one world or no world: revisiting Dire Straits’ Brothers In Arms album

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“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.”

Huey Newton

Before I start, I need to thank @SMWGeek for writing The Album That Makes Me Love Autumn and Reflect on his blog yesterday as a part of our 30 Day Blog Challenge with @MrFresh.

Brothers In Arms is one of my all-time favourite albums. I was a Dire Straits fan before MTV. When this album came out, I was ecstatic. I played it nonstop. Even to this day, I can sing every song on the album without looking at a lyrics sheet!

The album, to me, is in two parts. Part one is mostly about loneliness, disillusionment, and heartbreak, and part two is about the potential of destroying our one world as reflected in the many guerrilla wars that raged throughout the 80’s. In particular, the Nicaraguan conflict.

In the lead track, So Far Away, the protagonist of the song is in a long distance relationship brought on by his constant travel. He’s tired of ‘bein’ in love and being’ all alone.’ The longer he is gone, the further his love gets away from him. They are on two sides of the continent. She’s in the sun and he is in the rain. She keeps getting further and further away from him as the song suggest at the end. ‘You’re so far… so far away from me…” is repeated until the song fades out.

Money For Nothing, the runaway MTV hit, is about a working-class appliance delivery man who is envious of the perceived lifestyle of rock stars and the fact that they get paid a ton of money and get all the girls just for playing some guitars and drums, which to him amounts to doing nothing. Meanwhile, he has to just get by in life doing “real” work and get paid next to nothing for his hard work. By verse three, he wishes he had learned to play the guitar or drums and then he could have a cushy life too. I love the cameo appearance of Sting on the track with his distinct high pitch squeal… ‘Money for nothing and your chick for free…’

Walk Of Life balances out Money For Nothing with a guy who is excited to go watch an old blues singer named Johnny who is in town to sing the ‘oldies, goldies’ like “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, “Baby What I Say” and “I Gotta Women.” Songs the protagonist likes. He’s a huge fan of Johnny’s so much so that he can watch Johnny play all night: “Turning all the night time into the day.” The protagonist seeks refuge in Johnny’s songs from the walk of life which is full of ‘violence and double talk.’

With Your Latest Trick, we swing back to the theme of loneliness with a guy who has had his heart broken by a girl he’s madly in love with but doesn’t love him back in the same way. My favourite thing about this song is Mark Knopfler ’s use of metaphors to build a hazy dystopian picture of the city. I love his use of the piano keys as the keys to his heart. And the final epiphany, when he realises there is no more love between him and his girl: “Like a bowery bum when he finally understands that the bottle is empty and there’s nothing left.”

Knopfler balances out Your Latest Trick with Why Worry like he does with Money For Nothing and Walk of Life. In Your Latest Trick, we get the opposite view of love. Here are two people who support each when things are bad and they are feeling down. The song opens with the protagonist offering support to his girl who is feeling down about the world which has made her sad. But as bad as things maybe now, he reminds her that it will get better, so why worry, there will be ‘laughter after pain’ and ’sunshine after rain.’ “These things have always been the same.” It’s part of the rhythm of life. He knows when it’s his turn to feel down, she will do the same for him and help him through his blues.

I love the whole album, but part two really struck a chord with me. When it came out in 1985, I was 17 and longing for real world adventure. The kind of adventure the romanticised version of war promises to boys who are on the verge of becoming men.

In my boyhood naïveté, I wanted to be a mercenary. I used to buy Soldier of Fortune Magazine every month and read it from cover to cover. I was fascinated by the Rhodesian Bush War and many of the soldier of fortune tales that came out of that conflict. The Wild Geese movie with Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, and Hardy Kruger, was one of my favourite films at the time. I wanted that kind of camaraderie. Heck, when I was 16, I had researched and planned to runaway from home to join the French Foreign Legion! Not having a passport, and needing my mom to get me one, proved to be a barrier.

Part two of the album, to me, is mainly about the guerrilla wars that were being fought in Central America at the time, particularly the Nicaraguan Revolution and the Contra War.

Part two opens with Ride Across the River, a brilliant song. It shows war from two perspectives – one from the revolutionaries who are fighting what they consider to be a just and noble war in support of freedom. They are ‘the chosen’ and are ready ‘to pay with our lives if we must.’ And I’m wondering if Knopfler uses the river, which, appears in the chorus, as a metaphor for death. It calls to mind the River Styx from Greek mythology where Charon, the ferryman, would taxis the souls of the dead from Gaia (Earth) to the Underworld of Hades. The revolutionaries in the song are committed to death. They know they are “ Gonna ride across the river, deep and wide/Ride across the river to the other side.”

The soldiers of fortune in the song are not so naive. They don’t care about freedom and noble causes. They are in it for the money. And they “don’t give a damn who the killing is for.” To them, it is “the same old story with a different name/Death or glory, it’s the killing game.” And like the revolutionaries, they too, know, that they will more than likely be taking a ride across the river.

