80s Crushes
I ventured out into the post-pandemic world yesterday. There were a few walkers around, but not many. Someone a few cubicles over from me kept coughing. Once upon a time, they would have been tarred and feathered and tossed out into the street.
But now, with the vaccine pumping through most people’s veins, everybody in the office was pretty chilled about it. No need to panic. Carry on.
Anyway, last night on the show we tumbled down an 80s rabbit hole after I asked the question, “Who were your 80s crushes?” That chat room lit up. The names came pouring in, so much so I had to call an audible and throw out the original playlist and ad-lib the rest of the show!
This is what the Room came up with:
To get the full on 80s experience, I had to go dig around Youtube and pull up the videos to some of the songs.
1. Nasty Girl – Vanity 6 (my number one crush)
2. Some Kind of Lover – Jody Watley
3. Opposites Attract
4. Since I Fell for You
5. The Glorious Life
6. Like A Virgin
Digital Calm #30
We venture into deep water on this episode tackling consciousness and self-awareness and how they affect who we believe ourselves to be. On the playlist we have music from Justin Warfield, Air, Beth Orton, Skylab, Poets of Thought and more.
#AudioMo Day 9: Feel my flow
#AudioMo In the last couple of days I’ve been able to get into flow state. I love that feeling. It’s awesome. So what have I been doing to get into flow state?
The great hamburger hunt is on
I’ve been threatening to go on a hamburger adventure for many years, now I think the time is ripe. We’ve been cooped up for a year dealing with this whole pandemic thing and now that we’re finally allowed back out, I’m ready to hit the road. In the episode, we lay down the foundation of our burger rating system.
#audiomo Day 1: Challenge Accepted
#AudioMo – a 30-day audioblogging challenge I’ve been looking forward to all year. And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. If you’re an audio freak or geek, or new to podcasting and have been sitting on the fence about whether or not to start a podcast of your own, #AudioMo is the perfect vehicle to kickstart your podcasting ambitions.
Doing something for 30 days straight is a good way to start a new habit. Plus the #AudioMo community is super supportive.
I challenge you to #AudioMo
Try All You Want #25: Where’s the oil at?
This week, Suge Knight ’96, creatine, Coach Clay evolution, potential merch held up over oil dispute and image rights, and a fair bit of loud music from your hosts, the EXTROVERT Clay Lowe and the introvert Daniel Ruiz Tizon.
Hello Good People,
Happy Friday! Are you ready for the weekend? I sure am. I’m all jabbed up and ready to go out into the world again and bring some semblance of normality back to my life.
We had a blast last night on the Try All You Want show. @TomAZO11 was in good form with his cheeky comments in the chat. He has a thing for oil that’s kind of scary!
Our lady @MsMendosa brought her sister along and forced @DanielRuizTizonisAvailable to listen to some good rock music with classics from Rush and Ozzy Osborne.
@F5Hoodie ever the voice of reason, dropped some Lynyrd Skynyrd into the mix.
Other notables in chat last night: @HATMANJUSTWEARSAHAT graced us with his presence for a little while, @HitThePost shared his claim to fame about the time he almost bought Lou Gramm’s house with its 30 TVs. @Boydie71 kept it chilled and @SourcesSay stopped by to say hi.
That’s all, for now, folks, have a fantastic weekend.
Soulcruzer
Digital Calm #28
We had a great time on the Digital Calm show last night. The chatbox was on fire. On the episode itself, we dove into the question: do the ends justify the means? We also found out that Clay Lowe is dead – long live DJ Soulcruzer! And we may have just seen the birth of the Queen of Calm or the Queen of Chaotic Calm. The jury is still out.
a BIG shoutout to:
for livening up the chatbox with good vibes.
The Playlist
- Why Does the Wind? – Tracey Thorn
- Nothing Can Stop Us – Saint Etienne
- Sweet Harmony – The Beloved
- Sleeping Satellite – Tasmin Archer
- Missing – Everything But the Girl
Digital Calm #27
If you missed Tuesday’s Digital Calm show live, then here’s the replay.
Just a reminder, the show streams live every Tuesday from 8 – 9:30 PM.
If you download the Mixcloud app (search soulcruzer) you can have the show on the go with you while driving or walking the dog.
This week we get into a discussion about whether or not what a person does really matters in the grand scheme of things.
Plus we play some great tunes from Doctor Flake, Roy Bebop, Lost Frequencies, Embody, and more.
Have a listen and let us know your thoughts.
