Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Posted on: February 1, 2012

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Van Gogh’s Wheatfield With Crows. 1890

Forty Illusions Before Midnight

Birds never fly away
    Fish never swim away
        The sun never sets
 
We are idiots of ego

The only rev­o­lu­tions
That mat­ter are the vio­lent ones
The ones that force us to cast off

Me mine me mine

The only rev­o­lu­tions that mat­ter
    Are those that reveal
        All is relative

All is con­tin­gent and evanes­cent
Like the leaf that falls because

    She says so

…

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Posted on: January 31, 2012

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Riffing off my pre­vi­ous essay, with its slightly tongue-​​​​in-​​​​cheek usage of the word schizoid, I thought I’d take a quick look at major changes within bands them­selves dur­ing the 60s. Two come to mind easily:

The Moody Blues and the Beatles.

Listen to the Moody Blues’ first hit from 1964, Go Now. It doesn’t set trends. It fol­lows them. It’s well within the para­me­ters of the British Pop Invasion, with its echo of American Pop R&B and Blues. Yes, it has a Mersey beat twist. But it in no way pre­pares us for what would follow.

Go Now

Just three years later the Moody Blues, with a few changes to their orig­i­nal lineup (los­ing Denny Laine, pick­ing up Justin Hayward), would embark on a musi­cal Odyssey that only the Beatles had come close to attempt­ing. In 1967, when they made their album, Days of Future Past, the world got a chance to hear what full orches­tras could do when they backed up Rock bands sud­denly immersed in psychedelia.…

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Posted on: January 24, 2012

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Casting Mind back on the day. Back into the deep, dark past of youth­ful folly, delu­sion and spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion. Back to a time when we just didn’t care, or we cared far too much. When every­thing was brand spank­ing new and we drank and drank our­selves into unearned nos­tal­gia or oblivion.

Driving was every­thing. Driving was our escape and revenge, our home, some­thing we con­trolled out­side the law of adults. Their law wasn’t our law when we drove and par­tied and lis­tened to Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Bruce Springsteen and the Beach Boys  —  what today some call Classic Rock. It wasn’t clas­sic back then. It was just the music of our generation.

We had seen “American Graffiti” and we cruised the streets look­ing for our own ver­sion of West Coast Car Culture, know­ing we’d never find it. Knowing that our towns, bleed­ing into other towns, oper­ated under dif­fer­ent rules, three thou­sand miles away from the Valley.…

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Posted on: January 12, 2012

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Ishizuri Jakucho. 1770

Have decided to take the plunge. Jump in. No longer just an observer. I will prac­tice. I will breathe zazen. I will con­tain all oppo­sites and not look back. Will do Mu and find empti­ness in all forms and form in all empti­ness. Will do what is nec­es­sary to eliminate I.

The wheel. The great karmic wheel. How to get off it. Why wait? Why wait a thou­sand life­times? Why not now? Total imme­di­acy, total nat­u­ral­ness, com­plete such-​​​​ness. Now. Within this one life­time, which is all that there is, the noth­ing and the every­thing, the nowhere and the every­where, the cen­ter and the cir­cum­fer­ence, I will get off the wheel. Why wait? Why post­pone it? There is only now. There is only here, now.

It’s not just about one. It’s two and three as well. One and none. One and infin­ity. How to hold the con­cept of noth­ing and every­thing in the mind, chew on it, taste it, and smell it like steaks on the grill.…

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