The revolutionaries are optimistic. They are fighting the good fight: “Today in the mountains; tomorrow the world.”

The Man’s Too Strong is tricky. The revolutionaries’ cause starts off noble, but the death and destruction of war soon brings out the worst in men and the cause becomes tarnished by the evils of humanity and the corruption that evolves out of those who lose sight of the cause and become blinded by the power they wield over life ad death.

In this song, we meet the guerrilla leader who has finally been caught by The Man.

The Man’s Too Strong feels like a confessional song. The warlord tells his story:

… I have legalized robbery
And called it relief
I have run with the money
I have hid like a thief
Rewritten histories with my armies and my crooks
Invented memories
I did burn all the books

Through all of the bad things he has done, he has ‘striven for peace.’ A peace, he would never know.

The Man doesn’t want the guerrilla leader to die a martyr so brings him out into the courtyard to publicly denounce him:

“You always was a Judas,
But I got you anyway.”

The Man is not satisfied with just killing the guerrilla leader, he wants him to suffer. He tells him what he has done to his daughter and wife.

The captured warlord, who knows his execution is imminent, prays to God for absolution:

Oh father, please help me
For I have done wrong
The man’s too big
The man’s too strong

In One World, the protagonist has the blues. Nothing seems to be going right for him:

Can’t get no sleeves for my records
Can’t get no laces for my shoes
Can’t get no fancy notes on my blue guitar

He confesses that he “can’t get no antidote’ for his blues.

He seems to be trying to find a reason for why the world is in the state that it’s in. But nothing seems to make sense and the reasons people give for their actions can’t be trusted. He’s been told that it’s mostly vanity that drives our actions. That’s the way it has always been and always will be. He has to accept that “there’s no such thing as sanity, and that’s the sanest fact.” There is no remedy for his blues.

He concludes that if the politicians can’t find “a way to be one world in harmony,” there can never be an antidote to the blues he is feeling.

The last song, and the title track for the album, Brothers in Arms takes us back to the war torn country we met in Ride Across The River. It’s told from the point of view of one of the rebels who has aged now. He is resigned to the fact, that as a rebel, he can never go home again, that the mountains, where the rebels hide, have become his home. He misses his real home:

But my home is the lowlands
And always will be

He does hope that one day, the fighting will stop, and the rebels can go back to their homes in the lowlands and lush valleys and be with their families and no longer ‘burn to be brothers in arms.’

Verse two holds a specially place in my heart. As a former soldier, these words ring true:

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I’ve witnessed your suffering
As the battle raged high
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

I will always be close to my brothers in arms.

In the next verse, we return to the one world theme. Where the bluesman in One World has given up hope, the aged rebel in Brothers In Arms still holds on to hope that while for now we all live in different worlds maybe one day we will realise that we, in fact, only have one world. And we are “fools to make war on our brothers in arms.”

My 3 favourite tracks plus additional notes

what myth are you living?

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Here’s the audio version of today’s blog post:

“This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he is telling a story.”

Jean-Paul Satre, Nausea

Carl Young said that the most important question we can ask ourselves is “What myth are you living?” That seems like an odd question to ask, considering most of us probably think of myths as make-believe or associate myths with Greek and Roman mythology. We consider ourselves too enlightened for myths. Instead, we put our faith in the scientific method and reason to answer our questions about life. And we trust that technology will give us the power to change or destroy what we don’t like.

But how do you answer the question of ‘what is the meaning of my life?’

via GIPHY

As Joseph Campbell said:

“The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today…must face alone…This is our problem as modern, “enlightened” individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalised out of existence.

What are myths?

Myths are:

“An intricate set of interlocking stories, rituals, rites, and customs that inform and give the pivotal sense of meaning and direction to a person, family, community, or culture.”

If you view myths in this light, then myths are all around us. We just chose simply not to recognise them as such.

To examine the myths operating in your life, ask yourself why you do the things you do in the way that you do them. This might be a hard question to answer because, when you are living the myth, it is nearly invisible to you. Our myths become “truths,” reinforced by cultural consensus.

Here’s and example:

“Most Americans would consider potlatch feasts, in which Northwest Indian tribes systematically destroy their wealth, to be irrational and mythic but would consider the habit of browsing in malls and buying expensive things we don’t need (conspicuous consumption) to be a perfectly reasonable way to spend a Saturday afternoon.”

Sam Keen, Your Mythic Journey

What we hold as “truths” is somebody else’s myth.

So, back to Carl Jung’s question, “What myth(s) are you living?” Is it a narrative you’ve created or are you simply buying into the prevailing cultural consensus? Do you have any personal myths you would rewrite to make them more empowering?

