The West Coast Bill Laswell Residency

Manifestation 

Ontological Sound System

Chairman: Item six on the agenda, the Meaning of Life.  Now Harry, you’ve had some thoughts on this.

Harry: That’s right, yeah. I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One, people are not wearing enough hats. Two, matter is energy. In the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation." However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia.

[Pause.]

Max: What was that about hats again?" - Monty Python

Which brings us to music, in particular the extraordinarily powerful, multifaceted, musical event of Bill Laswell's five day Residency at The Chapel in San Francisco's Mission district.  I am just beginning to process it and likely will be doing so for a very long time.  Paradoxically, I feel both extremely worn out from 5 long days of work ... and incredibly amped ... electrically charged from the various new neural tracks, pathways, connections and voyages into different spaces and realities engendered by different configurations of musical assemblages and intensities in a very condensed period of time.  In other words, I'm totally messed up ... in a good way.  The routine has been shattered, the persona destroyed,  solve in motion without coagula just yet, still coming down; between lives, in the bardo once again.  The body is tired, the spirit unleashed to voyage both above and below the horizontal plane of everyday consensual reality. The only solution is to take a cue from Burroughs and write my way out of it.

I don't know that I've ever experienced music this intensely in such a compact period of time.  Six different bands in five nights which, of course, resonates with the Golden Dawn formula of transformation 5 = 6, the pentagram of the balanced 4 elements and spirit of a human becoming the godhead symbolized by the hexagram; the microcosm of the individual uniting with the macrocosm of Universe(s).  The resonance of five nights presenting six bands was not only numerical, it became experiential.  Six different universes of sound in a diurnal consecutive series.  It blew my mind.

Day 1: Divination - Laraaji, Bill Laswell, Hamid Drake

Day 2: Bass Invaders - Jah Wobble, Bill Laswell, Josh Werner, Peter Apfelbaum, 
                                     Hamid Drake, Dorian Cheah, with special guest Ravid Kahalani

Day 3: Sypher - Dave Lombardo, Bill Laswell, Dorian Cheah with special guest Mike Patton.

            Massacre - Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, Charles Hayward

Day 4: Third Rail - James "Blood" Ulmer, Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey, Bill Laswell

Day 5: Method of Defiance - Doctor Israel, Bill Laswell, Guy Licata, Graham Haynes, Peter Apfelbaum, Josh Werner with special guest Devin Prasad

 * * * * * * 

Ontology = the Science of Being; Manifestation = to bring into Existence

We have here a manifestation of a system of sound that creates being by transmitting being, a being forever becoming something new and different.  The system, in this case, encompasses the musicians, their instruments and all the methods of amplification and electronic processing modifying their sound to bring the music (being) into existence.  This music alchemically affects and reacts with everyone in the space - musicians, audience, staff, and technicians.  It may affect others around the world on subtle levels.

Alchemy = a material process for catalyzing and activating ontological manifestation.  It works at different rates of speed and varying intensities over long periods of time.  This process functions on the food we eat, what we do with it, and intention; food on many levels - music = food for the soul, not be confused with soul food which also has been known to fuel some mighty fine music.

The sequence matters.  Day 1: Divination invokes the univocity of being - the advised way to begin any magick ritual after banishing.  Divination featured Laraaji on the electric zither, a variety of processing pedals, vocals and laughter.  The ethereal sounds of the amped, cascading strings and their phased and fissioning harmonics invoked Kether and the Supernal Triad in a big "Atoh" - "Unto Thee." (referring to the initial gesture in the Golden Dawn's Qabalistic Cross which prefaces and closes the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram).

Very dynamic musical voyaging with this group, a nonlinear improvised flow traversing through different galaxies and dimensions traveling on the wings of univocal being.  Bill and Hamid created a solid but extremely fluid foundation for the zither to zith in; Rhythmic, melodic and harmonic beauty and surprise navigating and guiding the ship whither it may go.

Thou who art I beyond all I am

Who hath no nature and no name

Who art when all but Thou are gone

Thou center and secret of the Sun

Thou hidden spring of all things known, and unknown

Thou aloof, alone

Thou the true fire within the reed

Brooding and breeding, source and seed
Of life, love, liberty, and light
Thou beyond speech and beyond sight... 
                                                   -The Ship, Aleister Crowley

That was Divination

At the end of the night as I was closing up shop, the owner of The Chapel, Jack, enthusiastically expressed his appreciation of the music describing it on the order of a religious experience.  In the Fourth Way we call this striking a strong "doh." Divination seemed like a cosmic singing bowl was struck that vibrated as an undercurrent all week.  A very good beginning.

* * * * * *

Every drummer this week played absolutely amazing; rhythmic sounds guiding flows of time beyond description.  The beat ruled. Laying a solid foundation (Yesod) that felt like it reached down to the center of the Earth while supporting melodic ideas and excursions to take flight into different worlds and and alternate environments of sound.  Every drummer played a uniquely different style.  Every one world class playing to their peak, no doubt partially due to the compression, intensity, and environment of the Residency.  

The Chapel is the perfect room to see, hear and grok world-class drummers.  Intimate enough to hear every subtlety, big enough -with decent acoustics when it's filled and a strong sound system, to somatically touch the power and punch, to feel the sound.

Hamid Drake went completely beyond anything I had heard him do before.  He has an amazing fluidity, very dynamic while keeping the groove solid, funky and moving ...  and ... painting atmospheric textures along the way; I don't know, maybe he grows extra limbs like a Hindu deity, that's what it sounds like sometimes; very strong melodic sense too.

Bill Laswell is someone who compels, silently, just by his presence, musicians playing with him to perform their best, to be at the top of their game and go further. Here to go. Expanding beyond seems the code of real musicians. I suspect that partially explains how it went for Hamid. That, and the powerful trio synergy with Laaraji and Laswell; the eye in the triangle.

* * * * * *

This Residency gives a tip of the iceberg glimpse into the informal musical community and network of musicians Laswell has worked with over the years.  The purpose of this shapeshifting group seems always invocational and exploratory, innovative and dangerous, thus suggesting a completely singular, non-hierarchical mystery school similar in intention, different in approach, to the schools set up by Gurdjieff and Crowley.

Ontological Sound System works as one description for what Crowley and Gurdjieff were up to, particularly the latter who formulated a law of ontological creation cycles, the Law of Octaves, based on the diatonic scale in music.  The schools manifested by Gurdjieff and Crowley introduced and used alchemical principles and techniques for an ontological production of some kind.  Gurdjieff called it "Real I,"  Crowley's school signifies it as "True Will."

There was a question the other day as to whether avid Crowley collector Jimmy Page actually knew anything about magick, ontologically or otherwise.  I don't know the answer to that question but suspect he experimented.  My point is that something of Crowley rubbed off on Page through all his contact with the artifacts and the work he did to promote AC's books through owning an occult bookstore ( The Equinox) and publishing one of Mather's translations that Crowley wrote an Introduction for. Whether aware of it or not, Page made a connection with the 93 current and transmits it in the music of Led Zeppelin.  Theurgic magick requires a high level of energy and that energy or prana can get extracted and used by listening to Zeppelin, particularly to Page's guitar playing on the live albums.  Whether musically "correct" or not, it transmits an energy, prana, or baraka.  

I don't know how or why, but it seems obvious to me looking at it from the inside that Bill Laswell has a strong resonance and connection with the 93 Current and it gets reflected and transmitted in the music he constructs.  Encountering and confronting this music means confronting and encountering a school.  Caveat emptor, this comes more as a warning than a suggestion.  Intense exposure to the Ontological Sound System can provoke the temporary destruction of personal identity, then, like Humpty Dumpty, you  learn how to put yourself back together again only different.

  

* * * * * *  

Day 2 Bass Invaders meant a reconnection and reconstitution of the  musical assemblage with the iconic Jah Wobble.  The name of this group an homage to his band, Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart.  Wobble is one of the most influential dub bass players to shake this Earth, known for his sound (his own O.S.S.) starting with the unprecedented massive low end on the first Public Image Limited (PIL) recordings.  Bill Laswell, picked up on this and went on to innovate and changed the dub remix world introducing various outside elements and aesthetics including jazz, ambient and international sounds, sensibilities and textures, avant garde experimentation and chance operations among a host of other musical elements and processes.  The influence Laswell brought to the dub genre was heard by Wobble and fed into his compositions with Invaders of the Heart.  An artistic feedback loop circulates between these two pillars of the bass guitar.  

In fact, having Laswell and Wobble on stage in the same band reminds me of the twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz that marked the entrance to King Solomon's Temple in ancient Jerusalem.  These also symbolize the right and left hand pillars of The Tree of Life, the pillars of Severity and Mercy.  Jachin translates as, he will establish, while Boaz means strength within.

