Saturday, March 20, 2004
BACK FROM NYC [Meera]
Just came back from a journalism field trip to NYC; never had been there before. While at Columbia University I meandered off and found this:
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4:38 PM
THE ROOT OF ATTENTION [Matthew]
Great (p)review, Wrench. 'Life As a House' is definitely near the top of the list of movies to catch. Hannah and I recently re-watched 'American Beauty' on dvd. I was struck by the pervading, almost spooky, sense of calm primarily in two characters -- Kevin Spacey and Wes Bentley (who plays the boyfriend, 'Ricky Fitts'). The movie depicts suburban dysfunction, baby boomer narcissism, psychosexual repression, and the horrors all three can inflict upon the younger generations x, y, z. It definitely points towards the spiritual, as you point out.
Along the lines of the 'root of attention', let me highly recommend the new flick 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.' It is a powerhouse. We saw it last night, and my breath has yet to return.
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9:18 AM
"LIFE AS A HOUSE" [wrench]
recently caught this film - damn, what a tearjerker: kevin kline plays an unhappy architect, who, upon being fired, finds out he's terminally ill w/ only months to live. from there, kline decides to build the house he's wanted to for over 25 years, reconciling w/ his estranged teenage son (played by hayden christensen) and his ex-wife (kristin scott thomas) in the process. the film left me w/ a simple but insistent theme: pay attention. if you're unhappy, notice your unhappiness. if you're ecstatic, notice that, too. in the words of david deida, open, to whatever textures of awareness may be arising right now. if meditation is a rehearsal for death, then meditation-in-action is the full engagement of life. from movies like american beauty to the razor's edge to grand canyon (also w/ kline), I'm left w/ that same intuition, one that points to the buddha's final, everlasting truth: abide as Emptiness, embrace all Form.
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7:05 AM
WHAT IS FLICKR? [coolmel]
Originally uploaded by 
coolmel. Posted by
coolmel from
"The idea for Flickr occurred in November 2003 when one of Ludicorp's team members was on a business trip to New York and contracted a miserable case of food poisoning. Up all night, feverish and unable to sleep, he had a brainstorm: what if we put live chat together with social networks and enabled people to share media with one another in real time? He brought the idea back to the Ludicorp team in Vancouver, British Columbia where they mulled it over..."
it's still in Beta but i'm already loving it. very neat application made with Flash. way better than any other social networking service i tried. it also has support for major blogging tools (Blogger, Typepad, Livejournal, Movable Type, etc...) it's Friendster to the Nth power. try it.
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1:59 AM
Friday, March 19, 2004
GOD AND ANIMATION [.j.evonne.]
Konstantin Bronzit is an amazing Russian animator. While at the Nuart to see The Same River Twice Matt and I caught Bronzit's short entitled The God. For five minutes we laughed our heads off while a bronze Shiva got all bent out of shape over a little fly buzzing around.
I must say, for a destroyer god, you think he'd be able to take a fly.
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5:25 PM
BLOGGING WITH PASSION AND COMPASSION [coolmel]
the first time i've heard of blogging i thought it was just another stupid fad. i mean why the fuck read someone else's diary of cats, travelogues, heartaches, triumphs, newborns, geeky tips, naked amateurs, worthless political opinions, narcissistic activisms, and useless spiritual egotistic rants? "oh you mean you're enlightened? wow! fuck you! now go get a real job!" as usual, i was wrong. it turned out that these are the stuff that make this boring world go round. all i needed was an inspiration and soon enough i found myself posting my heart out--evangelizing, sharing, ranting... with passion and compassion. now excuse me while i step outside and go get myself a life.
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7:50 AM
HOW TO DEFEAT BLOGGER'S BLOCK [Paul]
Google.com has currently indexed 4,285,199,774 web pages, and I can't find a single thing to write about. Maybe it's because I'd rather be reading Flak Magazine's "A Review of God," a collection of essays all about The Man, including words from a Deist, a Catholic, an Atheist, an Agnostic, a Seeker, and a Jew. And yet frankly I don't see what all the hubbub is about over there at Flak, for we already know who the one true and living god is.
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4:32 AM
YOU TOO CAN ROCK WITH THE BIG BOYS [.j.evonne.]
Our little bloggie gettin' more action than these hard core stars...
After one livejournal post friends in MA are telling me about working with Tim Berners-Lee while others are back to discussing Wiley Wiggins' ebook (he's the kid from Waking Life and Dazed & Confused, his art is worth checking out).
Ah, the social networks we weave....
Somebody needs to buy this guy another round, he found out my true identity.
