How to sing like a planet

Scientists say the Earth is humming. Not just noise, but a deep, astonishing music. Can you hear it?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

This is the kind of thing we forget.

This is the kind of thing that, given all our distractions, our celeb obsessions and happy drugs and bothersome trifles like family and bills and war and health care and sex and love and porn and breathing and death, tends to fly under the radar of your overspanked consciousness, only to be later rediscovered and brought forth and placed directly in front of your eyeballs, at least for a moment, so you can look, really look, and go, oh my God, I had no idea.

The Earth is humming. Singing. Churning out a tune without the aid of battery or string or wind-up mechanism and its song is ethereal and mystifying and very, very weird, a rather astonishing, newly discovered phenomena that's not easily analyzed, but which, if you really let it sink into your consciousness, can change the way you look at everything.

Indeed, scientists now say the planet itself is generating a constant, deep thrum of noise. No mere cacophony, but actually a kind of music, huge, swirling loops of sound, a song so strange you can't really fathom it, so low it can't be heard by human ears, chthonic roars churning from the very water and wind and rock themselves, countless notes of varying vibration creating all sorts of curious tonal phrases that bounce around the mountains and spin over the oceans and penetrate the tectonic plates and gurgle in the magma and careen off the clouds and smack into trees and bounce off your ribcage and spin over the surface of the planet in strange circular loops, "like dozens of lazy hurricanes," as one writer put it.

It all makes for a very quiet, otherworldly symphony so odd and mysterious, scientists still can't figure out exactly what's causing it or why the hell it's happening. Sure, sensitive instruments are getting better at picking up what's been dubbed "Earth's hum," but no one's any closer to understanding what the hell it all might mean. Which, of course, is exactly as it should be.

Because then, well, then you get to crank up your imagination, your mystical intuition, your poetic sensibility — and if there's one thing we're lacking in modern America, it's ... well, you know.

Me, I like to think of the Earth as essentially a giant Tibetan singing bowl, flicked by the middle finger of God and set to a mesmerizing, low ring for about 10 billion years until the tone begins to fade and the vibration slows and eventually the sound completely disappears into nothingness and the birds are all, hey what the hell happened to the music? And God just shrugs and goes, well that was interesting.

Or maybe the planet is more like an enormous wine glass, half full of a heady potion made of horny unicorns and divine lubricant and perky sunshine, around the smooth, gleaming rim of which Dionysus himself circles his wet fingertip, generating a mellifluous tone that makes the wood nymphs dance and the satyrs orgasm and the gods hum along as they all watch 7 billion confused human ants scamper about with their lattes and their war and their perpetually adorable angst, oblivious.

But most of all, I believe the Earth actually (and obviously) resonates, quite literally, with the Hindu belief in the divine sound of OM (or more accurately, AUM), that single, universal syllable that contains and encompasses all: birth and death, creation and destruction, being and nothingness, rock and roll, Christian and pagan, meat and vegetable, spit and swallow. You know?

But here's the best part: This massive wave of sound? The Earth's deep, mysterious OM, it's perpetual hum of song? Totally normal — that is, if by "normal" you mean "unfathomably powerful and speaking to a vast mystical timelessness we can't possibly comprehend."

Indeed, all the spheres do it, all the planets and all the quasars and stars and moons and whirlpool galaxies, all vibrating and humming like a chorus of wayward deities singing sea shanties in a black hole. It's nothing new, really: Mystics and poets and theorists have pondered the "music of the spheres" (or musica universalis) for eons; it is the stuff of cosmic philosophy, linking sacred geometry, mathematics, cosmology, harmonics, astrology and music into one big cosmological poetry slam.

Translation: You don't have to look very far to understand that human beings — hell, all animals, really — adore song and music and tone and rhythm, and then link this everyday source of life straight to the roar of the planet itself, and then back out to the cosmos.

