The Mnemosyne Transmissions project was announced year. I am still working on recordings and written material for these brodcasts. The Mnemosyne episode and the Calliope episode are all underway. Which brings me to my next announcement.

I have purchased a domain for On the Way to the Peak of Normal. The site is not up yet at peakofnormal.org, but once it is built this will be the home for On the Way to the Peak of Norma radio showss. I have a number of interviews lined up next month, and as always great music. I feel the radio show is deserving of its own site, and this will also be a place where Brian “Thriftstore Leather” can post his shows.  

This site is in need of an overhaul and it will get it. Henceforward it will be dedicated to my writing projects: fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  I’m busy in all of these areas and want to blog some of my ongoing work, as well as book reviews and portions from my dream journal, and updates on my work in the occult and the permaculture projects I have going on at the homefront.

I’ll be getting to work, with some help from my friends, on the renewed version of this site soon and the peakofnormal.org site as well, with the goal of having them up and running by May.  

Thanks for staying tuned.

“Our Father Who Art In Dayton …  “  -Woody Trinkle

…A Message from Sonic Elf…

“Well why the F~(k don’cha?”

This essay takes a magical look at Gary Snyder’s poem, “What You Should Know to Be A Poet”, keeping especially in mind the soul and world repairing functions of a Bard. Any good poem or story speaks for itself, outside of explication, but it can still be fun to exctract the vast amounts of knowledge contained within each compacted line.

According to Snyder a poet should know “all you can about about animals as persons.” Learning what roles an animal plays within its ecosystem is certainly valuable, useful not only for the preservation of ecosystems, but also in the remediation of those already damaged. Beyone these facts, figures, and statistics, when I approach an animal as a person , I touch something closer to myself and my own being –the soul of another. Humans are not the only species with soul. The whole world is a shrine for the soul. This is something you should know to be a Bard.

Animals are encountered everywhere, from the industrial urban environment to the suburban, from rural farmlands and forests to untouched pristine wilderness. Nature is a continuum and from it we cannot be separate. No matter where one may live, animals will be encountered. The Bard is at home in the city as much hiking through the brush or paddling up a stream. In this waking world animals make star crossed paths with us and we can look to them for guidance, as their appearance is always relevant to our lives.

Creatures are also encountered in the amber field of dreams. These connections should be noted and studied by the aspiring Bard.

Snyder says a poet should know “the names of trees and flowers and weeds”. To learn them the poet should also be a flaneur, a rambler, walking anywhere and everywhere as notable poets of the past have done. Along the way we learn the local flora. The trees and bushes in my neighborhood become trusted friends.

Naming a thing or knowing the name of a thing has long been associated with magical power. It is important to distinguish between power-over something and power-with something, for a Bard would never wish to manipulate for his or her selfish glory, but seeks to raise the consciousness of all, to ever greater levels of playing. Restoring colour to a world that is growing ever so gray is the special job of poets at this time, and to do so it may be necessary to call forth the souls of the plants and animals who are on the verge of disappearing.

Any good poem calls forth its implicit qualities, whether good or ill, through the power of its words. Poetry can evoke and invoke. Knowing the names of trees, flowers, and weeds asks the poet to be involved in the life of the land. If the name of a plant is known, what else can be known about it? What stories, songs, and myths are associated with the plant? What medicinal virtues do its leaves, roots, and stems hold for us? Some plants offer the gift of prophecy, others intoxication. There are those considered poisonous, and to greater or lesser degrees, some of those poisons can be transmuted alchemically. It is not surprising that one of Walt Whitman’s poems is called Calamus, the leaves of this famous grass being associated in biblical times with the gift of prophecy.

I heard once that children recognize more corporate logos than plant species. Though I cannot place the source of this information, it has the ring of truth. Such a trend must be reversed. Through poetry and storytelling the mysteries of the natural world can be restored. When we know the name of something we may be less likely to destroy it, as our intimacy with it has grown. A Bard should have frequent and intimate encounters with plant life. Bards may be able to recharge their creative batteries through esoteric eroticism, the ecstasy that comes from tuning into the ever evolving and regenerative play of life around us. In doing so we become Speakers for the Earth, Trees, and Wind.

Knowing “the names of stars and the movements of the planet and the moon” helps the Bard to fall gracefully into syncopation with natural time. The cycles of electricity, the glowing screens of computer and television, the collective light pollution leaking out from cities, have for many of us obscured the awe inspiring majesty of the starry sky. The stars dwarf our worldly ambition, helping us to get a sense of the bigger picture. Learning the constellations alone can fill one with a lifetime of stories from many different cultures.

In his poem Snyder reminds us to know our “own sixth sense, with a watchful elegant mind.” The mind must be stilled from an excess of voices and internal chatter in order to receive clear messages from the senses – the signs and symbols of synchronicity that speak to us when we make ourselves available to listen. Poetic insight, while informed by the five senses, is revealed by the sixth. Polishing the glass of intuition so that it may reflect clearly should be part and parcel of the basic maintenance of our human instrument.

A traditional form of magic should also be learned. Snyder mentions three types that have been most commonly used for divination, I Ching, astrology and tarot. The deeper one digs into these systems the more one comes to realize they are also a tool for transforming inner and outer reality. Each of these systems are the subject for many scores of books and can be studied for deeper application.

The second stanza addresses dreams and the denizen’s who inhabit the multiverse, beginning with “the illusory demons and the illusory shinging gods”. In this stanza Gary shows how the poet acts as a shaman by traveling into the astral landscape, into the higher and lower worlds. In dreams a person comes into contact with spiritual beings of all shades and stripes, the demonic, angelic, the indifferent, ghosts who haven’t moved on, and many other types of non-physical entities. Dreams are the playground of the soul, and in them direct knowledge of the universe and our place in it can be gained.

In the lower world the poet connects with these beings in a most visceral way, by kissing the ass of the devil. This specific image recalls to my mind how the Knights Templar kissed the ass of Baphomet as part of their initiation, which in turn can be elaborated upon as a metaphor for eating shit. Having congress with devils was certainly dangerous in the times of the Inquisition, but thankfully now those interested in these paths can pursue them without fear of being burned at the stake. Even so, most folk will recoil at the image of kissing the devils ass and eating his shit. From an alchemical point of view however, eating shit may be equated with the nigredo stage of the divine transformation. The black, dark, base matter of life must be internalized, and eaten, before it can be transmuted into the philosophers stone. The devil is also symbolic of creative power, especially as it applies to the material substances of the world. To partake of the devils defecation is to ingest what he more thoroughly digested. Poop can be looked at as creative output. Putrefaction transforms into enlightenment.

All of this is followed up by Snyder suggesting we “fuck the hag” or the Crone, a type of elderly Witch. The Hag is one aspect of the Triple Goddess, who also appears as the Maiden, and the Mother. In her old age, at the peak of her wisdom and in the full grasp of her accumulated power, on the verge of transitioning through the blue gates of death, the poet goes to the Crone or Hag for initiation, and become closer to the mysteries of death. By copulating with beings from the Otherworld, the boundaries between this world and the Other merge for a time. To have intercourse with spiritual beings is to enter into discourse with them. When the poet emerges from holy sleep, new powers are found awakening in the soul, gifts from the congress that has been shared with the spiritual allies who are now his intimates. These beings are the Muses who will make the tongue silver.

When a person comes down from such a peak experience there is often a corresponding depression. Humans are not meant to always live at the heights of spiritual ecstasy. To be functional in the world, to be of service to other people and the living things in the environment, a poet must know how to ground herself in the routines of daily living. The hearthstone is far from being a constraint to hamper the soul. It is a place returned to with joy, and the daily matters associated with its maintenance should be undertaken in the same spirit. After traveling through the Lower worlds and Upper worlds the gifts that have been given freely to us must be given freely back to the world; we return to make love with our human counterparts, husbands and wives, we return to the role of parenthood and bonding with children, of being in community.

Spiritual practices should never serve to remove one from the world, but to help engage more fully with it. The psychonauts, shamans, and astral voyagers who are most adept at the psychic arts are also the most practical. The practice of being a Bard does not make one removed from everyone else, but, by being a person who carries the stories, songs, and poems of a people, the Bard is a servant to the people. This is why, in my mind, some of the best stories and poems are those that are easily knowable, not requiring decades of scholarly acumen. They have an immediacy about them and have not been deliberately obfuscated and intellectualized so only the learned have access to what is contained inside. A true Bard crafts stories and poems that touch the heart and soul of all. This cannot easily be done from ivory towers, or by becoming so spaced out in esoterica that you cannot function on the material plane of existence.

To keep oneself humble and in tune with the world, “long dry hours of dull work” should be “swallowed and accepted”. Another way it could be said is in the Zen precept “Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Dishes still need to be washed, clothes hung out on the line to dry, homes maintained. We do not transcend the material world, but transform it through our consciousness. Stripping and sanding the paint off my porch became a meditation for me. The sweat beads on my brow, on my back, in my arm pits. After a few hours I started to notice dull pains and aches in my arm, from the repetitive motion, but as I worked, I felt a sense of craftsmanship growing in me, a connection with the world of things. Working can be seen as a form of Karma Yoga, sweating out impurities, putting equity into the soul. Working, I feel in touch with my body, a useful counterpoint to all the work I do in my head as a writer. It’s fun to get my hands dirty, and after a day of honest labor food, beer, sex and sleep are fully enjoyed.

Snyder speaks of the “wild freedom of the dance”. Dancing has always been a primary method for entering into ecstasy. In a dance the Gods, Goddesses, animal spirits and ancestors are called upon and may even enter the body. The earth is honored by dance. The feet are drums pounding on her back. The heartbeat is raised. Breathing deepens. The dancer becomes entranced. Movements of the head, hair, limbs, torso take one away from the consensus mind, into the deepness of ones own. Dancing is a bridge between the worlds.

The “silent solitary illumination” or “entasy” is the vision quest, the lone Bard on a mountaintop or some other wild place hunting for dreams and visions. Alone and with no one to talk to the internal dialogue and chatter of the mind has a chance to become quiet and the poet is able to listen to the world speak. Blaise Pascal wrote, “all men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone”. Here Pascal’s Christianity is close to Snyder’s Buddhism. Both agree that relentless distraction stirs up unending desires, which cause suffering. Out on the vision quest the poet faces her own mortality. When the dream that has been cried for is delivered it is like an answered prayer, but one that requires action. We return to the fold of community renewed. Now, instead of following the path someone else has laid down for us we have our own map to go by, our own visionary blueprint to follow.