The two pillars were joined in their bass invasion by Josh Werner also fluent in low end dubbese.  All 3 bassists didn't rock the subsonic range at the same time the entire set.  Like Divination, Bass Invaders played fluidly and dynamically always listening to each other and responding.  Josh jumped in on the dub lines when space opened to do so, otherwise he played short melodic phrases or short chordal pads on an old school synthesizer.  Occasionally, Wobble put down his bass and rocked a cowbell in steady time giving Hamid Drake even more leeway to throw in rhythmic pirouettes and somersaults while locking down the groove; simultaneously anchoring and steering the musical voyage.

The three bassists reminded me of an all-time favorite album, Middle Passage, credited to Ginger Baker, produced by Bill Laswell.  That album also features Wobble and Laswell holding down the low end while a third bassist, Jonas Helborg sometimes plays higher register melodic parts.  It remains one of the best sounding albums I have ever heard and is a primary reference I use when listening to new sound systems, both live P. A.s and studio reference monitors.

On my way to to the FOH mixing post I noticed a book on a patron's table, "Memoirs of a Geezer, The Autobiography of Jah Wobble."  He told me he got it at the merch table out front so I picked up a copy and later discovered from it that Middle Passage was the first time Wobble met and worked with Bill.

Wobble has been a musical hero of mine since my friend Hutch - later to become the soundman for D.O.A. (legendary Vancouver punk band) - played the first PIL album for me in 1980 pointing out the  massive bass response which sounded like nothing we'd ever heard before.  Hutch also told me the story of how they got that sound, quite possibly the studio equivalent of an urban legend.  The story went that Wobble cranked up the bass cabinet and pointed it at a stone wall in a small room.  It does sound like that could be true.

Later, in my theurgic researches and experiments I came to really appreciate the name Jah Wobble because Jah really does appear to wobble in the Rastafarian sense of Jah.  Naturally, I asked him to sign the book and he did.  I haven't had the chance to fully read it yet, but the parts I've sampled are an excellent read - a behind the scenes look at working musicians along with a healthy dose of humour.  I highly recommend it.  You might be able to find it here.

Multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum contributed exploratory melodic and chordal segments and ideas in a higher harmonic register with Rhodes piano, Korg synthesizer, tenor sax, flute and melodica.  Special guest, Ravid Kahalani of Yemen Blues added to the line-up that day, brought a Middle Eastern flavor to the proceedings with mostly tonal, sometimes lyrical improvised singing that seemed cathartic at times as if working through and working out a deep reservoir of pain; a personal pain or the pain of the world situation as it impacts him or a combination of both.  Kahalani, raised in Israel by a Yemenite family who emigrated from Yemen can not return to the country of his ancestors without fear of persecution and nearly certain death.  Ravid joined the bass part of the invasion during the last song of the first set by plugging in and playing his gimbri, a Morrocan bass lute.

Electric violinist Dorian Cheah added his expertise in the second set providing an edgier voice in the upper register, the harmonic distortion from his pedals suggesting the timbre of an electric guitar but with the bowed attack of a violin.  His sound added another element of danger, contrasting as it did with the more sonorous tones of the horns and keyboards.

Bass Invaders in the Green Room.  From left to right, Ravid Kahalani, Hamid Drake, 

Jah Wobble, Josh Werner, Bill Laswell, Dorian Cheah, Peter Apfelbaum.

Photo courtesy of Josh Werner

Day 3 Sypher  Dave Lombardo continued the sequence of mind-blowing drummers.  He's mostly known for his innovations in heavy metal drumming with Slayer, yet his solid and powerful style sounded much freer and less repetitive than that.  More like jazz, though the boundaries between these genre seem fuzzy and indeterminate, a feeble attempt to communicate something that is best experienced.  Lombardo is known for his fast double bass drum style.  During sound check I put a noise gate on the bass drum to reduce some of the low end ringing that happened when the room was empty.  He heard that immediately and asked that it get removed saying that playing with a gate on the kick drum was like trying to run in the sand.  Later he mentioned that he had enjoyed the dub delays I occasionally put on the drums.  

The power of the drums was met and matched by the power of the bass guitar.  Bill played with a heavier sound than either of the previous nights utilizing an array of pedals and effects to create a war machine on the bass.  Dorian Cheah responded with an even more electric guitar-like agenda than the night before.  At times it sounded indistinguishable from a Stratocaster going through a Marshall stack and when he ran his violin through a wah wah pedal I could imagine the ghost of Hendrix smiling with approval.  

There was also a war going on with the volume police that culminated in this set.  It didn't come from the staff of the Chapel, who seemed very supportive of the music's aesthetics, but rather from one intolerant neighbor who lived on the other side of one of the venue's walls.  I had been warned about him after the first night, but thought I was off the hook when Bass Invaders went complaint free.  It seemed that if they didn't shake his cage, then nothing would.  Turns out he had gone out that night.

Sypher welcomed special guest Mike Patton to vocalize in the ending sequence.  I worked with Patton at least 20 years ago when he sat in with Painkiller at Slim's in San Francisco and again in Paris.  I expected it to be non-stop screaming like I remembered it before: a vocal chord war machine trying to burst the containing seams of the skin to let the vital essence out to bleed all over; an intensity hard to reach any other way.  Patton and Painkiller's Mick Harris patented the style and were quite the sub rosa alliance when they joined forces.  Patton has refined his style over the years.  This time around his vocalizings seemed to communicate in a sort of nonhuman, advanced language.  Some of it recalled the alien language of Leeloo in the film The Fifth Element. However the roots were still there - Sypher ended on a Painkiller-like blast with a full on vocal and musical catharsis.

The name Sypher appears a variation on cipher with a qabalistically significant change in spelling.  The definition of cipher: "1. a zero, the figure 0. 2. a secret or disguised way of writing; a code. "  This code often involves numbers.  We use it in the context of tracking the magick - attempting to see traces of what goes on in worlds more subtler than the consensual one.  

Qabalistically, Syp = 150,
                        her  = 210
                        150 + 210 = 360

If you study the gematria of 150 and 151 in Crowley's dictionary, 777 and you have an idea of the work implied by 210 (Robert Anton Wilson gives it away in one of the Historical Illuminatus novels) you may get some notion of an ontological system.

360 = the number of degrees in a circle.  While the bands played throughout this Residency a circular symbol created for this event was projected centrally onto the middle beam of wood above the stage.

As you can see, rays fan out in many degrees from a central location.  Compare that to the information contained in 150, 151 and 210 and learn more about this ontological sound system.

Massacre - Ever since I've known Bill, he has been in what I consider the preeminent band in free jazz circles; always playing with other master musicians.  I was lucky enough to catch a set of Last Exit at the Knitting Factory before they diverged and was fortunate to work with Sonny Sharrock, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Peter Brotzmann on other projects.  

These days it's Massacre.  Tonight's set showed proof of concept, twisting and stretching the boundaries again.  Every guitar player in the world should listen to this evening's performance in my opinion.  The possibilities of this instrument with pedals and technique sound limitless here.   I find it difficult to describe.  I put on the recording to help inspire words and just listen to it in sheer amazement.  All I can think to say is: a sonic manifestation of the activity implied in the above symbol.  Some of it reminded me of the psychedelic explorations of early Pink Floyd, or if it had evolved.  Set the Controls for the Center of the Sun. 

After the volume restrictions placed on the sound in the last set, Massacre's level started off on the conservative side.  Within minutes, Jack, the owner, insisted that it get turned up.  So I completely ignored what I'd been told in the last set and mixed it as loud as I wanted. No complaints. Plenty of kudos. This music has a Will to be heard on it's own terms.

* * * * * * 

The Laswell Residency was like a magnet drawing the hardcore cognoscenti from lands near and far. A taper came down from Oregon taking time off work to attend and record the first three shows.  My friend Dosh and his friend came up from Arizona to attend all six shows.  I saw so many old musical acquaintances that I hadn't seen for years I thought I may have died resulting in the bardo of my musical history flashing before my eyes.  But I also forged new musical colleagues: Josh Werner, Dorian Cheah and Dave Lombardo among them.  I was thrilled to meet and hang out a little with the great music writer Anil Prasad whom I knew from his compelling advocacy for artists on Facebook.  He gave me a copy of his book Innerviews: Music Without Borders subtitled Extraordinary Conversations with Extraordinary Musicians.  Some of the chapter titles jumped out upon a first glance.  Bjork: Channeling thunderstorms, Bill Laswell: Endless infinity, John McLaughlin & Zakir Hussein: Remembering shakti, David Torn: Mercurial mastery, McCoy Tyner: Communicating sensitivity.  I have only had the chance to peruse this book in random fragments so far, but everything I have read confirms my opinion that Prasad is one of the best communicators (and thus facilitators) of music out there.  I highly recommend checking it out.