Last thing I’ll say about myths for now and then I’ll leave you to rummage through your personal myths (“truths”).

Think of myth as:

The software, the cultural DNA, the unconscious information, the meta program that governs the way you see “reality” and the way you behave.

it’s not just a fantasy

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“Fantasy is as essential as air, forming the medium or the ether in which all the other activities of mind take place…Fantasy, in fact, plays a major role in building the world, in guiding the choices and adaptations we make, and the relationships we form. Fantasies are among the most powerful of the catalysts that infuse and organise our lives, dictating romantic, familial, and professional goals; fueling behaviour; engendering plans for the future. In turn, our experiences, and the myths and stories of the culture in which we live, shape our fantasies.”

Ethel S. Person, M.D. – By Force of Fantasy

We had an awesome night of adventuring in Dungeons & Dragons land. We found ourselves facing off against a four-armed copper state brought to life by some fanatical cult members, who, like all cult members, had some weird delusional version of how the world should work. And being cultists, they were willing to bring about their demented version of reality by any means necessary. 

Vulred Sarren, the wood elf, played by me, was having an off night.  He couldn’t land a blow to literally save his life.  He must have  somehow offended the gods. Even Lady Luck turned her back on him. It was a good thing he had companions – a human ranger, a dwarf cleric, a gnome rogue, and a gnome wizard who, coincidentally, was also having a bad night. None of her spells were working. 

None of us fancied fighting this living copper statue in the cellar where we found it, so we lured it outside the inn. 

I smugly cast a Wall of Wind to hold it in place. But before I could congratulate myself on my ingenuity, the living statue flew over my 15-foot-high wall and landed right in the middle of us. Our jaws went slack, and the fight was on.

I was 13 when my friend Brian, who was three years older than me, introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons. I was already heavily into heroic fantasy and its kin, sword and sorcery fantasy. I used to save up my lunch money and allowance until I had enough to buy an armful of fantasy books from Barnes and Noble at least once a month. I used to love it when the weekend rolled around and I could head to the mall and browse the fantasy shelves. I’d spend a couple of hours in the shop admiring the covers of the sword and sorcery books and reading the back covers until I found a few that really grabbed my attention.

By the time I graduated from high school, I had a collection of hundreds of these fantasy books. My prized books were all of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian novels and Marvel’s adaptation of the novels in The Savage Sword of Conan, the black-and-white magazine-style comic. True story: when I left home for West Point, my mom, who hated these books, she called them demon books, gave away my whole collection. But she knew I would have never forgiven her if she had given away my Conan collection.

During my time at West Point, my fantasy obsession faded. I threw myself into history books instead. I had determined I was going to be a Great War captain like Caesar, Hannibal, Grant, and Patton. If I wanted to accomplish that, I knew I had to be a student of war. I studied all the masters: Sun Tzu, Napoleon, Clausewitz, Rommel, Patton, and Grant, among others.

After I graduated from West Point, my love of heroic fantasy mainly lived on through whatever movies came out in that genre. My reading was mostly occupied with current events and history. I loved history books almost as much as I had loved sword and sorcery books.  I ended up majoring in History and by the time I graduated, I had amassed a huge history book collection.

After the army, I let history give way to business books and self-help and personal development books. I think, in the process, I lost a vital part of who I am at my core.

It is this missing piece that I am trying to find again.

So I was ecstatic when my wife tagged me in a Facebook post of a local Dungeon and Dragons group that was looking for new players. I answered the call for new adventures quickly. This was my chance to get back into the game. That was a few weeks ago. I am now into second week with the group on a big campaign to stop a cultist group that has been terrorising the local villagers and using them as sacrifices in their bizarre rituals.

It’s easy to dismiss fantasy as a detachment from reality, a waste of time, especially for responsible adults. The only myth you’re rewarded for believing in is consumerism and the capitalist narrative that supports it.

But as psychologists like Carl Jung and James Hillman suggest, by doing this and cutting ourselves off from our mythic imagination, we inhibit our personal and spiritual growth by forcing our psyche to accept a limited version of itself. 

The two books that really opened my eyes so I could see just how detached I have become from my true self and living a life of meaning are:

Your Mythic Journey: Finding Meaning in Your Life Through Writing and Storytelling 

And

The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal Mythology.

And the third book, which I opened this post with, speaks directly to the importance of fantasy: By Force of Fantasy: How We Make Our Lives

I think I need to do a deeper dive on each of these books, so I’ll mention them here and address them further in a future post.

everybody knows

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I can’t say that I’m a Lorde fan—not that there’s anything wrong with her music; it’s just not my usual thing. But I came across her blog, which she runs on Tumblr (I think people need to keep an eye on Tumblr; it’s poised for a comeback as a blogging platform). She was very open about the pressure to make a buck on concert tours, especially when all she and other musicians really want to do is play for the fans.