In other words, you love loud punk? Metal? Jazz? Deep house? Saint-Saens with a glass of Pinot in the tub? Sure you do. That's because somewhere, somehow, deep in your very cells and bones and DNA, it links you back to source, to the Earth's own vibration, the pulse of the cosmos. Oh yes it does. To tap your foot and sway your body to that weird new Portishead tune is, in effect, to sway it to the roar of the universe. I mean, obviously.

At some point we'll probably figure it all out. Science will, with its typical charming, arrogant certainty, sift and measure and quantify this "mystical" Earthly hum, and tell us it merely comes from, say, ocean movements, or solar wind, or 10 billion trees all deciding to grow a quarter millimeter all at once. We will do as we always do: oversimplify, peer through a single lens of understanding, stick this dazzling phenomenon in a narrow category, and forget it.

How dangerously boring. I much prefer, in matters mystical and musical and deeply cosmic, to tell the logical mind to shut up and let the soul take over and say, wait wait wait, maybe most humans have this divine connection thing all wrong. Maybe God really isn't some scowling gay-hating deity raining down guilt and judgment and fear on all humankind after all.

Maybe she's actually, you know, a throb, a pulse, a song, deep, complex, eternal. And us, well, we're just bouncing and swaying along as best we can, trying to figure out the goddamn melody.

Source

Björk and Sigur Rós in Concert

I went to see Björk and Sigur Rós last night and had a great time. Here are a few pictures from the night....

Petra and I

Sigur Rós on Stage

Petra and Hulda

Björk joined Sigur Rós on stage.

Björk on stage

Dan Deacon

I ran across this musician a few weeks ago. Crazy, wacky, hyperactive, sure to get you in a good and silly mood type of music.

I love it when people become successful in life when they've had to work for it and refused to give up even when the environment wasn't very supportive of their visions. Here's a cool interview with him which I ran across online: http://www.citypaper.com/music/review.asp?rid=8759

and here is the best song I've heard so far, CRYSTAL CAT

How beliefs and expectations create what you experience in life

I've been meditating daily since April and reading about how we experience life and what we think is real might not be real. Anyway, this is a great article I ran across.

Check out this picture carefully. What do you see?


Scroll down to find out what else you should have been able to discover…

Research points out that little children can't detect the lovers, because there is no corresponding memory in their brains. What the children actually do see are nine dolphins!

Children simply don't have the corresponding internal image of lovers. Adults, of course could also see the dolphins, but most of us see the lovers. (This by the way shows quite dramatically what our real preferences are…) Anyway, think about the far-reaching implications of this fascinating test:

You can see only what your reality-tunnel allows you to see!

What is a reality tunnel?
Your reality-tunnel is being constructed during the course of your life by your experiences, thoughts and belief-systems. Your thoughts and belief-systems are basically based on language. Try to think without using internal language! Thinking and all your belief-systems are hence built upon language:

The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.
-Terence Mc Kenna

Timothy Leary coined the term reality tunnel and it was then popularised by Robert Anton Wilson. It refers to the concept that with a subconscious set of filters formed from their beliefs and experiences, everyone interprets this same world differently, hence "Truth is in the eye of the beholder".

Is there objective truth?
This is not necessarily meant to imply that there is no objective truth; just that our access to it is mediated through our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors. The individual world each person occupies is said to be their reality tunnel. The term can also apply to groups of people united by beliefs: we can speak of the fundamentalist Christian reality tunnel, the scientific materialist reality tunnel, or the libertarian reality tunnel.

Once the fiction of one 'reality' dies as a concept, and the operational fact of 'realities' (plural) becomes generally recognized, we might all discover that human beings can actually live together without constantly making war over who has the 'real reality'.

You create one reality-tunnel at a time out of a phalanx of possible reality-tunnels. You can learn to change your reality-tunnel. You can experience many reality-tunnels.
- Robert Anton Wilson in 'Cosmic Trigger; Volume 2′

Confirmation bias
A parallel can be seen in the psychological concept of confirmation bias - our tendency to notice and assign significance to observations that confirm our beliefs, while filtering out or rationalizing away observations that do not fit with our prior beliefs and expectations. This helps to explain why reality tunnels are usually transparent to their inhabitants. While it seems most people take their beliefs to correspond to the "one true objective reality," Robert Anton Wilson emphasizes that each person's reality tunnel is their own artistic creation, whether they realize it or not.