Finally Snyder says a poet should know “real danger: gambles and the edge of death”. What great and bold acts of genius were ever committed by playing it safe and following the quotidian line? Who has moved into new areas of research and discovery by refusing to test boundaries and push envelopes? The treasures that are to be found in the deep may be guarded by formidable foes, but in facing them we prove our own strength. Once those glittering jewels have been claimed as ours we will never be content with the rinkydink pleasures found while wading in shallow waters.

A Bard should know the edge of death and walk it daily. In his higher capacity the Bard may even act as a guide or psychopomp into the realms of the dead. The Bard may take on the role of “speaker for the dead” on behalf of the community. With a fine tuned discernment the Bard will be able to incite proper actions on behalf of the departed when necessary, and ease those who are called into their passing. By walking on the edge of death we gain strength for what we need to do now. Contemplating the end of physical life is a great way to break through blocks of procrastination, and a great way to be truly appreciative of the day we have.

Gary Snyder’s poem may be short, but learning and living what is set out in the poem is enough to fill a lifetime of ongoing work. Luckily when one is a Bard, there is no set end, no fixed point where one can say “I am finished”. Being a poet is an infinite and open-ended game. Large victories and small successes may be had along with momentary defeats. These do not constitute the end of play, but rather mark further points of development and departure.

-Justin Patrick Moore

September 8, 2010

Revised March 6, 2012

Cincinnati, Ohio

A free chapbook of this essay will be available at Lyrical Synaesthesia 2, at the Northside Library 4219 Hamilton Ave, featuring readings by Matt Hart, Abiyah, Nick Barrows, and Betsy Young.

Tuesday, March 13 from 6 to 8PM at the Northside Library, 4219 Hamilton Ave. (In the Basement!)

The second in a series of poetry and short story readings, this round features Matt Hart, Nick Barrows, Abiyah and Betsy Young.

Matt Hart is the author of several books of poetry: Who’s Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006), Wolf Face (H_NGM_N BKS, 2010), LIGHT-HEADED (BlazeVOX, 2011), and Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012), as well as several chapbooks. His poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in The Awl, Big Bell, Coldfront, Gulf Coast, H_NGM_N, Harvard Review, jubilat, and The Lumberyard, among many others. Hart is a recipient of fellowships from both the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. A longtime musician, he currently also plays in the poetry/noise band Travel. Music from his previous musical projects has appeared on MTV and in major motion pictures, including Kevin Smith’s Mallrats. In 2011, he co-edited the reissue of the late Paul Violi’s first major collection of poems, In Baltic Circles, for the H_NGM_N BKS Reissue Series. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

NICK BARROWS comes from the hills of the Westside of Cincinnati, Ohio where he began his first days behind the bar of his father’s tavern down by the river Ohio. His works have appeared in Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety, Trained Monkey Press, Aurore Press, and the website Semantikon. He was also the music editor for The Citizen. Music escapades include The 4 Track All-Stars, Eagle To Squirrel, and Jack Burton Overdrive. In 2007 Barrows released his chapbook Rockets on Bibles and in the past few years he has been seething in the concrete and playing concertina.

ABIYAH has an edge that you rarely find in contemporary women singers—White-bred and pre-packaged, ol’ girl isn’t. As a writer, she’s passionate and onstage she sings, rebel-yells, dub-chants or raps about empowerment like she’s this cunning linguist who studies different languages and stirs …them up in her own little dutchie. Abiyah skirts convention, and there are obviously some influences from a wicked orgy of pop-culture pacesetters. Seven years ago, Abiyah began performing at spoken word venues, and wasted no time moving into pairing her words with music. Abiyah is electronic/world/pop anchored by Hip Hop roots and a rock diva with a Hip Hop soul, skipping across genres with ease, and hanging her rhymes on guitar hooks nailed to the wall with electronic beats. She smudges the line of class, race and music genre under her thumb, flipping the script of what people expect from a Midwestern white rocker chick. Just let her do her thing, ‘cause whatever it is, it’s more global than it is local.

BETSY YOUNG dreams of the finer things while spending most of her energy working for others. She divides whatever remaining time she has on earth pursuing more meaningful endeavors like Aurore Press, reading books, listening to old punk on her iPod and not wasting a single moment with her daughter. Editor, writer and curator of Aurore Press titles such as Stories for Shorty about the famed Jockey Club, and every other title in the catalog to date, come to think of it. The hope is 2012 is the year she starts finally going places.

The Cincinnati Council of the Bardic Arts is an independent body of illuminated adepts and poets who seek to foster the reemergence of magical poetry in the Miami Valley Watershed. A free monograph of What You Should Know To Be A Bard, an occult examination of Gary Snyder’s seminal poem What You Should Know To Be A Poet will be available from the concession table.  A Lyrical Synaesthesia 2 Chapbook will also be available in limited quantities produced by our friends at Aurore Press and featuring work from the readers.

I’m sure there are psychic messages contained in the coiling grooves of this clear vinyl LP. Being of a transparent nature they seep into my brain in slow trickle of melting tones a little over a half hour long. Yet that time stretches out and dilates in strange ways. The clock keeps ticking but my subjective experience of it is wobbly. I find myself looking for landmarks in “A Terrain of Constant-Low Intensity” and it is in this piece that I find most of them. The steady rhythm of bells starts out fast. Then, as the warm fuzz of an over-driven tube amp drone comes along, sound events slow down, moving into the supreme moment of kairos. And to me, this is what all excellent music will do: take me out of myself and the concerns of my daily trivial mind and into a moment of emergence where the deeper strains of true thought live. Again, this is akin to automatic writing in the way a steady stream is brought forth from deep chthonic currents.

…Read the Rest On Brainwashed.com…

To write in this book
I must become a blacksmith
hammering out the pages
carving letters with my acetylene torch.

I am a welder
and the black smoke
curling up from the flames
is nothing more than impurities
being burned away.

Feelings: Surprise

Reality Check: I was having a slew of Japanese related literary dreams in 2010 to early 2011 (about Yukio Mishima among others), but this theme hasn’t come up for awhile. I guess it is saying, “Hey Justin, don’t forget about this thread of your inner life. It’s not over yet!” As a young boy I of course had a fondness for Ninjas… remember those Teenage Mutant Turtles?

The name in the dream, Musakami, is similar to Haruki Murakami whom I definitely want to read (and am reading now). Murakami’s novel’s A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance both have a lot of dream related stuff in them from what I hear.

~

So, the Haruki Murakami novel I wanted to read is checked out by another patron at the Public Library where I work. But now that I am a member of the Mercantile Library I look up Murakami in their catalog. Well, they don’t have A Wild Sheep Chase but they do have Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World also on my reading list. I go get it on my lunch break and start reading it over a bowl of spicy white bean chili and rice. It’s very humorous. Each paragraph is like a stanza in a poem. The translator has obviously done an excellent job.

The book contains two narrative threads, one the “Hard Boiled Wonderland” is about a data launderer, who washes information for clients by processing it from his right to left brain. He gets hired by a mysterious scientist who lives in a lab far beneath an office building. You take the elevator all the way down, go through a maze of bureaucratic hallways, then take a ladder down several stories, pass through some caves, go underneath a waterfall from the underground river into the scientists lair, where he is working on “listening to skulls”. He has learned how to resonate the skulls of humans and animals via some kind of acoustic measurements…and now he has a plan to erase sound from the world. He says this will aid our evolution, implying that it will perhaps help us get full blown telepathy. And evolution is never easy he says.

The second narrative is “The End of the World” which takes place in small mysterious town -presumably so far in the future it looks like the past -or at the edge (End ?) of the world. The narrator of this section comes to the town. Everyone in the town is given a job by the Gatekeeper. The character is to become the towns Dreamreader. He must go to the Library every night at sundown and read the “old dreams” stored in the Library.

…and that is about as far as I’ve gotten. But it certainly seems like my dreams were leading me to the write reading material, for inspiration on my own stories and more. I can’t wait to learn more about the Dreamreader and the “old dreams” he reads.

To become a Dreamreader the narrator had to undergo a procedure from the Gatekeeper. An initiation. The Gatekeeper takes a knife and heats it up in a fire. After it cools he stabs the man in both eyes, but this doesn’t hurt him. This helps him to read the old dreams, kept inside of skulls. The Librarian tells him how to do this, “Before your eyes the skull will glow and give off heat. Trace that light with your fingertips. That is how old dreams are read.”

The Dreamreader narrates, “Dreamreading proves not as effortless as she has explained. The threads of light are so fine that despite how I concentrate the energies in my fingertips, I am incapable of unraveling the chaos of vision. Even so, I clearly sense the presence of dreams at my fingertips. It is a busy current, an endless stream of images. My fingers are as yet unable to grasp any distinct message, but I do apprehend an intensity there.”

I relish reading more and seeing where the right and left brain converge, into one skull-story.

For this live celebration of Imbolc I was joined by the fiery spirits of Cincinnati’s finest fusion of world tribal psychedelia. That’s right, Mayan Ruins take us deep into Earth’s molten core before spitting us back out at the stars in a journey that can only be described as shamanic. And even though it is radio we were still joined by belly dancer Zahara, as a further source of muse-ic and inspiration.

Set list:
o. Behind the Scenes Preview … back stage with the band
1. I Hear A New World – Joe Meek
2. Mayan Ruins live studio performance
3. A traditional Irish Lullaby played on Glass Harmonica by Dennis James from Cristal: Glass Music Through the Ages.

4. track five from Tharmuncrape ‘an Goo by Nocturnal Emissions
5. Mayan Ruins live encore performance
6. Imagination by Sun Ra from Nothing Is…
7. The Rose Dusk Carresses the Sex of Women and of Birds by Bobby Previte from The 23 Constellations of Joan Miro on the Tzadik label.
8. I Roselund under Sagas Hall / La Folia by Nils Okland and Sigbjorn Apeland from Homage a Ole Bull on ECM.
9. A Black Dust Cloud, and Stars Embedded in Gaseous Nebulosities (for Carl Sagan) by Michel Godard from “Sous Les Voutes, Le Serpent…” from M A Recordings
10.  Oh Thou Coal Black Smith by Current 93 from Crooked Crosses for the Nodding God
11. Calling for Vanished Faces & The Cat is Dead by Current 93 from An Introduction to Suffering
12. A Daughter of Infidels by 156 from Ticks from Many Clocks
13. Music Is the Healing Force -Albert Ayler

http://mayanruinstribal.com/

Mayan Ruins on Facebook

http://www.zaharastangledweb.com/

This episode was orginally broadcast on February 2, 2012 between 10pm and Midnight EST on WAIF, Cincinnati, 88.3FM

The Silver Star Radio series of On the Way to the Peak of Normal is an audio companion to Silver Star Journal
If you have written works on magick (any tradition) or visual art to contribute please contact editor Robert Carey via email with Silver Star Submission in the subject heading: robertcarey12 at gmail dot com

On the first side of this split 12” the group Stone Breath cauterized my wounded soul with the mythic sounds of their merrymaking. Playful and serious, reminiscent of wood elves and fey kicking around on some hand drums, banjos and dulcimer at a moonlit barn dance; the freshly painted hex sign above the wide double doors is charged by their sonorous vibrations, and the lunar light.