I don’t know how much you’ve been following the live music industry conversation, but lemme hit you with a five minute explainer, cause I think it’s interesting, and good to know about if you’re going to concerts at the moment. Basically, for artists, promoters and crews, things are at an almost unprecedented level of difficulty. It’s a storm of factors. Let’s start with three years’ worth of shows happening in one. Add global economic downturn, and then add the totally understandable wariness for concertgoers around health risks. On the logistical side there’s things like immense crew shortages (here’s an article from last week about this in New Zealand), extremely overbooked trucks and tour buses and venues, inflated flight and accommodation costs, ongoing general COVID costs, and truly. mindboggling. freight costs. To freight a stage set across the world can cost up to three times the pre-pandemic price right now. I don’t know shit about money, but I know enough to understand that no industry has a profit margin that high. Ticket prices would have to increase to start accommodating even a little of this, but absolutely no one wants to charge their harried and extremely-compassionate-and-flexible audience any more fucking money. Nearly every tour has been besieged with cancellations and postponements and promises and letdowns, and audiences have shown such understanding and such faith, that between that and the post-COVID wariness about getting out there at all, scaring people away by charging the true cost ain’t an option. All we want to do is play for you.

Lorde

As usual, it’s the common folk who bear the brunt of a global economic downturn. The fat cats just get fatter. Because “Everybody know…Da’ po’ always bein’ fucked ova by da’ rich. Always have…Always will“

https://youtu.be/HUSknqJMJkw

Twitter this, Twitter that

I know you’re probably sick to death of hearing about the fate of Twitter. I am too, but because it’s a platform I love, I can’t resist reading every article about its demise that comes through my feed. It’s like rubbernecking on the highway. When you see an accident off to the side, you feel compelled to look, which in turn causes you to slow down, which, through the ripple effect, turns into a mile-long traffic jam.

Stop rubbernecking!

Sorry, I can’t help myself.

This article in The Verge feels like the scene where the villain hits the self-destruct button, lets out an evil laugh, and then heads to the roof to escape in his helicopter. When your CISO, Chief Privacy Officer and Chief Compliance Officer ALL resign at the same time, you know the ship is going down!

Sources say:

Over the last two weeks. Elon has shown that he cares only about recouping the losses he’s incurring as a result of failing to get out of his binding obligation to buy Twitter. He chose to enter into that agreement! All of us are being put through this as a result of the choices he made.

Elon has shown that his only priority with Twitter users is how to monetize them. 

from a Twitter lawyer trying to do the right thing and warn the people

To hell with social media, long live blogging!

Some big shoes to fill

I don’t often mark TV shows down in my calendar, but for The English, I did. The Guardian called it a rare, sensational masterpiece, with Lucy Mangan giving it 5-stars! How could I not watch it?! As a kid, I was a huge Western fan. I picked up my love of cowboys from my dad. He was a huge fan of Louis L’ Amor. He had all the books, like The Sacketts, among others. And whenever a western was on TV, we were there to watch it. Some of my favorites:

  • The Outlaw Josey Wales
  • The Good, The Bad The Ugly
  • Two Mules for Sister Sarah
  • Shane
  • El Dorado
  • The Magnificent Seven
  • A Fist Full of Dollars
  • True Grit
  • Rooster Cogburn

I was curious to know if The English would live up to my expectations of a Western. The basic story line follows a revenge narrative.

The English takes place in the mythical mid-American landscape in the year 1890. It is about Cornelia Locke, an Englishwoman who comes to the new and wild West to get revenge on the man she thinks killed her son. When she meets Eli Whipp, a former cavalry scout who was born into the Pawnee Nation, they work together and find out that they have a common past that they must defeat at all costs if they want to live.

I am 3 episodes in and I am not disappointed. Chaske and Blunt are awesome together. The dialogue is superb. The action is graphic and dark. And the cinematography is stunning. I’m looking forward to seeing how the story plays out. It’s on BBC iPlayer in the UK. I think it might be on Prime in the US.

I gotta another wild hair

Well, it’s on. I’m embarking on a 30 day blogging challenge with my Twitter friends, @SMWGeek and @MrFresh who, like me, are OG bloggers from back in the day when blogging was cool and everybody had a Blogger or a Livejournal account, and we blogged everyday about everything and nothing. We shared our thoughts, our hobbies, our frustrations, our passions. Our blogs were an extension of ourselves. They were personal blogs back then. You were doing it for the love. Then blogs got popular and somebody figured out how to make money from them. That was the beginning of the end of personal blogging. The snake oil salespeople could smell the blood of the innocent. They promised to show us how we could make money blogging in our underwear. The marketeers could see the gold rush coming, and they moved in with their banner ads and Macromedia Flash videos. The personal blog was dead. Blogs became like the suburbs of the 1950s uniformed and bland, with every blog looking the same. No more Geocities. Myspace tried to keep the gig alive, but Zuckerberg had other plans. Now it’s all about the niche blog and content marketing, if you’re blogging at all and not doomscrolling or suffering anxiety from all the FOMO induced posts on Instagram.