* * * * * *

Day 4: Third Rail James "Blood" Ulmer walked out on stage causing a warm pulsing wave of emotion to quite palpably ripple through the crowd as if seeing a blood relative return home after many years.  I don't know when he last played in San Francisco, it felt like the crowd had missed him and were delighted to have him back, a very warm welcome.  I had missed him a lot too, and Jerome "Bigfoot" Brailey and everyone else from the original Third Rail who couldn't make it today, Amina Myers and Bernie Worrell.  

The adjective "legend" sometimes gets overused to describe great musicians, this time it's legit. Blood is a living legend of a unique side of the blues.  Everyone there knew it, either by previous reputation, or if not then they saw it this night as manifested by his presence and the command of his instruments - voice and guitar.  Blood was the bandleader tonight.  They had worked on several of Ulmer's songs at soundcheck, but this attempt at a formal structure got largely abandoned in actual performance for a more freewheeling and spontaneous offering in the same spirit of devil-may-care improvising  all the other groups in the Residency subscribed too.  

Esoterically: Blood, Bigfoot and Bill, what more needs to be said?  You just need to know that foot refers to Malkuth, the material world, the physical space/time continuum, and that Bill adds to 72 which means "a breakthrough."  The third rail is the rail that provides the electricity to the subway train.

Day 5: Method of Defiance

"Difference must be shown differing.  We know that modern art tends to realize these conditions: in this sense it becomes a veritable theater of metamorphoses and permutations.  A theater where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (Ariadne has hung herself).  The work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become 'experience', transcendental empiricism, or science of the sensible."  ...

This empiricism teaches us a strange 'reason,' that of the multiple, chaos and difference (nomadic distributions, crowned anarchies)."

 - Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p. 56 & 57

All music ultimately goes beyond representation when it works.  Most of it can still get represented by agreed upon terms and classifications after the fact, we can usually find a comparison with something in the past to give the music a familiar reference point.

Method of Defiance defies description.  That is part of its defiance, it leaves the domain of representation to ... see the quote above.

Method of Defiance  - a sonic collage, a pastiche of cut-ups, a bricolage, a schizoanalysis music investigation into a new being of music. an ontological sound system.

Put all these elements into the nuclear reactor of a small performance space: live drums, drum loops, dubbed drums, modulated turntable scratching dubbed and delayed, low end for days and galaxies of bass morphologies with pedals and effects, samples, electronic trumpet landscapes, obscure and arcane chords and intervals on keyboards and horns, trumpet and sax, occasional rippling of flute across the wake, a M.C. and rapper, Doctor Israel (is real) as tour director and guide for the voyage.  You'll get transcendental empiricism balanced against insanity and chaos.  This music touches the Other, that which exists completely outside of anything known.  It touches the Other and brings some of it back into the performance space translating it into a somatic and tactile awareness through the low frequencies of the beat and groove.

Into this cauldron of sound and mixture of chaos, 11 year old Devin Prasad was initiated into the Residency, into the O.S.S., as a special guest sitting in on guitar.  He played an excellent supporting role, and like all on stage, was keenly listening to everyone else and reacting in kind.  The only way this hybrid music monstrosity works is if everyone pays attention and listens to everyone else.  The stage becomes a nuclear reactor constructing  a new architecture of sound.  James Dellatacoma briefly tutored Devin on the range of styles he might hear and tips on how to respond with the guitar.

Method of Defiance.  Left to right: D.J. Logic, Josh Werner, Doctor Israel, Devin Prasad, 

Guy Licata, Graham Haynes, Bill Laswell, Peter Apfelbaum

Photo by Anil Prasad

* * * * * * 

Knowing this would be a major event in my music career I endeavored to track the magick as best I could.  By that I mean, to attempt to view what was going on in dimensions and worlds to subtle to impinge our normal senses.  Tracking the magick seems a type of transcendental empiricism.

The night before the Residency Bill, James and I arrived at the Phoenix Hotel within 5 minutes of each other.  They flew in from New York.   I drove from Grass Valley, left later than planned and got delayed on the Emperor Norton (Bay) Bridge for an hour.  We unintentionally arrived at nearly the same time.  The Phoenix is where everyone stayed.  It’s a funky and clean hotel in the Tenderloin district, also an institution of sorts.  It is thee rock-n-roll hotel in San Francisco, the place where many touring bands stay when in town.

A weird thing occurred Thursday night after Third Rail.  Before the show, I turned off the wi fi in my laptop to maximize its cpu for recording.  That night before falling asleep at the Phoenix, my girlfriend Paula and I watched the first episode of Russian Doll on Netflix using the same laptop. In the morning, I went to check my email and discovered no connection because the wi fi was off. I hadn’t turned it back on since the show. Somehow we watched Netflix without any known internet connection. Maybe the wi fi turned itself on for the show then back off the next morning? I’d find that equally strange. The weirdness factor increases because it was that show.

 Signs are the true elements of theater.  They testify to the spiritual and natural powers which act beneath the words, gestures, characters, and objects represented. -  Deleuze, D & R p.23

The day after the Residency concluded I drove Paula to a dealership in Roseville where she bought a car that she named Silver Phoenix.  Following that, she had to pick up a few household items so we motored in tandem to a nearby Dollar store.  The dude checking us out had PHOENIX written in all caps on his name tag.  I asked if it was his real name and he said it was, but had never been to Arizona.  I told him about the Phoenix rock-n-roll hotel in San Francisco.

Taken as an entire series, music expressing this power, emotion and intensity in a live setting is extremely rare.  A lot of popular contemporary music seems solely for the purpose of entertainment or to cover the noise.  Music with the artistic commitment to experiment with the creation of being as occurred in the unfolding of the Laswell Residency only comes along once in awhile and never the same way twice.  It would be amazing if this sound system were to repeat though you can be guaranteed that when it does, it will be different.

Make Believe by Dalyrmple MacAlpin

How do you raise the consciousness of the planet? How do you make this a better place to live? How do you bring people together, mend divisions and encourage processes of creative problem-solving that affirm life?  Many attempts to answer these questions get tried everyday in large and small ways.  I saw a play the other night that, among other things, gently introduced the audience to a world of magic.

Some theater offers an Initiation, some seeks to entertain, Make Believe does both.  It very explicitly offers the key to magic.  From the Author's Statement:

Children grow up believing whole-heartedly in the most unbelievable things.  So how is it we ever lose faith in the power of our imagination?

My wish with Make Believe is to remind the audience that magic not only exists, it also contains an inescapable soul, which has actually never left us. 

- Dalyrmple MacAlpin

It's my experience that this musical play is an extremely effective portal into other domains of reality often considered inaccessible or nonexistent.  If that sounds scary, and it probably should, well ... it's a mere fairy tale.  As Herman Hesse famously wrote in Steppenwolf: "Magic Theater - Entrance Not For Everybody.  The great thing about this kind of voluntary Initiation is that you can jump into the waters, so to speak, as much or as little as you like, or as you can take.  Just because you discover a quantum wormhole into an alternate dimension doesn't mean that you have to jump in.  Simply enjoy the view of things outside common sense reality.

Multi level stories generally contain puns and other literary tricks.  Make Believe is no exception starting from the subtitle: "An Archetypal Musical Theater Fairytale For The Young And Young At Heart," because it also plays to the Jung at heart.  It contains a strong Jungian component exemplified by a quote from Carl underneath the Artist's Statement: One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

This play rewards attention, the more you bring to it, the more immersed and inside of the story you become.  MacAlpin's language often expresses itself as riddle or rhyme and does not really sound of this century, however following closely draws you in while contributing to the otherworldy atmosphere of the space.

I had the pleasure of working with MacAlpin in his previous incarnation as the primary force behind  the esoteric folk (think of Pentangle) Lasher Keen who described their music as inspired by ritual induced trance states.  We recorded, mixed, mastered and released their 2014 album Mantic Poetry Oracular Prophecy.  He is a dedicated multi-media artist spending three years composing and producing the music for Make Believe going so far as to pick up a formal education in music theory, composition and orchestration as part of the creative process.  In his bio he mentions that he also studied traditional Czech marionette carving at the prestigious Puppets in Prague institute. "This skill he expounded upon in order to carve a vital and living consciousness into his very first puppet, Rumpelstilzchen."

All aspects of the production of the play were amazing and highly professional: the acting, the music, sound, set, lighting, costumes, etc.  It was of a quality and calibre you expect to see from theater in New York or London, although perhaps it gained some mystique and magic from the resonance of opening in Nevada Theater, the oldest active theater west of the Mississippi, site of some of Mark Twain's first public lectures.