Break down old reality tunnels
It is believed that through various techniques one can break down old reality tunnels and impose new reality tunnels by removing old filters and replacing them with new ones, new perspectives on reality - at will. This is achieved through various processes of deprogramming.

Thus, it is believed one's Reality Tunnel can be widened to take full advantage of human potential and experience reality on more positive levels. Robert Anton Wilson's 'Prometheus Rising' is (among other things) a guidebook to the exploration of various reality tunnels.

…In fact, all evolution, all growth, is a process of learning to see things from an expanding and increasing number of perspectives, instead of the one you're currently immersed in.
- Bill Harris

Source: http://www.ultrafeel.tv

Favorite Monty Python Songs

I had a great, busy, difficult, healthy, sane and content day. For some reason I had the Mr's Brown song stuck in my head while I was swimming tonight. It's kind of funny how a strange song likes to dwell in my head at times. I managed to swim 950 meters in 30 minutes thanks to Mrs. Brown...

Rambling 060708

I've been trying to cut down on work on weekends because I've been burning myself out. I'm going out to eat with my girlfriends in a few; we do this every Saturday. I have a habit of coming back home and working Saturday nights. I think it's hard to block out work when your work station is in your home, but I do love working from home. I've been independent since December 2006 and I'm starting to see that I could make a good living designing websites. Last year was a lot of work and paying off loans I got to start this company. I'm registered as a contractor and have been thinking about registering my company as the real thing.

I got a really good assignment this week from a dependable company. I'm doing their corporate identity and designing everything. Coming up with a logo is very challenging and I have a tendency to go into perfection mode. I even got a few ideas in a dream; should I give the spirits credit or myself? Haha.

I was talking to my friend last night and we started complaining about the lack of a good man in our lives. I realized that I'm not giving out signals that I want to be in a relationship.
- I have a small bed for one person
- I make comments around men like this "The good ones are gay or taken".
- "I'll meet the right one when I'm 80 in the old people's home"

Maybe I don't want a man at the moment. I've been more or less single since 1996 and it has been alright compared to the misery I felt in a bad relationship. Society keeps telling me that I should be looking for a man? "I need a man like a fish needs a bicycle", I'll leave it at that. Some famous lady said that, don't know who but I assume she is happy ;-)

Distorted Thinking

Really good article....
Styles of Distorted Thinking

by Gayle Rosellini, Mark Worden

Throughout addictive / alcoholic / codependent living one tends to pick up dysfunctional styles of thinking to cope with every day life.

Using them often ends in some sort of confrontation.

These are some that many have noticed. They are born out of anger, anxiety and denial; or just plain damaged thinking.

Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all the positive aspects of a situation.

Polarized Thinking: Things are black or white, good or bad. You have to be perfect or you are a failure. There is no middle ground.

Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once you expect it to happen over and over again. (If something good happens it is a one of a time thing.)

Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to divine how people are feeling toward you.

Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start 'what if's', What if tragedy strikes? What if it happen to you?

Personalization: Thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc.

Control Fallacies: If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you.

Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair but other people won't agree with you.

Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem or reversal.

Should's: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who brake the rules anger you and you feel guilty if you violate the rules.

Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true-automatically. If you FEEL stupid and boring, then you must BE stupid and boring, if I FEEL you are thinking about me, then you are.

Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.

Global labelling: You generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment.

Being Right: You are continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness.

Heavens Reward Fallacy. You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You feel bitter when the reward doesn't come.

Musturbation. An attitude of I must do this or, I must have done that or, I must be on time or, I must not do this or, I must go to meetings or, I must, must, must …. Etc. Musturbation' has the same effect as the masturbation. One may end up frustrated and missing out on some of life's pleasures.

Tibetan book of the dead