might start getting the idea that we arn't the beacon of freedom we say we are. So lets not make "the terrorists", who "hate freedom," jealous by throwing yet another freedom on the fire.

Yet again, my solution is that people need to be taught to take responsibility for the state of their minds, and to understand how our minds actually work. People need to be pragmatic about how we keep the state of our minds-- do you want to walk around all the time with our fight or flight mechanism turned on? Do we want our children to do that too?

So how does violent media effect us? Here are the best parts of the article: (keep in mind that the results for violent to and movies is Double that of video games, and the amount of time spent with these media increases the effect hugely!)

Playing videogames with aggressive content does have an effect on children, teens, and adults. In children and teens, several results are associated with exposure to aggressive videogames.

First, youth experience an increase in arousal that suggests an increase in tension that may contribute to aggressive behavior.

Second, youth engage in more aggressive thinking about others and changes their attitudes toward people as they emerge from play more likely to believe that others are interested in harming them.

Third, play diminishes the level of empathy that kids have for other people.

Fourth, play has an effect on the amount of aggressive behavior demonstrated in verbal aggression, teasing, and some physical aggression by increasing the frequency of these actions...

Finally, playing and viewing does desensitize people to aggressive images and the impact of aggression on others. After play and viewing, children are much less distressed by images of characters being hurt or killed, and, given their reduced empathy, more likely to engage in aggressive behavior against others.

Got Voice?

2006-03-01T05:59:00.000-08:00

I recently attended a performance a friend was in, and he asked me for some advice on singing from a voice teacher perspective. So I rather quickly hatched out an email and then I realized that (amazingly) what I had written communicated my philosophy on studying voice pretty clearly. So I decided to reprint parts of it here. I intend to improve on this in the future, but....

If you want to work on your singing, here's what I'd have to say: "don't WORK on your singing." Many people think in terms of "vocal problems" and such, and this is a very ruinous way of thinking. Don't try to fix anything or change anything, don't try to "project," and especially don't try to "sing forward"-- then you lose the special qualities that make your voice unique. Besides this, by over analyzing, we only get in our own way-- read "the inner game of tennis" or "a soprano on her head" by Elois Ristad-- Your Language Brain is quite separate from the parts of your brain that you want involved in your singing That is unless your trying to learn to conjugate "the hill are alive". A great singer will approach singing the same way a great athlete would-- with visualization. And the other parts of your brain will do quite well at improving your voice if you just get out of the way and let them.

Firstly, for this to happen, your voice has to have it's own natural balance, so always try to find the relaxed and easiest effortless way to sing. Listen to the tone of your voice and imagine it as beautiful as you can. Listen to good singing and let it have an imagined visual footprint in your head-- what does a good voice "look" like? By doing this, you're allowing all of your brains resources to get involved in your voice progress. And most importantly, sing often-- and sing with a vivid imagination. Learn to visualize your own voice the way you visualize other voices.... Slowly, your voice will start to look like the voices you consider beautiful (and sound like them too) without loosing the characteristics that make it unique.

But you should also pick good models for you to listen to.... Right now I'm doing research with spectral analysis and voice types.... You know that every sound we hear is actually a composite of different pitches... well these pitches are different for different voice types. And some of these things are unchangable. This is at least my future thesis, and my research thus far bears it out. You can imitate a different voice type, but from the stage, it will always sound like your voice, because you can't get the right harmonic response....

Male voices have four formants (or main pitches that make up the sound). The first is the actual pitch you are singing. The second has to do with making different vowel sounds. The third adds a feeling of space in the voice. The fourth formant is called "the singers formant" and it is really a combination of the fourth fifth sixth and seventh formants. This is ring in the voice, but it's different for tenors, baritones and bases. Tenors for example have a lot of ring in the fifth sixth and seventh formants, whereas bases have all of the energy concentrated in the fourth formant, with almost no energy in the fifth and above this is what makes a voice dark and bassy. This is my voice. I can try to sound like a tenor, and it works up close, but I can not generate energy above the Fourth formant, so from the stage I always sound like a bass-- a bass doing a bad imitation of a tenor!

So basically, just relax and sing, and don't worry too much (at this point) about changing anything. Just build your ear and your imagination. And enjoy singing.

Thank You Mr. Rogers

2006-02-26T08:45:00.000-08:00

From the Tao Te Ching:

The true leader leads from behind

Taoism was not a religion which was invented by a leader to set forth a way of being. It was not an invented religion. It was a description of the ways of the great sages who came before "Taoism." In this way it is unlike any other religion or philosophy. Taoism did not teach the people, the people taught taoism.

If you wish to know the way of the great sages, you need look no further than Mr. Rogers.

Mr. Rogers led from the bottom, and yet I believe that his silent impact on people in our century will have been greater than many political so called "leader."

