It’s that time of the year again where hundreds of audio fiends descend upon the Internet to share audio of all kinds. That’s right, it’s #AudioMo 2020 let the recordings begin!
Hello #Audiomo
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.
Stranglehold
I cannot escape the stranglehold of words. To be able to use language like an alchemist mixing chemical concoctions that play with the mind, well now that just turns me on to no end. Words are sexy. I’ve been learning about the sentence and even though I have been writing sentences for more than forty years, there’s still loads to learn.
And then there are American Sentences – the Americanized form of the Haiku invented by the word wizard, Allen Ginsberg. Like the Haiku, American Sentences (example 1 and example 2 and here’s a whole book of them) are meant to be extremely vivid and detailed oriented with the image as the central focus rather than rhetoric or lyricism. I tend to float between image and lyricism.
I especially love what happens between sentences where the juxtaposition of images play with your own experiences to co-create a narrative between writer and reader. For example, when you read the verse below what images spring forth from the depths of your subconscious:
Where were you when the weird bearded beasts
burst from her womb rubbing their buddha bellies and
praying to the sleeping lamb, the flowering whore laughed
and blessed the night; your last words lost in the drowning city.
Those are the kind of words I hear in my head from time to time and often commit to paper (well electronic paper that is). I know I’m sloppy with punctuation, but playing with words is more meaningful to me than grammar. Though grammar is the glue that makes the spells work. Otherwise, you (mis)spell and the magic doesn’t work. And words are magic.
Bring me back the witch’s head. I’ve been obsessing over Courtney Love obsessing over doll parts and faking beyond fake with a crazy ache to have more cake than anybody else at the table. But the truth is I’m more likely to be what might have been bearing the name of never was. I don’t know what I’m selling but I’m not selling sheep. Demonology maybe?
Sometimes my mind gets so saturated with words that it feels like my head is going to explode. Like right now, my head is throbbing but it’s not like a headache. It’s more like all the thoughts in my head want to get out at once, and yet I’m still putting stuff in it right now as I re-read T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland – probably his most famous poem, but hasn’t been, up until now, one of my favorites. The state my mind is in is making the Wasteland make sense like it’s never done for me before.
When I’m here, there’s not much else to do but ride it out and wait for the calm to come.
It’s a good place this.
I like it here this place where all of Time meets inside my head past, present, future blending together into now(here)
I hope you’re staying safe and sane in these crazy times.
Clay
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Existence
Existence is suffering.
Existence is pain
Existence is time
Existence is purpose
Existence is immediate
Existence is perfect
Existence is reason
Existence is problematic
Existence is exotic
Existence is mysterious
Existence is me
Existence is god
Existence is beautiful
Existence is mind
Existence is unnecessary
Existence is lame
Existence is resistance
Existence is futile
Existence is eternal
Existence is essence
Existence is temporary
Existence is struggle
Existence is everything
Existence is ironic
Existence is simple
Existence is absolute
Existence is reality
Existence is brief
Existence is meaningless
Even monsters need to eat
Everybody keeps going on about returning back to normal as if we could carry on living our lives the same way before the pandemic struck. I don’t want to find my way back to normal. I was already tired of the ‘image is everything’ culture we’d been sold through the foul mouths of marketers who are little more than piranhas praying on people’s frail egos and desperate need to be “liked” by people they don’t even know or care about.
I hope the world does collapse. It was shit anyway being under so much pressure , forced to earn a living selling false hope to be people who were blind and deaf to their own demise. Don’t hate me too much, even monsters and sharks need to eat. It’s not my fault we live in a world that rewards monsters like me for selling shit to people they don’t need.
You’re partly to blame for my grotesque behaviour. You patted me on the back for hard work. For success. For owning lots of fancy things. Now you look at me like I’m disgusting. All I’m doing is playing by the rules you laid down. What are you complaining about? You’re the real jackal.
That’s why I’ve stopped being friendly about it. I figured, If people are naive enough to give money to a voice on the phone, then fuck them. You have to have money to give money. If they want to give their money to me, who am I to complain?
I should warn you. If you’re the whining little moralistic type here to save my soul, don’t bother. I stopped believing in that fairy tale a long time ago. I broke through the barrier of mis-belief. I learnt to see the truth which is greater than any truth bound in rules and laws designed to deceive the weak and protect the strong. And the truth is this: the real world is soulless and automatic made palatable by the media you consume.
While I’m not brain dead, what remains of my mind is splintered and shackled through shards of black glass.