…read the rest on Brainwashed.com…

1. I Hear A New World – Joe Meek
2. Seasons In the Sun – Terry Jack
3. Dumb Am I -Nina Nastasia- from On Leaving
4. Adieu to All Judges and Juries -Shirley Collins -from Anthems in Eden
5. Teenie Weenie Boppie – France Gall – from Poupee de Son compilation.
6. On Another Shore – The Legendary Pink Dots – from Farewell Milkyway
mixed with 7. Drane2- Autechre- from LP5 mixing in with
8. Drone – Autechre - Peel Sessions (1)
9.  My Favorite Things – John Zorn- from Filmworks VII
10. December -Merely the Mocs -live in studio
11. Good Friends -Merely the Mocs -live in studio
12. A Cynics Prayer -Merely the Mocs -live in studio
13. Chaostrophy (Demo) -Coil- from Love’s Secret Demise
14. a bit of Karlheinz Stockhausen from Hymnen fading into
15. Dr. Whollucinogen ep. 1: Attack of the Weed Creature
16. RU 486 – The Pain Teens- from Destroy Me, Lover
17. Aegian Sea -Aphrodites Child- from Babylon the Great
18. Japanese for Yes (Dan Bitney Remix) - Male – from German for Shark
19. Tell Me How -Merely the Mocs- from A Cynics Prayer
20. Untitled -Merely the Mocs- from A Cynics Prayer
21. A Cynics Prayer -Merely the Mocs- from A Cynics Prayer
22. Ode to Marmaele -Kentin Jivek- from Ode to Marmaele
23. Long Distance Lullaby – Stornoway -from Beachcomber’s Windowsill
24. I Feel Mysterious Today -Wire- from On Returning

Background music for this evening was the song Badinerie by the Swingle Singers.

http://merelythemocs.bandcamp.com/

1. Joe Meek – I Hear A New World

2. John’s Children – Strange Affair

3. The Sandwitches- Lightfoot

4. Lights- World Falls Down

5. Unknown Mortal Orchestra

6. Motorcycle Boy- Big Rock Candy Mountain

7. Warpaint- Ashes To Ashes

8. Lords Of The New Church- Russian Roulette

9. Lene Lovich- I Think We’re Alone Now

10. Mechanical Bride- Art Decade

11. Raincoats- Lola

12.The Sandwitches – In The Garden

13. Roxy Music- Editions Of You

14. Mrs. Miller- These boots are Made For Walking

15. (From Man Of La Mancha)- Little Bird Little Bird

16. This Immortal Coil- You And Your Sister

17. Eternal Summers- Eternal

18. Jacques Brel- Fils De

19. Sun Ra- Rocket #9 Take Off For The Planet Venus

20. United States Of America- Hard Coming Love

21. Queen- Don’t Stop Me Now

22. Ramones- I Want You Around

23. B52′s- Lava

24. Shudder To Think- Photographic Ectasy

25. Brian Eno- Seedpods

26. T-Rex- Lofty Sky’s

27. Iggy Pop- Pretty Flamingo’s

28. Jane Birkin- Di Doo Dah

I always make interesting discoveries in these periodic cleanups.  In this case I found a loose page that should have been in the oversized binder collecting my dreams and other journalings from 201o.  The dream was about finding some books by fantastist and folklorist Jane Yolen, books about Russian mythology and folktales. This was synchronistic to me because I was deep in the middle of reading Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects by Dmitry Orlov.

Orlov’s book is a highly humorous read of what would otherwise be a glum subject: the collapse of the United States as a superpower.  While those who believe the U.S. is morally as well as financially bankrupt may welcome such a collapse, the way it is playing out  -yes, now-  imposes immense difficulties on many people, including the proverbial at risk: young, old, and those already immobilized.

Orlov was born in Russia and livd there until age 12 before emigrating to the U.S. with his parents.  He was an eyewitness to the Soviet Collapse, over many extended visits.  As such the parallels he draws between the two superpowers is fascinating.  What is more helpful on the downward slope of peak oil and Western civilization, are the ideas he draws from people’s experience in the former Soviet union. After building up the picutre for us Orlov focus’s in on three areas we can all work on: collapse mitigation, adaptation, and new opportunities. Within these he tightens the focus onto areas of housing, transportation, employment, and food.  One of the more interesting sections are the ideas for types of jobs and work  -most outside of the official economy-  that people took up in Russia, and how those may be adapted to the states.  A truly fascinating read and one that has me doing more to Be Prepared.  I was a Boy Scout after all.

The next day though, after seeing the page from my dream journal about the Jane Yolen Russian mythology books, I was down stairs at the library in the Children’s stacks pulling holds. I thought of the paper and then looked at the shelf in front of me. Lo and behold, I found in that very section three titles by Yolen where she retold traditional Russian stories.  I took them with me to read later.

Then, I was down in the fiction stacks later, pulling some graphic novel holds. I saw a few titles from Alan Moore. I’d recently read his amazing essay Fossil Angels, originally published online, and reprinted in Abraxas 2. (More about Abraxas 2 in a coming review.) The essay blew away my understanding of magic, while touching on so much else that I’d personally felt to be true as well. I highly recommend reading the essay, itself an amazing work of art. It inspired me to read some more of Alan’s graphic works. I’d read his graphic novel, From Hell some years before and loved it. It remains the only graphic work I’ve read which has been so meticulously researched containing footnootes and bibliography.  This time I picked up A Small Killing. Why this particular graphic novel by Alan Moore? Because I was on a Russian kick and the story concerned a wayward advertising agent during the Soviet collapse who was on his way to Russia to work on an advertising campaign for a soft drink. It was a good read, and also inspired me to listen to  Negativland‘s Time Zones Exchange Project, again, a classic piece of radio art.

When I finally got around to reading the Yolen childrens books I learned a number of things. In The Sea King, I learned that the “morning is wiser than the evening” perhaps because in the morning we awake with fresh dreams.  In The Flying Witch, a tale of Baba Yaga, I was shown that if you are going to have an encounter with this witch it pays to be feisty -and to know how to cook turnips, a truly underrated vegetable. In the Firebird, I learned how the ballet was taken from traditional Russian tales. While not a huge fan of the Neo-romanticism exemplified by Stravinsky, I did find the story enjoyable. More importantly Yolen shared all her source material, and I got an insight into her working methods: reading countless versions of the myth, until, at last the story becomes ones own.

The staff at Brainwashed this year have given the lifetime achievement award to David Tibet. Here is what I have to say about one of my own personal heros:

David Tibet expanded not only my musical universe but my literary life as well. When I started delving into the albums of Current 93, I looked up as many the references as I could find and read the books that he loved, from Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker (a big influence on one of my favorite Current 93 albums, Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Star) to Lautreamont’s Maldoror and the dark joys of Thomas Ligotti. The same is true for his musical tastes. I can’t hardly imagine what my own musical life as a listener would be like if I hadn’t been turned on by Tibet to the wonders of Shirley and Dolly Collins, to Comus, the Incredible String Band, and so many others. Tibet simply has excellent taste.

Tibet has always pursued a very personal vision. In the course of sharing that vision though he has championed the work of so many other musicians and artists I can’t count them on my fingers and toes. In doing so he has alleviated much of the worlds audio poverty.

I also continue to be excited about his work. I’m very much looking forward to reading the collected works of Eric Count Stenbock which Tibet has poured so much energy into collecting and editing. I am also always eager to learn more about his Coptic studies and his contributions in that field. David’s hypnagogic visual art, all the tiny scribblings of many moons and thieves ascending from crosses, is also stunning. It is obvious that he works hard with no signs of slowing down.

Read the rest of the Brainwashed writer’s comments and see the rest of the results of the 2011 Brainwashed Readers Poll.

For this episode of Silver Star Radio I was joined on the phone by Taylor Ellwood to talk about his forthcoming book Magical Identity.

Taylor Ellwood is the Managing Non-Fiction Editor of Immanion Press, which publishes cutting edge esoteric and occult books. He’s also the author of Pop Culture Magick, Space/Time Magic, Inner Alchemy and Multi-Media Magic, and the forthcoming book Magical Identity. Visit him online at http://www.magicalexperiments.com

Magical Identity is Taylor’s latest book, due out in March 2012. Magical Identity explores the role of identity within magical work, using themes of neuroscience, space, time, and definitions to understand where identity fits into the magical process as well as how we can use it to enhance our magical process.

We also featured a lot of musick from fabulous artists on this episode. Here is the full set list:
1. I Hear A New World – Joe Meek
2.  Winter Solstice – Ralph Towener- from the album Solstice.
3. Saturn – Jah Wobbles Invaders of the Heart- from The Celtic Poets.
4. Phone Interview with Taylor
5. Chemical Adjustment – Babalith- from The Doors of Misconception
6. Scorpion Tears – Stone Breath- from The Aetheric Lamp split 12″ with Mike Seed and the Language of Light on Anticlock Records.
7. The Final Solstice – Sorrow – from The Final Solstice II
8. Rough Old Night – Mike Seed and the Language of Light- from The Aetheric Lamp split 12″ (see 5 above).
9. Geronimo – Language of Shapes - (no official release as of yet)
10.  Babaziryelle – The Hermaphroditic ChAOrder of the Silver Dusk -from 156 = Musick = Babalon = Kaos on the Zoharum label.
11. Perception Is the Only Reality – Throbbing Gristle – from The Third Mind Movements.
Om Sarasvati Namaha (Cosmic Version) - The Magic Carpathians - from Sonic Suicide.
12. fade out with a bit of the soundtrack from Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising by Bobby Beausoleil.

My answers to the Weird Questionnaire are below. (Jeff Vandermeer also blogged his .) [Note: I hadn't read anyone else's answers to this questionnaire at the time of my own writing.]

1 – Write the first sentence of a novel, short story, or book of the weird yet to be written.

Moths emerged from the mummified cat  corpse in an eruption of dancing dust.

2 – Without looking at your watch: what time is it?

2:49 PM Eastern Standard Time

3 – Look at your watch. What time is it?

2:52 PM Transtemporal Understated Time

4 – How do you explain this — or these — discrepancy(ies) in time?

In this case I explain the time discrepancies due to interruptions. Or it could be the malleable plasticity of time.

5 – Do you believe in meteorological predictions?

Yes I do. Let’s bring back the art form of the almanack. We can throw some fantastical stories in as well, and a few recipes of cookery aiming at mutation upon ingestion.

