... As we know, most of our life is a battle, the strain, the anxiety, the guilt, the despair, the immense sense of loneliness and sorrow, that is our life. That is actually "what is" and we are unwilling to face it. When you face it without choice and resistance, what takes place? Can you face it? -- not try to overcome fear, jealousy, this or that, but actually look at it without any sense of wanting to change it, conquer it, control it, just to observe it totally, and give your whole attention to it. When you look at our daily life of travail, our daily bourgeois or non-borgeois life, what takes place? Haven't you then tremendous energy? Energy has been dissipated in resistance, in overcoming, in going beyond it, trying to understand it, trying to change it. So when you do look at this life as it is, is there not then a transformation of "what is"? That transformation takes place only when you have this energy in which the operation of will does not exist at all. - J. Krishnamurti, The Awakening of Intelligence  ¶ 10:40 PM 0 Comments

  Annie Brazil is fabulous.

Annie is leaving us for three weeks to go back home to the Philippines and to celebrate her 70th birthday! Happy birthday Annie, we'll miss you, nobody does it quite the way you do...  ¶ 11:52 PM 0 Comments

  just watched Prizzi's Honor again, hadn't seen it in years. The great John Huston.  ¶ 11:11 PM 0 Comments

  We were way late to the Gafieira Ensemble gig tonight in Astoria.  ¶ 3:29 AM 0 Comments

  DK's back!!!!

Welcome back DK, we've missed you, we had fun doing the session today, and look forward to finishing tomorrow. The music we did in Brazil together is vibrant! Here's to reconnections and completions. Amen.  ¶ 10:38 PM 0 Comments

  The Venerable Kyabje Gehlek Rimpoche spoke at St. Bart's today as part of the MeditateNYC program. A very cool dude. He had no problem with his own sometimes very long silences. A therapist once told me about the concept of having a container, which means that's what you're able to hold. Some people's containers are huge, meaning they can embrace everything that's around them, all-inclusive, not excluding anyone or anything... In this way they serve as a great healing vehicle and a point of convergence for good.  ¶ 11:09 PM 0 Comments

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN COLTRANE!!!!!!

He would have been 77 years old today. I want to visit the little Church of John Coltrane in San Fransisco one day... I recommend Ashley Kahn's book on the making of A Love Supreme. It's very well done.

A Love Supreme
I will do all I can to be worthy of Thee, O Lord.
It all has to do with it.
Thank You God.
Peace.
There is none other.
God is. It is so beautiful.
Thank You God. God is all.
Help us to resolve our fears and weaknesses.
In you all things are possible.
Thank you God.
We know. God made us so.
Keep your eye on God.
God is. He always was. He always will be.
No matter what... it is God.
He is gracious and merciful.
It is most important that I know Thee.
Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, throughts,
fears and emotions--time--all related...
all made from one... all made in one.
Blessed be his name.
Thought waves--heat waves--all vibrations--
all paths lead to God. Thank you God.
His way... it is so lovely... it is gracious.
It is merciful--Thank you God.
One thought can produce millions of vibrations
and they all go back to God... everything does.
Thank you God.
Have no fear... believe... Thank you God.
The universe has many wonders. God is all.
His way... it is so wonderful.
Thoughts--deeds--vibrations,
all go back to God and He cleanses all.
He is gracious and merciful... Thank you God.
Glory to God... God is so alive.
God is.
God loves.
May I be acceptable in Thy sight.
We are all one in His grace.
The fact that we do exist is acknowledgement
of Thee, O Lord.
Thank you God.
God will wash away all our tears...
He always has...
He always will.
Seek him everyday. In all ways seek God everyday.
Let us sing all songs to God.
To whom all praise is due... praise God.
No road is an easy one, but they all
go back to God.
With all we share God.
It is all with God.
It is all with Thee.
Obey the Lord.
Blessed is He.
We were all from one thing... the will of God...
Thank you God.
--I have seen ungodly--
none can be greater--none can compare
Thank you God.
He will remake... He always has and He
always will.
It's true--blessed be His name--Thank you God.
God breathes through us so completely...
so gently we hardly feel it... yet,
it is our everything.
Thank you God.
ELATION--ELEGANCE--EXALTATION--
All from God.
Thank you God. Amen.
-John Coltrane (December, 1964)
  ¶ 9:43 PM 0 Comments

  Sex and Lucia  ¶ 10:14 AM 0 Comments

  I recommend the PBS documentary Mailer on Mailer (2000) - I haven't read any of Norman Mailer's books, but now I feel I have a much better sense of the man - the incredibly lucid 77-year-old Mailer talks about his career, and takes us through the last 40 some years of America's history along the way... now I have some serious reading to do...  ¶ 10:20 AM 0 Comments

  if you always look towards the light, that's what you see coming back. if you always have an inner smile, it affects you and others. having said that, i often scare myself when i look into the mirror. i think new york really affects me in not such a good way. but what can i do, i'm commited to staying here and working through it all...  ¶ 11:28 PM 0 Comments

