Everyday magical musings.

Sorry for my recent absence–I really have nothing to write, and you know, I still don’t. I’m just making a post to lead you all to a friend of mine’s new news blog. It has news reports and editorials about current events and so on. Please do yourself a favor and give it a visit!

You can reach it here!

Last night, I had a dream wherein I was taking final exams at the college. I was perfectly content doing this, and just carried on and tried my best, until my conscious self kicked in with the realization, “Wait–I already took final exams.” At this moment, I woke up, because I realized it was just a dream.

When I awoke, I immediately thanked my good friend Descartes for his similar observation a few hundred years ago and proceeded to apply this situation to human experience.

When I was taking the exams, the situation didn’t seem abnormal at all. There was a man who was walking me through it, and it all seemed very logical and usual, that it deserved no second thought. So there I was, simply filling out the answers as they came. All was well.

When I had the realization that I already had taken final exams, and so this whole scenario made no sense, I awoke to reality. What I’m wondering is, if many of my fellow human beings are similarly trapped in an illusory version of reality simply doing what seems necessary and sensible because it is being handed to them in a logical way which really has no reason to have extreme skepticism applied to it.

Perhaps if such people were suddenly hit with the right piece of information that made their scenario make no sense, they too, would wake up from their false reality, understanding that it was all a lie, now able to apply extreme skepticism and get to the bottom of it all.

It almost sounds like Plato’s Cave, doesn’t it? Perhaps it is. Perhaps people really need to awaken. But, most likely, they will crawl right back into where it’s safe. Largely, they are content with the illusion, and so they will never ascend. This is what Hell means, what eternal suffering means, for suffering comes from being trapped in the illusion.

It’s been all too long since I started a certain project–3 and a half years, in fact. This time has been spent conceptualizing this project, searching for the right sound, and defining myself as a composer and performer, and even at times giving up and turning away. After much toil, much has been learned, much has been gained, and much has been lost too. Of course, such things are the machinations of change and require no mourning.

But one thing is now set in stone right now, and that thing is courage. It is courage that I believe the world is in need of the most right now. It is by courage that people can fix their insecurities and vices, and thereby allow compassion to flow freely throughout the universe. The time is coming for heroes of the caliber of greatness made legendary in our most beloved epics to reincarnate, and perhaps they already have, and I don’t just mean in the conceptual sense.

Today, while doing some of my morning coursework, I was listening to the song NEO JAPANESQUE by D, and through it a signal was communicated to me, one which took me several minutes to interpret. It is said that just as the seeker seeks the truth, so does the truth seek the seeker. In this case, the goal in my sight, that is to say, the advent of the project I have poured 3 and a half years of my life into, is seeking me as much as I am seeking it. Though it’s true I have waited and worked to see the advent of my project arrive, it is only by the conditions which have now been set that this advent can occur. There is a world prepared to be expressed.

So, I’m ready to see my goal fulfilled at last, that is, the advent, for the goal of the project itself is infinite. I have become connected to many people who now recognize this project as an important step for all of us. So much as I am able to fulfill it, I will, but I will also be relying on your strength.

We are told not to discuss topics like politics or religion, because it makes people upset, but I don’t see why people should get upset. If we, as Aristotle suggests, do what educated minds should–entertain ideas without accepting them–discussions on religion and politics should be constructive. Instead, people get angry or upset. Why? Well, I would venture that they are expressing frustration of doubt, only displaying outward aggression because they’re holding onto their ideas with any reasonable basis, which to me means they could use even more discussion, either to re-enforce their reasoning or allow them to abandon or break down flawed ideas. I suppose there’s no reason to avoid these topics after all!

Well, there’s a crazy trip I’m planning with certain of my cohorts in LA taking place soon. Crazy opportunities are heading my way…I wonder, what will come of all of this? I think I can feel that the wheels of change are finally working hard. Of course, I will save all details until after I get back, though perhaps I can update daily while there. Either way…I may become something else entirely once I have the right setting–the right thing!

The stone circle is being set! The show is about to begin! Prepare yourself!

It seems I have so much to say lately that I can’t really say anything at all. So, for now, I’ll stick with a rather simple subject.

But for now, I guess I’ll talk about Halloween. For me, Halloween is not just an ultra-commercialized version of the Celtic celebration of Samhain, but a day of catharsis. A chance to be something you are not, just for a night, to experience, perhaps, the darkness of being a ghoul or a revenant. Tomorrow night, I will prowl the streets as Anne Rice’s Lestat de Lioncourt! Lestat is a very tortured figure in literature, yet he is tortured in such style and magnificence…I hope to capture a bit of that. Lestat is a character you hate to love, don’t you find?