Is my voice not enough?
After a year of Zoom meetings, we now need to relearn how to look people in the eyes in order to establish trust.
try all you want #22
What do you do when your co-host has the hump? Nothing you can do in those circumstances, but soldier on!
In this episode, Clay introduces his intermittently crabby co-host to ‘geocache’ which Daniel clearly has trouble grasping, before the duo get into it over the American’s longstanding aversion to email. Clay struggles with a slow tune, Daniel just struggles. All that and more.
Playlist
- Harder Than You Think – Public Enemy
- Ironbound / Fancy Poultry – Suzanne Vega
- Standup – WOUNDEDSPiRiT, Har-Q
- There She Goes – The La’s
- Killing Me Softly With His Words – Fugees, Ms Lauryn Hill
- Replace Me – Mount Kintsugi
- She Saw the World – The Blue Nile
soulcruzer on the radio: Neo-Soul sessions with Cristina Baluta
On this episode, I explore Neo-Soul with photographer Cristina Baluta.
Playlist
- A Long Walk – Jill Scott
- You Got Me – The Roots
- Wish I Didn’t Miss You – Angie Stone
- You (feat Dwele) – Goapele
- Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You – Ms Lauryn Hill
- Still Ray – Raphael Saadiq
- Georgy Porgy (feat. Faith Evans) – Eric Benet
- Cruisin’ – D’Angelo
- Brown Skin – India Arie
- So Far to Go – J Dilla, Common, D’Angelo
- No One – Alicia Keyes
- Back In The Day – Erykah Badu
Plus we have a few a shout-out songs from our listeners.
feeling a little lighter
I’m feeling a little lighter today. Maybe because it’s Thursday and the work week is coming to a close. Or maybe it’s because I’m lifting heavy weights again after a year off because of the pandemic. Doesn’t matter. What matters had a good lunch session on soulcruzer on the radio, which by the way, I think I’m going to rebrand to an old brand I use to have sport – The Musical Journey show.
I explain more in the audio:
From the lunch sessions
the lunch sessions
Finally put out another episode of soulcruzer on the radio. I’ve been busy with my other collab streams, that I haven’t made time for my solo efforts.
But, the sun was out today, and I was feeling good. So I decided to do a lunchtime stream.
Some of the #1LUP crew were there.
Shoutout to:
- @TWazo11
- @sources_saywhat
- @Feaster5Hoodie
- @207_Tuna
Here’s the playlist
In other news…
I’ve been reading Jack Kerouac’s Book of Haikus. I must say, I’ve never really been that big of a fan of haikus, but reading Jack’s Americanised version of haiku, which he called American Pops, they kind of grew on me. I even wrote a few myself on Twitter.
This is worth a read if you’re into The Beats and like haiku style poetry.
a walkabout leam
Finally!
I went for a walkabout aimlessly through town after being lock away for 3 months in this home that has become my prison with an ever present invisible warden watching over me to make sure i don’t break any of the many rules put in place to keep us safe and stem the spread of the coronas.
Leamington Spa has changed a little. I was surprised to see new businesses that weren’t there before lockdown. How they managed to open a pizza joint and (yet another) coffee house is beyond me.
Good on them though. I love pizza and coffee so i can’t wait to try them out.
Here are some images from my little wander around town:
better to rule in hell
Just in case you read this God, I don’t really mean that. I mean serving in Heaven has its appeal too. And one day my broken tooth will fall out and I’ll be able to eat meat again like a lion instead of gumming it to death like a toothless hag. Until then, I’ll continue to eat more pears and drink the juice out of the can.
The day was clear and warm, without a breath of air to fan the sweat and cool me off, I had to try and balance the here and now with what happens next, you know when they let us out of lockdown. It’s likely to be a surrealistic future of bioengineering, virtual reality, and artificial consciousness. I can see pseudo-psychological cults flourishing in the aftermath. How do you end a pandemic anyway?
I have nothing but time now and I want to fill this huge gap in my soul that has been haunting me for years. I built a fortress around my heart that became a prison. The warden has fled the scene. There are no guards guarding the door. No one is holding the keys. In fact, the doors are all open. Should I make a prison break or stay here where I’ve been for years, a place that has become comfortable through familiarity. This place has become my home.
This prison has a name. It’s called the comfort zone. It’s an insidious place. It’s a place where danger is disguised as safety. Nothing happens in the comfort zone. And that’s the point – you don’t grow, you don’t improve, you don’t achieve – the only thing that happens is time passes. And time, as we know, is precious.