  The Diarist Awards  ¶ 2:42 AM 0 Comments

 
Alex Grey.  ¶ 11:35 AM 0 Comments

  Warm Water Under a Red Bridge - (Japan, 2002) I want to see this one again - I got so caught in just watching and listening to this beautiful and strange movie that I often forgot to read the subtitles... A woman has a strange affliction... she fills up with water and, when she's full, she leaks! And the only way to release is by making love... a very funny and compelling visual metaphor for orgasm follows... check it out.  ¶ 11:35 AM 0 Comments

  Yesterday's Up From the Skies session with Vernon was cool, Masque back together again, and the studio, Gigantic, was great. The track's going to be mixed by studio legend Eddie Kramer.  ¶ 1:29 PM 0 Comments

  My friend Leon will be a visiting artist at Harvard this fall... Congrats and chunk it out!  ¶ 10:28 PM 0 Comments

  Up from the Skies... session today with Vernon...  ¶ 9:49 AM 0 Comments

  LAST POSTCARD FROM COSTA DEL BLOG

Time for me to get back to my day job, which means that it's time for me to stop blogging.

- William Gibson signs off from his blog.  ¶ 1:29 AM 0 Comments

  Bowlmor.  ¶ 12:15 AM 0 Comments

  Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963) - beautiful to look at... with Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, and Michel Piccoli - ultimately a pretty sad story - a writer's marriage falls apart as he attempts to finish a screenplay for a film based on the Odyssey - how fickle love seems sometimes, how ridiculous we artists are sometimes, how lonely the process is sometimes.  ¶ 5:10 PM 0 Comments

  Tourism generates 11 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP), employs 200 million people and transports nearly 700 million international travelers per year; a figure that is expected to double by 2020. It is considered one of the largest, if not the largest, industries on the planet. With nature and adventure travel one of the fastest-growing segments within the tourism industry, the Earth's most fragile, high biodiversity areas are where most of that expansion will likely take place. While tourism has the potential to provide opportunities for conserving nature, tourism development, when done improperly, can be a major threat to biodiversity. - from crumb trail  ¶ 11:25 AM 0 Comments

  Hangin' with baby James. My sister's 6-month old kid - made a trip out to sunny Fairhaven, NJ on Sept 11...


white picket fence heaven, NJ  ¶ 12:14 PM 0 Comments

  another simple but effective time killer, Catch 33...  ¶ 4:55 AM 0 Comments

  Love Sick.  ¶ 12:14 AM 0 Comments

  boohbah? kill some time.  ¶ 8:13 AM 0 Comments

  Bought a Rose of Jericho in the street last night. Hope I can make this one last.



The Rose of Jericho is a holy plant, often found in Botanicas and other stores that hawk spiritual items.... Leon was so inspired by his that he wrote a song about it...  ¶ 11:41 AM 0 Comments

  Elis Regina Lives...  ¶ 11:59 AM 0 Comments

  Mio, your fishies are still alive. The water's dirty as hell, and I changed it last week. Maybe I'm feeding them too much but I don't give them that much. Sometimes I feel embarrassed for myself.  ¶ 1:14 AM 0 Comments

  Why does desire desire its own repression, how can it desire its own repression? - A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari  ¶ 9:29 AM 0 Comments

 
The Gafieira Armada project, led by Pedro Ramos. Late last night at Made in Brazil, Astoria. I'm going to start playing bass with this group, starting next Friday.  ¶ 3:46 PM 0 Comments

  a bumper sticker I liked: Please be patient. God isn't finished with me yet.  ¶ 3:35 PM 0 Comments

  ok another movie review... the newer Solaris (2002) stars George Clooney's butt and is pretty good but I thought the first Solyaris (1972) was a real work of art, with a real space-quality timing to it and beautiful camerawork and use of black-and-white and color. The newer Solaris gets to the action real quick and everything is explaned more up-front, more for the dumber audiences it was intented for. It's still pretty Star Trek good fun though.  ¶ 9:28 PM 0 Comments

  "Then there was another group of musicians that didn't know music. Some of them could only play in one key. But they played precious things. I was in between. My greatest influence came from the ragtime piano players. I was trying to play ragtime. That's what I was trying to do, but it came out a little different.
I wouldn't have been a good musician if I'd gone to a conservatory and studied in the usual way. I haven't the discipline." - Duke Ellington, 1945
from The Duke Ellington Reader  ¶ 9:20 PM 0 Comments

  Laurel Canyon was just alright. Frances McDormand plays this guy's rock-star mom, and he's completely embarassed by her lifestyle... whatever.  ¶ 1:18 AM 0 Comments

  On a whim, I picked up Barocco at Evergreen Video. Maybe because I wanted to watch a younger Gerard Depardieu. But I really didn't know what was going on during most of the movie. This was not a very good one, but somehow I enjoyed just laying back and watching it roll by. Depardieu plays two characters, murderer and murdered. Pretty weird. Yet more evidence that French people are out of their minds.  ¶ 8:53 PM 0 Comments

 
From high up in the Petropolis mountains, overlooking Rio. Taken earlier this year. That's where Jorge is from.  ¶ 10:10 AM 0 Comments