They’re coming for me now. I can feel the shock of their distant wings bearing down on me vibrating my skull with their shrieks. I feel something between hope and fear as I wait for them to descend upon me.
I want to be consumed. Sacrificed. Let them eat my organs. Let the earthworms rule my brain.
Let them go ahead and curse me. Rip my face off. I’ll always be a rebel. I have no time for conformity. In the Middle Ages the churches tried to eliminate madness in order to establish order and control. They needed to burn heretics like me. It was the only way they could maintain their grip on the hearts and minds of normal people.
These days the Church has lost its grip so, instead, they turned to reason to establish control. Changed heretics to lunatics like me who threaten the system. Social misfits they called us. Rounded us up like swine, consigned us to prisons, asylums, workhouses, fast food restaurants and school. The prisons and asylums are the worst. They are the pillars of order. If you refuse to act like everyone else, they throw you in prison. If you refuse to think like everyone else, they throw you in an asylum.
Orwell tried to warn us. But we let it happen anyway. Take a look around you right now. Look at all the spying devices you have in your home – the laptop, your mobile phone, the webcam, the digital camera, location apps, and GPS’s. Alexa, Siri, and Google are watching and listening to everything you do and say. Amazon tracks everywhere you’ve been on the Internet. Have you ever wondered how they can do same-day delivery? They know what you’re going to do before you do? The trucks are already loaded with the contents of your next order even though you haven’t even placed your order yet.
Which brings me to this: reason must subjugate non-reason.
It’s how they maintain order and control these days. I know they’re on to me. I know they’re monitoring this transmission from you. They know I know they know. It’s only a matter of time before they round me up. They have their choice with me because I neither behave like I’m supposed to behave nor think what I’m supposed to think.
I hope I see you on the inside too. Even though we’ll be locked up, we’ll both be free.
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.
The other side of nowhere
The beginnings of something new. An exploration of a long lost part of a soul. More to follow…
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.
Setting myself on fire
Uncertainty gives rise to anxiety, both intensify depending on how much time we spend dwelling in the future imagining, most likely, all of the things that could go wrong. The body, of course, responds as if those bad things are happening now, in the present.
I’m infamous, amongst my friends, for setting myself on fire. I do it when I get tired of the status quo.
Like now.
I’m tired of the same old hogwash and bullshit that i find across the “popular” web spaces. Or maybe it’s just an indication that i spend too much time surfing the ‘Net. In my defence, I do it in the hopes of finding something new and interesting, in fact, it doesn’t even have to be new, interesting will do.
But for every interesting thing i find on my travels through cyberspace, i’m bombarded with a 100 pieces of dribble (of course, this essay might be dribble too, depending on your point of view).
Oh how I hate to whine, but such is the times we live in at the moment, my friend. we are cursed.
You know the old Chinese saying, “may you live in interesting times.” The COVID-19 has made things interesting alright. Our leadership in the US and UK have made the times interesting too. The economy is no joke though and it’s about to make things even more interesting, if not desperate.
Since we’re all having to re-invent ourselves to fit into the new normal, I thought now might be a good time to set myself on fire again and see what rises from the ashes. Will I be the Phoenix? Or will I be burnt toast?
I guess the better question is who do I want to be when the ashes settle? I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to cling to the familiar and dress it up in new clothes.
Thoreau moved to Walden to challenge himself “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life…” so that when it came time for him to die, he wouldn’t discover that he had not lived at all.
I am imagining Thoreau challenging me now to do the same. To use this time of lockdown, social distancing, and isolation to live more deliberately.
Challenge accepted!
Some words of encouragement
The other day, a good friend of mine messaged me:
And I replied with:
And:
VE Day 75
Yesterday I was knee deep in video editing. I’m working on a tribute video for VE Day which is this Friday.
This year is the 75th anniversary of VE Day – the moment the guns across Europe fell silent and the war with Nazi Germany ended. The official end of the war happened at one minute past midnight on the 8th of May 1945.
To no surprise, all of the IRL events have been canceled due to the war we’re currently fighting against the Coronavirus.
But here’s a way you can get involved:
At 3pm on the 8th May, we would like to encourage everyone throughout the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and the Isle of Man to stand together and raise a glass of the refreshment of their choice and undertake the attached ’Nation’s Toast to the Heroes of WW II’ in tribute to the millions at home and abroad that gave so much to ensure we all enjoy and share the freedom we have today.
Warmest regards and please “stay safe”.
Bruno Peek LVO OBE OPR, Pageantmaster VE Day 75
Raise a glass!
Clear on out the back
We watched The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly last night. It’s one of the movies on the IMDB top 100 movies:
Thought I’d spend some of my isolation time polishing off the IMDB Top 100 movies.