-(Smartarse #5)-
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2:30 AM
Thursday, March 18, 2004
BRING THE SPIEL [wrench]
entertainment weekly rates their 25 funniest people in america, and raucous riot man chris rock is number one (the daily show, larry david, and dave chappelle trailing closely behind). good for rock. he's paid much respect to so many of comedy's greats: buddy hackett, redd foxx, brooks and reiner, lenny bruce, steve martin, mort sahl (along w/ the brothers: cosby, pryor, murphy). when too many stand-ups get suckered in by what jerry seinfeld calls the Hot Comedian Kit: tv show, record deal, book deal, awards show host - it's refreshing to see a humor man so relentlessly honest about stand-up and his desire to dish out comedy that comments, that aims to entertain and educate, especially on the little things: racism, abortion, poverty. (of course, comics needn't stop there: we await the funny men and women of tomorrow who will, perhaps, pull God's finger: "so I was levitating the other day, and in walks this archetype"..."zen master walks into a bar, and orders a Big Mind"..."just finished industrial reiki, and boy, are my chakras tired"...
but w/ comics like rock, we're certainly on our way.
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8:55 PM
LIVE POETRY [Matthew]
Integral VIP Saul Williams shows up in a Salon.com article on contemporary spoken word poetry. (You need to watch an ad to read the full article.) I'm in full accord with poetry regaining its live oral performance roots, or as the article says, from "Homer, Rumi, Allen Ginsberg, Chuck D." I'd add Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, Hildegard, St. Teresa -- they were poets!
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3:12 PM
TRIGGERHAPPY [.j.evonne.]
"If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream." Rene Magritte
My head is swirling today with anti-consumerist products, the difference between being gay and acting gay and other fruits of globalization.
What's the dream they're selling and are we buying it? With so much to wade through, it's becoming harder to buy any of it.
Apparently I've invested in a digcam on eBay, hence why you're being inundated with images. Here's one from the self-portrait icon folder, taken last night. Maybe our lovely Manifest host can replace that bad 2AM icon of mine with this.
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2:41 PM
OUTSIDER ART [Matthew]
Three blocks from where I work in Chicago, on the wonderfully named street 'Milwaukee Ave', is Intuit - 'A Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art'. The organization aims to 'recognize the creative work of individuals who demonstrate little influence from the mainstream art world - artists who instead seem motivated by their unique personal visions.' The muse bug can and does bite us all. Hooray to Intuit for giving venue to DIY artists who have caught the bug, and through whose artifacts healing and enrichment can spread throughout culture. May all catch that spirit.
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10:40 AM
WEAVING THE WEB [coolmel]
it's 1:58am. can't put myself to sleep. so might as well use this opportunity to thank this guy for creating something groovy which keeps me busy instead of me tossing and turning in my bed of nails.
The World Wide Web and the "Web of Life" - by Tim Berners-Lee
People have often asked me whether the Web design was influenced by Unitarian Universalist philosophy. I have to say that it wasn't explicitly, as I developed the Web well before I came across Unitarian Universalism at all. But looking back on it, I suppose that there are some parallels between the philosophies.
thanks Tim for weaving the Web. i now have 24/7 access to porn, shamanism, war in the middle east, the secrets of the vatican, scientific breakthroughs, new age, integral subculture, wisdom traditions, and pop culture. there. i'm sleepy now.
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1:58 AM
MR. ATLAS SHRUGS [Paul]
The greatest pleasure I've had in my employment with Integral Naked has been writing the biographies of the many diverse personalities we feature on the site. Case in point: Mr. Nathaniel Branden, former lover of Ayn Rand and expert on the psychology of self-esteem. For an alcoholic fuck-up on thin ice with just about everyone he knows, Branden is a much welcome kick in the ass. My ass. To wit:
It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.
Self-esteem entails the idea of feeling in control of your existence. This feeling requires that yu operate purposefully, since it is only through your goals and purposes that you can have any control over your life.
Live self-assertively. Bring into the world that which you think, value, and feel. Do not consign yourself to the unexpressed and unlived.