So, will any of you be masquerading?

But of course, the Samhain angle must be addressed too. The Samhain festival was a festival of the dead that marked the Celtic New Year. For the Celts, this was a day in which the boundary between this world and the spirit world were made extremely thin. I wonder, will we encounter any spirits this year?

Stay out of trouble, kids! Or don’t…mwa-ha-ha-ha!

By the way, I carved this pumpkin last week. He’s very menacing. I decided to call him Melvin.

You know, Halloween specifically reminds me of Versailles, music-wise. Their album Lyrical Sympathy came out not long before Halloween in 2007, and I think that album very much captured the dark, Gothic feeling Halloween can encompass. So, here is Beast of Desire, in all its glory!

I can only live my life based on what I know and what I don’t know as it relates to myself. Essentially, this is the basis of individual behavior for every person. However, I get the feeling that many people aren’t aware of what they do and don’t know, which results in confusion: acting directly upon what one does not know and doing nothing whatsoever for what one does. I may be an egoist, but as I do know this, I am comfortable with being one: I’m not confused.

One thing that peers and even merely acquaintances have told me is that I know myself better than any person they know knows themselves. I do not bring this up as a statement of pride, but rather to say that the reason I am comfortable living my life exactly how I want to is precisely because I know what I know and what I don’t know. When you know this, you know how you apply to the universe and how it applies to you.

This reconciliation becomes your identity and your moral philosophy. If this reconciliation does not exist, the identity is split, the person does not know or understand themselves, and wherewith can they now attempt to understand anyone else? Under this consideration, the issue exceeds the boundaries of the self and becomes applicable on the scale of humanity.

So what do I know, and why does it cause me to live the way I do and seek what it is I seek? Well, I attempted to answer this question, but I realized that this would encompass my entire worldview, which is already present in my writings on Silver Thoughts.

So, I hope that my existing rant here will suffice. I do know that what proof I have for making this argument could rest in the fact that when others try to force you to do something their way, great conflict arises. There is a reason there is so much intolerance in the world, and consequently so much death and suffering. Selfishness is not being yourself, it is forcing others to be what you want them to be, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde.

“Know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and the gods!” said the Oracle at Delphi.

I hate to take the soapbox approach, but I am astonished by a particular phenomenon I’ve been encountering increasingly often. I call it, in the vein of Mark Booth’s “Cult of the Expert”, the Cult of the Adult. I like to maintain a certain level of anonymity on the Internet, but I will say that I am rather young, and frequently have conversations with people much older than me of the nature that such people do not usually expect me to have well-formed ideas about.

Because my ideas are well-formed, and I’m fairly gifted linguistically, I am able to carry on full-blown debates with people more than twice my age, which I’m sure they aren’t used to. But I don’t think my argument applies only to me, I think it applies to people of my same age and much younger as well, if not as old as it takes to be capable of speech.

When I am having conversations with some of these people who are much older than me, it seems clear that my opinions, or not even opinions, straight factual pieces of information, do not matter or are not valid simply because I’m young. The adult responds with an authoritative tone every time, as if to say, “No, you’re just a kid, how cute is it that you think you have any idea what you’re saying!” Honestly, it’s a little disgusting.

Such people are even more surprised when I respond after they make a negating statement in this tone. It usually catches them off guard, and they usually have no argument left. So much for age meaning knowledge and wisdom. After all, it appears that the absolute statements are all they have at their disposal. This only means that they are relying entirely on the egoism of their elderly authority to perpetuate their ideas.

I find it sad, really, that there are people working this way in the world. No matter what the age, everyone is entitled to a valid opinion and having a knowledge of information you might not know. Some may be old, but those same people have possibly experienced and used their brains a lot less than people many years their junior.

So, we can overcome race, religion, and sexual orientation, but not young age.

Well, it looks as though my music has finally returned to me. I definitely feel “back in touch” with my work again, meaning I can probably make what is known as “steady progress” now. It seems the Autumn Spell was effective. The song is coming together. Right now, it’s all of the boring stuff I’m working on…getting tempos and rhythms perfect, piecing together each section to make it all fluid. What I really can’t wait to do is all of the ornamental stuff…

Shortly, in about 4 hours, Autumn will return to the desert. I feel it returning already…walking outside this morning, while noticing a somewhat crisper air, a small wisp of wind nudged some felled leaves and twirled them into the air in dancing magnificence. Ahh, the time I have longed for is nigh!