One of the most effective moments for me happened in the song, The Blessing of Pan.  There was a slide projector showing various iconic images of Pan revolving around the backdrop while Pan did his number about rescuing one of the children.  I flashed back to my previous adventures with Pan recording the music of Jajouka in Morroco's Rif Mountains while they did their ritual to the ancient God.  I wasn't surprised to read in the bio of Angela Holm, the Assistant Director and the person doing the projections, that "She likes exploring esoteric communication through the mysterious process of capturing image, in particular the aura of the unexpected that can happen through optical mechanics.

Synchronicities of a particular intensity seem to indicate contact with something, some force or Intelligence of one kind of another, much bigger than yourself.  They can appear as an affirmation of being on the right track or going in a productive direction.  After Dalyrmple began writing this story about 6 archetypal sisters exiled from their Mother and home by their evil Uncle, he discovered that in actuality a family with 6 sisters were neighbors to the Grimm Brothers.  Many familiar fairy tales such as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and several others were originally told to the Grimm Brothers by those sisters.  When you begin writing about archetypes then discover that the form you're writing about already had a major impact on folklore, then to me it seems more an issue of tuning in to some kind of current than of making something up from scratch; technically known as Invocation.  Make Believe appears a strong and successful Invocation.

Driving home from the play with my girlfriend Paula in a pleasant and alert altered state, listening to jazz on the classical radio station, an unfamiliar song came on singing the lyrics:  "When I write a letter to you ........ I ...... make believe ...... make believe ....... I'm right beside you."

This post is too late to convince anyone local to catch the play while they can.  As of this writing, there are only two more performances, tonight and tomorrow.  Its intent is to communicate the delight, great pleasure and spiritual value of Make Believe continuing on for future runs.  A special shout out to Promoter and Producer Paul Emery for having the vision and daring to make the initial run possible, much respect!  For more information check out www.dalyrmplemacalpin.com

I'll let Dalyrmple MacAlpin have the final word form the program's concluding lines:

"So let us commingle and conjoin with the shadowy contortionist of our nightmares and the imaginary friend who is our guide. They are there for a reason."

Original painting by Benjamin A. Vierling

Bill Laswell Manifestation: Ontological Sound System

Music has the ability to convey a powerful spiritual force, a force, a multiplicity, encouraging and enabling planetary transformation; a force of magick functioning and operating on the all-worlds-connected quantum level.

Good music, music that destroys systems of control, that awakens and transforms heart and soul, seems on the rise

Music serving as a vehicle for Magic colonizes Space and suspends Time.

"As Deleuze remarks in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, music indeed 'deeply traverses our bodies and puts an ear in our belly, in our lungs etc.', but ultimately it rids bodies of their inertia, of the materiality of their presence. It disincarnates bodies. In turn, through the manipulation of its sonic matter, 'it gives the most spiritual entities a disincarnated, dematerialized body.' Music, in short, through its heightened yet somehow dispersed, intangible sensuality, has the power of undoing the coordinates of the commonsense world and creating a sonic body of speeds and affective intensities, that sonic body traversing listeners and turning their organized, material bodies into dematerialized vectors spread out across an a-personal, trans-individual body without organs.

- from Violence in Three Shades of Metal by Ronald Bogue

Or in other words, music may operate as a catalyst for the alchemical process,

Solve Coagula

"... there is a sound block that no longer has a point of origin, since it is always and already in the middle of the line; and no longer has horizontal and vertical coordinates, since it creates its own coordinates; and no longer forms a localizable connection from one point to another since it is in "nonpulsed time": a deterritorialized rhythmic block that has abandoned points, coordinates and measure, like a drunken boat that melds with the line or draws a plane of consistency.  Speeds and slownesses inject themselves into musical form, sometimes impelling it to proliferation, linear microproliferations, and sometimes to extinction, sonorous abolition, involution or both at once. The musician is in the best position to say: "I hate the faculty of memory, I hate memories," And that is because he or she affirms the power of becoming."

- Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus p. 296

"And as the artists become other, they pass into things, they become 'absent but everywhere in the landscape,' at which point they are able to render palpable in the work of art the impalpable forces of the world" - Ronald Bogue, Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts

Special thanks to Yoko Yamabe for the graphic design of the poster images.

FLY ON The Tale of the Tribe

"Who's your favorite female superhero?

- Special agent Clarice Starling"

  - email exchange between Steven 'Fly' Pratt and Robert Anton Wilson, FOTTOTT p. 53.

"And you various tribes that fly with the halcyon

Over the rolling boom of the ocean

Come quickly and listen to what's going on,

Here we are mustering in all our variety

Of long-necked birds;

For here there has come a venerable sage

Full of ideas

Full of new ways."

- Aristophanes, The Birds (translated by Paul Roche)

Near the beginning of his introduction to the Gurdjieffian universe, Making A New World,  J.G. Bennett makes the point that Gurdjieff deliberately started many 'lines of work', many different projects and ideas without finishing them.  Bennett argues that rather than indicating a failure to carry projects through to completion, Gurdjieff deliberately set up several courses of work for his students to pick up and continue.  

Robert Anton Wilson planted several semantic sprouts and seeds and left the ever evolving Tale of the Tribe meta-history (and her story) project to his spiritual progeny to bring into bloomin' fruition. The Tale of the Tribe was an ambitious book Robert Anton Wilson had planned to write.  He indicated what it would cover in a short synopsis at the end of his penultimate book, TSOG, The Thing that Ate the Constitution.  The Tale of the Tribe was also the name of an 8 week online course presented by the Maybe Logic Academy and guided by Wilson in 2005.

The book Fly On The Tale of the Tribe (FOTTOTT) - A Roller Coaster Ride with Robert Anton Wilson recounts the autobiographical odyssey of Steven 'Fly' Pratt side by side with his constantly changing, multiple visions of the Tale of the Tribe.  One can see it as a treatise ebbing and flowing, weaving and winding its way like a river through the canyons of postmodern thinkers  and their transformational experimentation; a nonlinear narrative that can sometimes appear as holographic as the writing he is describing as holographic, mostly Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

This book is also one of the rare (so far), and invaluable primer books for the writings, philosophies and methods of Robert Anton Wilson.  For that alone, I highly recommend it, but there is much else too.  We get a cast of philosophical and scientific heavyweights and a synopsis of some their prime ideas and practical contributions to human development - the Tale of the Tribe.  Among others, we hear from Nietzsche, Alan Moore, Claude Shannon, Giodorno Bruno, Giambattista Vico, Buckminster Fuller, Wilhelm Reich, Korzybski, John Lilly, Tim Leary, Ernest Fenellosa, Jung, Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Marshall McLuhan, Orson Welles, Paul Krassner, John Sinclair, and of course, the Tale of the Tribe's first two stars, James Joyce and Ezra Pound.

Sombunall of the subjects include:

What is the Tale of the Tribe? and its corollary, what do we do with it?
Augmented Reality(AR)
What is art? We are all artists.
Eprime and certainty; the effects of language on consciousness.
King Kong, his sister Hong, and Guerilla Ontology.
Finnegans Wake
James Joyce/RAW inspired geo-mapping APPS - I suspect this one brilliant idea alone would revolutionize the consciousness of whomever used them.
Hologrammic writing.
The contribution of Chinese ideograms to the Tribe.
Magick.
Holometic Retribalism,  a Fly neologism which seems a portmanteau of hologram and hermetic.
The influence of psychedelic drugs on the Tribe.
Quantum entanglement and spooky action at a distance.

FOTTOTT is full of amazing quotes, the large percentage from Wilson, but many from other conspirators that serve to fill out and substantiate this vision of the Tribe.  Perhaps my favorite parts are the email and interview transcripts between Fly and RAW and any personal exchanges they had as it presents new light on the venerable sage.

I'm very interested in this topic because the online TOTT course became one of the most significant teaching experiences of my life; extremely intense at times, it felt life-changing.   I  regret not archiving the entire course exercises and discussion when given the opportunity.  So it was with some excitement to read that Fly included the course in the intro definition of TOTT .  I always assumed that someone at the MLA would archive it, and still hope it exists elsewhere other than in a few carbon-based memory banks and the akashic records.

Effects I can remember the course having on me include a quantum leap in understanding and comprehending Finnegans Wake that went a lot further than the information taken in by the group discussion.  I read it in its entirety for only the second time after the course finished and thoroughly enjoyed it, taking copious notes along the way.  The first read through felt like running a marathon through a thick swamp.  I would get mildly high from reading the book like you would meditating, but it seemed like I understood about 3% or less of it.  The TOTT also course introduced me to The Cantos by Ezra Pound.  It took a minute for that spark to catch, like almost the entire 8 week course, but it did flame and I also read The Cantos all the way through and looked at some of the secondary literature after the course.  I remember subjecting some of my mixing clients to recitations of inspiring passages.