Mr. Rogers taught a message of peace, sympathy and inclusion that was beautiful. Though he had been a minister, he refused to ever mention religion in his show, because he said that he would be devastated "if any child ever felt excluded from the neighborhood." He defined "injustice" as not taking care of the people who can't take care of themselves, and in a calm and forgiving tone, he said that this injustice made him very angry. Most importantly, he said the very purpose of the neighborhood was to teach children that THEY were special, not because of their things, but because of themselves, and that the greatest gift any person could give was just to be themselves-- it's the only unique gift that we're capable of giving, and that every person is worthy of our love. He believed that it was insecurity that drove people to take more that their fair share.

But his message was only the beginning of his teaching. Just as in the Lotus sermon, where the Buddha silently held aloft a lotus blossom and appreciated it's beauty, Mr. Roger showed us.

Today, who will teach the children?

Modern TV and Video games don't "entertain" us. They do not act on us by telling us stories or by communicating with our minds-- Modern TV acts on the human body directly-- TV shows are now designed to trigger the FIGHT OR FLIGHT mechanism. They trigger a release of chemicals into the blood and make us feel liker we're being chased by a band of viscous cave men. And this is very exciting.

When I was a child, we had cartoons in the morning and after school, and on the weekend there was Saturday morning. The rest of the time we had to entertain ourselves. And we had Mr. Rogers to entrance us and to relax and calm us. Today, children have 24 hour a day cartoons and video games. Furthermore, the Cartoons have become more sophisticated about triggering the nervous system's defense mechanisms and causing "excitement." We are teaching people in our society to feel beset by cavemen at all times. This will be a generation of Americans who crave constant drama constant strife-- "stress" will be the very way it "feels to be human" for us, and we will go out of our way to create violence and stress in our lives. In essence we are creating in our culture a dependancy on our own body drugs, and addiction to violence and drama.

Will we become an even more violent culture? A culture of ultra consumers who require constant vital stimulation and "entertaining?"

Who will be there to provide the example of a calm mind and a caring soul?

Mr. Rogers we still need you....

Guilty

2006-02-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

And now I feel all guilty....

Ok, she has to have some redeeming characteristics....

Um, well she's sort of nice.... But also kind of rude and well, ok, she isn't very nice at all actually. And she isn't very trustworthy either. OK, so she's basically morally despicable.

But I do feel sorry for her.

Oh, I got it! There is something really really good about her.

She is (usually) very open about what she doesn't know, and she's very honest about that (on most occasions). It's amazingly charming to find someone so lacking in hubris (most of the time)-- and that really is something to learn from!

Ok, now I feel better.

Longest. Post. Ever. Sorry.

2006-02-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

Wow, that sure was a lotta garbage yesterday.... If you're just checking in here today, I recommend you skip all the stuff after "IQ" unless you're really into educational philosophy.

But the parts about the really dumb person are gods honest truth. And please don't think I was making fun of dumb people-- in fact, I usually believe that there is no such thing as "dumb people," most all of the time calling someone "stupid" is a judgment of their values-- that's just the point.

But this person however (and this will be that last time I write about the poor gal)... every day that she manages to stay out of the Darwin awards baffles me. And what's more impressive is that she somehow managed to get a college degree without ever learning that people in different countries speak different languages, or that the "middle east" isn't in "in England-- where jesus was"... she was shocked to learn that there are people in the world who don't have electricity and indoor plumbing and more shocked to learn that toasters and showers do not work without electricity or plumbing... amazed to learn that there was such a thing as deserts and bewildered that people actually live in them... she's perplexed by higher mathematics like single digit addition, and she is incapable of having a simple conversation without getting hopelessly confused. Then, when she gets frustrated and embarrassed about her inability to have a conversation she shakes her head and makes obscene farting noises and slaps and ridicules herself (which she basically does constantly)... all this without any obvious clinical mental handycap. Ah... I have so many great stories about this person, but unfortunately my blog is not anonymous enough to tell them....

It's very frightening to think of what she must have been like many years ago when she was actually in college... has her brain just atrophied in her post college years, or was she always like this?

"I.Q.", "G," & "MI" at the U and my "almost too dumb to be alive" acquaintance.

2006-02-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

Beating Around the Cliche Bush with the Ugly Stick

"Help! Those Ninjas Stole My Multiple Intelligences!"

Ok, so as you might have guessed, this post has to do with concepts of "beauty and intelligence," "stereotyped perception and cliches" and "Ninjas kicking butts."

Well, actually, it doesn't have much to do with Ninjas kicking butt.... However I did have an unfortunate reunion with what has to be the dumbest person I've ever encountered, and I really wish someone would drop kick her butt. But, uh, I'll try to work in the Ninjas somewhere anyhow.

About this woman:

Kurt Vonnegut once described a character in a novel as being "almost too dumb to be alive." This acquaintance of mine might be the only person I have ever met worthy of such a description.