6 – Do you believe in astrological predictions?

To a degree, of Full Moon in Aquarius.

7 – Do you gaze at the sky and stars by night?

When I am out in the country I do, or when the city starlight isn’t otherwise obscuring them and I happen to be outside. Something that should happen more often.

8 – What do you think of the sky and stars by night?

I think the sky and stars by night -though I love the sight of the moon in waning afternoon daylight, over the converted can building that now houses gentrifying yuppies (but hey, maybe my property value will go up) – I think they remind me that my worldly concerns are such a small amount of time, and one day the universe will collapse again into the big crunch, from which will spring another big bang, on to another big crunch. Over and over again. Ylem.

9 – What were you looking at before starting this questionnaire?

Just reading Jeff Vandermeer’s blog is all.

10 – What do cathedrals, churches, mosques, shrines, synagogues, and other religious monuments inspire in you?

The flip answer: a fear of being sacrificed.

A thoughtful answer: In the monotheistic religions: an inspiration towards wondrous plainchant, the organ as played by Charlemagne Palestine, a lust for long sonorous drones. In polytheistic religions with more outdoor shrines, standing stones, pyramids & the like: a zeal for new ancient rituals to assist in communicating with the goddesses and gods -a feeling of working towards a steady state society (“sustainable” in the more fashionable parlance), of connection to land, kin, and cosmos.

11 – What would you have “seen” if you’d been blind?

The invisible landscape. Jorge Luis Borges & John Milton speaking of poetry over a game of chess.

12 – What would you want to see if you were blind?

Chartreuse flamingos dancing in a south Florida trailer park.

13 – Are you afraid?

Not of this questionnaire. Not right now.

14 – What of?

Yes, of some things. Like being forced to divulge my fears. Well, not really. In the past I’d been afraid of things like botulism. My anxieties shift, but I’ve found focusing on “doing something” (like writing, radio, housework…) eases the feeling and I return to abnormality.

15 – What is the last weird film you’ve seen?

Tough question. Inland Empire by David Lynch is probably the weirdest thing I’ve watched in awhile, as being very inexplicable to me, but full of mystery and wonder. Julian Donkey Boy and Gummo by Harmony Korine always come to mind though. As does Gumbo, perhaps by alliterative association, but it was weird. I know the question only asked for one, but I like to elaborate.  Especially when drinking good Kentucky bourbon.

16 – Whom are you afraid of?

It’s not so much that I’m afraid of authority figures -managers, bosses, administrators, board members- as it is they hold my livelihood in their hands to some degree (not that I don’t take personal responsibility for getting paid work done). The System. Plutocrats & beauracrats.

17 – Have you ever been lost?

Yes. But I always like to remember a saying attributed to Daniel Boone: “I’m not lost, I just don’t know exactly where I am right now.”

18 – Do you believe in ghosts?

Yes.

19 – What is a ghost?

The spirit of a person -animal or human animal- that has chosen to remain close to the Earth after the physical body has died.  Places could also be “haunted” by the bad memories and experiences of people who spent time there. They could be psychic impressions left by previous inhabitants, amalgamated into some newfangled astral construct.

20 – At this very moment, what sound(s) can you here, apart from the computer?

Pierre Boulez, Deuxieme Sonate, as played by Idil Biret, on a CD player.

21 – What is the most terrifying sound you’ve ever heard – for example, “the night was like the cry of a wolf”?

A ringing in my ears, a loud buzzing moving from left to right, that somehow meant I was receiving a transmission from another realm, and when coupled with deja vu, invoked anxiety.

22 – Have you done something weird today or in the last few days?

Not by my standards. I sit down at my desk and tune the 15 transistor, 5 band, Aircastle radio on the Shortwave band up and down the dial and listen for telemetry or whatever foreign stations I can pick up, or any aesthetically interesting static. But that isn’t weird is it?

23 – Have you ever been to confession?

24 – You’re at confession, so confess the unspeakable.

The unspeakable is also unwritable -and better left alone.

25 –Without cheating: what is a “cabinet of curiosities”?

A gathering of dusty unicorn horns, phials of alchymical elixir, naughty toys apprehended from vagrant youth, unsent letters, fragments of text, found objects, ready mades.

26 –Do you believe in redemption?

Only in the sense that people can redeem themselves from the wrongs they have done and hurts they have made in the past. I do believe in forgiveness. I also believe in forgiveness. It need not be mystical or Christian.

27 – Have you dreamed tonight?

I haven’t slept yet tonight, so not in that sense. I did have some hypnagogic experiences while slightly dozing on the bus. About not watering things down. Let it all be full and bright and pure.

28 – Do you remember your dreams?

Yes. And I make a habit of writing down as much as I can remember of them.

29 – What was your last dream?

My last dream was about going to the store Bizzare Bazzar to do some Christmas shopping for my wife.  I was looking at green sweaters.

30 – What does fog make you think of?

The fog makes me think of the Celtic Otherworld in most instances.  And of Narnia, of seeing a gaslamp and stepping into another world.

31 – Do you believe in animals that don’t exist?

But they do exist.

32 – What do you see on the walls of the room where you are?

Concrete. Pneumatic tubes. A dumbwaiter. Shelves full of classical music CDs. (It’s the next day after drinking some Bulleit. I’m having to answer this in segments. Otherwise I would have seen my own bookshelves, records, turntable.)

33 – If you became a magician, what would be the first thing you’d do?

But I am a magician. Only I practice ritual magic and not parlour tricks. Theurgy is much more a concern for me these days, though I enjoy the thaumaturgical side effects. Currently I’m working with Apollo, Asclepius, Mnemosyne and the Nine Muses.

34 – What is a madman?

A madman is a person who is perhaps haunted by malicious or otherwise unruly entities. Or a madman is a genius, cracked to let in the light, but incapable of conforming to life in the system as we know it. They could also be people who have suffered soul loss from various traumatic events -there is the possibility of being cured.

35 – Are you mad?

I should think not.

36 – Do you believe in the existence of secret societies?

I don’t have to believe. I know of the existence of secret societies.

37 – What was the last weird book you read?

I read all kinds of stuff. The last novel I read was The Great Bay: Chronicles of the Collapse by Dale Pendell. Nothing weird about it really, though it did have a high proportion of cannibalism. Excellent book. The last short story I read was by Caitlin R. Kiernan, entitled “In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)” in Tales of Pain and Wonder. Currently I’m reading the excellent John Cage biography Begin Again by Kenneth Silverman.

38 – Would you like to live in a castle?

No. It would probably be too cold and drafty.

39 – Have You Seen Something Weird Today?

Yes. I was looking at a doll a man gave to my department at the library. A curious bit of folk art made from sewn felt and cloth, kind of like an Abe Lincoln with a handkerchief over his face and an amputated arm and leg.

40 – What is the Weirdest film you’ve ever seen?

…Gummo is still at the top of the list.

41 – Would you like to live in an abandoned train station?

No. But I probably know someone who would. Besides, if I lived there it would no longer be abandoned now would it?

42 – Can you see the future?

Sometimes I can make out where one branch forks off from another deeper into the garden.

43 – Have you considered living abroad?

I’d like to stay in Iceland for awhile.

44 – Where?

Iceland.

45 – Why?

It’s a country whose culture I am fascinated with.

46 – What is the weirdest film I’ve ever owned?

Blood Sucking Freaks…

47 – Would you have liked to live in a vicarage?

Only if I am a vicar who also doubles as a mystery detective.

48 – What is the weirdest book you’ve ever read?

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban stands out. Les Chants de Maldoror another classic.

49 – Which do you like better, globes or hourglasses?

Hourglasses.

50 – Which do you like better, antique magnifying glasses or bladed weapons?

A knife with a compass on the end.

51 – What, in all likelihood, lies in the depths of Loch Ness?

Protean goop from recent antiquity.

52 – Do you like taxidermied animals?

Only when they are Labrador Ducks.

53 – Do you like walking in the rain?

Yes.

54 – What goes on in tunnels?

Transportation -an other unspeakable acts of depravity.

55 – What do you look at when you look away from this questionnaire?

My shortwave radio or the carved frog figure sitting on my altar.

56 – What does this famous line inspire in you: “And when he had crossed the bridge, the phantoms came to meet him.”?

A sense of being close to my ancestors on the Other Side.

57 – Without cheating: where is that famous line from?

I have no idea.

58 – Do you like walking in graveyards or the woods by night?

Yes.

58 – Write the last line of a novel, short story, or book of the weird yet to be written.

Once again awash with glittering snail slime.

59 – Without looking at your watch: what time is it?

8:57 PM -nearly a week after I started my piecemeal work on this questionairre.

60 – Look at your watch. What time is it?

9:00 PM …

almost time for:

Taylor Ellwood is the Managing Non-Fiction Editor of Immanion Press, which publishes cutting edge esoteric and occult books. He’s also the author of Pop Culture Magick, Space/Time Magic, Inner Alchemy and Multi-Media Magic, and the forthcoming book Magical Identity. Visit him online at http://www.magicalexperiments.com

Magical Identity is Taylor’s latest book, due out in March 2012. Magical Identity explores the role of identity within magical work, using themes of neuroscience, space, time, and definitions to understand where identity fits into the magical process as well as how we can use it to enhance our magical process.

This episode will also feature a variety of magickal musick including material fro Stone Breath and Mike Seed w/ The Language of Light from a recent limited twelve inch record put out by R. Loftiss and the good folks at Anticlock Records ( http://www.anticlock.net/ )

Tune in locally on 88.3FM Cincinnati or translocally at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/waif-cincinnati
The show airs from 10PM to Midnight Eastern Standard Tribe, Thursday, December 22nd.
Expect the podcast to be up sometime before the first day of 2012. As usual, I’ll send out the link when it is ready…

It has been a week since election day. That means it is time to stop waiting for those in office, or those in the corporate office, to get a start on the projects we’d like to see remake and re-enchant this world. It is time to get the ball rolling on making changes for ourselves, our families and our communities. It is within our power to do so. Often times these types of projects and community initiatives that aim at being in it for the long haul have an initial burst of steam that kicks things in to gear, but like carbon based fuels, energy and resources are quickly depleted. With the vast external pressures and seemingly endless distractions of our techno-consumerist culture it is also easy to feel pulled in many different directions at once. So after an initiative is started, say a community radio station, a bicycle co-op, community garden, hacker space, local small press, or non-profit dedicated to noise music and the avant-garde, what strategies exist to help these groups reach a level of sustainability that also allows them to have a continuing beneficial effect in our culture? And how can these collaborative efforts be made more resilient in face of the eroding power of capital?

