Would like to say a massive shout-out to genius video maker Simon Ward who is going to film my brains' myth-child being born next February. It is a trilogy, wrapped up in a tender chrysalis of layers and layers of epistolary ephemera that need to be carefully shed in order for the little baby story to emerge and be viewed from a number of angles by numerous pairs of eyes. This first pint-sized reveal will be an indication of what is to come in the profoundly ridiculous field of party artistry.
Simon made the trailer for Disasteradio's CHARISMA album, which I linked to the very first post on this blog, after I wiped my fresh slate clean in October 2010 :
The spontaneous celebration which will probably eventually eclipse Christmas as the vibiest celebration of the year, Charismas, is named after this timely album.
As you can see by Simon's latest vid he is a bonafide virtual zen master. (Watch on youtube for a more centred effect) :
I'm so glad that pink ball came out from under the rug and helped disperse all that grime !
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
POTENTIAL NRG
Coco Solid is in town at the mo and on Sunday she melted my mind when she uttered the three sweetest words in the English language :
"I get it".
Here she is DJing for us at Dan's club nite on Saturday, as depicted by Rob Mchaffie.
Have you ever noticed how art is largely about depicting what's going on?
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
RATS OUTTA THE BAG
As aforementioned, next February I will be representing ratkind in a Chinese Zodiac Group Art Show at Enjoy gallery in Wellington.
Late last year, while on a natural kundalini bender in Whanganui, I made a series of, what seemed to me to be, Prophetic Pass The Parcels. I propose to recruit some fellow rats (largely '72 rats, next rat up) to open a present in the present at an opening. All in the name of taking baby steps towards the up'n'coming PARTY ART REVOLUTION.
Which will be here any day now.
As we all know revolutions start with a series of little revelations. In this case I will be revealing the secret of precisely what lies in the centre of the nucleus of my own internal party, (because I have full behind the scenes access to that one). Thus externalising its secret in symbol form.
Here's a mail-out I just did to potential rats on the internet :
Hope this email finds you rats fit and well. I am a sick one currently, pain parties in my chest whenever I cough. But surely it will be gone before Women's Wellbeings birthday and club night with Coco this weekend.
Lots of rat love
Caroline
Late last year, while on a natural kundalini bender in Whanganui, I made a series of, what seemed to me to be, Prophetic Pass The Parcels. I propose to recruit some fellow rats (largely '72 rats, next rat up) to open a present in the present at an opening. All in the name of taking baby steps towards the up'n'coming PARTY ART REVOLUTION.
Which will be here any day now.
As we all know revolutions start with a series of little revelations. In this case I will be revealing the secret of precisely what lies in the centre of the nucleus of my own internal party, (because I have full behind the scenes access to that one). Thus externalising its secret in symbol form.
Here's a mail-out I just did to potential rats on the internet :
Hola Potential Rats who might potentially open a present in the present at an opening for me! Feb 15 2012 (have had some tentative yesses location pending)
Here is an important passage to ponder before reaching the centre of the present.
SURPRISE! It's by Jung. From Confrontation With The Unconscious, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (his autobiography)
"
This is the dream I mentioned earlier : I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss - say - half a dozen - I walked through the dark streets. I had the feeling that there we were coming from the harbour, and that the real city was actually up above, on the cliffs. We climbed up there. It reminded me of Basel, where the market is down below and then you go up through the Totengasschen ("Alley of the Dead"), which leads to a plateau, we found a broad square dimly illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square. In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island. While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke, and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight. On it stood a single tree, a magnolia, in a shower of reddish blossoms. It was as though the tree stood in the sunlight and was at the same time the source of light. My companions commented on the abominable weather, and obviously did not see the tree. They spoke of another Swiss who was living in Liverpool, and expressed surprise he had settled here. I was carried away by the beauty of the flowering tree and sunlit island, and thought, "I know very well why he has settled here." Then I awoke.
...
This dream represented my situation at the time. I can still see the greyish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque - just as I felt then. But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that was why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the "pool of life". The "liver" according to an old view, is the seat of life - that which "makes to live."
This dream brought with it a sense of finality. I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the centre. The centre is the goal, and everything is directed towards the centre. Through this dream I understood that the self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function. For me, this insight signified an approach to the centre and therefore to the goal. Out of it emerged a first inkling of my personal myth.
"
I will be providing an inkling into my personal myth by way of a small arrangement of confectionery items in the centre of a reasonably dense Pass The Parcel which hopefully may be opened up by YOU.
Here is an important passage to ponder before reaching the centre of the present.
SURPRISE! It's by Jung. From Confrontation With The Unconscious, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (his autobiography)
"
This is the dream I mentioned earlier : I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss - say - half a dozen - I walked through the dark streets. I had the feeling that there we were coming from the harbour, and that the real city was actually up above, on the cliffs. We climbed up there. It reminded me of Basel, where the market is down below and then you go up through the Totengasschen ("Alley of the Dead"), which leads to a plateau, we found a broad square dimly illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square. In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island. While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke, and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight. On it stood a single tree, a magnolia, in a shower of reddish blossoms. It was as though the tree stood in the sunlight and was at the same time the source of light. My companions commented on the abominable weather, and obviously did not see the tree. They spoke of another Swiss who was living in Liverpool, and expressed surprise he had settled here. I was carried away by the beauty of the flowering tree and sunlit island, and thought, "I know very well why he has settled here." Then I awoke.
...
This dream represented my situation at the time. I can still see the greyish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque - just as I felt then. But I had had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that was why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the "pool of life". The "liver" according to an old view, is the seat of life - that which "makes to live."
This dream brought with it a sense of finality. I saw that here the goal had been revealed. One could not go beyond the centre. The centre is the goal, and everything is directed towards the centre. Through this dream I understood that the self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function. For me, this insight signified an approach to the centre and therefore to the goal. Out of it emerged a first inkling of my personal myth.
"
I will be providing an inkling into my personal myth by way of a small arrangement of confectionery items in the centre of a reasonably dense Pass The Parcel which hopefully may be opened up by YOU.
Lots of rat love
Caroline
Sunday, November 27, 2011
TASTES OF IRONY
My supervisor
In my art practise I do a lot of pretending. Not deceitful pretending to purposely pull the wool over anyones eyes. Just very vivid imaginative pretending that is actually really real from my perspective even if it may not be from an outside perspective yet. Pretending is a good tool for planting ideas from your inner fountain in the soil of reality. If you never stop doing it there's a pretty good chance it's realness will come into fruition in the mind of others and all of a sudden it's not pretending anymore. I'm pretending to do a thesis at the moment. That means I actually am doing one I guess. Just not through official channels. (Pictured is my supervisor.)
I found this passage about pretending in The Art of Living : Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault by Alexander Nehamas :
Cicero himself, for example, does not separate irony from indirectness. He thinks, of course, of irony in positive terms. But he writes that "of the Greeks, we are told that a pleasant and humorous and genial conversationalist, who put up a pretence whenever he spoke, was Socrates (the Greeks called him an eiron), "his reference to pretending (simulare) leaves the question of transparency open. One might object, as Vlastos does, that "pretense" does not have its "basic use" of "deceiving" or "alleging falsely". Instead "pretending" must be understood in its "subsidiary use" as it is applied for example to "children 'pretending' that their colored chips are money ... or that their dolls are sick or die or go to school." This "subsidiary" use "altogether innocent of intentional deceit," allows us to understand eironeia as a figure of speech totally devoid of "willful misrepresentation" (27).