The highlighted ones I’ve seen already. pic.twitter.com/qIHhshAZcM
— Clay Lowe (@soulcruzer) April 1, 2020
I’ve seen the film countless times, but Ruth has never seen it (although I’m sure she’s heard it because I own the DVD and have watched it from time to time over the years).
My dad was a massive Spaghetti Western fan, so growing up, I watched a ton of “cowboy” movies. Clint Eastwood was my favorite. I liked all of his Westerns apart from Unforgiven, which saw Eastwood return to the genre that made him the quintessential tall, dark, silent stranger type. I had high hopes for Unforgiven. I mean, how could it lose. It had Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Gene Hackman in it. It failed for me because Eastwood didn’t use his gun until the end of the movie! He took the retired old Western gunslinger too much to heart.
This is what I wanted to see the whole movie, but sadly had to sit through 2 hours to get this (don’t watch if you haven’t seen the movie and want to judge for yourself):
I spent most of the day outside in my back garden working on my suntan. The sun was glorious yesterday. I think we hit a high of 21C. I launched the Radio Warwickshire #30DaySongChallenge in our Social Radio Club on FaceBook. Day 1 was to choose a song that needs to be played loud. I chose:
I’m also running the challenge on our Instagram and Twitter accounts. But like most things I post, Facebook is the place I get the most engagement. Go figure.
I’m still working my way through The Unspoken Name which is the first heroic fantasy book I’ve read in a long while. It’s good for reading when you’re working on your tan. I haven’t completely warmed to the story yet, but it’s early days.
With lockdown, all the days blend together. But I’m glad it’s a Bank Holiday weekend. I can spend time on the frivolous.
Peace.
Noticing
Noticing. I noticed the cacophony of sounds coming through my bathroom window in the wee hours of the morning. I couldn’t resist stumbling out into the pre-dawn to see what all of the fuss was about. The romanticist in me would like to say the fuss over the low hanging full moon in the dark morning sky and the way the patterned clouds slightly obscured the moon’s presence. I stood there for a while to take it all in. There was this one little bird (not on my doorstep) but on my neighbor’s TV aerial who singing his/her little heart out. A symbol of hope to fight back the dispair lurking in the shadows of my mind.
Yesterday, I spent a lot of time on Zoom. I had a couple of meetings in the morning. I delivered a virtual workshop on using LinkedIn and Twitter to grow social presence as a business person looking for new clients. The afternoon was a carbon copy of the morning. One of Zoom calls in the afternoon was with Naomi. We’re contemplating starting a new podcast together. I want to make sure that it makes sense given all of the other stuff I’m into – this blog, the coachclay community site and blog, the coach’s notes, the coach’s notes podcast, the radio show, the e-learning platform, and not to mention, my new itch to do something purely creative like write interactive fiction. A known fault of mine is that I like to have a lot of things on the go, which probably means I don’t do justice to any one thing. We agreed to let the idea percollate over the next couple of weeks.
We watched the latest episode of Better Call Saul on Netflix. I’ve enjoyed watching Jimmy McGill transform into Saul Goodman over the past 5 seasons. In season 5 Saul gets deeper and deep into the criminal world. The two Mexican Twins made an appearance last night. Two pretty cool characters from Breaking Bad.
I was desperate to create something all day, so I started a new drawing. I haven’t drawn anything for a while.
I feel the day calling. On the docket today I’m recording a podcast episode for a client, a couple of virtual coffee meetings, recording an interview segment for the radio show, and editing a few podcast episodes that have been waiting for my attention for a few days now.
Peace.
Snakes on the High Street
I don’t even want to count the days anymore. Counting only draws attention to the fact that we’re in this for the long haul. Three weeks is easily going to turn into six months, so I might as well get myself mentally prepared for that. Our face masks arrived yesterday. I don’t think it will be long before the government makes wearing masks in public a mandatory thing. France is the latest country to do a U-turn, joining others – the US, Austria and Singapore – in advising the public to wear them. For now it’s just advice. But soon, I reckon, it will be mandatory.
I was startled out of my sleep this morning by my dream.