So every now and then I get a wild hair on my butt and decide it’s time to do another 30 day blogging challenge to get myself back in the habit of OG blogging with the hope that maybe it might rekindle the fire of personal blogging.

If you’ve made it this far, then go ahead and make a nostalgic old man feel good by leaving a comment below. I will be cross-posting the 30 day challenge posts to Twitter and Mastodon, but if you want to be guaranteed to get my posts, then go ahead and subscribe to the blog or add it to your RSS feed reader.

This blog has been running since February 2004. Long may it continue.

where to from here

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They are there, protecting our meanderings. You don’t fear hunger, in such places, neither fear poverty of the spirit. Close, again, to water and stone, near the symbols of ancient European unity and Arab History, I can dismiss the present as a passage. The trouble, though, is that I don’t know where I come from, and even less, where I’m heading for.

Etel Adnan

I have been an intellectual wanderer for most of my life. Sometimes the wandering makes me feel lost. I should have a home, someplace to settle down. It feels like the “place” is somewhere out there, but because I’ve been away for so long, I’ve forgotten where it is. I wonder if this feeling has something to do with being an immigrant. I’m an American who hasn’t visited his homeland in 17 years! Maybe what I’m feeling is New Jersey beckoning me to come home. I’m not the sentimental type. And besides, I’ve always prided myself on being a citizen of the world, with home being where I lay my hat.

But Perhaps I can take refuge in J.R.R. Tolkien’s words and embrace that idea: “Not all those who wander are lost.“

My propensity to wander is probably why I have always felt that blogging is the right medium for me. With my blog, I have the freedom to roam. To echo my friend @darrenkeith3 words, social media, specifically microblogging, has made me lazy when it comes to long-form blogging, which is funny for me to say considering I’ve been an advocate of microblogging for at least the last couple of years. I convinced myself that social media is good for my personality, which is fuelled by shiny objects and new ideas. I’m like a magpie, easily distracted. Social tech apps like Twitter and Instagram allow me to fire off a singular thought and then move on. I don’t have to stick around and create a sustained narrative across many supporting paragraphs or paint super detailed word pictures. I can fire off 240 characters and forget.

But i think with all of the turmoil going on with social media platforms, I think I’m going to follow @darrenkeith3 message and get back to the blog where I have total control and freedom.

Side note: If you follow me on social media, why not consider subscribing to my blog instead? That way, you’ll be guaranteed to get my latest posts and not have to worry about algorithms coming between us.

It’s officially Christmas season. Why so? Because the new John Lewis Christmas video is out.

Track of the Day: Trigger Hippie – Morcheeba

Would anybody care if you went missing

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basket blur boy child
basket blur boy child
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Putin has begun training high school students for war. You know you’re in the shit when you have to start training 15- and 16-year-old boys how to fire an assault rifle and dress a field wound. This, he hopes, will put fear into the people at home and convince them that Russia really is under serious threat from the West. Of course he also wants to fix the problem he’s having with recruits showing up to the frontlines without enough training. He needs the numbers. And he figures this way, he can shave some time off of basic training and get these kids to the frontlines as soon as possible. Because, after all, Russia is under threat. Or is it? Or is the threat something Putin has cooked up in his own mind.

Sources say:

“The Kremlin is operating in a truth vacuum and trying to con citizens into believing Russia’s war against Ukraine and possibly against the west eventually is a righteous defence against a threat.

This smells like desperation to me, which I think makes Putin even more dangerous. Desperate men will do desperate things to get their own way. I’m half tempting to climb onto the loft and break out my old combat gear just in case the world does go to hell in bucket. I know one thing though, I won’t be enjoying the ride.

Kyle Pope took Gwen Ifill‘s “missing white woman syndrome” and turned it into a website called areyoupressworthy.com. With some basic demographic information, you can find out if anyone would care if you went missing. Well, damn! It looks like I’m only worth 6 news stories!

A maximum of 10.3% of Americans would hear about me. I might be able to bump the percentage up if the five of you who read this blog notice I’ve been gone for a while. Of course, if I dropped my age to 22 and became a white female living in Nevada, then 92.4% of Americans would hear about me, and I’d stand a better chance of being found. The whole point of this exercise is to make the bias in press coverage visible. How press worthy are you?

