Saturday, February 14, 2015

Wonderful zen afternoon re-reading sections from William Segal's "A Voice at the Borders of Silence"; references to Vaysse, Paul Reps,Soen Nakagawa and, of course Madame de Salzmann and Dr. de Salzmann, as well as James George. Such a rich inter-mingling of interesting ideas, peoples, currents and seeking! I've pulled down my ancient paperback copy of Paul Reps "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" from my bookshelf (so old it doesn't even have any copywrite or publishing info in it!!) and Soen Nakagawa's "Endless Vow". Zen and the Work are very different in many ways, but there are also many similarities. In the taste, touch and feel of things, however, no difference. Mind makes distinctions. Life does not.

All is One in God.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Went out to the studio today to work on videos for Will to learn tunes; instead spent an hour working out additional parts/arrangements for Elelphant Talk. No one seems to get where I'm going with this tune, but I've got about three parts worked out now, some interconnected bits, and it seems to be taking on a life of it's own! This is playable and will be totally awesome I swear if we can do it with me, Will, Daryl and a third guitarist... oh, Johnny, such an enigma...
The Santage guitar is coming home! This Les Paul copy from the late seventies is the "Entropics" guitar I play circa 1982 with Will, Scott and Dan; in the early 80s I had a spiritual awakening (e.g., nervous breakdown) and gave away all of my possessions, including apparently, this guitar. Turns out Fabian in San Fran has kept it and maintained it all these many years and is sending it to me so that we can be re-united! I'm stunned. I'm really excited about seeing her again! The guitar from my first real band! Imagine that! Just speechless!

habitual grace

Nice weekend revisiting the Gilliam Section CD on the Habitual Grace bandcamp (https://habitualgrace.bandcamp.com/album/the-gilliam-section); shared my story on the Promotion with Integrity Facebook group and got some nice feedback and the following note from Beth, the moderator: "thank you for giving us a link to your work! I like that I can listen to any track on the CD. They are quite quite beautiful. I wonder if this is how the Group can be useful to you--helping you return to promoting this "smarter not harder" (and without vomiting, per our mission statement)? Or is there new work emerging?" Also we sold a copy (thank you, Barbara June!)! Listening to this music, in particular Luna's Jacal, Om Shanti Om, and Secret Sacred certainly make me want to make more with Will in this vein. I would love to do a "spiritual" music for yoga and prayer type CD, even partner with David Nichtern on some promoting ideas for a broader distribution. As usual, this comes out of far left field for Will given our current trajectory to play power pop stuff, but that is why Johnny remains an enigma.

January: Pausing and Giving Thanks

Today I pause for a moment to remember to be grateful, and give thanks for my body, my being, my loved ones. Too often I seem to be so busy ...