In this dream, I was walking down the high street in Southam on my way back to see someone. I was walking and thinking about starting another podcast. I didn’t want to start a “live” show because people don’t listen live, they prefer podcasts. I was thinking maybe I could start a Marc Maron style podcast. In the middle of my thoughts while walking, I noticed there were a lot of slugs on the pavement. Big brown slugs. I took a closer look and realised that they were actually slugs morphing into snakes. I thought I was imaging the slug/snakes were following me. It wasn’t until one of the slugs became a full on snake that I realised they were actually after me. This one snake in particular drew a bead on me and started coming directly for me. I walked faster, but it was gaining on me. I had a sudden flash of inspiration. If I walked onto the busy main road and the snake followed me, it would get turnover by a car. Just as I stepped backwards off of the curb, the snake struck. I jumped awake.
I believe our subconscious mind sometimes communicates to us through our dreams. I looked up what it means when you dream of snakes. Here’s what Google had to say:
Snakes commonly symbolize fear or transformation. Dreaming of a snake is a sign that you are afraid of something in your waking life, or it could be a forewarning of changes to come… or
A snake in your dream may represent something in your life that is unpredictable and out of your control. You are afraid of the unknown. Snake refers to hidden threats: Because snakes are sometimes hard to see and are slithering in bushes, they are also symbolic of a hidden threat and/or a betrayal.
I can see there is probably a direct correlation between my dream and what’s going on in the waking world at the moment, but I wonder if there is more to the story. There was some stuff that happened before this scene in my dream, but the details are fuzzy. I may need to tease those out in order to get a better understanding of this dream.
It’s just a fantasy
Late last night, I felt the urge to read some heroic fantasy or epic fantasy as it’s sometimes called. I’ve been gaming a lot these past couple of weeks, which inspired me to dip back into Ethan Gilsdon’s book, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks and that, in turn, led me back to heroic fantasy novels.
I’ve been out of the genre for years, but back in the day, I knew and read all of the top authors. Last night I had no clue where to begin. I could have just pulled something off the shelf. I still have a descent collection of sword and sorcery books, but I wanted to something new. I turned to Google to help me out and found the best epic fantasy books series through the ages. I pulled a debut novel by A.K. Larkwood, The Unspoken Name. So far there’s a sacrificial virgin bride turned runaway, a mysterious wizard, and a god who’s name can’t be spoken who’s about to be pissed off when he finds out his sacrificial bride is gone. Nice.
My hidden agenda here is I’m toying with the idea of creating an interactive adventure game using Twine. But that’s probably miles down the road.
I just finished pre-recording the radio show I’ve been making for a client. Last week I was a bit rusty. I hadn’t recorded a full show for a number of years, so my rhythm was a little off beat. This week, I was back on form. It was fun to record. I hope the team like it.
I still have the cover art to make. Here’s last weeks cover:
Tomorrow we roll into week 3 of lockdown. The UK Prime Minister has been admitted into the hospital to be further tested for COVID-19. Nevr a good thing.
Cleaning Up
Hi Folks,
Excuse the assault on your inbox today if you subscribe to this blog by email. As you can tell, I’m cleaning up a bit. Part of that clean-up and importing my March updates from soulcruzer.com. I decided this morning that it would be more sensible for me to personal blog here under my name versus my Internet handle of soulcruzer.
As I probably mentioned in one of these posts I’m importing, this whole lockdown thing has given me even more time to think and to reflect, and I want to use my personal blog as part diary to capture my thoughts and observations.
Again, sorry for the interruption. It’ll be over soon, I promise.
A zooma, zoom, zoom
Is there a company in the UK doing what Kinsa is doing in the U.S.? I read this on Dave Winer’s blog. What a great idea, a network of thermometers. Can they spot outbreaks of Coronavirus? You can read about it in the NYT.
We’ve been here before. Read about how NYC survived the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. We will get through this. It’s a question time and people doing their part to help stop the spread of the Coronavirus. And here’s a history of pandemics.
Get some vitamin D in you, either from the sun or supplements.
Apps like Zoom are really coming into their own during this pandemic. I spent most of my day working through the medium of Zoom. It’s good for meetings, webinars, and training. I’ve been an advocate of online learning via the virtual classroom environment for years. Glad to be able to do more of it now (although the catalyst for the increased interest isn’t the best).
head down and hippies
Not much to report today, apart from the UK going further into lockdown. I did have I am Legend moment today. I was the only one home for most of the day and with the streets being empty in my town, I felt like I was the last human.
I mostly had my head down trying to meet a deadline for a client. I owed them a Guide On Managing a Remote Team. I finished the PDF version. Next, I have to convert that into an online microlearning course.
I had fun adding some more images to my Hippie Lifestyle and Beat Generation Pinterest boards.
I like the aesthetic of the Beat Generation. Oh, and I love me some hippie chicks.
I hope you all are washing your hands, practicing social distancing, and keeping yourselves safe!
Clay