Track of the Day: Life is a Highway – Tom Cochrane

buy me a coffee ☕️ ❤️

Radio Soulcruzer 11.06.2022

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I got the idea for this episode from Jimi Hendrix’s song “Voodoo Chile,” which is on his album “Electric Ladyland.” The song clocks in at 14 minutes and 59 seconds! It’s a monster track. Well, that got me thinking about other lengthy tracks that I love. I compiled a list and then turned to my peeps on Twitter and Facebook to crowdsource other people’s favorite tracks over 6 minutes long. The results – a monster 3 hour show of some great tunes that clock in at least 6 minutes.

Don’t call it a comeback

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My life has been ridiculously strange of late. I’ve been going through one of those wobbly periods where I believe the whole of the human race is wicked and probably deserves to burn in Hell, if Hell exists.

But don’t worry. I haven’t lost faith yet. I’ve been too distracted by Elon Musk clearing out the Twitter saloon like Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales.

One of the things you have to deal with on social media is when the bandits get turned loose. They gnaw on your brains like zombies and cause people to spontaneously combust. These things happen. And when they do, ordinary folks like me and you start looking for the nearest emergency exit.

Take Tumblr, for instance. It’s a relic of the old internet. It’s been holding on for dear life for at least the past 10 years. Then the pandemic hit. And Gen Z started swarming to Tumblr like blue-assed flies on a fresh cowpat. 61% of its new users and nearly half of its active users are under 24. It seems the woke have found a new place to congregate.

Tumblr also has more active daily users than its sibling rival, WordPress.com. That surprises me. I can’t help but think there might be some truth in the rumor that blogging is dead! No, I can’t believe that. I won’t believe that. I refuse to believe that!

I bet Papa Mullenweg is happy to see his big gamble pay off. Tumblr’s revenue has jumped 55% since last year. If you ask the Tumblr crew what it feels like to be making a comeback, you’re likely to hear them spit L.L. Cool J at you:

Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years
I’m rockin’ my peers, puttin’ suckers in fear

Still, these things happen. I need to re-up my Tumblr game in case I have to flee Twitter in the middle of the night with only my go-bag in tow. You never know with these things. On the other hand, Musk might turn out to be a benevolent dictator like Lee Khan Yew, and we’ll all be able to thrive in Twitterville.

Just in case, I need to be ready. Noah built the ark before the rain. You can find me on Tumblr as “Soulcruzer One“

The late Bruno Latour on the intricate network of things

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Bruno Latour, the French philosopher who died on 9 October 2022, was a man who lived in many different worlds.

As a “actor-network theorist,” he contended that everything, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, is part of intricate networks of relations. This is true regardless of the size of the thing or how trivial it may seem.

As an “immersionist,” he held the belief that rather than observing the worlds we study from above or below, we ought to fully submerge ourselves in those realms.

As a pluralist, he advised us not to reduce all of reality to just one thing, whether it be nature, culture, or society, and to instead pay respect to the many different worlds that exist.

In addition, as a public thinker and activist, he had a profound concern for the future of the planet and all of its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman.

Feeling the pump of Rad Wings of Destiny

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“When Ugly Kid Joe sold their souls to the devil in the pursuit of rock ‘n’ roll they drove a harder bargain than Robert Johnson at the Crossroads. Not only did they trade their souls for over thirty years of globetrotting and metal extravagance. They also haggled to keep their playing abilities, they bartered to keep their looks – we get older, gain weight and lose hair, yet they look like they’ve just walked off “that” song’s beach video set from 1992!”

(Black, 2022)

I was pumping iron the other day and wanted something different to listen to. I’d been overdosing on Creed’s second album, Human Clay.

In my search, I stumbled upon Ugly Kid Joe‘s latest album, Rad Wings of Destiny. I haven’t really listened to Ugly Kid Joe since their 1992 hit, ‘Everything About You‘.

I was pleasantly surprised. Most of the tracks have just the right heaviness to channel into my muscles and give me that extra boost to get one more rep in!

I did skip over the slower songs, promising to give them a proper listen after my workout. On reflection, I think the album is really good fun. They stick to what they’re known for, which is one-hit wonders, weird covers, and good old AC/DC-style rock.

My favourite tracks:

  1. That Ain’t Livin’
  2. Dead Friends Play
  3. Lola

Radio Soulcruzer 30.10.2022

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It’s been a hot minute since I last did a Mixcloud live stream. There’s no particular reason why not, I just haven’t. But it is my intention to get back in the game and stream more regularly. I’m not going to commit to a specific day or time. They’ll happen when they happen.

I’ll drop a heads up on my twitter when I know I’m going live. It would be wonderful if you could join me live, but if not, I’ll always post the replay here.

Or you can follow me on Mixcloud and get notified there when I go live.

All this talk of leaving Twitter has got me thinking

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My favourite social network seems to be under threat now that Elon Musk is the new boss. On the one hand, Musk is seen as the person who will restore freedom of speech. On the other hand, he’s seen as the person who will let Twitter become a free for all for bad actors to spread hate and lies.