At the time of this course my writing was limited to posting in these online courses and on the MLA Forum.  I remember something happening in the course that caused me to resolve to always write and get my point across as simply and directly as possible. I learned about "fossil poems."  The concept originates with Ralph Waldo Emerson in this quote:

“Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”

RAW expanded and put this into practice by suggesting listening to short phrases from any source, he used the example of CNN, and hearing them as fossil poems rather than in their ordinary context.  Short phrases, even with only a couple of words, that can poetically imply much more. I don't recall any of his examples, but to take what normally passes as mundane and hear it as poetry seems enlightened.  The first one I submitted was from the Rolling Stones: "Jumping Jack Flash is a gas, gas, gas," which reminds me of sexual alchemy.

It was in this course that a sequence of events arose which led to my verification that baraka can get transmitted through the internet.  In Cosmic Trigger, this gets called a contact experience. I posted a blog about it.

One thing I look for: are there actual real world changes being made as a product or byproduct of engagement with The Tale of the Tribe?  Is it doing anything?  The answer is absolutely yes! and I can give a direct example I just discovered a few days ago as this post gestated in my brain.  The Tale of the Tribe course occurred in the autumn of 2005 shortly after Hurricane Katrina.  In one very intriguing post RAW initiated with a headline that began: "Housing ...," he suggested they use Bucky Fullers mobile, portable housing structures to provide temporary housing for people displaced by the hurricane.  At the time I thought this a brilliant notion, but also rather cynically expecting that it probably wouldn't happen.  A couple of days ago Raw Illumination had a post linking to Alec Nevala-Lee's announcement about writing a biography on Buckminster Fuller.  It mentions that emergency shelters influenced by Fuller's designs were indeed used in the aftermath of Katrina. 

FOTTOTT  compares favorably  with Cosmic Trigger.  It pulls a few triggers of its own.
Very few people can attest to the extraordinary nature of Wilson's TOTT course, by the end of it there were only about a dozen or less active participants and it seems that at least 40 people had initially signed up.  Fly was one of the few that saw the whole thing through and the one who has most explicitly launched  the Wilson inspired Tales trajectory forward starting with multiple collage-like posts in the MLA Forum, that. much like this book, in the spirit of Ezra Pound, James Joyce and others who have worked with this concept, examined and re-imagined The Tale of the Tribe.

On p.38 we see the instruction: "That's the aim of the game folks.  Build your own tribe."  This book introduced me to Slavoj Zizek for the first time.  Zizek opens the door to French postmodern philosophy and psychology, especially the work of Jaques Lacan, also briefly discussed herein.  Besides translating Jaques Derrida, perhaps the most prominent of the lot,  Zizek has also ably contributed to the secondary literature of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.  Guttari was also a student and therapeutic client of Lacan.

In the comments from a couple of the later weeks of the Email to the Universe book discussion over at Rawillumination.net, I point to at least 4 or 5 instances of RAW obviously alluding to ideas from Deleuze and Guattari.  RAW knew about these dudes, I strongly suspect.  Deleuze in particular seems quantumly entangled with many other card-carrying members of the tribe.  His interpretation of Nietzsche published in the early 60's is said to have revived interest in the philosopher eventually making him a sweetheart of the counter-culture.  He writes about Orson Welles in his books on the cinema.  Delueze also finds much inspiration in Burroughs, using and expanding his ideas as much as  Wilson.

A good introduction to the world view of Deleuze & Guatarri is through their concept of the rhizome.  The nonhierarchical, decentralized process of growth of a rhizome appears isomorphic with the development and proliferation of the Tale of the Tribe.  Their essay on  the rhizome, initially published separately, later became incorporated as the introduction to A Thousand Plateaus.

A primary characteristic of some of the more integral members of the Tribe involves their use of multiple meaning and multiple levels of meaning in the same word, phrase or sentence.  They can seem very punny guys.  James Joyce, who gets more air time in FOTTOTT than anyone else apart from Wilson, leads in this area with Aleister Crowley not far behind.  Most or all of Wilson's fictional writings appear rife with multiplicity of meaning.  This characteristic receives further elucidation in a future post.

Deleuze & Guattari also communicate multiple meanings in simple and elaborate ways.  For instance, the Rhizome piece starts with an illustration of an avant garde fragment of musical notation.  The header on this notation reads "XIV piano piece for David Tudor 4."  Deleuze & Guattari comprise two doors (Tudor) into multiple, philosophical, postmodern concepts and scenarios.  Multi-level writers tend to be qabalistically fluent.  This appears true with D & G.  In the example given, XIV, 14 = the key number for the path of Daleth which connects Chokmah and Binah and gets associated with Venus.  4 = the numerical value of the letter Daleth and Daleth in English = door. 

A theme that cycles around in FOTTOTT from Nietszche via Cosmic Trigger: we are all greater artists than we realize.  In an essay on Michel Foucault, Deleuze wrote:

"It’s a question of 'doubling’ the play of forces, of a self-relation that allows us to resist, to elude power, to turn life or death against power. This, according to Foucault, is something the Greeks invented…it’s a matter of optional rules that make existence a work of art, rules at once ethical and aesthetic that constitute ways of existing or styles of life . It’s what Nietzsche discovered as the will to power operating artistically, inventing ‘new possibilities of life."

One of my favorite quotes from Fly's book:

Thus relativity, in the hands of James Joyce, is translated from the realm of mathematics and operationalist volumes of philosophy into a living laboratory, a living zoo or circus where no single word can define meaning concretely, yet a string of them together can cast a powerful message to the reader.

My question becomes: what grows?  If we indeed find ourselves in a living laboratory, and I agree we do, how do we describe what grows?  The attempt to define this may benefit the process.  We'll put this under the microscope, or the telescope, in the next installment here regarding The Tale of the Tribe.

Servants of the Star & Snake

I've held a deep fascination for Kenneth Grant since first hearing about him in Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger, The Final Secret of the Illuminatti.  Wilson invoked Grant's researches into his story to support the hypothesis that Beings from Sirius were transmitting preternatural Intelligence to certain individuals on Earth.  Wilson, appropriately enough, cites Grant 11 times in Cosmic Trigger, the first one being a quote from The Magical Revival stating that Crowley identified the heart of his magical current with Sirius.  As well as being adepts at Qabalah, Grant and Wilson also shared an appreciation and a practical use for the works of H.P. Lovecraft.  They both experimented extensively with theurgic magick.

I have strong affinities with many of the subjects and disciplines found in Cosmic Trigger particularly Sirius, Magick, Qabalah, Lovecraft and synchronicities.  If Wilson acts as a spiritual progenitor of sorts for me, then Kenneth Grant seems like an Uncle from the same lineage.

Servants of the Star and Snake published this year by Starfire and edited by Henrik Bogdan beautifully illuminates the salient points in the legacy of Kenneth Grant's often controversial and iconoclastic career.  The chief influence on his path was undoubtedly his wife, Steffi as evident by the subtitle: essays in honour of Kenneth and Steffi Grant; the cover photo is of a painting of the couple by Osman Spare and across from the title page is a photo of them on their wedding day, February 14, 1946.  One of Grant's great acts of service was helping Austin Osman Spare continue researching and publishing his magical system and art.  Grant is responsible for bringing a great deal of recognition to Spare's work.  Without him, most of us would never have heard of Austin Osman Spare.  It was Steffi Grant who first brought Spare to Kenneth's attention.  I don't know who turned him on to Lovecraft.

Many of the essays appear to have been written by people who had a close relationship with the Grants.  The love and respect they have for his work comes through quite clearly in the writing.  All of the main bases in Grant's legacy seem covered: the fruitful relationship with Spare, Advaita Vedanta, Gerald Massey, Lam, Sexual Magick and Tantra, etc.  There is the excellent essay, Foundations of the Typhonian Trilogies that provides valuable background on how Kenneth Grant's unique expression and continuance of the magical tradition came into existence.  It was the first two volumes of the Typhonian Trilogies that Robert Anton Wilson cited from in Cosmic Trigger.

Some of the controversies Grant was severely criticized for get addressed in this compendium.  His creative incorporation and use of fiction by H.P. Lovecraft, Sax Rohmer and others receives some exegesis and clarity here.  His view, following the lead of Frater Achad, that the aeon of Maat had shown up early to supersede the aeon of Horus receives an inside perspective in the essay by Nema, Kenneth Grant and Maat.  Nema had visions of her own in that regard and relates an interesting synchronicity when she sent a record of them to Grant.