You kill time in the comfort zone. But you might phrase it as biding time while you gather resources, wait for the stars to align, or wait for permission to act. You think you’re killing time, all the while time is killing you.
Is the point of life to survive or to thrive? You tend to stay on the bottom rung of society if survival is your only ambition. Thriving comes with greater risk, but the rewards are also greater.
It is better to burn out than to fade away?1
A raven landed on the back fence, spread its wings, and flew away to my neighbor’s chimney. I could swear it had been watching me since midmorning. It’s beady little black eyes peering into my soul.
I’ve been collecting dust for a while now, playing it safe, coloring in-between the lines. COVID-19 has changed all of that. The physical lockdown has made me realize that I’ve been in mental lockdown for longer than I care to admit.
But now the gates are open. It’s time to break out, stagnate, or die!
*Said the Kurgan in the movie, Highlander. He was paraphrasing Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost who said it is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.
look at me, i’m gordon gekko
Being everywhere at once is an appropriated style I adopted from the speed freaks of the Gordon Gekko generation. Everybody wants everything at once. I don’t have time, they chant. I’m busy, they say. Busy doing what? Everybody’s busy. Everybody is busy being busy. And if you’re not busy, you’re wasting time. Shame on you. You lazy beast. Sitting idle watching the wheels go round and round. They make wasting time a crime when, in fact, being busy should be the crime. You’re going to busy yourself into an early grave and then you’ll have time. You’ll have plenty of time to smell the roses they lay at your feet. You’ll even have time to listen to the words they pray. And if they’re too busy to come talk to you now, with you lying flat on your back, be patient, they’ll be with you soon enough, then you can spend eternity together watching the sunset and listening to the moon. Oh, You’ll have plenty of time to do nothing then, except live.
when ignorance is wise
By changing the chemical and electrical activity in their large brains, they argued that as a species, they had fallen victim to evolutionary success.
Others worried.
They worried that besides the relentless pursuit of pleasure, they had forged sad habits and an ethos that would lead to a good life. The insiders were suspicious of such talk. It didn’t suit their brand of morality. It was a deeply unscientific way of thinking perpetuated by guru philosophers and techno shamans.
“Take the pills”, they insisted. The message is easier to spread if you take the pills like they did in the old days. The world transformed. Happiness was inverted. Re-insert the matrix back into the brain. They chose happiness over enlightenment. Knowledge veiled in ignorance is comfortable. False beliefs and bad practices make them happier.
The happiness machine was a brilliant invention. Ignorance retained its appeal. It sustains happiness, however shallow and unstable. Wise ignorance is the key to understanding.
Then he understood.
She would go for long walks through the fields with her Portuguese girlfriend. Sometimes their conversations went round and round pointlessly. Why don’t we just go to bed together, she caught herself thinking.
Her Portuguese friend said, “I used to believe in the Conservatives. I held out hope for traditional values to return.”
“What do you believe now?”
“These days,” her Portuguese friend said, “I side with the Anarchists waiting for the world to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.”
She found herself thinking, I wish she would collapse into bed with me.
He watched them circle the field three times.
How much absurdity does it take before one gets to bed?
One evening they walked through a rough neighborhood. There were shadows in odd places. They had been warned to avoid this sort of area. Rival gangs were on the prowl. Ethnic groups disliked each other. These two didn’t fit in.
“Should we turn back?”
Her Portuguese girlfriend didn’t think it was a good idea to turn back. “You can’t force fix things. Using force to fix things never works as intended. You have to guide it. Let things take their natural course.”
“Guide it?”
“Yes. Let it flow into the absoluteness of emptiness. Embrace the chaos of limitlessness.”
“Let’s flip a coin instead. Heads you kiss me. Tails we go on pretending like there’s nothing between us.”
When morning came, she woke from a strange dream about stealing a peach from an orange tree grove keeper. When fully wake she found herself on a filthy mattress on the floor. Her Portuguese friend was not beside her and she did not feel like she had been touched. She felt possessed by a memory of something that might change her.
Through her aches and pains, she remembered a conversation with her Portuguese girlfriend about the maltreatment of women and why men go off to war. There is satisfaction in pain and humiliation she remembered arguing. But does it really offer meaning? Purification, release, relief, like masturbation perhaps? But meaning? Goodness knows.
When she returned home, she found him sitting at his desk, typing on his laptop. She kissed the top of his head, then went and took a shower.