So I thought I’d write from inside a dark mood. I’ve been given to many such moods as of late. They come and go, as the moon replaces the sun.. oscillating consciousness.. In the darkest of moods, one forgets of the possibilities of light.. as if darkness will rain eternal. The only method I have found for coping with this kinda darkness is to put your warrior hat on.. take a Christ like attitude as far as not being attached to.. well anything of earthly origins should we say?.. that kinda live dangerously and don’t cling too hard to life.. kinda thing.. that’ll take you through the eye of the most vicious of storms..  Christ was always good with that kinda thing.. a real roll model he is for that sorta thing.. and then the final thing, of course, is to put on a blind fold and ignore what your eyes see.. what your idea of reality is… and all the nightmares dancing before the minds eye.

This is not to deny any bleak reality’s reality.. no, far from that.. that’s what those drug taking sissies do.. fearer’s of black dogs!

Err, don’t ask me about my language here.. lets face it.. I’m in an odd mood.. I don’t fully embrace or believe what I’m saying here.. this is unreliable narration time.. where I take on the character of some.. odd spirit in my imagination.. and play with things from that perspective.. making a post such as this.. a bit on the opaque side.. if transparency would mean insights into my true state of.. well whatever. Nope.. all you’ll get here are clues.. clues with which it would take a mind far more disciplined then yours to truly read!

Err, there’s I go again, teasing you.. daring you..

But any who, that’s not what I wanted to go on about.. no, I wanted to go on about this darkness.. without all the silly embellishments and.. whatever… but I do bring up several good points in my silly dance.

Reality, as cognitized.. is an unreliable narrator

That’s why you want to put on that blind fold. See to some extent, no matter what, life is always a sorta roll of the dice.. the future is just that way. Now.. any good gambler will tell you about the statistical order that governs the law of out come of.. dice throws.. which is to say there is no chance, or chaos.. without order lurking around there somewhere.. but.. if you have chaos on the micro, you may not find order till you get to that macro.. it’s that kinda a deal.. and sometimes we just don’t know what is the chaos and what is the order..

So the point is.. whatever.. we don’t know.. and that’s pretty freaking important. When I have friends.. and they sorta reach there breaking point… when it would seem all hope is lost.. the council I usually provide is.. “well hold on a second, you really don’t know what is going to happen yet you know? So don’t freak out till it’s time to freak out.”

This would be wonderful advice for me in my current situation.. unfortunately there seems to be other voices in some of the people around me.. nearly preaching the virtues of the freak out. These people have good attentions.. and thus they are great way pavers.. of that road to hell. They have this kind of.. character.. where in they’d like to make them selves intermediaries between your self and.. reality, or whatever the hell it is.. telling you they kinda know better.. so to speak.. which.. unfortunately.. can be powerfully persuasive when you’re at your weakest moments.

It’s an interesting question to ponder, isn’t it… “what’s the worst that could happen?” I mean if you were to really think it out till the ends of eternity.. I mean how much of what differentiates a hellish life from the great life is a matter of the values we bring to it, and there for not intrinsic to it? How far down can you dive without hitting a horrible wall known in alcoholic circles as “reaching your bottom?”

I ponder these kinds of questions because of what I do value.. I mean.. I believe in values.. true values.. having the kind of commitments which you’ll take to the grave if need be.. you’ll accept a crucified fait if need be.. I’m not saying I desire that kinda thing.. just that I approve of that kinda commitment.. which is why when given a choice between selling my soul and having an easier go of it.. or getting fucking crucified.. I have a horrible habit of the fucking crucification…

Perhaps Jesus was a bad influence on me?

Oh I’m just having fun!!! What could be grander then thinking of Jesus as a bad influence on your life?!!  I think this notion is particularly powerful when you consider that most people do indeed think of that kind of commitment as.. well a horribly bad idea.

Well take these terrorist whom kill them selves in the process.. do we take a moment, ever, to respect there commitment? I’m not saying we have to agree with there politics.. or not think of them as.. at bottom evil and retched.. although I’m not saying they’re evil or retched.. cause you know.. I don’t know that I really know them well enough to make that kinda judgement call.. I’m just saying that we carry certain prejudices around with us.. that play a roll in all our judgements..  and I’m just trying to call you’re attention to that…

Another words.. the fun I’m having in all my crazy talk is in part one of pushing readers buttons.. or.. the buttons of the collective baggage of our times.. I’m saying that’s the crazy stuff.. not necessarily where I’m coming from.. and so it is that if my crazy talk seems too crazy, it might just be your projection.. as an effect of said baggage.

I don’t really know what to make of all this, to be perfectly honest with you. Is it simply a matter of me needing to be willing to face the darkest of possibilities without the flinch? Being able to do that, it strikes me, is an amazingly powerful thing… and that could be the silver lining of my situation.. a bit like God saying “don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about,” this being God’s way of dealing with the neurotic in us.

And as I write this I think “Jesus, I don’t write crap in how long, and then I start coming out with this kinda thing?” To my imagination this is some ballsy pros.. A bad ass rap if you will.. But the Buddhist idea that the demon is simply an angel of revelation before you’re ready.. does seems to me a powerful idea to my current state.

The demon’s goal, as near as I can tell, is to wake me up. And I can tell you that I am waking up.. and if what I’m waking up to is an ability not to flinch in such lower depths of despair.. that is an amazing freedom to bring back to the light with you.

Most of us, in our lives, on one level or another.. live in prisons.. and its our own fear and desire that has constructed our prisons.. and it is that wrestling with the darkness that can be a path to transcendence… which sorta reminds me of a recent news letter from Chris Brogan.

Meditations on the message of Chris

I’ve never had the pleasure of a real deep conversation with Chris.. I’ve tried to dance around and debate with him from time to time.. but I suppose he’s not really into that sorta thing. Still.. there are certain organization principles to his content that resonate for me.

Anyway…. in a recent post he talked about this metaphor of the Matrix movies.. on not fitting in.. and all that kinda thing… about this cage issue I was bringing up.. err.. how about a little video to illustrate my point of view?

So yeah.. I of course think Joseph Campbell is the master of this subject. At the very least Campbell is one of my principle mentors relative to life and this subject. If I take this video as a clue to my own life.. it’s down right creepy.. indeed if you juxtapose this post with the contents of this video, its creepy..

Earlier in this post I made a snide little bit of a comment about the sissies who need there meds.. My point being that what I am going through could be very easily classified as a mental disorder.. but… the meds roll is to intermediate.. to lesson the impact.. control it.. when it is the natural evolution of the disorder to have a break through.. that is the medication is a part of the cage. But psychiatry’s goal is usually not the break through but the.. making the symptoms livable..

What I’m wrestling with is more the ordeal.. and possible futures.. and while I wrestle I sharpen my axe… which is roughly the prep work for deeper wrestling or.. well.. this will start to get complex soon.. so how about a little post?