Two interesting points made in her vision: the presiding deity of the aeon appears a matter of human perspective and that aeons are eternal.  To me, the boundaries between aeons become fuzzy - elements of the aeon of Isis and Osiris as well as Maat appear in the current aeon of Horus.  How they can exist eternally gets explained by Deleuze with his paradox of pure becoming in The Logic of Sense.   Whenever an event occurs, and this applies also to macro-events such as the advent of aeons, we can distinguish two dimensions of time.  He called the ordinary sequential flow of time which is limited and measured, Chronos.  The second dimension of time he called Aion.   Viewed in the time frame of the Aion, when an event occurs it splits off simultaneously into the infinite past and the infinite future.  This indicates the flow of pure becoming.  The causes and origins of the Maat event go infinitely into the past of its occurrence, therefore can get tuned into now.   I hold the opinion that Horus best describes this aeon in the Chronos time reference.  The becoming of the aeon Horus = the aeon of Maat.  The DNA of the Maat aeon seems encoded in the one of Horus.  Tapping into it may explain why some occultists feel it  has arrived.  I don't see a sharp dividing line between the two, but suspect that we still have a ways to go.  The current president of the United States seems a strong throwback to the male dominated Age of Osiris.

One of my favorite lines in the book is a quote from a letter Grant wrote to Nema: "You do not appear to be able to let go of the idea that the 'self' is some kind of entity ..." She selects a few additional excellent exchanges in their letters then states the hope that this correspondence appear in print.  We second that motion.

Servants of the Star &Snake.  I no longer consider the Star to exclusively represent Sirius.  I see it in its sense as described in the previous episode of this blog flow, Beethoven and Simrit, itself based on the description of the Star card in Crowley's The Book of Thoth.  Or as Liber Al 2:62 gives it: "I am uplifted in thine heart; the kisses of the stars rain hard upon thy body." The Snake gets a shout out in Liber Al 1:61 toward the end: "Put on the wings and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!" Hindus and yogis call it kundalini, sexual energy which = spiritual energy.  Seen with this perspective, the title Servants of the Star & Snake becomes synonymous in one sense with the service of love under will.

The valuable contributions, connections, and expansions Kenneth Grant brought to Thelemic sex magick are clearly expressed more than once in the book.  Dialectically contrasting his work in sex magick with Crowley's seems shortsighted.  I would avoid conflating Crowley's experiments in that area with the extensive practical information found in Liber Al, The Book of Lies, The Book of Wisdom and Folly to name just a few sources in Crowley's oeuvre.  To focus on his possible experimental mistakes or wrong approaches against what Grant got right occludes a great deal of useful data on the subject found elsewhere in Crowley's writings, data potentially supplemented quite well with Grant's modifications.

My favorite essay is Shakti in Chinatown by Michael Bertiaux.  The literary, "fictional,"  (I would call it magick realism) nature of it seems well-suited for getting to the heart of the Grants' legacy. It is the only chapter, in my recollection, that directly exposes the theurgic character of their work.

In another excellent essay on Babalon in the Typhonian tradition, Manon Hedenborg-White states that Grant has a propensity "to play with and destabilize meaning," (p. 137) when he or she writes of the controversial claim Grant makes by identifying Babalon with Choronozon (Chaos).  This further aligns Grant with Robert Anton Wilson and other writers (including Crowley) who employ what Wilson called guerilla ontology - making provocative statements that might not literally be true, but that serve to help dissolve the readers preconceived views.  Hedonborg-White goes on to articulate Grant's use of this technique.  Christopher Hyatt refers to it as "breaking set" in the Preface to the Eye in the Triangle.  Another example of Grant's literary tricksterness is the title Against the Light.  Subtitled, A Nightside Narrative the undiscerning reader might conclude this is about dark things fighting the light and never crack open he cover.  If they do make it to the Contents page, they'll discover opposite it a quote from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce about holding up a verse against the light to read it better.  In other words, the assumed meaning of the title gets reversed.

Like the writings of Crowley, Wilson and others in this lineage, learning to understand, use, and flow with reversals of sense and paradox appears key to deeply penetrating into the alchemical/transformational percepts and affects found in the Typhonian Triliogies and Kenneth Grant's writings in general.  It goes without saying that any understanding of Qabalah aids the endeavor logarithmically.  "Paradox is initially that which destroys good sense as the only direction, but it is also that which destroys common sense as the assignation of fixed identities." (Deleuze, Logic of Sense p. 3)  I elaborate on the esoteric use of paradox here.

 In her essay, Nema quotes from Outside The Circles of Time another common theme:

It is not my purpose to try to prove anything; my aim is to construct a magical mirror capable of reflecting some of the less elusive images seen as shadows of a future aeon.  This I do by means of suggestion, evocation, and by those oblique and 'in-betweeness' concepts that Austin Spare defined as 'Neither-Neither' ..." (p.180)

The quote goes on to explain the benefits of such a practice.  The state of 'in-betweeness' is what Tibetan Buddhists know as the Bardo.  'Neither-Neither' also describes the Bardo.  The term comes from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Kenneth Grant appeared a very intrepid and experienced bardo explorer.  The term 'magical mirror' also becomes a clue for the realm or area of exploration we're talking about.  The bardo sometimes gets considered an unravelling of consciousness.  Chapel Perilous seems an extreme sector of the bardo that can seep into and disrupt normal social stability.  Knowing that Grant practices bardo exploration may make it easier, or you braver, to navigate the stranger areas of his writings and benefit from them.  By reading his writings, you will explore the bardo, it comes through in his books.

This may (or may not) explain why Bertiaux put Shakti in Chinatown.  Chinatown is a favorite of Robert Anton Wilson. Chinatown in that film gets portrayed as a bardo-like area of mystery and unpredictable danger; dark and scary.  Bardo exploration has also been referred to as Darkside Dreamwalking, another appropriate description for some of Kenneth Grant's adventures.

Servants of the Star and Snake is a beautifully conceived and executed book with a high aesthetic on par with it's content and subject matter.  Praise Thoth!  Every article is worth the price of admission though the entrance may not be for everyone.

Beethoven and SIMRIT

Two separate uplifting musical currents crossed my wires in October with the biannual SIMRIT tour coinciding with a World Wide Web study of Beethoven's String Quartets.  Here's an experiment to document this musical disjunctive synthesis.

At first glance these musical entities appear to have little in common. One, a solitary composer, dead for nearly 200 years, under-appreciated in his time, but whose name has since become synonymous with musical greatness; the gold standard.  The other an assemblage, a unit, of 5 musicians vibrantly alive and greatly appreciated right NOW by a small, but growing cognoscenti of world, trance, and yoga music enthusiasts; musical time and space voyagers.

Our entry into the circle of Beethoven's Quartets comes from the book of that title, The Beethoven Quartets, by Joseph Kerman originally published in 1966, and a weekly discussion of that book curated by Eric Wagner over at RAWIllumination. In that lucid expression of the master's music we find overlaps of aesthetic with SIMRIT, most notably with intention.  These quotes about Ludwig's later Quartets apply equally to the tour I just experienced:

"There is an attendant sense of spiritualization, which has struck all commentators without eliciting from them very much in the way of verbal articulation.  Principally, perhaps, it is the whole matter of musical contrast which is treated most radically, and which as a result opens up whole new unexpected areas of consciousness." ...

Now, with some justice, the various features enumerated here might be considered to be inward, subtle, technical, and even esoteric.  If every impulse of the last style tended in this one direction, there might be a basis for the formidable barrier that the late works used to be said to present - do they still present? - to the common listener.  But an equally strong 'public' impulse accompanies the 'private' one: a striking new directness of emotional appeal, a determination to touch humankind as nakedly as possible.  Never in the past had Beethoven reached so urgently for immediacy.  There is something very moving about the spectacle of this composer, having reached heights of subtlety in the pure manipulation of tonal materials, battering at the communications barrier with every weapon of his knowledge."

We find another connection on the level of qabalistic, Joycean dream language, the associative linguistics of stream of consciousness, this stream emanating from unconscious or subconscious levels; the genetic language of the Deep Self.  One of Beethoven's significant musical teachers was Joseph Hayden.  Holding the post of European classical music doyen in SIMRIT is Shannon Hayden.  The names are spelled and pronounced slightly differently, Shannon's last name has a long "a" sound, yet one of her early music teachers, perhaps in a fit of magical wisdom, regularly and intentionally mispronounced Hayden to sound like Haydn, to connect and resonate the musical current of the classical Viennese master with that of her young student.  Kerman begins his book quoting a similar transfer of musical current from Mozart to Beethoven through Hayden.