Enter The Art of Free Cooperation. Many of us were told as kids, as kindergärtners, to cooperate with adults, with teachers, and with other kids. To get along and behave. Cooperation however, should only be given freely, otherwise it becomes co-option. If there are things we don’t like in life we have the choice to not cooperate with those things. So it is that free cooperation is intimately tied to free association. But these free associations and cooperatives don’t always go easy. As with any other part of life conflicts turn up. There are skill sets and tools that can help groups to prepare for the challenges of collaboration.

The DVD I’ll be showing came with the book, The Art of Free Coopeartion. The book is a collection of papers that grew out of the Free Cooperation Conference held by the State University of New York. The book examines the politics, technologies, and semiotics of Free Cooperation. This film explores the ideas and principles through the language of science fiction films, edited into a humorous collage. This collage is narrated in part by Tony Conrad. Tony is an experimental video artist and filmmaker and musician among many other things. In the realm of music, as an improviser collaborating with the likes of Faust (as Outside the Dream Syndicate) Charlemagne Palestine and many others he has put into practice many of the themes running through the Art of Free Coopeation.

This film will be screened today, November 15, at 6PM in the basement of the Northside Library (4219 Hamilton Ave.).

For more along these lines check out:

The Institute of Network Cultures

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Each of these photographs tells a story. When I look into any one of them I feel I have become a witness to a way of life that is at once dying, and in certain corners of society, is being born again. Here the old life of the holiday is preserved. It looks very different from the Halloween I grew up with, which was in the process of removing itself from being a festival of death to a festival of pop culture. Few are the ghosts and ghouls who trick or treat these days. Most of the costumes that kids wear now are culled from a lexicon of cartoons and hollywood movies. While these do have their origin in the imagination (someone gave birth to the plethora of characters emerging from screen after all) in my mind it is an imagination that has been tainted. The costumes come prepackaged like so much else in our contemporary world, ready to be pulled off the shelf. These pictures are populated by spirits from the collective imagination of the Celtic folk who brought the holiday over to the New World. In his historic note at the end of the book Ossian writes, “Fleeing Ireland’s Great Famine of 1845, many thousands crossed the Atlantic to America. The haunted tradition they carried with them would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half-remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Hallowe’en was reborn. New blood—Scandinavian, Germanic, African, Native-American—flowed in its veins spawning a host of hybrid phantoms to consult, to confront, to placate.” These phantoms from other cultures have certainly enriched the holiday.

…Read the rest on Brainwashed.com…

Ciao,

Just the little I’ve read of his amazing work has had a profound and long term effect on me. Perhaps the most influential was when I was at Antioch college. I was in crisis mode. I was telling a counselor that I wanted to go into Psychology, except I was having issues with the head of the department who was a big behaviorist with a picture of B.F. Skinner hanging above his desk. The school counselor suggested I read Hillman’s book “We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy – and the World is Getting Worse” written in conversation with Michael Ventura. I never did read that one, and I never did study psychology in academic setting.  The teacher was very hostile towards Wilhelm Reich and Carl Jung, even at a radical school like Antioch. I dropped out after the term.
 
Later I did read “The Souls Code: In Search of Character and Calling” by Hillman which is basically his thoughts about the Daemon, or Holy Guardian Angel if that’s your preference of terms. It was excellent. In it he talked about various well known individuals early lifes, and how by looking into them, the pattern, as set out by the daemon, for a persons life work could be seen in these early experiences. I still have “The Dream and the Underworld” sitting on one of my bookshelves awaiting attention. I’m sure it is essential reading for aspiring Oneiromancers.
 
In the New York Times obituary of Hillman they quoted him from 1976:
“Some people in desperation have turned to witchcraft, magic and occultism, to drugs and madness, anything to rekindle imagination and find a world ensouled. But these reactions are not enough. What is needed is a revisioning, a fundamental shift of perspective out of that soulless predicament we call modern consciousness.” 
 
Gyrus wrote of this, over on his Dreamflesh blog, “However else Hillman has inspired me—and he’s inspired me very deeply—I just have to admire someone for whom witchcraft, magic, occultism, drugs and madness are ‘not enough’. Obviously he didn’t take the path of trying all of these and going through the other side. And obviously I don’t agree with him if he’s dismissing them outright (I don’t think he is). But it’s an important message for all of us mad druggie occultists. Something more is necessary.” 

Eric Clarke and I had a good chat about James Hillman at the Esoteric Book Conference after party. Eric emphasized how James Hillman wasn’t into the “victimization” that is part of so much modern day therapy and New Age fluff. In a review of “One Hundred Years of Psychotherapy…” the Library Journal wrote that Hillman “contend(s) that therapy encourages self-preoccupation, leaving no attention or energy for the woes of the outside world. Similarly, the ‘inner child’ movement has created a population of self-centered, juvenile adults who feel they have little power. Political apathy, a dying environment, and an inability to form real relationships are among the ills resulting from this solipsism.” Rather than fall back on endless hours of therapy and introspection people can pick themselves up and set about doing the real work, based on the call of their daemon, that will change themselves and this world. By writing this I’m not dismissing the validity of soul retrieval and our inner young ones. These aspects need to get reintegrated. Health is the goal -and a return to meaningful work and life, not an endless round of sessions delving into troubled pasts, which in many instances seems to prevent people from moving forward. A good therapist would be one you don’t need to see forever.
James was also an adept dream teacher. His most famous words for dream interpretation were “Stick with the image”. Don’t over-interpret the image. Carry the image with you. It has its own energy and is its own interpretation.

James Hillman was a champion of the imagination and the soul. His tireless work aimed at the reenchantment of this world.

“…skeptics can always insist that the results of magic might be coincidence. When a shaman works a rain spell, it could be coincidence that a rainstorm rolls in a few hours later. If the same spell works a hundred times in a row, it could still be coincidence. As long as the rain spell gets the results the shaman wants, it hardly matters, and indeed magic could almost be defined as the art of causing coincidences in accordance with intention. Think about how many important things in life are governed by what modern people call ‘coincidence’ and you may begin to grasp the astonishing power magic has to shape the universe of human experience.”

Picture from From E. J. Glave’s In Savage Africa: or, Six Years of Adventure in Congo-Land (1892).

The book starts with a nod to British peasant poet John Clare, who in 1827 wrote a cycle of poems titled A Shepards’ Calendar. (John Clare was also on influence on the Current 93 album Earth Covers Earth.) Peter gives us twelve poems for his own “Sheperds’ Calendar”. In starting with a meditation on the wheel of the year, with thoughts on the recurrence of moons, and the recurrence of seasons, the poet prepares the reader to think of larger cycles of time, to think of the fall of empires, and even the end of civilization itself. In homage to Clare, who grew up dirt poor on a rural farm, the first word of the first poem here is “Bumpkinism,” what he describes as “…literally /[a] shit kicking hick”. Then his pen lashes out against “urbane monotheists” and the “Nature Police”. Wilson doesn’t hold any punches back on those who adhere to the cult of progress. That was in January. In May he paints a description of the Wisconsin Driftless Region, home of the anarchist, permaculture & media collective, Dreamtime Village, where Wilson has lectured and spent time in the past. Here he is “Lying on midnight hillside surrounded by cows / waiting for meteor showers / the color of wormwood / -moonflowers / blooming by the old hotel”. By August the poet has taken up the subject of oaninism. Though this could be simple self indulgence, here it is used in the service of Gaia. Throughout the book Wilson brings to light humanities erotic and libidinal longings for the things of the green world, hence the Eco in Ec(o)logues. In the mid-fall of October Wilson’s mind turns to milkmaids, haylofts, and “shiftless hip-billies” twanging a lyre.

…read the rest on Brainwashed…

The book is available from Station Hill

Slowly Melting Euphoria :
A Report On The Third Annual Soiree
Of Multidimensional Art Mongers

　This years third annual soiree of Multidimensional Art Mongers (M.A.M.) was a testy, sordid affair. Attendees had a difficult time remaining level headed due to recent schisms within the group and in the formerly close knit community of Multidimensional Artists. Florentine Flabberwright confided, “I’m not sure the cohesion of the group will gel back together enough in time for a fourth soiree. Besides, the bones of the artists are getting pretty lean, and we mongers will need to move on to a new movement that still has some meat and vitality left.”

Nathaniel Brunswick who was to give the after dinner speech, along with several other members, had been kicked out for issuing a new manifesto stating that Multidimensional Art was fiscally and theoretically bankrupt. These communiques were not readily embraced by the majority of mongers who had invested large sums of money in the development and subsequent marketing of astral galleries.

Those who remained at the soiree argued about the intellectual vacuity of Rupert Firedrakes morphogenetic installation over bowls of oyster and crawfish gumbo. Located in a shantytown just outside the Land of the Dead, and nearly indistinguishable from the glowing grub worms who did make a home there, his piece was not seen as being a work with a future, and the mongers worried about being able to sell his newer work, or get it placed in shows. His few defenders pitched back insults at his attackers with the snide aplumb typical of the aesthetic elite.

Blexie Pharish was however praised for her idiosyncratic use of sixth dimensional contours. Often considered the wunderkinder of the Multidimensional Art Movement (M.A.M.), her newest public work was regaled as a masterpiece of dream glamour. It functioned by worming its way into random selections of the dreaming populace, picking up on the fragmented detritus of sleep. The constructions succubus-enhanced astral slime also trailed off bits of juicy gossip into the dreams of others, seeding whole cities and towns with nefarious pheremones, one night at a time. No one knew how long the etheric thought form would live on. While it is true that among her peers, this work was roundly applauded, critics have claimed her reliance on sexual motifs is a crude tactic used to draw in an audience who would otherwise have nothing to do with her. Others have said she has just not grown into the full power of her voice yet, and given time her pieces will mature to encompass a broader range of themes.

The mongers, while concerned with aesthetics, were more concerned with markets, platforms, scaling, and sales. One monger summed up the feelings of the entire room with his question, “But how can we make a profit off this? “Indeed one of the problems long associated with M.A.M. (and here I mean the Art Movement as opposed to the mongers) has been the difficulty faced by cultural workers trying to make a sale, much less get a comission, or a grant. For the most part non-tangible, they create goods which exist only on the imaginal realms and in the subtle planes of reality. Some contend these « planes and realms » do not even exist, that Multidimensional Art is the ultimate form of artistic rebellion and mockery; the gallery, the museum, and even street art had all been co-opted by capital at large, so the only pure form of creation left to those who did not want their work appropriated by conglomerate scum bags were those which did not produce physical products. Such is the history of imaginary art in a nutshell.