I’ve been watching a seemingly endless array of movies.. that’s been my day today.. well that and an itty bitty bit of work.. fueled by the inspiration from some of those movies.. and perhaps this post will turn out to be similarly inspired.. but.. if I’m to post this, it can’t be too much of a post.. cause the real deal posts.. are too much work to have finished.. or to finish on a night like this.. it’s 5 AM after all.. and I’m tired.. so don’t expect too much.

So what am I driving at? No, not in this post.. but in life.. the life away from writing this thing.. Maybe I should try and explain what I mean.

One of the films I’ve watched in my recent array was a documentary on Thomas Merton.  Merton was a monk whom I read a bit of at some point around college.. He was important, for among other things, a kind of east west dialog.. and he was a bit of a prophet. I can’t quote him properly, but in my “what am I driving at question” he sorta communicated my meaning somewhere.. This idea that God is always giving us seeds, but those seeds rarely turn to fruit for the simple reason that the conditions aren’t quite right.

I have a difficult time making distinctions between myself and God sometimes. This is not to say that I have a hyper inflated ego, or anything like that.. but that the nature and depths of consciousness are such that.. well I suppose you could argue that it’s only from the stand point of the ego that we are so differentiated from the world that we could look at our selves as distinct individuals.. as a pose to seeing all the mutual dependancies.. from which we are a product.. and it is in this sense that I find the difficulty in distinguishing myself from God.

But my analogous thought to Merton’s, or my analogous meaning.. think of all the thoughts that you think over the course of a day, or a few days, and think of each thought like a seed from God.  Ok.. I know, you’re thoughts? But where do our thoughts come from? Where do they come from prior to there dawning on our awareness? They are, are they not, products of complex dynamics.. inside of which we are linked to, well, everything. Do you follow?

And these thoughts are also expressive of something else.. which is like.. oh lets call it our existential relationship to reality… err, maybe that’s not the best thing to call them.. or not the meaning I’m after here. Maybe it’s more like.. they are expressive of the course we are trying to navigate through life. They are somehow about choices we make.. we make the choice to think down a path.. or look down a path.. or perhaps to walk down it. These are the thoughts of that path.

But the choice of paths.. and all of this.. I use the phrase “choices we make,” but again there’s the ambiguity here. Conscious will is not really the thing in charge of our lives.. there is, after all, fait.. the seemingly random nature of the universe.. the issues of mice and men.. and of course, the unconscious factors. So when I ask “what am I driving at” what I’m trying to do is look at all those thoughts, and see what the path might be that they are expressive of.

I think of prayer life.. or my relationship to the divine.. as kind of “call and response” esk. I believe we all, even the atheists among us, have prayer lives.. have relationships to the divine. Now.. this is a “transfiguration of the common place” esk point of view.. This transfiguration of the common place.. well among other things was a book by Arthur Danto on Aesthetics.. It was a wrestling with issues of modern art, or what is often called modern art.. Dushamp’s water fountain, Warhol soup can’s.. some John Cage fun..

The idea is what is the implication of “the frame.” Well it’s quite a rabbit whole to go down, to try and fully explain this.. but the point is.. that there’s something we call “prayer,” there’s something we call “a relationship to the divine” and these terms.. are frames.. that frame things a certain way.. but if the thing we are trying to refer to with our frames.. is something intrinsic to the nature of.. lets call it prayer or relationship to the divine.. it might be possible to find things that hold these same intrinsic qualities.. which we do not put in these frames.

And so it is that I’ve spied the “unconscious spiritual lives” that exist in all of our lives.. without us even being aware of it. We, without realizing we are doing it.. say a prayer… ask God for something.. and we even get our selves an answer.. all while not being at all aware of it.

There is this notion that things are in “God’s hands.” This is.. a mysterious thing, is it not? Do we believe there’s some invisible force behind phenomenological reality? Well, in psychology it is fact in the sense that those things that we do not work out within our selves, we are forced to work out in our lives.. as our psychology makes them manifest them selves in our lives.

This is a complex point.. I mean what’s the distinction between us doing it and God doing it? This point is made even more complex by the fact that the psychologist is… in a very basic sense, a kind of substitute for a priest.. and that what we now call “psychology” was once called “spirit.”

In any event, I have my eyes firmly focused on this problem.. this question.. and the sorta unfolding of my own destiny and how that relates to these sorts of questions.

Howz abouts another crazed entry? Sure, why not? I hear this first paragraph is very important.. you gotz to makez it keyword rich.. but is that how you wantz to start off your blog entry? With some keyword rich action? What is this, a newspaper; where we gotta give you an overview of whatever it is I’m going to post about in the first paragraph.. and then kinda go into it a little here, a little there.. circling around.. till I’m finally allowed to deep dive? Is that how we are to do it? How it’s supposed to work? Well I mean.. whatz ifz I’z wants to do something else.. I mean.. half the time I start a post and I don’t know what the hell it is I’m going to write about it.. till I getz to it. So who knows whatz the hellz this one’s going to be about? More social media bitching perhaps?

I don’t know.. I’m in a weird mood thinking about everything… See I’ve been sick in bed for a freaking week.. and it sucks.. cause I walk around wondering what the hell happened to my momentum.. plus my life is at this weird point where we kinda don’t know what’s up.. with various things.. and.. its like the cliff hanger sustains.. so we can’t quite acclimate to to whatever the actuality turns out to be.. and we got a lot of this kinda thing to start working out.

But then I fell into this odd way of thinking… that basically.. its kinda all in my mind anyway.. or I mean.. a certain amount of it is. Or.. see it’s like.. what’s there to be anxious about, really? I’m not saying there’s not a lot.. or that there’s not a lot on my plate, and life isn’t overwhelming in reality.. and that I’m still feeling like I’m failing to live up to it all.. I’m not debating that part of it.. more the big picture anxiety over living through this and getting to some better reality.. All the feeling of..  like that will never happen… and the wondering how much of my life’s efforts might be in vane, or any of that. 

So here’s a little tip from you’re uncle Matt.. when you’re in that there valley of darkness.. this is not the time to assess such things! In the dark.. so much is in shadow.. and.. what you see in the shadow.. in all the question marks… tends to be just a projection of your mood.. and if your mood is dark.. well.. there you go. And with this comes the question of.. just what is momentum..

A couple latter:

Seems like I’m circling around a thought worthy of examination..  which is like.. about the baggage we cary with us through our life.. its effects on pathology, and the unfolding of our lives.. This feeling like.. if we could just break through it.. but somehow breaking through seems.. beyond what we are capable of.. and you wonder if you’re like some elephant that was taught he was caged.. by a giant chain around his leg.. and now it’s just a string.. but we still feel the cage.

I have found.. I absolutely can walk outside my own cage. I have.. in various ways.. and yet it is still there.. and yet, is it?

One of the things I was thinking about.. oh a month or back or so.. was the importance of interacting with lots of people.. for the sake of my sanity.. And in social media.. I discovered this by going to a bunch of tweet ups.. I have lots of social media friends.. friends I enjoy hanging out with.. having a beer with.. etc.. But now it’s looking like I might not be able to make so many tweet ups.. meet ups.. or whatever. 

The thing about hanging out with lots of different groups of people.. having lots of different types of friends is.. the way we kind of define our selves socially.. that is how our identity in part comes from this social interaction.. and Well this might sound like crazy talk.. it’s part of a theory I developed under the influence of psychedelics.. that as a part of social cohesion.. there is a kind of center point that happens when you interact with one or more person.. that.. in a certain way.. could be thought of as a kind of modified version of Freud’s super ego.. whatever it is that brings us together.. or whatever it is that we have in the way of shared values.. because like our value system.. and the basis of social hierarchy.. sorta.. 

For men, of course, pecking order is very important.. and the vibe you have about your place in the universe.. and all this.. Now.. the deal about the value of lots of people.. means you have lots of little places where different things are valued.. different parts of your being..  So.. your view of your self.. if not super good.. could have something to do with the folks you are hanging out with.. the world  you’re in…

This is not to cast aspersions to the folks I regularly hang with.. but that my regular experience is not… ideal in terms of my whole self.. that its unbalanced.. 

So in this sense.. the cage within.. and is it really a cage at all.. how much of this feeling is a part of a sense of identity.. based on the world I’m experiencing myself through? Is what I’m asking…

We are a complex web of interrelated wills..  a will echo system if you will.. that has some sorta interrelationship with our needs as human beings.. and how well or poorly these things are being met. To attack the problem in a kinda Maslow hierarchy sorta way.. it can be hard to reach higher stages of spiritual enlightenment when there’s some question of if you’ll even be able to eat tonight.. But I think there’s lots of hierarchy’s in us.. not just Maslow’s.. surrounding all sorts of things.. so that there are certain things we can’t achieve until this other set of things is taken care of.. and this is the sorta thing that can create creative blocks.. or just whatever.. and sometimes you just have to kinda put you’re ear to the unconscious to find your way to the next place you need to be at.

So in this way it’s all quite hard to tell what’s really up inwardly.. what’s creating the cage phenomenon of the mind sorta feeling.. 

A couple latter:

I think I mentioned somewhere.. this association I’m having between sickness and and neurosis.. neurosis being a substitution.. substituting illegitimate suffering for legitimate suffering.. not that being sick isn’t a legitimate thing.. but.. it’s at least neurosis like in that you aren’t doing anything about whatever the thing is.. that you should be doing something about.. and the like between excuse and reason can be fuzzy.. 

Speaking of which.. I’d finish this thought.. but I have things to attend to.  

I guess I’ve been posting some crazy ass posts while sick, ha? It’s good to post! I encountered this bit of inspiration over at Pluperfecter.. this interview of Steven aka Vaspers the Grate from some 5 years ago.. On the subject of what a blog is.. Steven quoted Doc Searls… a blog post being like an email to the world.. and this thought just sorta inspired me.. should I blog like that? Should I blog as if this were a personal email to the world? Me to you? And you over there as well? 

You know.. I can dig that kinda idea.. like.. I don’t know.. so often there’s all this “how to blog” crap.. smart crap though it can be.. it’s the game of it.. everything from your SEO / SEM / Copywriting, key working, whatever ing..  top 10 lists.. and God knows what else. I mean sure.. it can all be good.. but um.. I don’t know.. I never feel totally comfortable with it.. just as I’ve never felt totally comfortable with best practices.. I’m not trying to refute there utility.. and it’s not that I want to sabotage my own plight.. It’s just that sometimes it feels like just a lot of rubbish to get in the way… You know?

I don’t know.. I feel as if.. on some level.. if I blog there should be some sorta strategery about it.. or some purpose.. some excuse to poor energy into it.. I wonder if I’m adding any value to the world or to anything.. Why am I doing this again? If strategical.. shit, my spell checker didn’t underline that word.. is that a real wold?.. err.. strategical tactical al-tick-al whatever..  el.. Salvador of dolly.. parton.. pardons.. I don’t fucking know.. but just the.. 

Ok.. so there’s an ecosystem that works a certain way.. which causes somethings to rise, somethings to fall.. blah blah blah.. and the el strategic-o tacktic-o is in part born out of a close observation of how all this works and “How you to can be a social media rock star” or at least.. well.. whatever.. and I think all this is important.. and if you have a goal.. and that goal is your success metric.. well.. you ought to adopt all that…

But then I think.. and I think real deeply.. so deeply.. it-id scare your mofo ass.. you know.. like “what’s this life for” deep? Well screw that line of questioning as that make you walk around like a head without a body.. lol, which is to say not walk all that well at all. . No what I’m thinking more is like.. look inward.. Who is you, what is you about? Like really on the super deep levels. Deep enough that you eventually get to darkness and must confess incomplete knowledge on the subject.. and here, if nothing else.. aren’t you supposed to be the supreme grand-poo-bah expert on the subject of who and what you is? And you don’t fucking know? If  you hit rock star big.. good luck to you’re F’n biographers right? 

Yeah, I’d bitch at those vicarious-ism addicts to… which would bring me to this crazy existential question I’ve been pondering lately.. but.. we’ll skip that for now..

I’m thinking about mind mapping the subject.. kinda mandala esk action for yeah.. like what’s all the crap on your mind.. not just consciously.. what are the things you are after.. what’s up with these obsessions of yours.. looking at all the aims you gotz in your life.. map that shit out.. see the cross relationships.. 

So like each thing you do is like a piece of puzzle of a bigger you… a Nietzschean super man quest.. err.. well maybe you’re not that bad ass but.. to one extent or another we are always in a process of waking up to our selves.. and we have.. lets say it is a part of the soul.. a kind of destiny.. that we are always driving towards.. with all our pathology stuff.. conscious or not.. this is what all our impulses are doing.. even if we are tangled in knots and.. our lives a mess.. and whatever else..

So if  you view a blog inside of these terms.. if it, in the biggest of all pictures, is about your becoming.. then it’s success has to do with your becoming’s success.. and that is an utterly different thing from all SEO / SEM, top 10 lists of whatever strategical tactical al-ical of the smart sort… or that is just a part of this larger thing..

A few latter:

Well I gotta work out what I’m going to do with this whole blogging thing.. or it’s on the to do list of stuff to work out.. but I like this idea of the personal email to the world.. and I like the idea of being an anarchist in the writing..  

I’ve been meaning.. gosh, for ages and ages, to share content and stuff that I’m digging.. But really, in many cases, it’s more personal then all this, cause we are talking about social media.. and so it is a social kinda thing.. it’s people whom I dig.. Probably most of my friends these days.. are social media folks.. folks who actually produce content of one form or another.. 

So how about some highlights?

My personal favorite blog has probably gotta be Catskill Cottage Seed ( ccseed on twitter ) from Richard Reeve.

I discovered it via a strange series of serendipitous events.. starting with a Berkman Blogger meet up where Joe Cascio shared his architectural ideas for a distributed twitter like micro blogging platform, (which has since morphed into an email program that Google Waves reminds one of) where Laura Fitton suggested that I should really follow @bikerbar… which somehow lead to following a lot of.. I guess you could call them “the mystics of twitter..” Lots of interesting crazy debates there.. and someone retweeted a quote from Carl Jung that I hadn’t heard before.. which is rather rare for me… and of course it was Richard.. so I immediately had to go and read his blog.

I left a crazy comment.. which seems to be my way.. and oddly Richard emailed me back.. seemed to really like my comment.. insisting that he doesn’t usually email commenters that way.. and, well, he’s been tolerating my crazy comments ever since.

Err, I hope I get this right.. as I listened to someone interviewing Richard many moons ago.. But… essentially he moved out to the Catskills… err, sometime ago.. in a slightly farmer-ish way.. growing food on his land that he integrates into meals as much as he can.. and looks into selling some of it at market.. in addition to other things.. and of course is studying to be a Jungian Analyst..

He’s only been on planet social media for.. I want to say a bit over a year? …And I think he’s doing an amazing job of it.. 

What you get on his blog are regular meditations on various Jungian concepts as they apply to daily life.. among other things.. and sometimes the post it’s self will strike you as a metaphor for something else.. kinda mediations on life…

Err, How about a music video to get us in the mood

How to Live.. and Jung Fun 

So in some respects.. you could see Richard’s blog as a response to Audio Slave.. which seems to be whaling the howl of our modern plight.. The spiritual challenges of our times.. and of course the analyst is a kind of substitute for a priest…

You know I dig Jungian psychology above all others cause it tends to grapple with these deeper things.. I imagine the modern psychologist ought to be a pragmatist.. taking what he or she can from all the schools of psychology.. applying where needed.. but mostly, modern psychology as I have encountered it on a personal level.. seems to suffer all too much from the sorta power relationship issues that Foucault wrestled with in, say.. Madness and Civilization..   

This point is that underlying the world of medicine is the prejudices of modernity’s value system.. how society is organized today has much to do with what defines a thing as a disorder.. The disorder has something to do with, perhaps we could say, challenges to adapting to the modern world.. never mind that it could be the modern world that is the problem.

Or at least that was the basic argument I gave the last time a therapist wanted to put me on medication! “What, and undermine my psyche’s natural attempt to heal me? Not on your life!” Those psycho wounds, after all, are wombs from which to be born again.. 

Out side of the subject of psychology, Richard is also big on social media.. which, as you no doubt know, is the latest sensation to sweep the nation. I LOVE social media, and what I think it means for the future of civilization.. but much of the conversations surrounding it are very business application centric.. and business conceptualized.. again, from the a certain modern view point which.. has those kinds of prejudices.. like unconscious metaphysical presumptions underlying all thought. In both medicine and business the problem is not the modern, but the modern subverting that which is becoming.. the tomorrow… 

And so we have a certain amount of system gaming going on.. or shall we call it Strategy? Tactics? Many of these things are filed under the heading of “best practices” for “social media practitioners.” The trouble is, from my point of view at least, that this often means a certain subversion of content.. and of becoming. We are not trying to be total people, merely successful people… and our metrics for what constitutes success… is.. not really what is really needed.

All of  this is somewhat inside social media baseball.. the point being that Richard’s take on all this.. is such  that in his values you don’t get these kinds of subversions.. That there is something greater that he’s after, and social media is a tool for that adventure.. and I think that’s great. 

Cloud City 

As a final note.. A little while ago Richard did a post on publishing in the clouds. This is one of a series of themes he revisits fairly regularly which.. I guess you could say are kind of wrestling with a number of things related to technologies evolution as it relates to social media.

Anyway, in this post he calls me out on my crazy comments.. and I thought offered interesting insight into my madness.. and clued me into where one can read my comment streams… or some of them anyway.

His post left me blushing a good deal.. and of course I wonder how could anyone possibly ever mistake me for a functional human being? I mean that’s just crazy talk! Don’t cha know!?! Meant to thank him for the generosity of it… 

The publishing in the cloud post I think also sorta centers on the issue of.. the future of this space.. I’d go off for eons on this.. but… well.. if I do I may never post this and.. it’s been far too long since I posted.. so lets post, shall we?!

There’s so much in my head right now.. It’s not always easy to get it out… onto these virtual pages, or… well wherever.

I’ve been thinking long and hard and deep.. about a number of subjects… and something, as if from deep in my soul.. or perhaps even beyond the soul.. there’s this little vibrations.. and from the vibration comes a vision.. and in that vision I see a very different reality then the one of.. well I want to say waking life.. but that’s not quite right.. 

Perhaps it’s a very different reality then that which I’m able to give voice to? That sounds kind of right.

The feeling I get from it is.. well its pretty intense.

I could put it to you this way

Have you ever looked in the mirror and seen God staring back at you? (picture spoken in an Eminem sorta voice) “Yeah well I have.”

I wont try and explain the very complicated theological / philosophy of religion.. or even psychological significance of this sorta thing..  but I will try to describe the experience for you a little.. which will hopefully, at least, delay your fears that I might be totally out of my mind.

Who drives the driver? Who writes the plots of our lives? You know we go about our living.. and how much is our rational mind really is in control? Very often we have all sorts of interesting “issues” that steel the steering wheel away for our “right mind.” You don’t need to be Freud to appreciate this fact.

Well.. its as if all our “issues” all our little.. “why do I behave this way when I don’t mean to” …all of everything.. there are reasons to it all. Now.. we can try and attribute reasons to it.. to whatever.. but that’s not really what I’m talking about.. 

Lets try a slightly strange thought experiment. Imagine there were such a thing as “Nirvana” or “Heaven.” In the gnostic gospel of Thomas we learn that the kingdom of God is spread out throughout the world.. but we don’t see it because of an enchantment of the eyes. What if there were a way of looking at it… all of it, where.. all the stuff of the mind, and all of whatever.. you could sorta see how it was serving you and consistent with a notion of heaven? One problem is just trying to work out what the hell heaven is.. or God for that matter..

What I’m trying to get to with all this can be found in the Hindu tradition.. to tell it in Christian language… once upon a time there was this dude who went by the name Adam, and this Chick called Eve.. and everything was perfect.. and.. you know.. perfects kinda boring.. and there was this fruit that was all forbidden… and apparently would magically give you knowledge of some mysterious thing called “good and evil” but.. this fellow God.. forbid it.

Well you know.. its not that this couple was terribly hung up.. but they wanted to do right by this God fellow.. on the one hand.. and on the other… well they were bored and this fruit sounded terribly exciting.. They were trying to do as God said.. but then came along this snake.. whom it would seem knew something about this fruit.. and the snake helped the couple get over there little hang up and.. give it a taste..

So.. this lead to the knowledge of Good and Evil.. as well as getting kicked out of the perfect place.. and lead to more exciting adventures… and that’s a bit of the Genesis of it all.

Ok.. so WTF is that story really about? Its the birth of duality in consciousness.. is one way we could read it.. welcome the pair of opposites..  But its also saying.. let go jump into the confusion of our lives.. 

What I’m sorta trying to get to is that the vibration is speaking from that perfect place.. that, psychologically speaking.. it’s a real place within all of us.. and in a certain sense we are all there… but we are also here.. cause.. well.. we thought it might be interesting.

If you see here as an expression of there.. then you are in a certain sense identifying with the divinity within.. with God so to speak.. I don’t fully understand this but.. I guess the Christian thing is that Jesus is supposed to be some kind of a roll model.. and yet.. he can say “I and the father are one,” but for some reason we are not supposed to?

Even without making that jump.. which might be creepy for some.. we can look at it all in this light and see the will of God in our lives.. and so if you look in the mirror and see God.. you could then say its just you seeing the expression of his will in your life. 

So yeah, pretty crazy ha?  

I regard exploring new possibilities, as an artist.. stretching into new things.. as being one of the most important things you can do.. and it’s probably true in most other walks of life. Generally it’s a kind of oscillation.. between that area where you are really strong.. and the new areas you’re just starting to explore… It’s about integrating these two things.

In some of my newer directions.. I have some fear that what I’m doing might be nieve… The reason being because I am venturing into areas that are more conventional then my work normally is.. so that if you’re taking you’re first few steps on a very well trotted road, how excited can you be about what you find? I mean.. sure, you’re excited.. but maybe for everyone else its “Ho hum, I’ve seen that before.”

Still.. it is still me making the music.. still a product of my aesthetic thinking.. my aesthetic sensibilities.. still something that largely comes from within..  still my process.. etc. So whatever it is I’m doing.. it’s still inescapably me.. still has a certain.. I’m not sure what.

Ultimately.. where I see the future in the new stuff is finding ways for it to be more and more imprinted with.. whatever it is that’s unique in me.. and integrating it with the older stuff. 

Into the New Music 

If  you’ve been listening to my stuff for any length of time.. you’ll note that this new track is basically an evolution of some of what we heard on ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures:

Glitchy Goodness mix (As of yet untitled early mix) by Matt Searles

What we hear here is what we were hearing in Deep Space.. but now arranged, mixed, and sorta composed around.. in a kind of new way. It’s been said that the Deep Space stuff was like exploring out into space.. and now we are listening in on Alien conversations..

It’s a crazy kind of dark and harsh ambient.. or that track is, isn’t it? Makes me feel like a journey into the shadow side of the soul.

About this direction

The direction opens up a whole lot in the way of possible possibilities… err, so let me describe the process of the above track.

Inside Reaktor 

I started out in Reaktor.. with a sound source by which you can make music / sound / whatever.. via twiddling some knobs with your mouse.. by twiddling the parameters of sequences, synthesizers, sound generators, effects processors, and mixers.. you can only adjust one parameter at a time.. and you tend to not do it too abruptly most of the time.. you spend a lot of time navigating the interface just to get so you can get the thing you want to tweak’s parameter…

Controlling one parameter at a time.. sorta slowly.. with gaps between where you can tweak.. has the effect of making for a somewhat slowly organically evolving sound.. and because we are talking about parameter tweaking.. its as if the resultant sound is.. well it sounds like its coming from the same device who’s pattern and behavior is shifting over time.. and expressive in that way.

Parallel Compression  

So you do this over and over again.. generating a few sound files.. and you take these sound files and submit them to an automated process of what is called “parallel compression.” Parallel compression means.. you have a sound source.. that gets thrown through many compressors working in parallel.. and you mix the outs of the various compressors.. indeed I mix the sends into the compressors as well as the sounds out.. The idea is that the various compressors you’re dealing with all color the sound in different ways.. in relationship to things like.. the dynamics of the audio.. and they also effect the dynamics of the audio differently..  

So we are both colorizing the sounds and shaping there dynamics.. the latter of which will allow us more control once we get to the mixing and arrangement process.

The Mixing and Arranging Process

Next I take the audio files and load them into my DAW.. Digital Performer. 

There’s certain interesting aesthetic issues that pop up about this point. Because each sound file was generated independently of one another.. there’s no “design” to there interrelationships accept that they were all created at the same tempo… There relationships of timber and pitch (counterpoint, harmony, orchestration).. are.. in essence indeterminate.. which kinda brings us into John Cage Country…

What is similar is that.. in many cases the effects treated to the instrument are the same.. or at least some of the effects are the same.. and they are all created via the same process.. so the way they evolve over time is very similar: Process dictates a probability distribution of attributes.. so that its as if there’s a systems level interrelationship of stuff.

The process of mixing and arranging is then our chance to insert a little design into the production.. For now I’m not doing anything much more sophisticated then deciding when an audio recording should be inserted into the arrangement, choosing additional effects for that instrument.. effects of the general mix.. and mixing the instruments.. –Although I have been creating custom stuff with say.. Native Instruments Machine.

The Mixing

In my conventionally unconventional music.. harmony is at least in part conceived of as 3 dimensional..  What I mean is.. the issue of overlapping frequency ranges is a central issue to the mix engineers stock and trade.. and some of how this is dealt with is panoramic positioning.. and just where a sound should be located in a virtual sound stage. Because in my music the mixing and the composition are integrated.. harmony is conceptualized in a context of spacial relationships.

So if you think about it.. the process of mixing.. can be like a process of contextualizing material.. which means embedding meaning into it..  and um.. that kinda thing.

What you end up doing is listening to the material of the audio.. the various audio files you have.. and asking questions.. What you do is making decisions about.. what to highlight at one moment or another.. what should be dominant in the mix.. how the sounds should interrelate.. how to make things interesting in terms of how the track evolves over time..

So in essence the mixing is the composing.. moving things around in space.. automating effects.. and all this kind of thing.

Where Maschine fits into all of this?

Maschine is in essence a pattern based percussive sequencer.. and a little bit more. You compose in it various patterns.. and then in your DAW you tell it when to play what patterns..

So, at the very least Maschine represents the possibilities of pattern based sequencing.. to my music.. something that’s very good for real time music production.. and based sequencing is a big part of what’s going on inside of Reaktor in much of this production.

Machine gets mixed in like any other element.. though its the one element where we have conscious control of.. so that it works to somehow.. fit things together.. I guess.. another layer of it..

Where to go from here

It seems to me that there’s an incredible number of possibilities moving forward from here.. I have an obvious interest in working out how to create a kind of music that is similar to this.. in a live scenario.. and then there’s all the kind of possible mutations of this…

With Kore [ and hands on controllers more genearally ] 

Kore, shown here:

represents one obvious set of possibilities. You can load up various software instruments, effects, and what not.. into Kore.. and control them via its buttons and knobs.. which you map to various parameters of the instruments / effects in question.. You have various pages of mappings that you can then move between.. allowing you real time control.. without a mouse.. and in a way were you can control multiple parameters at once.

Real time control of software, in this fashion.. radically changes the way you think, and how you work with.. the software.. it’s really awesome.

 A day or so latter:

Implications 

The full implications of real time hands on control of software in this fashion, and relative to this sorta production style are really.. well more then I can really lay out in full for you here today… but I can throw a bit at yea

Manipulating multiple parameters at once

As mentioned earlier… mousing around single parameters at a time produces a certain kind of organic evolution of the sounds.. hands on control is a very different beast.. we are not talking about… well there’s a certain artistry of performance.. kind of more power.. and with that power comes the need to know how to temper it.. and anyway.. there’s a good deal to explore here.

Beyond this.. things can get a little complex.. especially is we are using multiple controllers.. and the idea that we can now play with interrelationships on the performance level.

Recording Automation rather then Audio

A significant difference between the way I was tweaking away in Reaktor.. and tweaking away with controllers in a DAW is that we are now recording automation data of a performance.. and not simply the resultant audio.

This means we can go back in and edit the performance.. we can perform on one set of parameters on one take, and another on another take.. so that the results can become a good deal deal more complex in how they evolve over time..

There is a kind of negative.. which is.. well has to do with most modern music.. that you don’t really have to make choices.. when you can alway edit / adjust things latter… this is a kind of long conversation.. but basically it has to do with.. the creative process.. and being pushed into situations where you have to work your way out of the hard way.. and in so doing.. often that’s how brilliant things happen.. But without going to far into this topic.. I will say that ultimately its up to the artist, in how to relate to the technology on this level. 

Taking it to Ableton Live, and the joys of patterns.

I imagine the next phase of things is to take the whole production, and bring it into Ableton Live.. creating patterns.. using MIDI effects to tweak the patterns.. and make it so the whole production is produced this way…

Here we really get to thinking deeply about how to take this into the live arena.. also… we are getting out of Reaktor.. and using the rest of my instrument library.

This is sorta like.. “lets go do stuff in the usual studio” stuff. It’s hard to say too much about a path you’ve yet to walk but.. An Ableton Live based… pattern based.. compositional process.. can actually lead you into a world of more control.. more.. lets say design developed.. stuff.. then traditional linear sequencing… 

Basically.. you have a bunch of patterns.. and you play with how the different patterns play together.. this can be how you think of production and composition in the real design sense.. or it can be like the design of a framework for improvisation.

There’s perhaps more to say here.. but I’m tired..

Integration

The final subject is really integration.. to integrate this stuff with the stuff that I’m actually good at… or maybe the better way of putting it is where I’m already strong..

I see this kinds of hands on.. tweak it.. kind of organic evolution of sound.. as having certain elements that my more programmed.. crazy attention to detail music lacks.. In case you haven’t heard this stuff.. a reasonable example might be this remix of the Cobert Report Interview with Lawrence Lessig.. I did recently

BSO Steven Cobert Lawrence Lessig ReMix by Matt Searles

This track took me about a month to do.. there’s a hell of a lot more attention to detail then you might notice at first..  ( including a fair amount that doesn’t really come out when listened to streamed).. the problem with this track is perhaps mostly how short it is.. as so much of this sorta thing for me tends to be about taking a little trip.. and its hard to go that far in a couple of minutes.. In some ways you can listen to it as a prototype for the new direction of what we are calling my conventional work..  Even with whatever it’s flaws might be.. it does represent a step forward on that trajectory… 

I love the idea of taking a whole month to do a single track.. I mean just the level of detail you can achieve that way… that much love and attention to every moment.. of course it’s a little on the unrealistic side.. but still!

The integration can probably happen along multiple axises

1. If you create a music form where it literally takes a month to finish a couple minutes of music.. to have this along side music where in a day’s work can give you twenty plus minutes worth of music.. well.. now the month for a couple minutes is realistic.. 
2. I have this notion of a whole album that is of the tweak kind.. where via creative mixing.. the super programmed detail stuff.. sorta comes out of that world.. where in you’re really considering the album as a whole. ( which may not make a lot of sense for custom play lists )
3. The Tweak-age stuff could be an element inside of the super detailed programed sequence stuff.
4. There’s a lot of stuff I’m thinking about where.. you have.. say.. a kind of tweakage space reverb and delay inside of a deeply programmed mix..  

A Concluding Statement

Stretching is important.. and that’s really what this is about.. What’s slightly strange about this post is that it seems to almost emphasize the.. let call it objective facts.. over the sorta internal organizing principles that would be.. what is actually known.. the facts.. we must.. as Hunter Thompson would say.. buy the ticket, take the ride.. to really get at.. so it is a strange synthesis.. and we’ll have to see what happens.

In any event.. in the end.. this is just like a confession of one tiny piece in a much larger puzzle

[Editors note: Matt wrote the following sometime ago… while suffering from a dark mood.. it is the voice of the struggle with the darkness within… he’s feeling better now.. or at least in a different mental space.. but seeing as he still considers himself a blogger.. it was thought something ought to be posted.. so here’s this.]Some how I’m not posting too much these days.. so.. today’s goal is to write something and post it… doesn’t matter if it’s sucky.. just post it.. just get into that swing of things.. just push forward.This was my attitude as an art student.. or someone just at the early part of learning… just push forward, doesn’t matter if it’s any good or not.. what matters is that we are getting better..I’m trying to take that attitude towards my music now to.. See… hmm… the thing is I feel this need… this want.. or, it’s in me that.. there’s a bar I have to live up to. It may very well be that it’s an unrealistic bar.. it might be impossible.. but that doesn’t matter.. gotta just go for it.I had this thought earlier today.. about how unrealistic I might be about my expectations for myself. Is it that if I’m not unrealistically good I’m not good enough? At the time I thought this might be the case, it really felt that way to me.. sitting here now.. I don’t feel it so strongly.. but what I do feel strongly is.. well, that I have my challenges.I’ve been pushing forward on my music a hell of a lot lately. I regard that as a really good thing.. it’s good to be focused.. and there’s no way to get better then by doing.. still, when it comes to my work.. I feel somehow trapped in the wilderness..  somehow lost. I’m working hard but I don’t necessarily feel like I’m getting better.. which is odd considering it wasn’t that long ago when it seemed like every time I took a swing at making new work.. it would be a giant step forward for me. Of course I very much am moving forward.. I’m indeed learning lots of new stuff on every project.. and the truth is that I’m just way the hell out of my safety zone.. I’m taking these leaps into the unknown… so the going isn’t quite as easy as it is when I’m in said safe zone..Well.. the trouble is that I have so much growing to do really.. It’s as if all the projects of my past have happened inside of a limited world of… Well inside of a limited world… I’ve grown into that world nicely, and now its time to take things to the next place…

Latter that night:

Just finished watching the Deer Hunter.. good movie.. a revelation came to me while watching..  Basically what I want to do is create “A real album.”

A real album

I suppose I’ve been dreaming about this my whole life.. or at least since about the 8th grade or so.. to actually make one of those albums.. and not just to make an album.. but to make a great album. All those day dreams set the bar.. and..It’s hard to explain actually.. this notion of a real album.. or a real artist.. what those words mean to me and there implications. Practically speaking its… Do you ever notice the unconscious motivating forces in your life? Like you feel a certain way, behave a certain way.. but wish you didn’t? It’s as if you could look under the surface and see the reason.. and the reason represents.. I don’t know the right word for it.. but I guess I’d say its as if life has a certain organization.. the psyche does.. our humanity does.. and some how its like.. the reason is like the expression of soooo much..  and so much more then whatever it is that lys behind you’re conscious will.Or that’s what I’m kinda feeling here.In someways I’d say its like I have a vision of who I want to be.. and I’m abandoning the moment for the future. I’m saying.. reaching this higher goal is more important then.. It reminds me of the days I worked as an interactive designer. I’d been using Photoshop, and whatever else, for years.. but I had never spent 40 hours a week in Photoshop… and as I spent all that time.. in Photoshop and Flash mostly.. It was amazing how fast you’d grow.. how it seemed to dwarf you’re past experiences that brought you to that point, at that job.So it’s a little like I’m embarking on that kind of journey.. what happens when you work 4o hours a week on this stuff?

Speaking of Challenges 

The funny truth of the matter is that it’s a hell of a lot more complicated then the interactive design stuff. If you’re a designer.. what do you gotta know? Principles of design.. plus lets say.. xhtml, css, dom, maybe actionscript.. photoshop, flash, illustrator probably…With this music stuff…. I’m using Digital Performer, Ableton Live, Reason, Melodyne Studio, Kore, Komplete ( including Reaktor which is a bit like learning a programing language.. not to mention Kontakt’s programing language ) Omnisphere, Maschine, Liquid Mix, stuff from VirSyn, and stuff from Audio Ease.. I anticipate I’ll be adding Max to the list in not too long… Not only do I deal with composing.. but I deal with mixing.. recording.. lyrics.. performance… lets say producing?So I guess the point I’m trying to drive at is.. 

Many days latter:

I think I should just post this. 

I’m getting ready to slip into unconsciousness.. and feeling sorta in awe of how long it’s been since I’ve posted.. and all the 100s of drafts I’ve rejected inside of that time frame.. mixed with all the things I feel inspired to write about… So I figure I gotta post something.. and whatever it is, its got to be short.. so..

I’m thinking about electronic music a little bit.

Electronic music, to mind at this moment, is like the most incredible genera of music around.. I suppose this is in large part because it doesn’t really refer to a genera, but more a way of making music.. and if you’re familiar with how music is being made today.. I think it’s reasonable to say that at least 90% of everything made today is made on a computer.. and thus is electronic music.. even if we don’t generally view it as such.

But what I really dig is the seriousness of the genera.. or that there are areas of electronic music that are so serious.. be it from a compositional perspective.. philosophical sorta aesthetic perspective… and then.. you have club music, rave music.. dance music so to speak.. and then it goes so far as the music that underlies Rap.. or you think of the stuff going on in Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson…

History of Electro Acoustic Music 101 

The history of electronic music can probably be told in a variety of ways.. but basically you have these major universities.. and only a few of them.. back in the early early days.. that were able to afford these computers that would take up whole rooms.. big rooms at that.. that were the only places with the power to make it happen.. and so only a very few were able to get access to these things.. and so the early stuff has this rather serious classical sorta influence..

Eventually.. out comes these analog synths from folks like Moog.. made popular by Wendy Carlos and the like… and eventually made cheap enough that regular musicians could afford…

Now.. all these years latter.. there’s a hell of a lot of tools for electronic music that you can down load for free.. and then we have the commercial software..

Seriously Serious Avant Guard fun 

I’m getting ready to enter a phase where in I’ll call myself a serious electronic sound artist.. seems like a good way of putting it. Not that I ever wasn’t.. but now there’s a kind of new focus to it.

One of the areas I’m naturally attracted to is.. a kind of world of seriously serious seriousness.. of.. avant guard delights. Historically this is music Frank Zappa might call “ugly,” …ugly not being a negative term here. I think of the 60s revolutionary spirit.. the rethinking of basic values.. and the effect that some stuff became very difficult listening.. and something good for the more snobby among us.. to listen to and think we is better then them…  

Matt’s mitigation of the ugly 

LOL, of course I am better then them.. where’s my Thursten Howl voice? But um.. I’ve never meant to make music that was in anyway unapproachable. The issue of approachability is a design consideration.. But.. I’m also interested in exploring sorta far out ideas… 

I guess.. and I don’t know.. it’s hard to tell at this point.. but it seems like there’s certain compositional ideas.. ways of thinking.. a kind of.. set of things.. which kind of characterize my music at this point.. and then.. there’s a set of things that I’m exploring with the idea of adding new dimensions to it. So.. basically I have a set of strands.. all at varying levels of maturation.. that I basically weave together.

At the moment I started to write this post.. I’ve been contemplating the development of a whole lot of new strands… some of these strands I’ve been contemplating for the last.. almost 20 years.

The construction of these strands.. some of them anyway.. seems rather daunting.. steep learning curves required to get anywhere near my vision..  Should I speak of these? Well.. it would take a whole post to explore but a part of this but…

Algorithmic Composition

What we are talking about here.. basically, is writing programs that create compositions… Indeed create performances. Or perhaps we aren’t writing the program.. perhaps we are just setting up conditions..

My first thoughts on this matter… I was probably about 15 years old.. having just taken up guitar.. and was a bit of metal head.. Early on I had become interested in making music that was.. strange.. out there.. experimental… in part as a kind of philosophical reaction to the music I’d heard before.. it was a revolutionary spirit..

Let’s say we wanted to use an algorithmic approach to making heavy metal music.. how might we go about it? 

Theory Geek-O-Ree 

My view had been.. lets start with a scale.. create a randomly generated synthetic scale.. 8 tones.. where we could use a regular diatonic framework.. warped into our synthetic scale. From where we could have a probabilistic framework..  

Perhaps it would start by thinking about chord progressions for a riff.. or something like that.. divide time up into..  a few parts.. say what chord it is.. and that would be like the center around which the various instruments would play.. generally play one of the 3 notes that would make up that triad.. or perhaps playing the 7th, or perhaps playing a 3rd below the route..

We could.. at any given time divide up the chord.. saying this or that instrument would play around this or that note of the chord.. so you’re talking about a kind of harmonized modalism…

The Aesthetics of which are? 

In a certain way.. the kind of ideas I had were like a quantified version of how I actually make music… how I think about composition.. accept that my compositional framework… it’s like a way of thinking… and eventually.. in my process.. I leave my thinking behind.. go on this or that tangent.. and whatever.

I don’t actually have much of a music theory background.. what little I have is.. extrapolated, questions.. I eventually came to think of it as.. like being the product of an out dated cosmology… and so set out to build a new one… and I suppose that’s what my music actually is about. It’s really a kind of revelation of an intuition.

A few latter:

Think I better post this.. if for no other reason then to say I’ve posted something recently at least! 

[editor’s note: Matt has really gone off the deep one on this.. ] 

Confronting and evil culture 

So it happens to me again.. I’m watching the G4 network.. they had Fight Club on.. I’m only half watching.. while I’m playing a round of command and conquer.. when what comes on but “Babe’s of the Internet.”

Umm..  what is this crap?

Ok, lets get this straight, right from the top.. I like hot women. Ok? I’m not gay or anything.. and blah blah blah.. and I don’t want to put myself forward as some kind of model for having “the sort of attitude men should have towards women.” But.. Jesus…

Ok.. #1. I can not stand a soulless “look how hot I am” kinda women. Like seriously… It’s really a kind of prostitution of female sexuality..  somehow transmogrified into a total absence of..  anything beyond “look how hot she is.” Or this “we are using sex to sell our product because we can’t sell it without the sex.” 

I’m sorry.. I like a REAL women.. A real women can be super hot.. she can have the big boobs, and everything else.. but that stuff is not a prerequisite! And you know.. soul goes a long long way… a mind and personality aint bad ether..

I’m sorry, but it just frustrates me….

cyber fun

Online.. on your MySpace’s and whatever else.. you’ll see these women whom.. you’re like “are they real?” I think of this like.. the relationship between youtube video and like.. traditional media aesthetics.. that the youtube video has the benefit of authenticity.. or it did before the goal of hocking stuff got in the way..  And that’s my reaction to these women whom you’re like “are you real?”

For one thing.. the chances of them being real.. is not really all that high.. If the photos look like studio photography.. that’s a big red flag, right? And all the rest of it..

The artificial babe 

But there can also be that whole.. “this is a women who’s in demand by the male half of the species” thing.. and I kinda feel like.. if that’s all a women has got going for her.. I’m just a little repulsed… I’ve really hated it since I was a little kid.. the absurdity of it all… as a young kid.. you’re generally not looking at women from a sexual stand point.. though perhaps you might have a crush or two.. but then you’ll see these women who’s way of relating to men is like “what kinda drugs is she on?” Do you know what I’m talking about?

I guess it’s just like.. who are you beneath the surface, you know? I generally can’t stomach shallow people… and frankly, I don’t think they think too much of me ether.. and I guess that’s really what all this comes down to.. So it wasn’t really the “Internet Babes” that I had the trouble with.. more the coverage of said internet babes.. which was just God awful… 

On the troubles of relating to the other sex / finding “the one.” 

Strangely.. I do find myself meeting a lot of really beautiful women… lol, most of whom are one way or another taken.. and I’m always very thankful when I find them to be smart with a lot of soul.

The trouble of picking up a women in a somewhat professional context 

[editor’s note: What Matt is really trying to talk about is the problem related to sending bad vibes to the innocent, so to speak… er, something like that] 

This is maybe a different topic.. but in social media circles.. there are now more women then ever.. Often one of the first things that’s a little problematic is the question of.. are you talking to them to hit on them.. I don’t know if I play this right.. like ever.. but generally I feel like.. in social media vill I have a lot of goals that are kinda really important to me.. and it really is all about forming relationships.. and so that’s what I try to do.. in a way that’s sorta.. doesn’t really care about hitting on.. or like.. any of that stuff.

The other thing I figure is.. for a woman to… really dig me.. like if I did want to get somewhere with said female.. the most attractive parts of me are on the inside.. and it’s like.. that’s kinda the route I need to take, ether way.. one where the conversation is able to render that transparent.

Its a little bit complicated.. but generally I feel like if you get to know who I am on the inside.. lol, minus the bad stuff… well somehow I think it’s a real powerful thing..

The “are you trying to hit on them,” one way or another, is a really difficult thing.. or it’s more broad then that.. its a question of vibes. On some level I don’t really feel like I have a lot of control over what vibes I give off.. frankly.. at least half of what sorta vibe you get from me has to do with who you are and where you’re coming from.. its mixing with where I’m coming from, and then we are both reacting to resultant vibe, which creates yet another nuance to the vibe.. even if it’s just some strange subtext that neither one of us is totally conscious of.

A lot of the time my reaction is to bend over backwards to not present a difficult vibe.. There was this one women.. I met a while back.. and she was like.. I’m sure she could have been one of them internet babes if she wanted to.. or a Playmate or whatever…  and my own reaction to her was so bad that.. I had to work really really really hard.. to not be so effected as to not be capable of carrying a conversation.. all of which got even worse when she found her self in a saucy flirty sorta mood..  

Matt’s romanto-er0t0 strateg0ry 

When it comes to trying to hit on a women.. it’s that underly reaction that I kind of rely on.. It’s like trying to communicate.. even if only on a subtext level.. or a not quite conscious level.. that reaction.. while at the same time trying to communicate something of the inner me…

Ok.. let see if I can nail this one: Underlying dynamics

What is love? What is it that we are all looking for, if we are really looking? That’s a deep and complex question… But I dare say that one answer is sorta on the archetypal level.. which is to say the ideal is something that comes out of instinct.. built into the fabric of our biology…  Thus the answer can be found in mythology…

We will say things like “our other half” and talk about “soul mates.” There’s a certain level that I’m skeptical of this sorta talk.. I believe that.. on the deepest levels of our humanity… we are, in a strange way, not really different people at all but one person. I believe that that which makes us feel like we are some how separate, at least on a few levels, is actually a construct.

It’s like this: “who are you?” We have lots of stories we tell our selves, and the people around us, about who we are, but is that who we REALLY are? Who we really are.. is actually a mystery to us.. We have a handful of intuitions on the subject.. but we don’t really know.

In the mystery of our own being… it’s tied up with the mystery of the universe.. so… basically.. the deepest of deep soul stuff.. that’s in us.. I tend to think can find it’s other half / soul mate in just about anyone.. the only thing that really blocks this is the way the person in question relates to there own mythology about who they think they are.. as well as there own mystery.. so that basically.. the issue is one of our ideas about the nature of reality obstructing our experience of reality.

So.. if I’m “Really looking” and.. and I look at a women.. and I’m knocking on her door.. asking “excuse me, but is my soul mate hanging out in there?”  …If I’m doing that.. particularly if I happen to spy her in there… well then there is a real danger that the women in question will fall head over heals in love with me.. that’s the seductive power of it… it’s not merely a materially based eroticism.. it’s an eroticism of the spiritual foundations of you’re being…  

A momentary digression into a problem 

Of course.. eventually you have to get down to who your personal mythology says you are.. because our identities are often somewhat static… and there’s the question of how we relate.. in who we’ve become in this life time… and there’s lots of other challenges around this stuff..

Another words, once we take the love potion.. there is the trouble of “waking up.”

And back to our story 

Before we get to the problem of waking up, there is the problem of jumping off the cliff… which is where the problem really lys. How often do you.. are you willing to.. make that jump? I’m not talking about getting married… not in the institutionalized sense here.. I’m talking in the.. ok.. we have recognized this thing that is an earthly manifestation of the divine.. and next comes the.. we’ve sorta called it into being.. but.. can we take the jump that brings it to full bloom, so to speak?

This is an incredibly difficult thing.. We are not talking about settling for second best here.. that’s actually pretty easy.. we are talking about a kind of total fulfillment of every romantic impulse you’ve ever had.. and actually believing such a thing is even possible! Usually… it’s the disbelief that gets us… that eventually we start telling mythologies that reinforce the disbelief… a kind of idolatry if you will.

The path through this is one of being able to embrace the mystery.. and one must make ones self worthy of the mystery.. so that the experience of life might be one of eternal revelations of the mystery. 

Latter:

There’s more to this subject then I’m going to be able to get to tonight.. I’m most over tired… so.. goodnight.