But many activities that go under the name of "pretending" cannot be reduced to either of these two starkly defined opposites. The children who pretend that some colored chips are money may not intend to deceive anyone by their pretense, but that does not mean that to them the chips are clearly not money either: children have a much more complex relation to toys than the dichotomy between the primary and the subsidiary use of "pretending" can possibly capture. To take another sort of case, I may pretend to be - I may act like - a classical scholar, all the while leaving my audience (and perhaps myself as well) in doubt as to whether I am one or not. To call someone a pretender, a simulator (as Cicero calls Socrates) shows neither that we know their mind nor even that they know it themselves.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
RADICAL FUSION (BEHIND THE STICKERS)
Stay tuned for a Hyprophesis of my scientific freestyle thesis about connections and parties, possibly to be revealed layer by layer in Pass The Parcel form in a Chinese Zodiac Show at Enjoy Gallery, Cuba St, Wellington, Feb 15 2012 !
I'll be representing Rat-kind, a very curious sign.
But wait till you hear the question,
there's AT LEAST TWO layers in that alone :
Which came first ... the future or the PRESENT ?!
(My guess is the PRESENT, but ... How does the PRESENT know what the future holds!? Could it be that the PAST gave it some clues ... ???)
Thursday, October 27, 2011
DREAM I HAD PON DI HILL
Just found this in a sandy brown book I penned pon di hill at Balaena Bay, Wellington, while subleasing with FFM and Maria while their housemate Jen was clowning around in Finland for 3 months.
(This was the view from my bed) :
Going to a cool breezy laid back party with Dan with a slight Miami Vice feel of whiteness and smoothness. In a white very airy open bar. Went to get a drink and the woman next to me remembered me. I didn't recognise her but it turned out to be Carey-Ann who was at Upokongaro School with me in my youth. Had some light convo's, asked Dan if he would still be there in one to two hours and went exploring down into the basement. Found an extremely long staircase. There was a sign for putting out into the street to a theatre of some sort at the top of the stairs. I thought I better take it with me in case I exited out a different location.
Gleefully I slid down the rail of the long staircase, holding the sign, closing my eyes a lot of the time all the while in a free and transcendent state. Started to realise maybe I should've left the sign at the top of the stairs because it was probably meant to go outside when the theatre was open. I came to the lobby and it was clearly closed. I couldn't just slip out and keep exploring.
There was a man there who saw me. I started to run and he started to chase me. Then I stopped and said "I just wanted to explore" and he was like "Yeah we need to get more set up for people like you who want to explore" and I didn't get in trouble.
(This was the view from my bed) :
Going to a cool breezy laid back party with Dan with a slight Miami Vice feel of whiteness and smoothness. In a white very airy open bar. Went to get a drink and the woman next to me remembered me. I didn't recognise her but it turned out to be Carey-Ann who was at Upokongaro School with me in my youth. Had some light convo's, asked Dan if he would still be there in one to two hours and went exploring down into the basement. Found an extremely long staircase. There was a sign for putting out into the street to a theatre of some sort at the top of the stairs. I thought I better take it with me in case I exited out a different location.
Gleefully I slid down the rail of the long staircase, holding the sign, closing my eyes a lot of the time all the while in a free and transcendent state. Started to realise maybe I should've left the sign at the top of the stairs because it was probably meant to go outside when the theatre was open. I came to the lobby and it was clearly closed. I couldn't just slip out and keep exploring.
There was a man there who saw me. I started to run and he started to chase me. Then I stopped and said "I just wanted to explore" and he was like "Yeah we need to get more set up for people like you who want to explore" and I didn't get in trouble.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
DONE SPOKE
Here's a link to a some semi-public speaking I did last week on Radio Valerie. I'm discussing the Peace Party Puzzle I'm making, which secretly is an art and science project too. Thanks Ronan and Sam,
(a couple of Peace Party Puzzle Packs are coming your way!)
I come in around 53 mins in and hang around for quite a while :
Listen up HERE !
(a couple of Peace Party Puzzle Packs are coming your way!)
I come in around 53 mins in and hang around for quite a while :
Listen up HERE !
Sunday, September 25, 2011
ARCHIVAL SOLUTIONZ
Just want to say a massive shout-out to Geordy Muir (Genre if you're predictive texting). Geordy works at NZ Archives. For his birthday I sent him a bunch of hardcore playful literary treasure that he has agreed to archive in a funny yet serious fashion, which is his style anyway. He is famous for this hard-hitting quote that he said to me in the car once :
Rules are like routines, they're made to be broken.
Happy Birthday !!!
Thanks for magnetic fishing to Sade with me when I was down!
Thursday, September 22, 2011
TRANCE PARTY
My friend Elle Loui, who helped me re-integrate into society after a magical ongoing trance party of my own just helped induce one in some others with her party art show at rice and beans :
If Elle Loui August and Matthew George Richard Ward's WONDERING HOW WE EVER CAME TO THIS THANK YOU, FOR INSTANCE. OR POSSIBLE OR JUST WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER!!!! (rice and beans) was something a reviewer could reliably call theatre or dance, and expect to be understood, then the world would be a somewhat different place. If I say to you that I experienced this as a type of post object art - whose scattering of bodies across the blank slate of Rice and Beans seemed to deny literal scrutiny and require of the visitor other means of perception, integration into the work - then you might be well served in terms of perceiving an absence of commodity, but completely mislead in other ways, for this was no dry intellectual exercise. What type of person has the temerity to dissect and codify when it is live bodies at stake? A theatre reviewer? Speaking recently with the director of the just-finished Avenue Q, we reached an typical impasse with his assertion that "physical theatre" was a redundant term - all theatre being intrinsically physical. Which, abstractly, is completely true, but in practice is completely not. Much, if not practically all of what we call theatre is involved in encasing non-literal, animistic, flesh-based communication in a great sheet of words. "Wondering....." , on the other hand, felt a bit like wandering down to a great rivers edge to watch an ancient species at play - but that is only if you chose to see it as spectacle at all. It felt more like a rite intended to awaken atavistic pathways in the brain. When I left - after about an hour- I literally could not speak. The world seemed enormously present, and language seemed too..... easy a strategy; too coarse. I offer no guesses at method or intention on the part of the performers, and in terms of what i "literally" witnessed - two people denying (passively, it seemed) eye contact or interaction, and moving in the space -any description beyond the most basic would mislead. Entertaining, informing, transporting an audience are all splendid goals for theatre - but literally putting them in a trance is, in our modern context, something of a paradigm shift. Some say it was not always so. Certainly it has not deserted us for good.