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12:52 AM
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
WAKING UP TO AN OVERMIND MEMORY [wrench]
I caught waking life during my first months in austin, tx. read a review in the chronicle and took off, a corndog paddling some place he'd never been, in a town he didn't know, toward folks he'd yet to meet. only to land at the alamo drafthouse, a wonderful old theater in downtown. inside, a long table bar hugged each aisle for chowing on-the-spot dinners or slugging pitchers of beer. anyhow, there was a wild local buzz to the movie, w/ much of the rough footage shot in town and director richard linklater being an austinite himself; even as a relative newcomer, outsider, in-settler, I had picked up an overmind, a culturally shared experience w/ these cats, a big fat sloppy communal feeling gushing in those affectionately worn seats. one dude just laaaaaaughed and laughed at the funny parts, a sort of winding up/sendoff laugh, that, in turn, steadily brought me and other filmgoers into spurts of our own. the experience left me w/ a warm, fuzzy feeling; sappy suds from the foam of a memory floatbob that is forever tied to austin, alamo, linklater, eye-gifting animation and noetic narrative...
one of my best nights, there :)
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10:48 PM
LINKLATER [Matthew]
Can you believe my surprise, when Hannah and I saw the hysterical School of Rock last fall, to learn that one of my favorite directors, Richard Linklater, made it? I love his work. Slacker is conceptually brilliant, Waking Life is intense, Before Sunrise has plenty of cool moments (though Ethan Hawke gets to be a bit much at times). Of course I'll always have a warm place in my heart for Dazed & Confused, which showcased early roles by cats such as Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Milla Jovovich, Adam Goldberg (I wanna dance!).
Matthew McConaughey gets all the best lines, including "That's what I love about them high school girls. I keep getting older, and they just stay the saaaame age." So yeah, Linklater rocks.
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9:15 PM
NO GOTHIC BABES HERE....YET [.j.evonne.]
Thanks for the WL, top inspiration in animation/exploration.
Want to do an animated documentary on ecstacy?
Seek the source of all awakeness...Waking Life 2: Electric Boogaloo!
We need some good aftereffects junkies/animators working off of DV footage like Flat Black (Bob Sabiston's rotoscoping studio). Are of you talented in such mystical ways?
One more photo from this weekends artshow, because she looks like a superhero:
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8:31 PM
MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY... [coolmel]
speaking of sleep cycles, there's no better animation to jar your concept of reality than the mind-blowing, dizzying, visuals and dialogues of this postmodern version of Groundhog Day --
...the film would focus on one man's intellectual journey as he was thrust into a series of encounters with outrageously quirky characters. "It's a film that I had in my mind for a long time," says Linklater. "It wouldn't have worked with live action. But then technology sort of caught up with it and allowed it to be made."
now if only they can make movies like this with Gothic babes...
(hey Paul, i wonder what your friend Matt T. thinks about this TedJesusChristGod... makes me feel shitty @#$! too...)
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4:32 AM
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
THE SLEEP-CYCLE & SPIRITUALITY [wrench]
it may help if a discussion of spirituality began w/ outlining ever-present states of consciousness: the radically noticeable fact that everyone wakes, dreams, and sleeps. that these three great natural states: waking, dreaming, deep dreamless sleep, are actually the gateways to body, mind, and spirit. and to consciously, deliberately explore or harness the potentials of those three great states, a wide array of meditative practices have organically developed: yoga, tai chi, sexual communion; visualization; bare-attention, self-inquiry, Zen, etc. a more integral spirituality, it seems, would acknowledge the importance of each practice, and make note of which state of consciousness they best enact.
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11:27 PM
THERE'S ROOM FOR GOTH IN THE SPIRITUAL SCENE. [Meera]
Without Faith
""Prove yourself to me, " you say
A skeptic waiting for a faulty word
A sole mistake, a lapse of timing
I release your arms to show you trust
To make the miracle, to will the rain
To part the seas, to press the wine from water
But without faith, I am nothing
To demand is to deny
For an instant you will see me
As I flicker from your eye
And while you hold your eyelids shut
The buttermilk will boil to blood
And onyx black, the net of sky falls to reveal the light beyond
And still you swear upon your heart
That you can taste the wind and hear the ground
Beneath you, yet you still refuse to see
With your doubt, all is comfort
We are all as we appear
No more questions left unanswered
No more wonder, no more fear
Nothing is beauty, nothing's feeling
Blood where there once was a soul
So I ask you, prove yourself
Make me believe that you are whole."
-ThouShaltNot
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6:52 PM
A RIDICULOUS BUMMER [Paul]
Matt Taibbi, my former editor at The Buffalo BEAST, is at it again with his Jesus obsession (last summer I went with Matt to a Six Flags theme park to see Growing Pains' Kirk Cameron -- now a Born Again Christian -- deliver a fire-and-brimstone speech to a throng a blue-meme whities). Here's a quote from a recent editorial for NY PressEnter The Passion of the Christ, a gigantic gore-fest designed to make us feel like shit. In that sense, it descends from the worst traditions of the Catholic Church, which has now spent two millennia enthusiastically laying this ridiculous bummer on the world population–though never with the aid of such great special effects.