A group of those who still hold these concerns protested the soiree for the entire evening, attempting to boycott the sale of astral works, heckling mongers and potential buyers alike as they arrived for the evening. They tried to roust them via agitprop messages printed on toilet paper covertly installed in the bathrooms at the Ivory Tower Hotel where the event was housed. Most of these protesters had been former members of S.M.A.C., or the Society for Multidimensional Art Concepts. Svaegnir Thorsson, the Icelandic founder of the group was also the first member to quit. He states, “My associates and I feel that the original aim of S.M.A.C. has been perverted by posers and pretenders, due to the mongering of the art. Our prime directive was to assist humanity in escaping the vapid materialism and haughtiness of the contemporary art scene. Modern man is also overly stimulated and so we tried to craft astral experiences which required the ability to slow down the mind in order to perceive them. Our methods were used to fight everything from Attention Deficit Disorder and the tooth decay caused by addiction to sweets. Our events and creations were designed to withstand the negative impact commodification has had on art movements throughout history. However, the mongers have found a way to capitalize the Astral Plane. They have colonized our dreams. That is why I’m here now, engaging in activism to educate the general public on the dangers of art mongering. I’m also conducting intense research on new tactics for resisting the corporate encroachments on every aspect of life. To this end I’ve started a new group, the Society for the Manifestation of Anarchist Chaos, whose initials are also S.M.A.C.”

Elmer Well’s, a co-founder of the original S.M.A.C. was also in attendance with the hopes of finding a patron among the mongers. It didn’t take long for him to warm up to the subject of his former colleague Thorsson. “Svaegnir is a fraud. He’s a failed painter himself, and can’t help but get irritated when he views someone else’s success. And he has this really bad habit of self sabotage, where if things start to go well for him, he thinks he doesn’t deserve it, goes on a Brenivin drinking binge and starts mouthing off at the people he’s closest to. I couldn’t take it anymore, and when he broke up with me, and broke away from the group, I stayed behind to keep S.M.A.C. operational. I’m still dedicated to the original cause of Multidimensional Art. If I can make a little money on the side, to feed back into the work, is that such a bad thing? Does that make me a sell out?”

Anonymous informants on the inside of the original S.M.A.C. claim Elmer himself is a fraud, that his most lauded works were stolen from Svaegnir after he’d left them abandoned in the Abyss. They don’t resent him for this, claiming the practice dates all the way back to the Readymade School founded by Saint Duchamp in the early years of the Twentieth Century. The panel of experts formed to look further into the matter at the soiree is the subject of heated debate among the mongers, as their findings will be decisive in terms of projected values for the Wells/Thorrson portifolio. Among the mongers, the initial findings of the experts has been the cause of a slowly melting euphoria.

I am visiting Iceland again. My wife Audrey is with me. When we get to the country, we make our way to a hotel where we’ll be staying. The lady who is the concierge cannot check us in until around 5pm, so we set our stuff down, and are going to walk around the city. But I get distracted by an art gallery showing inside the hotel. I go over to the wall and look at the pieces. One is a clock. The curator comes over to me and is wanting to sell me this piece for several thousand dollars. I don’t have that kind of money: especially on a trip to a foreign country. Besides I tell him, “I like this piece better” pointing to a painting on a board above the clock.

Then I find Audrey and we plan to go out walking around the town. I ask the concierge “How late do things stay open here?”

She tell’s me “Not very late”.

We get going walking around the city. The sun is up, but for not that long. It must be because we are in the far north. I make a phone call to my Dad, “We are up in the Arctic Circle!” I’m very excited. Then I’m talking to some other people back home and they we’re asking what city we were in, “Reykjavik!” I tell them proudly.

The city is awesome. The buildings are beautiful…some are up on a ridge above the harbor….

Feelings: Like I was there…

Reality Check: I have never been to Iceland. It is one of my “dream” trips I’d love to make in this life. I have however dreamed of the country a lot. I’ve read some of the Poetic & Prose Eddas (primary sources for the Icelandic/Scandinavian mythos) & studied various aspects of the country’s history and life there, but wasn’t thinking about Iceland at all yesterday or last night before going to bed. Had no intention for my dreams. I also had synchronicities involving Iceland during the research for my talk on “The Library Angel & It’s Oracle” at the Esoteric Book Conference this past September.

Action: See what’s going on in Iceland today (read any recent news stories…) Eventually go there. Perhaps look into hotels & art galleries there…

Banner: It feels good above the Arctic Circle.

The Cincinnati Council for the Bardic Arts was started on October 18, 1911 by the poet, Walnut Hills High School teacher and Nordic scholar Arthur Fiske, alongside his protégé Kenneth Templeton. An invisible third partner was the silent backer providing additional resources, financial aid, and occult knowledge.

Arthur Fiske, who had a deep interest in Nordic literature, specifically the Eddas and Sagas of Iceland, considered himself to be a Skald. During the Viking Age Skald’s were members of a group of courtly poets in Iceland and Scandinavia whom recited the epic verses of their day to their kings. They were also often responsible for creating new verses to commemorate and historicize the deeds of their own king. Fiske was also an outstanding chess player.

Kenneth Templeton was himself a member of an order that was instrumental in the revival of modern day Druidism. It was as a member of this order that he received his training as a Bard. The Bards of ancient Gaelic cultures, unlike the poets of today, were a respected lot. They helped to maintain the oral tradition and history of the people. In this tradition, the forms of the poems were not only valuable for their inherent beauty, but were designed with mnemonics in mind as well, allowing room for inspired improvisation.

Together with the help of their backer, they not only worked to design a curriculum for the transmission of these arts, but issued books, monographs, and pamphlets under a variety of pseudonymous imprints. Now, after the initial 100 years where this work was done in silence, their successors in the Council have decided to move forward into the public.

What are the Bardic Arts?

At the core a Bard or Skald, and her or his arts are concerned with memory, with story, and with the preservation of particular stories which become herstory. According to this view a Bard is someone whose memory has been trained to contain not just one story but a multiplicity of stories.

Archdruid John Michael Greer, of the Aincient Order of Druids in America wrote “To know many stories is wisdom. To know no stories is ignorance. To know just one story is death.” Likewise the great interpreter of the American experience, Joan Didion has said “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

The lifeblood of a culture then can be measured by how its poets and storytellers are valued. Something else can also be discerned by looking at what stories are being told. When the narrative shifts from a story told by multiple characters and multiple points of view, to a single story about a single person with a single point of view, we know that a culture has entered dangerous territory. A monoculture is one where only a single story is told. This is the place Western Civilization finds itself stranded in. The dominant story of endless progress –at the cost of resources, species, and future generations- is the myth of our age. The children who come after us, born into our debt, who will have to clean up after our party, will need other stories. The Council aims to provide as many as possible.

To be a Bard requires a skill set not generally taught at the contemporary university. Furthermore it takes the courage to speak. Speaking however, is not enough if one does not know what to say or how to say it.  In this respect, the Bardic Arts again return to Memory. All true knowledge is original knowledge, and it returns to us through anamnesis, by remembering the wisdom imparted to our souls before incarnation.

So one of the Bardic Arts is the Ars Memoria or Art of Memory. There are various procedures and techniques that can be learned, practiced, and taught, not only to enhance the Memory but to purify it as well. There are also the Ars Combinatoria or Art of Combination, the Arts of Dreaming and the Ars Moriendi or Art of Dying. Each of these arts requires  in depth study and further explication and will become the subjects of monographs to be issued by the Cincinnati Council for the Bardic Arts in the future.

Tonight, after 100 years of behind-the-scenes activity, the Cincinnati Council of the Bardic Arts makes itself known. Come to their first public performance at the Northside Branch Library on 4219, from 6PM to 8PM, to hear the readings they are sponsoring from literary legends Steven Paul Lansky, Mark Flanigan, Chuck Byrd, Bryan Burke and and Justin Patrick Moore. Maybe you’ll even join us for a drink afterwards at the Northside Tavern.

“The future, as always, is now,” novelist John Crowley writes in his wonderful essay for Lapham’s Quarterly,  The Next Future. Crowley goes on to say about Science Fiction, later in his text, ”  from the beginning it gained extraliterary power from its prediction of actual marvels that were sure to come sooner or later. No other fiction, not even the tales of Darkest Africa or polar exploration, had that. The more often the future was imagined, however, and the more detailed the guesses, the more they proved unequal to the strange meanderings of real time.”  Still further into his timely thicket he asks ”Why should the future be privileged as a realm of speculation?”

Indeed, some of the most innovative of ”Speculative Fictions” have been alternate histories, different “nows”, postulated through magic or the parallel worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.  These are the “forking paths” which have emerged from Jorge Luis Borge’s famous garden. One of my favorites in this subgenre is by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt which imagines a world where the Black Plague destroyed European and Christian culture, leaving Islam and Buddhism in a cultural ascendancy. It is a very useful thought experiment to make. And it tells the alternate history from the time of the Black Plague, up to present times. (One of the more interesting elements is how it follows several characters and their reincarnations through the centuries.)

Locus: the Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field even has a regular column entitled “Yesterday’s Tomorrows” penned by Graham Sleight which looks back at various SF writers bodies of work. (It’s always one of my favorite parts of the magazine.) Following this, and following the SF field in general, a reader can discern how the future changes with time.

Having contributed a story to a contest being run by John Michael Greer, author of many books on magic and the popular peak-oil blog, The Archdruid Report, and having followed not only Greer’s line of reasoning about peak-oil, but also James Howard Kunstler’s, this question of probable futures is very engaging for me.  As a writer of Science Fiction and Fantasy, among other things, doubly so.

Greer, in his initail post about the contest writes, “Still, one of the virtues of science fiction is that it doesn’t always fall into such ruts, and more often than other branches of literature, recognizes that the social and technological habits of any given era are not the permanent fixtures they sometimes seem, but points along a historical trajectory shaped, among other things, by ultural fashions and sheer dumb luck. Even if we get through the crises of our age the way the people of Stephenson’s world got through the period they call the Terrible Events, and create a technological society on the other side of it, our descendants won’t be wearing T-shirts or calling people on cell phones in the year 5400 AD, any more than we now wear togas or take notes on wax tablets the way the ancient Romans did; they’ll wear other clothing and communicate with other tools—and with any luck they’ll snack on something less repellent than energy bars. Fairly often, science fiction catches wind of such shifts; sometimes it succeeds in guessing them in advance; tolerably often, for that matter, what starts out as imagery from science fiction becomes the inspiration for design in the real world—I trust nobody thinks, for example, that it’s accidental that most early cell phones looked remarkably like the communicators from the original version of Star Trek.” He then goes on to ask for the writers in his audience to come up with stories depicting responses to peak-oil, with the following reasoning, “Still, the arrival of the limits to growth bids fair to have at least as massive an impact on the future of the decades ahead of us as space travel and its associated technological advances had on the decades that followed science fiction’s golden age, and it seems to me that it’s past time to get thinking and writing about the dangers and adventures, the hopes and fears, the dreams, problems and possibilities of a world on the far side of peak oil.”