SIMRIT truly plays World Music integrating traditions from all over our fair planet.  As mentioned, Shannon's pedigree comes out of  European classical music updated with the modern technologies of electronics, looping and sound sampling tastefully applied.  She also occasionally puts down her cello for the American folk strains of acoustic guitar.  I've known Salif Bamakora as a devoted student of West African griot or jeli music ever since I met him in Bamako, Mali more than 10 years ago.  His mentors on the kora include the renowned brothers and kora masters Madou and Toumani Diabate whose family lineage with the instrument dates back to its invention.  The rhythm section of Devon Ashley and Jared May have absorbed and played a widely eclectic array of music genres and species.  As a drummer for the Lemonheads, Devon experienced firsthand the hybrid world of alt rock.  Growing up in the urban zone of Chicagoland, his musical DNA includes underground rock, soul, rap, blues and anything else that hit the streets of big city midwest America in the last 40 years.  Jared boasts an equal, but different level of versatility in music.  I have recorded him playing Entwhistle meets Jaco progressive rock/jazz fusion riffs jamming with Isaac James and E.J. Gold at one end of his spectrum to solid, melodic tinged lines backing up the gospel/folk sounds of MaMuse.  Lead singer and songwriter Simrit Kaur mixes East India influenced vocal sonorities with  a sound all her own gathered from the culturally diversity of a Greek heritage growing up in the American South.  More than one of them began their musical journeys playing or singing in church.  They all like the Grateful Dead.

The fall tour this year with SIMRIT began for me with a summer preview of a significantly revamped set list at the Beloved festival held near the Oregon coast in early August. The band emerged from rehearsals with at least two new songs and some rearrangements of other ones incorporating extended improvised sections.  To these ears it seemed they had crystallized an aesthetic shift from a collective of musicians who played their memorized parts properly to a cohesive soul, a single unit responding musically to the moment.  I took advantage of the highly professional stage crew at Beloved to properly mic Devon's entire drum kit.  Usually, the drums get four mics: kick, snare, and stereo overheads due to input limitations with our stage box (snake) and in most venues this works well with a little dynamic mixing.  Having microphones on the drums everywhere I desired highlighted Ashley's subtle and soulful playing.  Devon joins the ranks of amazing drummers/percussionists that I've had the opportunity to work alongside.

That day at Beloved was a long one.  SIMRIT played first on the bill on the main stage around noon then had another set at 9 pm in the small meditation dome atop a hill looking over the site.  After our well-received debut I headed up to the dome to check out the sound system and get a lay of the land.  I was pleasantly surprised to find my friends in the group HuDost leading a dynamic, musical workshop.  Jemal was providing psychedelic/ambient electric guitar soundscapings while Moksha pumped a harmonium and lead the small group in mind/body awareness exercises using intentional breath and visualization techniques.  She employed a framework around the four elements of the ancients: Water, Air, Fire and Earth even incorporating a variation of what has elsewhere been called the Sufi heart chakra exercise, itself a form of what Crowley calls "love under will."

The attendees of the Beloved festival appeared to me a classic snapshot of the diversity found in Tim Leary's fifth circuit intelligence: larval humanity attempting to break free from the prison of robotic, societal programming and expectations.  Abundant bliss ninnies reveling in newly discovered hedonic gratification cavorted freely alongside the yogis, health food adepts and artists demonstrating how to put to use these liberated energies for maximum pleasure, humor and intelligence; hedonic engineering  in practice.  I viewed the proceedings with cautious hope.

The start of SIMRIT's evening set in the small, white geodesic dome atop the hill looked to be heading for technical disaster.  Inside the dome one found a beautifully fung shuied facismile of a sacred space that held about 40  people seating or laying down on the grass.  If only they had put the same kind of attention towards the sound system.  Setting up the band was a nightmare.  The house tech didn't know how to use the brand new board someone else had brought in.  I hadn't seen it before either; didn't even know they made mixing desks that small and cheap - about the size of 1.5 laptop computers, but with a postage stamp monitor.  Once we thought the stage was connected, about the same time we were scheduled to start, Simrit tested her mic.  It sounded like a sock had been put over it, dull and faraway.  Some time was spent troubleshooting the problem in front of the packed audience patiently waiting.  I intensely urged the technicians to get it together until I noticed the dude beside me on the mixing board beginning to act strangely to the point where I worried about a breakdown.  I saw him making gestures with his hand over the board like one might draw a sigil in ritual magic as if this would solve the audio issues.  This is called confusion of the planes. Once I observed this fellow's fragile state, I immediately and consciously relaxed letting go of all extraneous tension; instinctively stepping into the role of guiding him through his technical dark night.  I felt him reflexively relax when I chilled; the problem was approached more calmly.  I suggested that the lead vocal channel was broken (on this brand new mini-board) and suggested trying a different channel.  Lo and behold, it worked.  I was then permitted on the board and discovered that all the treble had been rolled off the errant channel.  The tech thought all equalization had been bypassed, but the eq bypass switch strangely didn't apply to the low pass filter, the source of all the anxiety.

This 40 seat geodesic dome decorated like a Hindu temple marked the appearance of the most detailed reviewer/critic of the sound I'd ever encountered.  It seems my  mixing supervisor from the Invisible College beamed themselves into the body of a woman who approached me and began making extensive comments.  She began quite complimentary then quickly shifted into a meticulous analysis; "turn down 250Hz a couple of dB on the bass, try adding a dB of 8k on the vocal, etc. " I listened and declined to implement most of the suggestions.  I did try her idea to put a touch of reverb on the harmonium.  Usually I get annoyed by these kinds of intrusions, but I found it amusing in this environment to encounter this supervision.  Besides, you never know who you're really dealing with.

* * * * * * 

One can easily imagine Beethoven's music playing out into the resounding, reverberant, massive acoustics of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral where SIMRIT began its 2018 tour of the West.

Photo by Corrine Yuen Harrison

Setting up seemed a little like running through a labyrinth.  Where are all the parts, how do you do this again? I had to evoke myself in the past to re-aquaint my current self with the operation of the M32 digital mixer.  We had an outside sound company providing the front end - the  house loudspeakers and amplifiers this time, thank God! The speaker arrays were flown above the stage allowing clarity of sound to reach all the way back to the start of this labyrinth pictured above.

Interfacing with the excellent and professional sound company was part of the labyrinth of setting up.  When Devon hit his snare I could tell something sounded wrong with the right speaker stack.  I told the systems tech who discovered one row of speakers out, but was able to get them back online in a timely fashion.  We had another issue with a bad drum overhead mic cable which I discovered immediately via the board's metering, yet the drums and cymbals sounded extremely clear and articulate with the just a single overhead mic working.  I changed the bad cable only because it seemed better for the recording.

Like any journey, the whole tour became a sort of labyrinth, following Ariadne's thread through highways, streets and alleyways; gas stations, hotels, homes of generous, loving supporters, restaurants, health food emporiums, backstage potluck to these incredible pockets, or chambers, of transcendence and sanctuary - the concerts themselves.

Photo by Vanessa Noelle

The architecture of the building expresses itself in the acoustics of the space.  The musicians, with their voices, resonant devices and electronics, amplification and lighting technology bring the Cathedral to life and allow the building to fully express itself through the musical expression of the human invocants.  This chamber paradoxically becomes both a landing pad and a point of lift off.  The space itself becomes alive in a very non-human way, pregnant with possibility while electromagnetically engendering a collective experience.  In the words of Vanessa Noelle: "It was heavenly. Their sound really resonated in that big cathedral with high ceilings with their music. "

Grace Cathedral was close to home and with 2 days off and a travel day before the next concert, it felt separate from the rest of the tour.  For me, the tour began with the traveling.  It started in Edmonton, Canada and finished in Encinitas, California near San Diego.  There was snow on the ground and winter conditions when we started and it felt like the end of summer 3 weeks later in sunny Southern California when the tour concluded. 

Beginning and ending in cities that start with the letter "E" reminded the Qabalist of a line from Stairway to Heaven: "... when she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed, with a word she can get what she came for." In Erik Davis' superb analysis of Zeppelin's fourth album (published by Continuum in their 33 1/3 series) he notes that Robert Plant sometimes clearly substituted the word "stars" for "stores" and gives an excellent interpretation referencing ancient Egyptian mythology ( i.e. magic) why he might do so. The letter "E" corresponds with the Star card in the tarot.  If the stars are all closed, with a word she can get what she came for.  The "word," in this metaphor, represents the SIMRIT shows.  What "she" gets can be guessed, inferred or understood by perusing The Book of Thoth's description of the Star card, part of which reads:  

Behind the figure of the goddess is the celestial globe. Most prominent among its features is the seven-pointed Star of Venus, as if declaring the principal characteristic of her nature to be Love. (See again the description in Chapter I of the Book of the Law). From the golden cup she pours this ethereal water, which is also milk and oil and blood, upon her own head, indicating the eternal renewal of the categories, the inexhaustible possibilities of existence.

She did get what she came for at every city on the tour even those locales that don't begin with the letter E.

* * * * * * 

Traveling through the Canadian Rockies was the scenic highlight of the tour, for me.  This time around my go-to music was Beethoven's String Quartets as played by The Tokyo String Quartet. 