There’s talk of a great Twitter migration of people who don’t want to be associated with the platform with Musk at the helm. One of the places people are heading is Mastodon.

I’ve had an account on Mastodon for a few years now, left over from my experiments with the IndieWeb movement. I like the platform. It’s much the same as Twitter. But as a decentralised platform, it can be confusing because there are so many instances of Mastodon, which is its strength because you can join an instance that caters to your interests. If you have the server space, you can even start your own instance and invite only the people you want on it.

The most popular instance is mastodon.social which is maintained by the founder and CEO of Mastodon. I’m there at @soulcruzer@mastodon.social

I’m currently hedging my bets between the two platforms. I’m using moa to link my Twitter and Mastodon accounts. With this link, I can crosspost from one to the other. So I can either Toot or Tweet and the post will appear on both platforms. Moa can be a little slow at crossposting, though.

I was looking for a way I could just use my WordPress powered blog as the central point of all of my documentation. While I can syndicate out from my blog to Twitter and Mastodon, I don’t want to use my main blog as a microblog. WordPress isn’t really designed to function as a microblogging platform.

My other option would be to go back to micro.blog and syndicate out from there to WordPress, Twitter, and Mastodon. Or even to switch back to Tumblr and syndicate out from there.

For now, I’ll continue using my WordPress blog for longer posts and syndicate them out to Twitter, Mastodon, and Tumblr. And I’ll continue to use Twitter as my main microblogging platform.

Some people might ask why I don’t just return to blogging full-time and forget about the social networks. And as cool as that would be, the reality is that if you want to reach more people and make connections with others who share your interests, you need to use platforms where there are lots of people.

I don’t think blogging will ever return to its former glory. The social networks are too pervasive. And let’s face it, they are super convenient. You don’t have to worry about keeping the software updated or your plugins updated. You don’t have to pay hosting fees and domain name fees etc.

Of course, you give up a lot in return for this convenience like your data, and ownership and control of your content. Your audience belongs to the platform, not you. This doesn’t really matter if all you really want to do is share a few status updates to your family and friends and you’re not really looking to expand your network beyond the one you already have with the people you already know.

I’m a big fan of social networks as opposed to social media. The key word for me is social. I like socialising with diverse groups of people from all walks of life and interests. The media bit gets in the way. Really I should say using social media as marketing tool gets in the way. It’s get tiresome when every other post you read is someone or some business clearly trying to sell you something or get you to buy something (that you probably don’t need).

A cool place to get away from all of that is Neocities. You’ll find proper old-school blogging there. Dead Journal is another place you can go if just want to blog and not be bothered with coding.

As you can probably guess, I find that WordPress best suits my needs. To my mind, it provides the most leeway. It is simple to customise the look and feel of your site, whether you know how to code or not. I can blog from anywhere thanks to its mobile feature. There is also a built-in community of other WordPress bloggers to interact with.

With all of this turmoil going on in the social space, I’m definitely consolidating my efforts more around my own space, with this blog and potentially a newsletter.

OK, let’s end this with a cute cat video. We recently added a new member to our cat family. Her name is Rosa.

A quick peek inside Engage VR

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Here’s a first look at the metaverse for professionals, the Engage VR app. I’ll be giving the app a thorough review and walkthrough, but for now, I just wanted to give you a brief overview of what it’s like inside of Engage VR.

Exploring the Metaverse

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The metaverse isn’t just an idea anymore. It’s a reality that’s ready to explode into the mainstream.

I spent a good portion of my weekend exploring various versions of the metaverse through apps like Engage VR, AltSpaceVR, and Immersed.

I was amazed by what’s already out there and how big the metaverse is going to be in our everyday lives, including how we work, play, relax, and meet new people.

If you think the metaverse is just a fad, you should think again and dig deeper to find out what’s really going on where virtual reality and the metaverse meet. Whether you want it to or not, it is going to change your life.

What exactly is the metaverse?

The metaverse is a virtual reality that includes virtual worlds, augmented reality and a collective virtual shared space. It’s important because it combines all the best things about being in a physical space with the best things about being on the internet: it’s social, it’s immersive, and it offers a sense of community you can’t get from either place alone.

Matthew Ball offers up this definition:

“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.”

from The Metaverse: And How It Will Revloutionize Everything

In the world of work, especially hybrid working and remote working, the metaverse is superior to any of our current solutions for helping people and teams bridge the gap created by distance working. The sense of presence and the tools available for creativity and collaboration are unmatched.

On the social side, whether you want to go on an adventure, meet new people, or just hang out with friends or family, there are opportunities for all of these things in the metaverse. You can join a band of adventurers and explore a fantasy world together; you can play games against other players across multiple platforms; you can create your own virtual world and invite people over to visit it, or you can simply hang out with friends while they show off their latest sketches or songs they’ve been working on. The possibilities are endless!