Then, a number of weeks down the line I get wind of Neal Stephenson’s Hieroglyph Project, in an article he wrote called “Innovation Starvation“.  In it he proposes that Science Fiction writers shouldbe inspiring more of the kind of big engineering projects that industrialized countries, specifically America, pursued in the wake of World War II. Massive highway systems. Space shuttles to the moon. The internet. And he gives two good theories as to how Science Fiction is able to inspire people into action: 

“1. The Inspiration Theory. SF inspires people to choose science and engineering as careers. This much is undoubtedly true, and somewhat obvious.

2. The Hieroglyph Theory. Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers. Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace. As Jim Karkanias of Microsoft Research puts it, such icons serve as hieroglyphs—simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.”

I don’t feel the same way Stephenson does about the passing of these big projects. The US interstate system has made it easier to navigate from point A to point B, to get from the West to the East and from the South to the North, but what is missed on those trips are the inner corners of America, what Harry Smith has called “the Old Weird America”  reached on the Blue Highways that written about in William Least Heat-Moon’s book of the same name. And while I’ve been inspired by the notion of visiting other planets, I’d much rather visit the Otherworld and take care of the Earth. Besides, I don’t really believe we have to kind of fuel and resources it would take to get back to the Moon, let alone Mars or outside the Solar System.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t like some of the other points Stephenson makes, particularly those where he contrasts isolated research, the kind done by individuals and groups in the pre-internet area, that required visits to the library, and the kind of wide open research done nowadays with a few clicks on google. There is something to be said for the kind of long, slow developments that occur when working on a problem over a duration of time. Or when learning a skill or craft over a period of many, many years. This is how all great art develops, from the initial insight to the hours, days, weeks, months and years it takes to see a vision be grounded in physical creation.

And where do occultists, magicians, and dreamers stand in all this? How do today’s pagan philosophers at the growing edge envision our collective future? As Stephenson and Greer both know, fiction is a great playground to toy with these types of thought experiments. And to inspire readers to action. There has been a tradition of Occult Fiction that goes all the way back to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen,   on to Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune, and that stretches onwards to the likes of Kenneth Grant and Storm Constantine to name just a few culprits.

Esoteric artwork is at this time coming into its own, as is the field of magickal musick. Esoteric publishing is hitting a renaisance with many of the wonderful presses issuing fine editions. I’m thinking of the likes of Scarlet Imprint, Xoanon Limited, Three Hands Press, Fulgur Limited and Waning Moon Publications, again to name just a few. Now is a ripe time for those who are Operative Mages and also Working Writers to come forth with a new generation of Occult Fiction. This is just one of the things I’m working on.

If you have what might be considered Occult Fiction of your own, please link to it in the comments.    

(Thanks to Sophie Gale, from the Green Wizard’s forum,  for the John Crowley article.)

Delve on into the rich contents of Paraxis 02. They’ve done a slick job combining original artwork with the longer stories. They have stories from: S J Butler, Beth Ward, Sam Parr, Graham Dean, and Elou Carroll alongside essays from Myriam Frey, Alan Wall, Robert Sheppard, and Alan Gibbons. Artists include: C Massey, Tori Truslow, Kirsty Greenwood, Tom Fletcher, Emma Jane Unsworth, David Rose, Nicholas Royle, A.K. Benedict,  . You know what my online reading will consist of over the next week.

This is the perfect themed issue for all my fellow library aficinados and bibliomaniacs!

The image here, is the “cover image” from Paraxis 02 and is titled the Library by Myriam Frey.

Track list:
1. I Hear a New World – Joe Meek
2. The Transmission of Enochian via the Seer Edward Kelly – Temple Music
3. Cutting Diamonds – Greg Turner
4. Velvet Shoon - Anahita – from “Matricaria” on Important Records
5. Amochantzinco - Soriah with Ashkelon Sain -from forthcoming album Eztica, on Projekt. (On tour in England this October!)
6. Seven Souls - Material -from “Seven Souls” feat. William S. Burroughs
7. Liber@ – Aion 131 (Who now perhaps has the distinction of being the first to use an autotuner for invocation.)
8. Fuse + The Five Steps – Scanner/William S. Burroughs mixed by DJ Spooky
9. Hyperspacial Transdimensional Astral Vehicle – AnimAmotrix (Daniel Anthony Ezekiel Niehaus)
10. Zenta! – Meat Beat Manifesto – from “Answers Come In Dreams”
(I dreamed about this song, so I had to play it!)
11. The Inhabitants of Nemiron - TAGC – from “Tesserae 1″ a free audio supplement that came with issue number 2 of Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies.
12. Energy Is Eternal Delight - Harry Oldfield – from “Crystal“. This track was mixed by Hilmar Orn Hilmarson
13. China Sky (excerpt) – William Streek
14. Sleeper – Cyclobe – from “Wounded Galaxies Tap At the Window”

I believe there is still some time left for those who wish to enter. Stories are to be posted on a blog. Here is mine. I hope you all enjoy.

This story touches on Library Guilds, the Art of Memory, FM & Amateur radio, Medicine Shows, and takes place in Ohio canal country, during a future time when people have worked to reopen the canals. All wrapped around a love & coming of age story… Enjoy. It probably still needs some tweaking, so please leave comments if you’ve got any!

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“And that’s it for Ecollage, your source for low-voltage doses of esoteric radio activity,” Jacob spoke into the microphone before handing it over to Benji, host of The Village News Hour, the next slotted show on station WXEN, voice of New Delphos, Ohio.

One by one Jacob rolled the three hand cranked phonographs back into the far corner of a studio crowded with radio equipment, battery arrays and a tangle of cables under its slanted ceiling. He was careful not to bump their antique horns as he’d gone through hell to procure and get them working again. Then he took the vinyl records into the library room adjacent to the studio.

Though there were no new records being pressed, not that Jacob knew of anyway, he had amassed a sizable backlog of old music from the 20^th century preserved on vinyl. Compact discs were obsolete, useful only to make hanging mobiles or other shiny decorations; but vinyl, if you had a hand-cranked phonograph, was still playable. Jacob had salvaged three such devices and with some ingenuity had adapted the needles from more recent record players to work on the far older machines. In this manner he was still able to mix recordings together, playing two or three records at a time, giving new life to what would have otherwise remained frozen in wax. And over top of these mixes he would start rapping in a strange rhythm, what old Williard, the master librarian he was apprenticed under, had taught him the Druids of old called Tenm Laida, or Illumination through Song. Jacob tranced out during these rap sessions, and the lyrics that came through him were often surprising and oracular. Into this turbulent froth he would even sometimes add melodies from the libraries collection of low voltage electronic instruments, some of the circuits of which he’d soldered and bent with Williard’s help.

But he was still working on his ability to scratch.

His weekly show was a favorite among many of the old timers. They sat and listened in their rocking chairs while sipping watered down whiskey or moonshine at the end of the long workday. They remembered recorded music more than anyone else. It didn’t matter to them so much that Jacob often spun the stuff at the wrong speed. Most other music programs on WXEN pooled from the strong talent of live playing local musicians. Jacob’s show, in using pre-recorded material, was tinged with nostalgic anachronism as he tried his hand at recreating the old fashioned art of the DJ alongside his inspired and improvisatory raps.

After filing the records away he walked downstairs. The Johnston brothers were sweeping up the debris of grist on the floor. It hadn’t been ground into the finer corn flour for the breads, tortillas and polenta they also made, but would be used in making a mash for the family’s line of Straight Ohio Whiskey.

The town’s radio station was on the top floor of the water mill. The same power that chaffed the grain also turned the alternators that in turn sent a flow of electricity into the transmitter, human voice and music over the ether, and into people’s homes.

“Will I see you at the Green Lion Medicine Show?” Jacob asked the brothers.

(…Click here to read the rest of the story as a PDF…)

The image is from the Rosarium Philosophorum, an editon from the John Ferguson (1838-1916) collection at Glasgow University.

Tibet was first introduced to Oldfield’s work by Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson (or HÖH who also mixed one of the most beautiful tracks on this release) while in Reykjavik, Iceland back in 1986. The work of Harry Oldfield is very wide ranging, but he is perhaps most well known for his pioneering work in developing non-invasive methods for the analysis and balancing of the human energy field. Chief among these methods is his innovative combination of electromagnetism with quartz crystals to create what he has called “Electro-Crystal Therapy“. There is nothing New Age about this practice. Yes, his work has been on the fringe of science, but it has gained recognition in it’s orthodox circles. After all crystals have been used for many advanced technologies including radio and computers to microphones, speakers, and lasers. That stimulating them with pulses of high frequency electricity could have a healing effect should come as no surprise. His therapy involves placing crystals in tubes containing a conductive electrolyte brine solution, and putting those tubes around certain points of the body. The tubes are then attached to an electromagnetic generator that administers electrical frequencies to the crystals. These frequencies, interacting with the crystals, then balance and normalize the human or animal energy system. Oldfield likens this process to receiving a “molecular massage.”

…read the rest on Brainwashed.com…

The EBC was an exquisite mind bending experience. and I am very thankful for all the new friends I made.

Furthermore, keeping a journal is a great practice for ordering our inner and outer worlds. My own diaries stretch back to the time I was in the sixth grade, or twelve years old. These have become treasure troves and galaxies of imagery waiting for me to tap when I need some clue, information, or direction. Over a long period of time these journals start become pregnant and are ready to give birth to writings that we will share with the world.

Improvements in quality and verisimilitude will arise naturally from this most essential of practices.

Lovers of literature and language, please join us for the inauguration of Lyrical Synaesthesia, a series of poetry and short story readings hosted by the Cincinnati Council for the Bardic Arts, and MC’d by Justin Patrick Moore at the Northside Branch Library. The hope is that this will be the beginning of a long tradition of quarterly readings, in the fall, winter, spring and summer, showcasing the breadth of talent in Cincinnati and to help foster a strong living literary tradition in the Queen City. The event is from 6 to 8 PM on Tuesday, October 18^th. If you are interested in reading at a future edition of Lyrical Synaesthesia please contact Justin at: Justinpatrickdreamer@gmail.com

The following authors will be reading on October 18…

Steven Paul Lansky is the author of Main St. (2002) and Eleven Word Title for Confessional Political Poetry Originally Composed for Radio (2009), two chapbooks published by Seaweed Sideshow Circus.  His audionovel Jack Acid (2004) is available in a limited edition six cd box set on Squidmusic.  Mr. Lansky also has written a novel: the citizen, which has had excerpts published in The Brooklyn Rail (2005), ArtSpike, CityBeat (online), and Streetvibes.  His somewhat animated videos: Bratwurst (with Leigh Waltz), Exit Strategy (with Leigh Waltz), Harvest, and The Broken Finger Episode A-8 or the Cigarette Break can be viewed on YouTube.  He teaches creative writing at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and lives in Clifton.  Please be gentle with him.