I posted in the Beethoven group:

On tour driving through the Canadian Rocky Mountains listening to the E minor and C major quartets on headphones. Driving through valleys between Earth reaching up to Sky with pure white snow crowning the peaks. These mountains come in all shapes and sizes, some resembling pyramid-like Egyptian tombs housing long dead giant Queens and Kings. Another one suggests a castle chess piece. These geological expresssions from our fair planet are always a wonder to behold.  Earth creates mountain ranges with the same poise and beauty as Beethoven creating his symphonic music.

The opening Allegra of the E minor sounds like a woman to me with all the infinite depth, drama, sudden change in mood, soft, delicate, questioning, bold, timid, angry, fearful, giving birth, etc. – quite a lot of mood shifts for a 9:30 piece. Perhaps these ears get biased from currently reading Mead’s translation of the Pistis Sophia. The C major quartet also sounds feminine, to me. I like the moments of dissonance. Maybe this dissonance causes Kerman to label the opening movement “strange?”

Ludwig van Beethoven

Rocky Mountains near Banff, Alberta

Flying up to Edmonton to begin the tour I had reason to google Bob Dylan and Beethoven and came across this verse from Tombstone Blues:

“Where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped their bedrolls
Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole

And the National Bank at a profit sells roadmaps to the soul
To the old folks home and the college.”

Including these disparate musical innovators – Rainey was called the “Mother of the Blues” – in the same line shows Dylan’s respect and acknowledgment of Beethoven. Dylan’s avid interest in musical history – whole PBS documentaries have been made from his collection of old film clips – indicates his great respect for Ma Rainey whom he pairs with Beethoven. The remaining lines of this stanza superficially appear as a cynical view of societal programming.

I choose a different interpretation: “Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole” – music claims new territories like a flag does symbolically. What territory? Tuba or not tuba, that is the question. This kind of phonetic allusion seems very much a part of Dylan’s repertoire. He has read James Joyce.  Selling "roadmaps to the soul” echoes the point I made in last week’s post (regarding alchemical instructions getting encoded in music.) 

The title Tombstone Blues obviously suggests death.  Old folks home suggests death lurking close by.  A college gives education.  The Invisible College educates invisibly. Educate yourself about death; make a roadmap to the soul.  I submit that Beethoven's music contains similar instructions.  A lot of great music seems didactic in a multiplicity of different ways along the lines of a spiritual education, an education into the mysteries of death and the life that follows.  Every SIMRIT concert does, different each time.

* * * * * * 

We got robbed in downtown Vancouver. I went out to smoke and, probably unrelated, noticed several police in SWAT vests hanging in the Lobby so I casually got out of there as quickly as possible.  I stood by our Sprinter and breathed in the night air, surrounded by a very active urban scene, even in the parking lot, I noticed.  I strolled around the neighborhood giving the officers a chance to do their business in the Lobby before going up, and encountered a number of colorful characters space and time tripping, a fashion bricolage from central casting mashing together a number of different eras including the future.

The next day, setting up in a church, we discovered the van had been broken into and a harmonium, drum sampler and stage clothes had been stolen.  Foresightedly and fortunately, it had been parked with its back doors against a fence making them impossible to open, barring the thieves from getting at the majority of the gear in the back hold.  Replacements didn't seem difficult to get and it did teach a relatively harmless lesson: protect your valuables or they will get taken.  As below, so above.  

The hardest place to do the sound was St. John's Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, one of the most challenging venues for acoustics that I've ever heard.  The interior, a large cathedral space with a high arched ceiling, seemed entirely made of stone.  I felt like I was mixing inside a large tomb, a pyramid with a different shape.  Fortunately, the band played exceptionally well, some consider it the best concert of the tour and I don't disagree.  I went a little more radical with the processing to meet the challenge of the acoustics and the sound worked out.  Another interesting bit of luck is that the M32s malfunctioning USB card that had been blocking multitrack recording for the past few concerts decided to do its job that night, the night SIMRIT reached a new height was caught on the cyber equivalent of tape.  We got a recording!  That was the last time this USB card worked and it has since been replaced.

I took a walk after soundcheck to get some air.  Looking back at the tall edifice of the Cathedral I noticed two phrases inscribed in a large banner that read:

I thought this seemed quite a political message for a church, a message however that goes on a backburner whenever there isn't a horrific mass shooting in the news.  The next morning brought news of a deadly, senseless attack at a synagogue in Pittsburgh that left 11 people dead.  It put me in a bad mood.  I don't know why I take these things personally.

We had a different kind of gig this day, providing backing music for a Kundalini workshop hosted by Jai Dev Khalsa.  I enjoy this kind of change of pace.  It takes place in a small yoga studio, a setting more intimate that your average concert space, and is completely improvised on SIMRIT'S part.  

Jai Dev begins these workshops with an introductory, free-ranging discourse.  His talk this afternoon was one of the best public talks I've heard in a long time.  Without being specific, it addressed, for me, the morning tragedy in Pennsylvania.  The question that always comes up in the aftermath of these aberrations is, what kind I do about it?  How can I help?  Waiting for politicians to legislate gun control has proven to not be a solution.  This discourse provided suggestions.

Being a student of the philosopher Crowley and of the magician Deleuze, both spiritual descendants of St. Nietzsche, I subscribe to the notion of evolutionary Immanence. I interpret this idea to say that we have vast potential, right here, right now, to develop powers to help and heal far beyond what common consensual reality tells us is possible.  

Jai Dev brought up the idea of service to others as contrasted with service to self.  This very basic distinction often gets overlooked.  From an enlightened perspective, service to others = service to self, or should I say service to Self.  Also, there are times when service to self seems necessary in order to better serve others.  These are my editorial comments, I don't remember what he said verbatim.  He then proceeded to show the gathered students the active power of (again in my words) "love under will": opening the heart chakra then directing that energy with intention.  I participated as best I could directing my energy toward Pittsburgh.

This energy becomes substantially sensible once it crosses a certain threshold.  Jai Dev brought up the idea of protection saying that the  open heart chakra substance can provide its own protection.  Without the experience of feeling these high energetics then losing or having them taken away, the idea of protection can seem a little paranoid.  The higher neurological circuits - C5 and C6 in Leary's exposition, appear very unstable and transitory to conscious awareness.  You can get there, but how long can you stay?  It takes many repeated efforts over years to crystallize a stable body, a stable awareness with the power to act in these higher circuits of consciousness.  These repeated efforts comprise the activity of establishing new territory in a higher dimension.  Tuba players now rehearse around a flagpole.  The National Bank at a profit (accumulated higher substance) sells roadmaps to the soul.  This gets collectively known as the alchemical process.

The substance radiating from a healthy open heart can provide its own protection, but doesn't do so automatically.  It requires directed intention to make a protective frame of some sort; love under the will to protect will get the job done.  The higher emotional circuitry needs the alignment and participation of the higher mental circuitry.  Visualizing any kind of sacred iconography while under the influence of the higher emotional - a cross, om symbol, etc.  will provide a protective barrier.  Studies in parapsychology have shown the symbol of the 5 pointed star, otherwise known as the pentagram, to be very effective at blocking energies.  Perhaps this explains its prevalent use in both the U.S. and Soviet militaries, and probably others.   The banishing ritual of the pentagram has been claimed by several authorities (Crowley, Regardie, Cornelius etc.) to be one of the primary and most important rituals in ceremonial magic as it banishes extraneous influence and distraction, invokes C6 and protects the invocation.  It was the only external ritual Crowley performed on a daily basis at his Abbey in Sicily.

Another primary Thelemic exercise, Liber Resh, ( I call it the Sun Adoration) illustrates the necessary cooperation between the higher feeling and higher thinking circuits.  The student gets instructed to say a short prayer and identify with the cardinal points of the different phases of the sun in the daily rotation of our planet - dawn, noon, dusk and midnight. The prayers deviate with each phase of the sun though they all conclude on the same note: "Tahuti standeth in his splendour at the prow and Ra-Hoor abideth at the helm.  The nomenclature comes from Ancient Egyptian mythology. Tahuti = Thoth, the god of writing and magic = the higher mental apparatus.  Ra-Hoor = the higher emotional circuit.  The higher self or soul is viewed as a boat traveling across the sky with those two characters powering and steering it.

After the workshop we all went to a place in a quiet part of Hollywood for dinner.  The Sprinter got parked beside a newish, nondescript brown building with nothing but names in memoriam and Hebrew letters adorning its exterior.  There was no sign of business or residence.  I wasn't sure if it was a temple or mausoleum.

My second project after the SIMRIT tour finished was a last minute marathon mixing session with local artist Ludi Hinrichs.  I was astonished to discover his full name: Ludwig van Beethoven Hinrichs, his father named him after Beethoven.  A musical resonance of excellence certainly transferred from the dead master to the living artist due in part, possibly, to the power of a name.  Part of my mixing job involved editing out unwanted noises and sounds.  This lead Ludi to opine that I could advertise myself as a "Disappearing Artist" and put the phrase, "Nothing too visible," on my business cards.