For example, I once witnessed her volunteering to explain to someone what a "denominator" was. It was bad enough that she clearly had no idea that this was the word for the unlucky chap on the underside of a fraction, but couldn't admit her ignorance. No, what followed was one of the greatest displays of dumb I have ever witnessed, and god, I wish I had it on tape. And let me stress, this spectacle was completely in earnest: she transformed before our eyes into Coach Z. She kept trying to say the word "denominator" over and over agian, and somehow couldn't say it right. Actually, she couldn't even get close. She is a native speaker of English, but I have never heard the sounds she was making in any language before-- it could easily have been the native language of Pluto:

"dee- norm-men-urgenerg"

'dee-nort-enizer"

"dee-neg-gent-urger"

And she kept stopping and shaking her head, slapping her own face and saying "why can't I say it?" And then she would try again, fail, and then make a raspberry type of farting noise, and try some more:

"dee-germ-entyper"

Then, she even wrote the word down. She studied it carefully, and tried again very slowly. Each time we thought she was going to be successful until at the last moment she would somehow miss it:

(very slowly and deliberately:) "deeeeeee-noooooom-eeeeeeen-aaaaa--geerrggggeoorrrrrrggg."
"deeeeeee-nooooooom-eeeeeeen-gerrrrggggggner.

This went on for what seemed like an hour. She must have tried literally at least 40 times.... (denomejader)

And this story by no means exhausts this being's vast resources of stupidity....

So, as you can imagine, the only thing that gets me through any meeting with this person are my fantasies of her being ripped apart by Ninjas while she inexplicably and gleefully makes fart noises and shouts "look dancer, Whooo! I learned to crochet!" (which she annoyingly pronounces "crotch it.")

IQ

But not only is her existence personally trying, her irrefutable dunder-headed-ness is intellectually upsetting for me as well.

You see, her absolute lack of intelligence is the only sure refutation of my insistence that there is no such thing as "general intelligence" ("g") or even more broadly intelligence as a whole.

"No such thing as intelligence?" you ask? Yes, the idea of "so and so" being smarter than "whosey who" has become an unquestionable assumption in our culture. But it is just these types of absolute truths that we need to question the most. When someone says "boy, that sure is a smart kid!" or "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" or some other well-worn platitude, it carries the power of generations of acceptance. Hence it's veracity is never questioned. Which is really too bad.

Firstly, these cliches make a duality where there is more likely a continuum: "either beauty is in the eye of the beholder or it isn't." The truth however is probably more gray than black and white. I think we continue to use cliches because we want them to be true, not because they are. The idea of intelligence is very flattering if you come out on the "superior" side while it makes a lovely excuse for ones failings if we land on the downside. So for a long time we had the idea of "general intelligence," which as we now know, was invented by a couple of Phrenologists for the purpose of showing that white people were better than people with other colors of skin, after measuring skulls failed to verify Arian superiority.

But there were lots of problems with "G." Firstly, it didn't seem to be a good predictor of anything (not even race, which to some was it's greatest failing.) One kid gets a high IQ and another gets a low IQ. Statistically their odds of success remained the same.

But then Howard Gardner back-flipped onto the scene with his theory of Multiple Intelligences and saved the day. Gardner gave us the idea that there is no such thing as "g", but instead there are "self smarts," "music smarts," "body smarts," "math smarts," "picture smarts," "word smarts," "nature smarts" and the "popular girl smarts." Well, I guess that's a little better.... And it does seem to be a slightly better predictor of success-- at least in specific endeavors.

However, here is the problem. Take Mozart for example. Did he have "music smarts." Sure he did. Did he have lots of other smarts too? Of course. But why was Mozart so great? Was it just a gift for tunefulness? Absolutely not. Perhaps it was his math smarts which allowed him to construct such perfectly ordered compositions. Or his "popular girl smarts" that enabled him to communicate so fully with us. And what happens when we compare Mozart to Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Lizt or Mahler? Well, we see that one is a great composer because of his picture smarts, one because of his self smarts, one because his nature smarts and one because of his body smarts. How important were their "music smarts?" I'm not sure there even is such a thing!

And the same would be true for writers, mathematicians, and popular girls.

So because of this failing, certain people have tried expanding Multiple Intelligences into a complex swirling entangled grid of fluctuating kinds of intelligence. Though I enjoy contemplating these theories to the music of Pink Floyd, they are basically worthless for understanding anything about so-called intelligence

The truth is that as our concepts of "intelligence" come closer to the real world, "intelligence" becomes synonymous with "individuality." Mozart was a genius because of his specific life experiences and understandings. Same with all the other composers, and same with every other human. We each have something unique and powerful that we can all learn from-- we are each a clever solution to the problems that we encounter. And even a lack of typical "g" can represent a powerful intelligence of a sort. Those of us who encounter difficulties learning may become geniuses at teaching! Remember that Einstein declared that his eventual insights were due to the relative trouble he had at understanding concepts that were easy for his contemporaries.

The truth is that their ARE multiple intelligences-- somewhere's around 6 billion of em.

And as for my ridiculously stupid friend from above, I even learned from her! I'll be consulting with her about my new theory of "singular dumbs."