Friday, June 11, 2010

Songs of love and why it doesn't all fall apart

Twice in the last twelve hours, this song has come up. It seems just to post it now.
This is Hurdy Gurdy Man by Donovan. The rhythm comes from the laugh of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and relates to a universal cadence that all things follow.
There's an extra verse written by George Harrison.
When the truth gets buried deep,
Beneath a thousand years of sleep,
Time demands a turn-around,
And once again the truth is found,
Awakening the Hurdy Gurdy Man,
Who comes singing songs of love.

Here's a performance with that verse.





As we consider our very survival, threatened by a carelessly made wound to the planet, a wound emitting toxins into the sea that ultimately supports our life as much as the sun  and the air, let's take a minute and consider WHY we need to survive.

The introduction to this Shawn Phillips song is on point.




How important are our lives?
Do we care enough to put aside our greed and fear, and just help one another live?
I'm not a meditator, and my spiritual center is, well, not all that centered. But I have an idea of how the whole thing might work. It's fuzzy, as is much unscientific thought on the subject, but science and faith are intersecting in intriguing ways. There's no reason that atoms should even hold together, given that one of the three particles is neutral, and the other two, being positive and negative, should repel each other.
Therefore, since everything is composed of atoms, why doesn't it all fall apart?
On possibility is will, consciousness, God.
In The Cosmic Jackpot, physicist Paul Davies offers, along with other possibilities, a consensus theory. Everything exists because an aggregate consciousness has willed it to do so. Some call that The Universe. Others call it God.
Others just see it as us.
Vaughn Bode' called it The Management.


Some would say that wrapping these ideas in popular culture is doing them a disservice, that I should be dutifully reading the Bible, the Ghita, Jung, and more serious physics texts.
Maybe I'm just sloppy about my spiritual side.
Maybe.
But if we truly are here as a result of shared consciousness, if everything exists by consensus, appreciating its beauty and diversity can only help The Cause.
Thus Spake The Management.

Original Art Sundays #44 (Friday): Night for Day

No excuses for missing a Sunday. I've just been a bit disheveled of late. Back on track again this week, despite the beginning of a new class on Sunday (more on that later).
This is traditional photography again: film, darkroom, photo sensitive paper, the whole shooting match.


What I find interesting is that this is a night shot, about 10:30 PM.
And it's so oddly bright.
Really weird night, sort of an orange fog light dispersing mist everywhere. The texture of the tree just jumped out at me, and the result was this odd rule of thirds composition.I'm fascinated by the texture of the dirty snow and the parking lot as the shadow of the tree hits it.