That's all I need right now, to feel like more shit.
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1:23 PM
WHEN MIDNIGHT SIGHS [.j.evonne.]
"If and betting on an if, and if that if might have a chance to survive.
It runs in to twelve different ways of existing each with capacity to change it's mind.
The vibe says six, so be six, now it has a clone that is a bit more feminine.
Pondering the paces of what's going down....life, and the greeting is, "oh...it's you again."
Now come the images so many images. the painful colors and the bliss like tries.
I'm taking notes till the end of theatrics, then it stops, ends, dies....
Whatever is whatever, it calculates the karma.
And tries to adjust as it inquires what's shaking.
But through no eyes, I could see the entity....crying."
PMDawn, a break from the heavy political vibes between Haiti, Spain and our own rapidly-shifting futures. Democracy Now has updates on Aristide's return to the Caribbean as confrontations heat up close to home. This is going to be a very explosive year on all sides of the political fence; integral political theory needs to dig deep to find roots in the nondual awareness that knows that there are no sides to begin with.
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1:52 AM
Monday, March 15, 2004
THE AMERICAN SHAMAN [wrench]
"The soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all organs;. . . is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie. . . a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. . . When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins when it would be something of itself. The weakness of the will begins when the individual would be something of himself. All reform aims in some one particular to let the soul have its way through us;. . . to engage us to obey."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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11:48 PM
FROM MATTYD, ON INTEGRAL MUSIC [.j.evonne.]
My, that's quite an organ you've got there!
You will be filled with beaming light when you hear about the show that our boy MattyD played on Sunday evening. No, really. Beams of light shootin' right through you.
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8:40 PM
NEW LIFE [.j.evonne.]
From the Create:Fixate show on Saturday night. Thanks again for the Hildegard inspiration Mr. Dallman.
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8:26 PM
SOCIALISM IS NOT DEAD [coolmel]
after reading Ray Harris's, Left, Right or Just Plain Wrong?, i'm still scratching my head and wondering what partial truths can be applied from this seemingly constructive criticism of the Integral movement, specifically in politics. in the meantime, Ray Harris's words are still ringing in my ears... in stereo --
"In order to be taken seriously in the world of politics integral theory needs to grasp that outside the US socialism and Marxism are still taken seriously."
especially in light of recent developments in Spain.
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12:23 PM
HARRIS' POLEMIC [Matthew]
Thanks Paul, for the link. Always interesting to read various accounts of integral theory application. I'm not really sure how much Harris is in a position to give critique to I-I, though of course he has the right to do offer whatever opinions he likes. He kind of loses me in the first couple sentences, when he suggests that there is a "problem" with the integral political theory as described by Ken Wilber and Don Beck. Ken has made it clear that integral theory does not purport to be some sort of agenda, like Marxism. I don't expect integral political theory to be able to tell people "how to vote" and more than integral art theory will tell artists "how to make art" or integral medicine theory to tell doctors "how to heal". In writing about the Iraq war, Wilber said that there are good reasons to be for the war, and good reasons to be against it. The integral model doesn't by nature suggest one or the other. So in my mind, there is some degree of 'straw man' rhetoric in Harris' essay.
But what do I know, I'm just an artist.
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11:39 AM
GOING CAMPING WITH YOUR LAPTOP? [coolmel]
just make sure you check this in @ the airport. in a world drowning in oceans of data, this baby could either be your lifesaver, or just another piece of metal to pull you down the abyss. you decide. now where the hell is the bottle opener?
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7:37 AM
Sunday, March 14, 2004
SOMEWHERE IN OKLAHOMA [wrench]
the dust bowl has been cradle to some pretty interesting cats: from gary busey, to walter cronkite, to ken wilber (!) - native america's notables undoubtedly span the spectrum.
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9:37 PM
MEDITATIVE ART [Matthew]
Humbly, I've recently started a collaborative music experiment called Fantasia for Wine Glasses. If you like, you can read more about the project here. Basically, the injunction is to meditate as a group according to different styles (silent, singing, toasting w/ good wine) and after each session, make music using struck wine glasses as instruments. The aim to to sustain a group mind consciousness throughout the music-making. Yes, we get clinky.
Of course, I have a long way to go before I help facilitate and compose an artifact that is anywhere near as beautiful as this. Yet the journey of a million breaths begins with one, consciously.
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5:57 PM
"I LIVE NEAR THE CITY
WHERE THE RIVER IS IRISH GREEN" [coolmel]
Take a dip, take a sip, and taste your own reflection...
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12:35 AM