Jimmy Currin
If Elle Loui August and Matthew George Richard Ward's WONDERING HOW WE EVER CAME TO THIS THANK YOU, FOR INSTANCE. OR POSSIBLE OR JUST WHATEVER WHATEVER WHATEVER!!!! (rice and beans) was something a reviewer could reliably call theatre or dance, and expect to be understood, then the world would be a somewhat different place. If I say to you that I experienced this as a type of post object art - whose scattering of bodies across the blank slate of Rice and Beans seemed to deny literal scrutiny and require of the visitor other means of perception, integration into the work - then you might be well served in terms of perceiving an absence of commodity, but completely mislead in other ways, for this was no dry intellectual exercise. What type of person has the temerity to dissect and codify when it is live bodies at stake? A theatre reviewer? Speaking recently with the director of the just-finished Avenue Q, we reached an typical impasse with his assertion that "physical theatre" was a redundant term - all theatre being intrinsically physical. Which, abstractly, is completely true, but in practice is completely not. Much, if not practically all of what we call theatre is involved in encasing non-literal, animistic, flesh-based communication in a great sheet of words. "Wondering....." , on the other hand, felt a bit like wandering down to a great rivers edge to watch an ancient species at play - but that is only if you chose to see it as spectacle at all. It felt more like a rite intended to awaken atavistic pathways in the brain. When I left - after about an hour- I literally could not speak. The world seemed enormously present, and language seemed too..... easy a strategy; too coarse. I offer no guesses at method or intention on the part of the performers, and in terms of what i "literally" witnessed - two people denying (passively, it seemed) eye contact or interaction, and moving in the space -any description beyond the most basic would mislead. Entertaining, informing, transporting an audience are all splendid goals for theatre - but literally putting them in a trance is, in our modern context, something of a paradigm shift. Some say it was not always so. Certainly it has not deserted us for good.
Jimmy Currin
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
DAY OF RECKONING
Tomorrow (Thursday 22 September) I will be reckoning some stuff on Ronan's radio show, Radio Rascals from 6:45pm ish Melbourne time.
Mostly I will be talking about a Peace Party Puzzle Project I'm playing at, which is sort of an Interactive Evolutionary Time Capsule project, that fits in with the weekly theme of TIME pretty appropriately. It is an infinitely complex yet bodaciously simple project. Founded on an intricate framework of hot vivacious connections (neural and otherwise) and the puzzling yet exhilirating destinations they can and will lead you to if you invest your joules in their exploration. Then there are the joules of interest you gather on your investment, which are worth their weight in snacks!
It is an exercise in SEEING WHAT HAPPENS, jotting it down, and sending it to someone for some reason. Then realising the reason that you did that, jotting that down, and so on ...
FYI, it is NOT a chain letter, it's totally off the chain. The process is simple, WHAT HAPPENS is the complex part.
Anyway, tune in if you like, you could be one of the 50 listeners !
LIVE from above the ice cream shop,
here : http://www.radiovalerie.org/index.php?/ongoing/yeah/
Mostly I will be talking about a Peace Party Puzzle Project I'm playing at, which is sort of an Interactive Evolutionary Time Capsule project, that fits in with the weekly theme of TIME pretty appropriately. It is an infinitely complex yet bodaciously simple project. Founded on an intricate framework of hot vivacious connections (neural and otherwise) and the puzzling yet exhilirating destinations they can and will lead you to if you invest your joules in their exploration. Then there are the joules of interest you gather on your investment, which are worth their weight in snacks!
It is an exercise in SEEING WHAT HAPPENS, jotting it down, and sending it to someone for some reason. Then realising the reason that you did that, jotting that down, and so on ...
FYI, it is NOT a chain letter, it's totally off the chain. The process is simple, WHAT HAPPENS is the complex part.
Anyway, tune in if you like, you could be one of the 50 listeners !
LIVE from above the ice cream shop,
here : http://www.radiovalerie.org/
Monday, September 19, 2011
GOLD ENVELOPES
Ideas are not just counters used by the calculating mind; they are golden vessels full of living feeling. "Freedom" is not a mere abstraction, it is also an emotion. Reason becomes unreason when separated from the heart, and a psychic life void of universal ideas sickens from undernourishment.
The Buddha said: "These four are the foodstuffs, ye bikkhus, which sustain the creatures that are born, and benefit the creatures that seek rebirth. The first is edible food, coarse or fine; touch is the second; the thinking capacity of the mind is the third; and the fourth is consciousness."
Whoops, just quoted some more C.G Jung,
from "Phenomenes Occultes"
Psychology and the Occult
Friday, September 16, 2011
ART FORUM
Thursday, September 8, 2011
TEXTICLE
I just found this drawing on my friend Rob's blog. It's by me, and was the first drawing I've ever had in an art show, at the Melbourne Art Fair last year. That's mine and my siblings bling fossilising deep in that sediment there. Joanna's gold nacho, my gold banana earrings and Sean's gold blackberry and hamsa. (Not sure who the diamond ring and pearls belong to.)
Have come a really long way since then and now I've had two things in art shows (official ones) and many many more things in Home Art Shows around the world. Generally though there are two sides to my art so one half might get concealed when it comes to framing.
I lost this one between the pages of some book and am still waiting for it to spring back out at me.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
THE OPAL EMBARGO
This essay by Jessica 'Coco' Hansell is a MUST READ for anyone who's not a chicken. So on the money I will not cheapen it with adjectives.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
PARTY PHYSICAL REALM
Just been revisiting my wise old friend J. Krishnamurti who my other wise friend Peter Hall (of delectable North Fitzroy eatery Munsterhaus) introduced me to by way of a book right when I needed him, late 2009. Now I'm living with Pete and have been perusing his copy of The Awakening of Intelligence. Here's an excerpt :
It is only the still mind that understands that in a quiet mind there is a movement that is totally different, that is of a different dimension, of a different quality. That can never be put into words, because it is indescribable. What can be described is what comes up to this point, the point when you have laid the foundation and seen the necessity, the truth and the beauty of a still mind
For most of us beauty is in something, in a building, in a cloud, in the shape of a tree, in a beautiful face. Is beauty "out there", or is it a quality of mind that has no self-centred activity? Because like joy, the understanding of beauty is essential in meditation. Beauty is really the total abondonment of the "me", and the eyes that have abandoned the "me" can see the trees, the beauty of it all, and the loveliness of the cloud; that happens when there is no centre as the "me". It happens to each one of us doesn't it? - when you see a lovely mountain, when you come upon it suddenly, there it is! Everything has been pushed aside except the majesty of that hill. That mountain, that tree, absorbs you completely.........
So beauty means sensitivity - a body that is sensitive, which means the right diet, the right way of living, and you have all this if you have gone that far. I hope you will, or are doing it now; then the mind will inevitably and naturally, unknowingly become quiet.
You can't make the mind quiet, because you are the mischief maker, you are yourself disturbed, anxious, confused - how can you make the mind quiet? But when you understand what quietness is, when you understand what confusion is, what sorrow is and whether sorrow can ever end, and when you understand pleasure, then out of that comes an extraordinarily quiet mind; you don't have to seek it. You must begin at the beginning and the first step is the last step, and this is meditation.
It is only the still mind that understands that in a quiet mind there is a movement that is totally different, that is of a different dimension, of a different quality. That can never be put into words, because it is indescribable. What can be described is what comes up to this point, the point when you have laid the foundation and seen the necessity, the truth and the beauty of a still mind
For most of us beauty is in something, in a building, in a cloud, in the shape of a tree, in a beautiful face. Is beauty "out there", or is it a quality of mind that has no self-centred activity? Because like joy, the understanding of beauty is essential in meditation. Beauty is really the total abondonment of the "me", and the eyes that have abandoned the "me" can see the trees, the beauty of it all, and the loveliness of the cloud; that happens when there is no centre as the "me". It happens to each one of us doesn't it? - when you see a lovely mountain, when you come upon it suddenly, there it is! Everything has been pushed aside except the majesty of that hill. That mountain, that tree, absorbs you completely.........
So beauty means sensitivity - a body that is sensitive, which means the right diet, the right way of living, and you have all this if you have gone that far. I hope you will, or are doing it now; then the mind will inevitably and naturally, unknowingly become quiet.
You can't make the mind quiet, because you are the mischief maker, you are yourself disturbed, anxious, confused - how can you make the mind quiet? But when you understand what quietness is, when you understand what confusion is, what sorrow is and whether sorrow can ever end, and when you understand pleasure, then out of that comes an extraordinarily quiet mind; you don't have to seek it. You must begin at the beginning and the first step is the last step, and this is meditation.
Monday, July 18, 2011
FUTURE COMING SOON
Sometimes I like to freak myself out by advertising widely that I'm going to do something when I'm not totally sure what it is.
This is one of those times.
Monday, July 11, 2011
PEACE PARTY PUZZLE
Groovy (fragmentalized), from 'El mundo esta muy loco', blue book (2nd least electric shade), El Bruc, June 2010
I have a friend on facebook who keeps faking his own death and coming back in another guise. Yesterday he posted this link to my wall. It is a downloadable PDF to jewels from Jung's Red Book that I can't seem to stop mentioning no matter how hard I try. (Please note the labels, all of which are relevant to this party project: ART, BOOK REVIEW, COGNITION, COSMOLOGY, LITERATURE, POETRY, SCIENCE, SHAMANISM, SOCIETY, SPIRITUAL HEALING, TRIPPY) Jung died in the 60's and the original transcripts of his ancient memories and mystical visions were only just published in 2009.
That is how not ready for it yet he deemed the world to be in his lifetime.
Because my mission is the cultivation of sweet parties full of high calibre genies who can join forces to make magic realistically happen, I am distributing pieces of my original writings and symbolic clues around the world. Via the postal system and slipping golden yellow envelopes under their doors. Then eventually everyone can get together, have a party, a few laughs and make the puzzle. Provided that's the sort of thing they think they might be into.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
RADICALLY LOGICAL, SENSUAL, MYTHICAL
German philosopher and anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach was the first to treat stories of Adam's fall and Jesus's resurrection as myths rather than historical events. He saw them as parables, symbolic stories with deep philosophical meaning. Here he basically sums up the Party Art Movement I am keen to get off the ground :
"The new philosophy rests on the truth of love and feeling... The new philosophy itself is basically none other than the essence of feeling elevated to consciousness; it only affirms in reason and with reason what every man - the real man - professes in his heart. It is the heart made into mind... The new philosophy... recognises the truth of sensation with joy and consciousness; it is the open hearted and sensuous philosophy."
Ludwig Feuerbach
quoted by Lloyd Geering in 2. Ludwig Feuerbach "God is Human"
from Religious Trailblazers
"The new philosophy rests on the truth of love and feeling... The new philosophy itself is basically none other than the essence of feeling elevated to consciousness; it only affirms in reason and with reason what every man - the real man - professes in his heart. It is the heart made into mind... The new philosophy... recognises the truth of sensation with joy and consciousness; it is the open hearted and sensuous philosophy."
Ludwig Feuerbach
quoted by Lloyd Geering in 2. Ludwig Feuerbach "God is Human"
from Religious Trailblazers
BLAZIN
For the last three Tuesdays I have been going to see Sir Lloyd Geering give a series of free talks on Jung and the Unconscious at St Andrew's Church on The Terrace. This week Lloyd took it to the next level with an eloquent foray into the God archetype and it's evolution through the ages. I felt inspired to splash out $5 for a copy of Religious Trailblazers, a collection of essays penned by Lloyd himself, and was delighted to find quotes from 19th century Party Artists inside :
Feuerbach saw in the Holy Trinity a symbol of the essential importance of human community, a theme on which he himself placed great emphasis. For when he spoke of human creativity and greatness, he was not thinking of the individual but of humans in community. So he said: "the secret of the Trinity is the secret of communal and social life : it is the truth that no being - man, God or ego - is for itself alone a true, perfect and absolute being." This, thought Feuerbach was an unconscious acknowledgement of the true nature of the human condition as essentially communal...
So when Feuerbach contended that the concept of God was in reality the projection of the essence of humanity, he meant by the latter the essence of human community: "A human for himself is human (in the ordinary sense); human with human - the unity of I and Thou - is God... The individual person possesses neither the essence of humanity in himself as a moral being, nor in himself as a thinking being. The essence of humanity is contained only in the community and the unity of person with person; it is a unity, however, which rests on the reality of the distinction between I and Thou."
Sir Lloyd Geering in 2: Ludwig Feuerbach "God is Human"
from Religious Trailblazers
This is why we must party, people.
PS. You can listen to the talks here for $2.50. PLUS there's one more next Tuesday called Jung and Global Unity. Check it out!
Feuerbach saw in the Holy Trinity a symbol of the essential importance of human community, a theme on which he himself placed great emphasis. For when he spoke of human creativity and greatness, he was not thinking of the individual but of humans in community. So he said: "the secret of the Trinity is the secret of communal and social life : it is the truth that no being - man, God or ego - is for itself alone a true, perfect and absolute being." This, thought Feuerbach was an unconscious acknowledgement of the true nature of the human condition as essentially communal...
So when Feuerbach contended that the concept of God was in reality the projection of the essence of humanity, he meant by the latter the essence of human community: "A human for himself is human (in the ordinary sense); human with human - the unity of I and Thou - is God... The individual person possesses neither the essence of humanity in himself as a moral being, nor in himself as a thinking being. The essence of humanity is contained only in the community and the unity of person with person; it is a unity, however, which rests on the reality of the distinction between I and Thou."
Sir Lloyd Geering in 2: Ludwig Feuerbach "God is Human"
from Religious Trailblazers
This is why we must party, people.
PS. You can listen to the talks here for $2.50. PLUS there's one more next Tuesday called Jung and Global Unity. Check it out!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
ANATOMY OF CLOUDS
Here is an early remix I've done of an excerpt from an anonymous work of Christian mysticism, The Cloud of Unknowing. The idea is to replace praying with playing, and God with a party, to eliminate confusion. Seeing as we all know from experience that partying is real and feels excellent. Still some room for improvement but not a bad start!
Saturday, June 11, 2011
WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT!
X
Inbox
X
Inbox
| May 28 |
bq,
Cad é do sheoladh poist?
ó Caroline
| May 28 |
Mo sheoladh, go dtà 12.06.2011 :
B**** Q****
c/o K"""" F""""
18 Cappagh Drive
Portstewart, BT557SU
United Kingdom
Le grá
B**** ó C****
| Caroline Anderson |
| May 28 |
| May 30 (13 days ago) |
Je n'ai pas compris, desole ma chere.
Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 21:05:42 +1200
Subject: Re: a sheoladh
From: crystaldiamondunlimited@gmail.com
To: verydesperate@hotmail.com
Date: Sat, 28 May 2011 21:05:42 +1200
Subject: Re: a sheoladh
From: crystaldiamondunlimited@gmail.
To: verydesperate@hotmail.com
| May 30 (13 days ago) |
I blame google translate.
I said "keep me posted, not sure what I'm sending you yet" ... but when I just translated it back it goes "to keep getting me! Not sure what you sent yet" which doesn't quite correlate.
El mundo esta muy loco!
| May 31 (12 days ago) |
si hombre si
I'll be back in dublin from mid june to mid july. Then, hopefully, london town. I hope i don't miss out on post because of location, the idea the some epistolary content becomes redundant because the receiver is east rather than north is too tragic
Soon yo
B
 |
Friday, June 10, 2011
PARTICLE ON A WAVE
For my birthday last year my sister Joanna wrote me a rap and then rapped it into my voicemail in the morning. It said stuff like The way she behave, particle on a wave and She cries all the time but she doesn't mind. She wasn't wrong, although late last year I did hang my blanket of sadness on the line during a session of gong therapy, (which is another story altogether) and have been much more chipper since. Keanu said it best when discussing Point Break on Japanese TV :
you learn a lot about yourself when that water jacks up.
Funnily enough Jung also had something to say on the matter :
Everything is riddlesome to one who is becoming, but not to one who is. He who suffers from riddles should take thought of his lowest condition; we solve riddles from which we suffer, but not those which please us.
To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. In the depths being is not an unconditional persistance but an endlessly slow growth. You think you are standing still like swamp water but slowly you flow into the sea that covers the earths greatest deeps, and is so vast that firm land seems only an island embedded in the womb of the immeasurable sea.
As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world have brought you.
C.G Jung, 'One of the Lowly', LIBER SECUNDUS, from LIBER NOVUS or RED BOOK
FYI if you are in Wellington Sir Lloyd Geering who has a Doctor in Divinity is doing a series of talks entitled Jung and the Unconscious, at St Andrews church, for the next 3 Tuesdays.
Details here.
you learn a lot about yourself when that water jacks up.
Funnily enough Jung also had something to say on the matter :
Everything is riddlesome to one who is becoming, but not to one who is. He who suffers from riddles should take thought of his lowest condition; we solve riddles from which we suffer, but not those which please us.
To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. In the depths being is not an unconditional persistance but an endlessly slow growth. You think you are standing still like swamp water but slowly you flow into the sea that covers the earths greatest deeps, and is so vast that firm land seems only an island embedded in the womb of the immeasurable sea.
As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world have brought you.
C.G Jung, 'One of the Lowly', LIBER SECUNDUS, from LIBER NOVUS or RED BOOK
FYI if you are in Wellington Sir Lloyd Geering who has a Doctor in Divinity is doing a series of talks entitled Jung and the Unconscious, at St Andrews church, for the next 3 Tuesdays.
Details here.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
SO SECRET, SO EVERYWHERE
Sometimes I have been known to find myself on a buzz that no-one in my vicinity is on. This can be slightly awkward for human relations, but no matter what, there are always radical dead friends and live ones too who have been on that buzz and recorded it between some pages, in the form of sonic vibrations or papier mache and through their art, give solidarity to an indescribably visceral state.
Transcendental heavyweight Ralph Waldo Emerson can be relied upon to dip your situation in poetry. Here are some pearls from Nature.
The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in literature, - in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born....
In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humoured inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
Transcendental heavyweight Ralph Waldo Emerson can be relied upon to dip your situation in poetry. Here are some pearls from Nature.
The advancing man discovers how deep a property he has in literature, - in all fable as well as in all history. He finds that the poet was no odd fellow who described strange and impossible situations, but that universal man wrote by his pen a confession true for one and true for all. His own secret biography he finds in lines wonderfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was born....
In every work of genius we recognise our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humoured inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
CHAINZ
All the events in a man's life would accordingly stand in two fundamentally different kinds of connection: firstly, in the objective, causal connection of the natural process; secondly, in a subjective connection which exists only in relation to the individual who experiences it, and which is thus as subjective as his own dreams.
. . . . That both kinds of connection exist simultaneously, and the selfsame event, although a link in two totally different chains, nevertheless falls into place in both, so that the fate of one individual invariably fits the fate of the other, and each is the hero of his own drama while simultaneously figuring in a drama foreign to him - this is something that surpasses our powers of comprehension, and can only be conceived as possible by virtue of the most wonderful pre-established harmony.
From Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, C.G Jung
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
SPRING!!!!!!!!!!!
Whoops, here's some more :
Jung wrote that it was a difficult task to differentiate the personal and collective psyche. One of the factors one came up against was the persona - one's "mask" or "role." This represented the segment of the collective psyche that one mistakenly regarded as individual. When one analyzed this, the personality dissolved into the collective psyche, which resulted in the release of a stream of fantasies: "All the treasures of mythological thinking and feeling are unlocked." The difference between this state and insanity lay in the fact that it was intentional.
Two possibilities arose: one could attempt to regressively restore persona and return to the prior state, but it was impossible to get rid of the unconscious. Alternatively, one could accept the condition of godlikeness. However, there was a third way: the hermeneutic treatment of creative fantasies. This was the process of individuation.
From "A New Spring Life", RED BOOK or LIBER NOVUS, C.G Jung
Edited and introduced by Sonu Shamdasani
Jung wrote that it was a difficult task to differentiate the personal and collective psyche. One of the factors one came up against was the persona - one's "mask" or "role." This represented the segment of the collective psyche that one mistakenly regarded as individual. When one analyzed this, the personality dissolved into the collective psyche, which resulted in the release of a stream of fantasies: "All the treasures of mythological thinking and feeling are unlocked." The difference between this state and insanity lay in the fact that it was intentional.
Two possibilities arose: one could attempt to regressively restore persona and return to the prior state, but it was impossible to get rid of the unconscious. Alternatively, one could accept the condition of godlikeness. However, there was a third way: the hermeneutic treatment of creative fantasies. This was the process of individuation.
From "A New Spring Life", RED BOOK or LIBER NOVUS, C.G Jung
Edited and introduced by Sonu Shamdasani
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
THE BLOSS
Party Artists are renowned for their extraordinarily high albedo's. That's a word I learnt from the mustachioed charisma laden Sean O'Brien while looking at the moon late last year. It refers to the reflectivity of a surface and I use it simplistically and loosely because that's my style. We as Party Artists are a reflective bunch. Synchronistically we can see that the past is shaping the future and it is in our interests to contemplate what's happened thus far.
Sean O'Brien also goes by the name Joe Blossom and is releasing an album this Thursday. He used to play in The Losers with Lynton Denovan (Satanic Rockers) and Dan Lucka (FFM) who is my current roomie in a House On A Hill. Only for a few more weeks though,
due to the lamentable fact that :
Losers never congregate for long, it's one of the laws of nature - S. O'B
Dan Lucka, holding and reviewing:
Couldn't wait to review this one folks. Joe Blossom has made a sophisticated leap since his inelegant days with The Losers. His new band of discerning musicians, summon a tender sway and sensitive boogie through their nocturnal pop and soaring sonics. Their debut album evokes the optimism of the night, its dance floors and love. You would have to be a loser to miss the album release of Wellington’s most dapper band from 8pm this Thursday at the SFBH.