Mark Flanigan is still happily entertaining the same 100 people he always has.  His “Exiled” series has been in print and online for over a decade now—first in X-Ray Cincinnati, then at semantikon.com—and currently can be found in CityBeat, Cincinnati’s alternative weekly.  His e-book of verse, Minute Poems, can also be found on the web.

Chuck Byrd , along with his tag team partner Betsy Young, are the force behind Northside’s own Aurore Press.  In his 45 years on this earth Chuck has lived in Cincinnati Ohio, San Francisco California, Phoenix, Arizona and again in Cincinnati Ohio. He has   the distinction of being part owner of an independent professional wrestling company called Queen City Wrestling and his wrestling alter-ego Charles E. Brown still gets into the ring every now and then. In the spring of 2012 he, along with his co-conspirator   Justin Patrick Moore will be releasing a chapbook of new material.

Bryan Burke is a lifelong Cincinnati native that has been published mainly for his sports writing.  He has written many unpublished fictional works including short stories, novellas, plays and screen plays in addition to his journalism.  He lives in Cincinnati with his fiancee and dog.

Justin Patrick Moore is a writer and broadcaster. His essays have been featured in a number of themed anthologies from Aurore Press, the most recent appearing in Living In the Lap of Labor. He is a contributor to the independent music website Brainwashed.com where he has written on the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen in the essay Music from Sirius and interviewed Nigel Ayers, the man behind the experimental music project Nocturnal Emissions. A long time library employee, in September 2011 he gave a talk at the Esoteric Book Conference in Seattle on the subject of The Libray Angel and It’s Oracle. His most recent short story, Gertrude and Ludwig Spin A Web, appeared in Flurb #12, a webzine of astonishing tales, edited by Rudy Rucker.

The other authors included in this September 2011 issue are Brendan Byrne, Adam Callaway, Paul Di Filipo, Will Ellwood, Eileen Gunn, Martin Hayes, Ernest Hogan, Rudy Rucker, A.S. Salinas, John Shirley, Emily C. Skaftun, Bruce Sterling, Anna Tambour, and Don Webb.

Did you know Rudy Rucker has a new book out? Well he does, and it’s called Jim and the Flims. You can read a nice article about Rudy and the flims on Santa Cruz.com (That is where I took my picture of him from. Oh, and he painted those pictures on the wall.) Rudy also has an autobiography out, Nested Scrolls,  in two editions, a limited collectors from PS Publishing, and another coming out from Tor Books in December. Look for them, and seek the gnarl!  An excerpt from my story follows…  

*************

In another order of reality Gertrude Stein was joined in matrimony to Ludwig Wittgenstein.  Setting aside their own sexual predilections, they learned to love each other.  Besides, they wanted to leave a linguistic legacy and spawn children who could tear a hole in the fabric of language.

Flirtation led to foreplay and foreplay to a congress of sticky secretions.  But it wasn’t always easy for the two.

Ludwig tickled Gertrude, made her purr.  He was knowing, understanding of her moods, of her being.  She intimated to him what to do and he followed into her geography only to find he didn’t know his way around, unfamiliar with her type of plumbing.  So they made a word game of exploration and told each other puzzles to keep their minds off the act of copulation.  Gertrude detested passion in any of its disguised forms, but managed to live through it, bearing Ludwig not one, but three children, two daughters and a son.  Julika, Genevive, and Henrik. …

…read the rest…

During the first part of the show, I talk with Chuck Byrd from Aurore Press about the upcoming release of their latest and greatest anthology Living In the Lap of Labor. The book is a flip book, spiral bound, housed in plastic, with a hazard sticker, absolutely gorgeous. We played some songs from the bands who will be at the release party at the Comet on Saturday Sept. 3^rd who will be playing after the readings, which begin at 9:30PM.

In the second half of the show I am joined by William J. Kiesel who called in from Seattle to talk about the upcoming Esoteric Book Conference. We had a great conversation, but I messed up in that I forgot to switch out the CD’s at the end of the first hour, so I only was able to record the first half of our conversation. My apologies go out to William and everyone else who was hoping to hear the entirety of the interview. However, William did recently appear on the excellent Occult of Personality podcast, which you can listen to here. One positive side effect from my mishap, is that I was able to splice in tracks from Oryelle and Aion, which I didn’t get a chance to actually broadcast last night. However, do listen to the show, and hear some of the groups which will be playing at the EBC including Amodali, Lux Interna, and Waldteufel.

Track List:

In lieu of our usual theme song, and in honor of Harahel, the Library Angel, the show opened with:

1. I am a Sub-Librarian – Piano Magic – from Seasonally Affective: A Piano Magic Retrospective 1996-2000.
2. Automation – Joe Glazer – on the Classic Labor Songs compilation from Smithsonian Folkways.
3. I Wanna be A Man – Teddy & the Frat Girls
4. Clubnite- Teddy & the Frat Girls
5. I Owe It to the Girls – Teddy & the Frat Girls –all from Auto Glamour Sound, a Hospital Records compilation.
6. Regular Job – SS-20
7. Class Struggle – SS-20
8. Tax Tax Tax, Spend Spend Spend – SS-20
9. Times Are Tough – Dixies Trash
10. Scatter Wolves – Dixie Trash
11. Daisy –Dixie Trash
12. excerpt from Queens of the Circulating Library – Coil – (album same as song title).
13. Full Lunar Deep – Amodali –from Incarndine
14. Soror Thee – Amodali –from Incarndine
15. West of Eden – Lux Interna – from God Is Not Dead For The Birds
16. Hymn (from a poisoned mind) – Lux Interna from Absence and Plenum
17. Hexe Hild –Waldteufel
18. Kupferwut – Waldteufel
19. Nectareous – Oryelle Defenestrate-Bascule w/DB.P.I.T (Rome), Evan Flux, and Amordios Gobblyn-Smyth
20. Black Moon –Aion 131

]]> http://sothismedias.com/2011/09/02/silver-star-radio-episode-6/feed/ 0 119:55 During the first part of the show, I talk with Chuck Byrd from Aurore Press about the upcoming release of their latest and greatest anthology ... During the first part of the show, I talk with Chuck Byrd from Aurore Press about the upcoming release of their latest and greatest anthology Living In the Lap of Labor. The book is a flip book, spiral bound, housed in plastic, with a hazard sticker, absolutely gorgeous. We played some songs from the bands who will be at the release party at the Comet on Saturday Sept. 3rd who will be playing after the readings, which begin at 9:30PM. In the second half of the show I am joined by William J. Kiesel who called in from Seattle to talk about the upcoming Esoteric Book Conference. We had a great conversation, but I messed up in that I forgot to switch out the CDrsquo;s at the end of the first hour, so I only was able to record the first half of our conversation. My apologies go out to William and everyone else who was hoping to hear the entirety of the interview. However, William did recently appear on the excellent Occult of Personality podcast, which you can listen to here. One positive side effect from my mishap, is that I was able to splice in tracks from Oryelle and Aion, which I didnrsquo;t get a chance to actually broadcast last night. However, do listen to the show, and hear some of the groups which will be playing at the EBC including Amodali, Lux Interna, and Waldteufel. Track List: In lieu of our usual theme song, and in honor of Harahel, the Library Angel, the show opened with: I am a Sub-Librarian - Piano Magic ndash; from Seasonally Affective: A Piano Magic Retrospective 1996-2000. Automation ndash; Joe Glazer ndash; on the Classic Labor Songs compilation from Smithsonian Folkways. I Wanna be A Man ndash; Teddy #38; the Frat Girls Clubnite- Teddy #38; the Frat Girls I Owe It to the Girls - Teddy #38; the Frat Girls ndash;all from Auto Glamour Sound, a Hospital Records compilation. Regular Job ndash; SS-20 Class Struggle ndash; SS-20 Tax Tax Tax, Spend Spend Spend ndash; SS-20 Times Are Tough ndash; Dixies Trash Scatter Wolves ndash; Dixie Trash Daisy ndash;Dixie Trash excerpt from Queens of the Circulating Library ndash; Coil ndash; (album same as song title). Full Lunar Deep ndash; Amodali ndash;from Incarndine Soror Thee ndash; Amodali ndash;from Incarndine West of Eden ndash; Lux Interna ndash; from God Is Not Dead For The Birds Hymn (from a poisoned mind) ndash; Lux Interna from Absence and Plenum Hexe Hild ndash;Waldteufel Kupferwut ndash; Waldteufel Nectareous ndash; Oryelle Defenestrate-Bascule w/DB.P.I.T (Rome), Evan Flux, and Amordios Gobblyn-Smyth Black Moon ndash;Aion 131 On,the,Way,to,the,Peak,of,Normal Justin Patrick Moore no No http://sothismedias.com/2011/08/28/a-quick-correspondence-guide-to-the-library-angel/ http://sothismedias.com/2011/08/28/a-quick-correspondence-guide-to-the-library-angel/#comments Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:24:11 +0000 jmoore http://sothismedias.com/?p=944 The Library Angel is the 59th intelligence of the Shemhamphorasch.

In Hebrew her name is comprised of the letters Heh, Resh, Cheth, Aleph, Lamed. This can be transliterated into English as Harahel, Herochiel, or Herachiel.

The Biblical verse associated with Harahel is Psalms 113 verse 3, “From the rising of the Sun, to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to praised.” (Which Lord? I guess that is your choice.)

The Tarot Card associated with Harahel is the Seven of Pentacles.

The Library Angel is in charge of providing “Cross REferences” These occur through coincidence, synchronicity, & chance-operations.

Through these “Cross References” the magick of Ars Combinatoria can be practiced.

Watch out for the broken glass.

Originally broadcast on August 11, 2011.

* The image is a still taken from David Cronenbergs adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel Crash.

…turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream…

Robbie will be playing this Friday, August 19, at Awakenings Coffe house in Hyde Park square between 9 & 10PM.

Last week on Brainwashed, many of the staff writers gave their views on Coil’s Loves Secret Domain. Here is my take on it…

My first experience of the music of Coil came in the mid-’90s, hearing their remixes of Nine Inch Nails songs. I tended to prefer the remixes to the NIN originals, and the versions by Coil were some of the best of those: creative and bizarre sound construction and deconstruction. Still, as remixes they were not the unfiltered visionary music of Coil proper which still allures and intrigues me to this day, a vision I fell for completely on listening to Love’s Secret Domain.

…read the rest on Brainwashed…