I’m curious to know what your thoughts are on the metaverse.

Table Mountain and Pen Cerrig Calch – Brecon Beacons

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Table Mountain and Pen Cerrig Calch are two of Wales’ most popular hiking trails. They provide breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside as well as a challenging hike for experienced hikers.

At 1085 metres above sea level, Table Mountain is the higher of the two peaks. It is a popular climbing and hiking destination, and the views from the top are truly breathtaking. Pen Cerrig Calch, at 973 metres, is slightly lower but no less popular with hikers. It’s famous for its rocky terrain and views of Snowdonia.

Table Mountain and Pen Cerrig Calch are both worth a visit, whether you’re looking for a strenuous hike or a leisurely stroll.

The Route

The beliefs that shape us

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I’ve been playing around with beliefs this week. It’s so easy to get lost in our own beliefs. What I mean by that is most of us don’t question our beliefs. We just believe what we believe because that’s what we’ve always believed. Because our beliefs are built up over time, we forget the foundation on which the belief is built.

It’s like a house. Once the foundation has been laid, you build everything on top of it and you no longer notice the foundation until something like an earthquake comes along and rocks the foundation. Or the foundation was faulty to begin with, and time then reveals the effect of the fault on the house.

I thought I’d build a short microlearning module that gets you to explore your beliefs and the beliefs of others that might be holding you back or limiting you in some way.

Let me know how you get on with the exercise.

Wretched is the Mind

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Montaigne:

We are never ‘at home’: we are always outside ourselves. Fear, desire, hope, impel us towards the future; they rob us of feelings and concerns for what now is, in order to spend time over what will be – even when ourselves shall be no more. Wretched is the mind anxious about the future.

And yet our whole society is conditioned to think this way. It’s our default position. As I read that passage, I caught myself doing exactly that – ruminating about the future. And if I’m honest with myself, my rumination was driven by all three emotions: desire, fear, and hope.

When I bring my attention to the present, the present seems lacking. I’m sat in my quiet room reading a book written by guy who has been dead for 430 years. What is glorious about the present? Is it the celebration that you’re alive? But alive to do what? Exist? Procreate? It seems as soon as I give myself a purpose or a mission or a goal, I immediately create the condition of concern for the future. Will I achieve my mission? Will I accomplish my goal? Will I live my life on purpose?

The moment I bring my mind back to the present, those things vanish. Yet somehow, there’s that little niggle in the back of my mind, poking me, reminding me that I haven’t accomplished all that I want to accomplish yet. Reminds me of the narrator in Robert Frost’s poem – Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep

And as soon as I acknowledge the voice, a dozen different tasks flood my mind, things that need to get done if I have any chance of achieving anything beyond just living in the moment. But living in the moment is meant to bring peace, a settled mind, a oneness of spirit. How can I have both, peace and ambition?

Ambition is fueld by desire. Desire implies lack. Lack induces fear. And hope keeps me hanging on in the belief that this will all work out in the end.

The acknowledged wisdom tells me that the present is exactly where we I need to be. If I spend too much time wandering around in my past reliving old glories, or too much time daydreaming about the future, then I am wasting my life.

Who do you believe? Where should one put their faith?

I know what it feels like to be fully present. It is pure joy. A joy that gets ruined the moment you say to yourself, I wish this joy could last forever, but it’s time to get back into the real world and get shit done. Otherwise, when I get to the end of the year and people start patting themselves on the back about all of the things they’ve accomplished this year, I’ll have nothing to show. All I’ll be able to say is that I lived a life of joy doing nothing but being present.

I want to be insanely obsessed

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I want to be crazy about something again. And when I say crazy, I mean insanely obsessed, filled with passion, evangelistic borderline fundamentalist. A fanatic! I think you get the picture. I want to have that feeling when I first fell in love with The Savage Sword of Conan magazine. I was obsessed. I had to have every issue. I would save my lunch money, and forgo eating, which was a big deal for me because I loved my food! Every month, I had to be the first in line at the shop to get the new issue.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had that giddy feeling that comes along with being obsessed with something.

On my last Musical Journey show, the one I did with Tom and Dionne, I asked them the question, “What do you do when you’ve already done so much? How do you get that next metaphorical high? How do you keep everything from just being a variation of the same old same old? You’ve climbed one mountain, you’ve climbed them all. Sure the scenery changes, but a mountain is a mountain after all.

So, the search for my next new obsession is on! Any suggestions, let me know.

In other news, I’m headed down to Bowles Rock tomorrow for a few days. I’m co-facilitating an outdoor adventure challenge for a group of construction apprentices. I do love it when I get to work outdoors and not have to sit on my ass all day staring at a screen.

I started reading, Awareness Games: Playing with Your Mind to Create Joy, by Brian Tom O’Connor and it inspired me to make this: