Validate Your Life

I am not you, and you are not me.  That is the way things are.  I like that.  As you ponder that, let me explain to you why I find tremendous value in that distinction.

Distinctions create boundaries.  Without distinctions, everything would be porous and absorbing this information or that information would generate confusion.  But that confusion is instantly absolved when we utilize distinctions.

There’s a tendency for people with whom I communicate to think that we have some connection, as-if they “know me”.  The way they communicate and the advice they give comes from the perspective of “I know this person in every dimension and in every aspect”.  But then I mention something that I have done that the person with porous distinctions has not done, like ran multiple marathons,  the person shirks back and immediately says “Oh, I couldn’t do that!”.  Instantly their slurring and blurring of our distinctions of you being me, and me being you –gets mutilated when an element of capacity enters the conversation.

You see, as you listen to this closely and intently you realize that intention should govern our behavior (and often it does when we are not being persuaded, manipulated, or under a hypnotic trance by the media), but  many times our perception of capacity limits our behavior.  When I mention to someone actions I have taken that they deem outside of their capacity (for example having written 4 books, or ran multiple marathons, or any other task of which people are incredibly capable of doing, but don’t believe they have that capacity to do so) who has a ruptured their perception of boundaries, what happens in their mind?  First they recoil.  They instantaneously have a thought process of “this person is not whom I thought they were and there exists a distinction in our capacity”.  Such distinctions are good.  Because in many ways, what makes you you, and me me, is our logical levels, which of course, include beliefs, identity, capabilities, and behavior.  If I am talking to you in person, we share the same environment.  That is it.  I’d say environment is roughly 3% of “who I am” and “who you are” at best.   Without logical levels, we are all practically identical twins because our only differences would be blemishes on our epidermal layer of our skin, hair coloration, simple, trivial distinctions bound into the same sequences of deoxyribonucleic acid.  So it’s truly our logical levels that spark this kind of Lamarakian

For awhile in my junior year in college I engaged this belief that we were all this spiritual, interconnected, “Universal One” person.  I enjoyed entertaining that belief because of many reasons.  Reasons for entertaining the “universal one” delusion: (more…)

I’m not some geezer reminiscing on “Sonatra days” but I do have a repertoire of “Old School” music videos by which I felt utterly entranced by in the early 90s. In addition to watching a music video being something “somewhat rebellious”, going back and revisiting them and understanding the underlying message of a lot of them has felt extremely rewarding.

Some of these I claim “utterly awesome” because of their visual story, or maybe I owned the album and liked seeing the band, or maybe I just liked the tune, but they all embody and quintessentially capture the 90s music scene. In any case, Here’s my top ten list not in any specific order:

1. Men without Hats. The Safety Dance
   This is such a goofy (but appropriate) music video for this song. I had never heard of the band, nor the song, but this I definitely caught multiple times channel surfing in my teens as one of the weirdest (but still acceptable) videos of all time.

   (more…)

This interview was hilarious. I don’t think I’ve ever cracked up as much reading this. Why? A few reasons.

1. I think I just like hearing british people’s responses. They’re logic processes appeals to me.
   
2. I prefer articles where the epicenter of the article actually gets heard (i.e. an interview!) instead of some bloke author reporting on something I have an interest in. In other words. I have no idea who the article author “clark collins” is. nor do I care. You read something like this to see more about keith, so having his responses compose the bulk of hte article makes this read worthwhile. In other words, using this example, I want to hear from the horse’s mouth what Keith, Mick, or Scorcese had to say about “Shine a LIght” (a movie I seriously want to watch), not some dude reporting on it expressing his views because then you have to filter out and extract subjective perspective. Same goes for any topic.
   
3. Keith’s responses were just outrageously HILAROUS!
   

Keith’s responses:

Awesome show. Period.

• 750-1820 – Classical – balance and structure
• 1820-1900 – Romantic – emotional, large, programmatic
• Beyond 1900 – 20th Century – limitless

• 750-1820 – Classical – balance and structure
• 1820-1900 – Romantic – emotional, large, programmatic
• Beyond 1900 – 20th Century – limitless

(more…)

Sinead O’Connor says “We all loved John Lennon better for all the mad things he did – the way he was interested in just tearing open the sky. He was definitely the sexiest of the Beatles because he was angry and edgy. And look at what he did with his fame. He didn’t use it to suck [up] and get more money and be liked by everybody. In fact, that’s the powe rof John Lennon to me: he was real. Even in the songs, he was never afraid to show that he was a bit of a bastard, that he had a nasty side to him like the rest of us do. He stood up and showed that, no matter what, you’ve got to be your frickin’ self” (Giles 64).

Some say that “the beatles split when Yoko sunk her claws into John. Most of his post-beatles work was crap. It was diabolical” (Giles 64). Or that “Ono is commonly accused of having sabotaged her husband’s gifts; how she worked her black magic on McCartney is unclear” (Giles 68). But what is more realistic? Lennon’s wife was some black sorceress witch doctor woman intent on defiling his music to make him less successful, or he simply had a slump and his fans where to fanatical to admit that it was of his own doing? Ono could have certainly have had a bad impact on Lennon, maybe even done some things to purposefully derail if wicked run of generation-defining music, but it’s not too far-fetched to say he drifted a bit on his own, too. The point is that he made great music that perpetuates; it was great then, is great now, and will be great later on.

It’s important to note that singers like Mick Jagger painted an even more rebellious “bad boy” image than Lennon. Compared to Mick, Lennon was a momma’s boy. But this is not a rebellion contest. The point is that Mick, Lennon, Springstein and many other successful musicians weren’t trying to be bad boys. They weren’t out there trying to sculpt themselves into an image of rebel with plaster and a societal chisel. No, instead they just laid it on the line. They spoke their voice and made sure it was heard regardless of whether or not people would accept their message, kill their message, rejoice because of their message. They were masters of authenticity because they didn’t try to sculpt. Society sculpted them into how we describe them today, but their level of authenticity demands so much more attention because of the level of certainty it creates.

(more…)