- DAL
Sean O'Brien also goes by the name Joe Blossom and is releasing an album this Thursday. He used to play in The Losers with Lynton Denovan (Satanic Rockers) and Dan Lucka (FFM) who is my current roomie in a House On A Hill. Only for a few more weeks though,
due to the lamentable fact that :
Losers never congregate for long, it's one of the laws of nature - S. O'B
Dan Lucka, holding and reviewing:
Joe Blossom – Nocturnes
- DAL
Sunday, May 8, 2011
GENTLE AWAKENING
If you live in Wellington, please go to Dan Lucka's somnambulant art show at Photospace on Courtenay Place above the Sahara kebab shop...If not, here is a poignant rendition of someone discovering their Party Within by Rilke :
It might be little more than a year ago, that something strange happened to him in the castle garden which sloped down fairly steeply to the sea. Walking up and down with a book, as was his wont, it occurred to him to lean against a forking of two branches, at about the level of his shoulder in a shrub-like tree, and immediately he felt himself so pleasantly supported in this attitude and given such ample rest, that he remained like this, without reading, completely absorbed into Nature, in a state of almost unconscious contemplation. Gradually his attention was awakened by a hitherto unknown sensation: it was as if almost imperceptible vibrations were passing from the interior of the tree into him; he explained this to himself without any difficulty by supposing that a wind, not otherwise noticeable and which was, perhaps, creeping over the slope close to the ground, was making itself felt in the wood, although he had to acknowledge that the trunk seemed too stout to be so markedly affected by such a slight movement of air. What interested him particularly was not, however, this idea or one of a similar kind, but he was more and more surprised, indeed impressed, by the effect produced in himself by what was passing over into him without ceasing: he felt he had never been filled with more delicate vibrations, his body was being treated in some sort like a soul, and made capable of receiving a degree of influence which could not really have been felt at all in the usual well-defined clarity of physical conditions. In addition to that, he could not, in the first moments, properly distinguish which sense it was by which he was receiving so delicate and pervading a communication; furthermore, the condition it was producing within him so perfect and persistent, different from all others, but so little to be represented by the heightening of anything he had ever experienced, that, for all its delicious quality, he could not think of calling it pleasure. All the same, endeavouring always to account for the least perceptible experiences, he insistently asked himself what was happening to him and almost immediately found an expression which satisfied him, as he said aloud to himself that he had reached the other side of Nature. As happens sometimes in a dream, the expression gave him pleasure, and he believed it to be almost completely apt. Everywhere and more and more regularly filled with this impulse which kept recurring at strangely regular intervals, his body became indescribably touching to him and of no other use than that he might be present in it, purely and cautiously, exactly like a ghost, already living elsewhere, that sadly enters what has already been gently laid aside, in order to belong once more, though even absentmindedly, to a world once felt so indispensible. Looking round him slowly, without otherwise altering his position, he recognized everything, remembered it, smiled at it as it were with distant affection, let it be, like something known long ago, that had once, in former circumstances, been connected with him. He looked at a passing bird, a shadow attracted his attention, even the path itself, the way it went on and passed out of sight, filled him with thoughtful insight, which seemed to him so much the purer in proportion as he knew himself to be independent of it.
From An Experience, SELECTED WORKS Volume 1 PROSE
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Saturday, April 23, 2011
NO. 5
Recently I had a magical epic wig out I might tell you more about later. It involved a cocophany of wild sensations (including that of being a dolphin) and mechanical re-enaction of significant events from the past. In the morning I felt like I'd turned back into a baby, did a wee on the floor then accidentally took a bus to the beach in Williamstown instead of going to work at Handsome Steve's. There I dropped my phone into the sea, saw the sun turn into ocean and sparkle dust flying off everything and was pretty sure of my mad skills in the field of wizardry. Over the next few days I acted out (in my own small way) what seemed to me to be events from the future.
Right before it happened I filled up two pink journals which I entitled Showtime Synergy and just now have read an excerpt about synergistic thinking. Would you like to read it too?
Fifth chakra thinking adds a dimension of reason that transcends, yet includes, the holism of the fourth chakra. What now emerges is synergy--a word for situations in which the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. Once synergistic thinking is in gear, relationships among events or ideas are no longer proportional, nor are they additive; rather, they are seen as part of an emerging global order. Meaning no longer emerges from definition, but from interaction. Events are caused as much by a pull from the future as a push from the past. And the very act of playing the game has an unsettling way of changing the rules.
Like a rocket boost into high orbit. fifth-chakra thinking enables a person to mentally soar above any system of which he is a part. Once there, he contemplates the whole from a vantage point inaccessible to any component of the system. This allows him to devise ways to manipulate that system once he is back inside of it. From this panoramic view of reality, there is truth-seeing at a single glance. He places each idea alongside numerous others, envisioning how its truth or falsity influences the truth or falsity of the others. This whole-systems view broadens even the wide-angle perspective of the fourth chakra. It enables him to encompass a network of ideas and coordinate their relationships to achieve a specific purpose. He no longer interprets events in terms of his personal feelings about them, but in terms of where they fit into the grand scheme.
From Chapter 13 : Madness and Creative Genius
-- Healing the Split by John Nelson
To say sorry to Steve for not coming to work I gave him Tape Man Goes to Outer Space on CD, an original piece of The Manifestival and an R.D Laing book about how no-one is REALLY crazy are they? with a drawing about the special day I had inside the cover.
He was cool and decided not to fire me.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
WEE-OO-WEE-OO-WE
Hi everyone. Today I'm starting a new life again. Being a Leo (cat sign) I find it difficult to stop starting new lives all the time. Also a tell-tale trait of practising party artists. This time I will be perched upon a hill overlooking one of my favourite bodies of water (the sea) with some of my favourite humans, all of whom have been aforementioned at this P * A * R * T * Y. So I'm majorly psyched.
To celebrate I will channel another of my favourite humans, Kurt Vonnegut (RIP) directly from his book Wampeters, Fomas & Granfalloons, a collection of essays and speeches and interviews and whatnot. This is about what writers, and artists in general, are doing here. From an interview in Playboy magazine :
PLAYBOY: Beyond the fact that it's become a profitable way to make a living, why do you write?
VONNEGUT: My motives are political. I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how writers should serve. Mainly, I think they should be - and biologically have to be - agents of change. For the better, we hope.
PLAYBOY: Biologically?
VONNEGUT: Writers are specialized cells in the social organism. They are evolutionary cells. Mankind is trying to become something else; it's experimenting with new ideas all the time. And writers are a means of introducing new ideas into the society, and also a means of responding symbolically to life. I don't think we're in control of what we do.
PLAYBOY: What is in control?
VONNEGUT: Mankinds wish to improve itself.
PLAYBOY: In a Darwinian sense?
VONNEGUT: I'm not very grateful to Darwin, although I suspect he was right. His ideas make people crueler. Darwinism says to them that people who get sick deserve to be sick, that people who are in trouble deserve to be in trouble. When anybody dies, cruel Darwinists imagine we are obviously improving ourselves in some way. And any man who's on top is there because he's a superior animal. That's the social Darwinism of the last century, and it continues to boom. But forget Darwin. Writers are specialized cells doing whatever we do, and we're expressions of the entire society - just as the sensory cells on the surface of your body are in the service of your body as a whole. And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms. I have the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know, coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists - all artists - should be treasured as alarm systems.
To celebrate I will channel another of my favourite humans, Kurt Vonnegut (RIP) directly from his book Wampeters, Fomas & Granfalloons, a collection of essays and speeches and interviews and whatnot. This is about what writers, and artists in general, are doing here. From an interview in Playboy magazine :
PLAYBOY: Beyond the fact that it's become a profitable way to make a living, why do you write?
VONNEGUT: My motives are political. I agree with Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini that the writer should serve his society. I differ with dictators as to how writers should serve. Mainly, I think they should be - and biologically have to be - agents of change. For the better, we hope.
PLAYBOY: Biologically?
VONNEGUT: Writers are specialized cells in the social organism. They are evolutionary cells. Mankind is trying to become something else; it's experimenting with new ideas all the time. And writers are a means of introducing new ideas into the society, and also a means of responding symbolically to life. I don't think we're in control of what we do.
PLAYBOY: What is in control?
VONNEGUT: Mankinds wish to improve itself.
PLAYBOY: In a Darwinian sense?
VONNEGUT: I'm not very grateful to Darwin, although I suspect he was right. His ideas make people crueler. Darwinism says to them that people who get sick deserve to be sick, that people who are in trouble deserve to be in trouble. When anybody dies, cruel Darwinists imagine we are obviously improving ourselves in some way. And any man who's on top is there because he's a superior animal. That's the social Darwinism of the last century, and it continues to boom. But forget Darwin. Writers are specialized cells doing whatever we do, and we're expressions of the entire society - just as the sensory cells on the surface of your body are in the service of your body as a whole. And when a society is in great danger, we're likely to sound the alarms. I have the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. You know, coal miners used to take birds down into the mines with them to detect gas before men got sick. The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam. They chirped and keeled over. Nobody important cared. But I continue to think that artists - all artists - should be treasured as alarm systems.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
BABIN'
Coco Solid is my fave NZ rapper and also my Number 1 Love-Life Confidante. We have been (knowingly) having mirror epifs since 2008 and both have funny feelings we are in for some cosmic collabs in future. Last weekend when I was in Auckland my other friend was going to a wedding so she dropped the kids off at nana's then me off at Coco's to stay the night. I got to meet her herb dealer and found out that the King of Herbs is in fact, Basil.
Here is a beautiful poem from her new mag PHILOSOFLYGIRL which you can order here. It brings a tear to my eyes.
HE AROHA PONO
The real elite are never elitist.
On my behalf only, I decline the matter they feed us.
Know my quest was relative to yours, to the grave from the fetus.
I own up to lost property, I am not a defeatist.
I know my own style. I live wise-awake to my taste.
Now silent beauty emerges at the extroverts wake.
I make proud but fragile moves within my own time.
My finest moments are my weakest, slain in existential recline.
Aroha pono can burst forth when vanity proves pointless to shine.
Not only yours, dynamic plights shift behind a trillion masks
I don't ask you to answer what I have asked.
You're not mine to solder to my clutch
But to be kept in circulation
And like warm zen minutes
I allow you to pass
Here is a beautiful poem from her new mag PHILOSOFLYGIRL which you can order here. It brings a tear to my eyes.
HE AROHA PONO
The real elite are never elitist.
On my behalf only, I decline the matter they feed us.
Know my quest was relative to yours, to the grave from the fetus.
I own up to lost property, I am not a defeatist.
I know my own style. I live wise-awake to my taste.
Now silent beauty emerges at the extroverts wake.
I make proud but fragile moves within my own time.
My finest moments are my weakest, slain in existential recline.
Aroha pono can burst forth when vanity proves pointless to shine.
Not only yours, dynamic plights shift behind a trillion masks
I don't ask you to answer what I have asked.
You're not mine to solder to my clutch
But to be kept in circulation
And like warm zen minutes
I allow you to pass
Thursday, March 10, 2011
DARK STARS ON JOHNSTON ST
If you are in Melbourne this weekend I highly recommend checking out FFM at the Old Bar, Saturday 12th of March from 9pm. For a measly $6. Rumour has it another sparkly star from a particularly hygienic band from NZ may be joining them. Is it all just HOT GOSSIP?
Nobody knows!
Here's a story I did for threethousand in its extended form :
Uniting in a rare interstellar constellation, Droszkhi (Torben Tilly) and Riffkah (Bek Coogan) have washed ashore from a land rich in rainfall and boiling mud while Electric Bongo Bongo (Steve Heather) has beamed his way directly from efficient Berlin. With the express purpose of leading you on a sonic exploration into deep space.
In Melbourne touring their timeless 12" Still Life With Black Light, produced during a residency in Worpswede, Germany. An atmospheric vinyl disc that, when played right, hypnotically releases ethereal radiophonic mist, rising from a molten river of rumbling rocky riffs which, while dormant, lie housed within a series of concurrent circular grooves. Prolonged listening may awaken that age-old realisation that, solid as matter may seem, it is actually made up of a rhythmic myriad of jittery harmonic sparkles.
More than just a phase, FFM is sonic salve to the psychedelic senses.
Monday, February 14, 2011
WHAT BECAME OF THE O.G MANIFESTIVAL
In September last year I had my first official art show in Melbourne, The Manifestival, for party artists. Party generation is at the heart of any official punk document a party artist produces. We don't like to produce heaps because it's a waste of resources, so we tend to be very careful yet also tantalisingly loose about our usage and re-usage of materials. I zenly hand drew scores of fliers on the backs of envelopes and other half-used pieces of paper.
After I took it down I promptly crossed out the parts that had already changed and cut it into puzzle pieces to distribute as gifts. Here's a piece I gave to my main man at NZ Archives, Geordy Muir, when he picked me up from the airport.
After I took it down I promptly crossed out the parts that had already changed and cut it into puzzle pieces to distribute as gifts. Here's a piece I gave to my main man at NZ Archives, Geordy Muir, when he picked me up from the airport.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
PERPETUAL GENIES
Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(from Emerson's Transcendental Vocabulary by Mary Alice Ihrig)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(from Emerson's Transcendental Vocabulary by Mary Alice Ihrig)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
COHESIVE HOLE
Remember how I harked back to my time in Spain a few weeks ago with some travel excerpts from the blue diaries? Well I left my notebook at the A1 internet joint that day and only just realised.
Lucky they still had it!
Here's some more :
I'd been thinking of studying at university but have since realised being a rogue scholar is the life for a party artist. NRG is precious and money takes time to acquire, so why not take love-soaked lessons from your friends for free? (not necessarily in a kinky way)
One of my dead friends J.Krishnamurti said this to me from between the pages of The Flame of Attention in the library today :
One needs tremendous energy to meditate and friction is a wastage of energy. When in one's daily life there is a great deal of friction, of conflict between people, and dislike of the work which one does, there is a wastage of energy. And to enquire really most profoundly - not superficially, not verbally - one must go very deeply into oneself, into one's own mind and see why we live as we do, for meditation is the release of creative energy.
I was like "yip" but silently on account of being in the library.
Lucky they still had it!
Here's some more :
I'd been thinking of studying at university but have since realised being a rogue scholar is the life for a party artist. NRG is precious and money takes time to acquire, so why not take love-soaked lessons from your friends for free? (not necessarily in a kinky way)
One of my dead friends J.Krishnamurti said this to me from between the pages of The Flame of Attention in the library today :
One needs tremendous energy to meditate and friction is a wastage of energy. When in one's daily life there is a great deal of friction, of conflict between people, and dislike of the work which one does, there is a wastage of energy. And to enquire really most profoundly - not superficially, not verbally - one must go very deeply into oneself, into one's own mind and see why we live as we do, for meditation is the release of creative energy.
I was like "yip" but silently on account of being in the library.
HOW IT GOT IN THERE
Found out the answer to my exclamation of a couple of posts ago :
All Buddhist teachings are the outcome of a warm heart cherished for all sentient beings, and not of a cold intellect which tries to unveil the secrets of existence by logic. That is to say, Buddhism is personal experience and not impersonal philosophy.
Dr Suzuki in Essays in Zen Buddhism
(But I got it from The Way of Action)
This may go some way to explaining why I dub my sensational experience 'The Party Within' and not 'The Factoid Within'.
All Buddhist teachings are the outcome of a warm heart cherished for all sentient beings, and not of a cold intellect which tries to unveil the secrets of existence by logic. That is to say, Buddhism is personal experience and not impersonal philosophy.
Dr Suzuki in Essays in Zen Buddhism
(But I got it from The Way of Action)
This may go some way to explaining why I dub my sensational experience 'The Party Within' and not 'The Factoid Within'.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
ART STAR SYNCHRONICITY
Double page spread, Moonee Ponds, 2010.
Want to hear a little 'dote about a funny thing that happened?
A couple of weeks ago while visiting DPAG, (Dunedin Public Art Gallery) I found myself lingering over Ronnie Van Hout's book I've Abandoned Me, a companion piece to his show of the same name that I'd seen in Wellington and loved deeply (circa 2004). On about my third visit it kept absorbing my attention. I gave in and splashed out thirty big ones so I could take it home.
One evening within the same week I was lying on some grass in the town belt drawing in my yellow fluoro* notebook. Currently I am working on a world changing (for me at least) party philosophy book that is dedicated to my sweet friend and former colleague Vito. He looks like Prince but slightly taller and possibly a better cook. I was writing on the page in a semi-whimsical font : This Gentle Revolution is for Vito. While I was doing that a little fluffy dog went nuts at me, yapping uncontrollably for a really long time. Her owner tried to appease her to no avail. She assumed it was because I was lying down. I noted the presence of the unruly puppy, whose name was Poppy, on the page with my pen.
Then last Thursday some friends opened a new gallery down here,
rice and beans. I helped out cutting fruit and pouring drinks for a while then hung in the VIP lounge low-key studio chill out zone next door. Who should I happen upon? Ronnie Van Hout with his lady Poppy and tiny son Vito. Ha!
*Not actually fluoro but says 'fluoro' on the cover.
Monday, February 7, 2011
ACTION STATIONS
'Mastery of the inner world' wrote Carol Baynes, 'with a relative contempt for the outer, must inevitably lead to great catastrophes. Mastery of the outer world, to the exclusion of the inner, delivers us over to the daemonic forces of the latter and keeps us barbaric despite outward forms of culture. The solution cannot be found with deriding Eastern spirituality as impotent, or by mistrusting science as a destroyer of humanity. We have to see that the spirit must lean on science as its guide in the world of reality, and that science must turn to the spirit for the meaning of life.'Carol Baynes in The Secret of the Golden Flower
As quoted by Christmas Humphries in The Way of Action
Lately I've been reading a few zen books and realising more and more that I've been groovin' to the tune of Buddhist thought convincingly disguised as my own thought for quite a while now.
How did that get in there!
Friday, February 4, 2011
PARTY ART ZINE
If you're in Dunedin this Wednesday 9th of Feb come down to Mou Very on George St for the launch of celebrated Zen Punk Party Artist Kerry Ann Lee's radical hot new zine, Permanent Vacation, from 8pm. DJ's! Babes! Small Spaces! Dancing! MAGAZINES!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
DIAMOND AND PEARLS
Stay tuned for a fresh middle-class remix of the old Sanskrit classic : Diamond Sutra, Jewel of Transcendental Wisdom. Thus named because diamonds cut through the illusion of life not being a party.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
SOUND AND VISION
When I became a party, in late 2009, a series of synchronistic events happened in my life, running as a parallel commentary to the radical changes occurring in my mind. I was being flooded with images and emotions from what had once been my unconscious and was now just another part of the party known as Caroline Anderson. This came as an effervescent surprise to me. I hadn't been expecting to change so suddenly and was rapidly and instinctively researching wtf was going on, mostly via wikipedia, music and books full of solidarity that happened into my life at the time.
A few days after things started getting freaky a guy called Leon Salom called me asking if I wanted to make and select costumes for an ABC documentary called MIND based on Tom Cho's excellent collection of short stories, Look Who's Morphing.
Of course I jumped at the chance!
The book is comprised largely of fantasies he had while transitioning from being a woman into a man. He morphs with wanton abandon from one character to the next, often feeling misunderstood and lashing out dramatically. Secretly I was doing that too but with more blogging, drawing, dancing, rearranging, swimming and long walks to music than becoming a giant and destroying little cities.
In one of the fantasies he is a huge 80's cock-rock god with 50's hair smashing up Tokyo with his guitar (pictured above before destruction ensues) and in another he is mid-morph into Godzilla stamping all over his native suburb of Bulleen, and eventually vomiting blue. There was also a kinbaku (delicate form of Japanese bondage) expert on set for when tiny ladies tied him up. My friend Andy painted the clouds. The gaffer, Ed, had also worked on another totally freaky video I did costume for a few years earlier in Wellington.
If you live in Australia check it out on ABC1, Tuesday Feb 8th at 10pm.
Like Jung when he had his fantasies, the content of my mind got really ancient and really futuristic at the same time. I could see a lifelong-and-beyond party art project coming to fruition before my minds eye. The old thinking voice in my head shorted out and notions seemed to be bubbling up joyfully from an eternal fountain in the nucleus of my heart and pumping tingles all around my body. Ideas were bombarding me so thick and fast I became a bit of a raver for a while, not realising it takes more than a sentence or two to revolutionise.
I thought : OMG I CAN CHANGE THE WORLD RIGHT NOW WITH THIS NEW-FOUND INFO ! EVERYONE IS GOING TO LOVE THIS FEELING SO MUCH, I BETTER TELL THEM ABOUT IT QUICKLY !!
Then one day after being on set at MIND in Prahran I went to my friend Andrew Liversidge's masters show at VCA. He had recorded all the texts his girlfriend sent him while they were together and made a sculpture of a graph of the velocity of their relationship based on syllables per text throughout the duration of the relationship. He made it out of romance novels. I stood on my tip-toes, extended my arm and took a shot looking down from the top.
It gave me this sneaky message.
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