Is Acoustic James Bond Better...?

Truman Capote, who is one of my favourite writers of all time, could not finish a novel to save his life.

In fact, not only was he completely useless at it, you could 'see' how much of a mess of things he was making - getting himself further and further into a ditch he would never be able to get out of. You could see where his nerves were getting the better of him, not so much the self-doubt, but the sheer anxiety of himself knowing he was so much better and that people would inevitably get the wrong idea.

In this respect, Capote was a symmetrical writer - well, as in, symmetrically 100% opposite.

This is what the eyes of pure genius look like

His first um, perhaps fifty to a hundred pages were astonishingly good - you know at some point that you're in the hands not only of a master of the modern English language, but someone whose brain was worth listening to, if it was prepared to disclose anything to you. Truman Capote, in my view, understood human beings in ways that not too many even understand themselves about. He was nuanced. And he was far deeper of a personality than - at least in my estimation - the times in which he lived were capable of reaching even if they tried, and they generally didn't try.

Today, we have radically gone off the rails though - we could have reached depths, we could have hit heights; we were on the way there with Orson Welles, Arturo Perez Reverte, maybe even Ken Russell in some a strange sense. Kubrick was personally always too closed off from the public to give the mass public itself a feeling of its own true potential: he pointed to something, but then he also pointed over - with Kubrick there is always a bridge across vast spaces, metaphorical and spatial, between contemporary Man and society, and that 'other' place where there is a deep Man. That is to say, a profound Man.

Man is no longer even close to being profound.

There are good men but they are not profound. Capote was profound in ways that Vidal never ever was.

Where we've gone off the rails is in this mistaken belief that technology equates with 'the profound.' But it doesn't you see; design equates with the profound - it's about why intelligent beings select one thing over another thing. 

It's not about that you do, or that you can do, or how you do (something) - it's always about why.

'Why?'

Financial markets have energy (or lack of it), politicians have energy (so we can see), athletes have energy - life appears to have energy.

I don't believe it does have energy however. It has a dialogue going on: and there is a strict order with a fateful terminal sentence velocity...

Static things exist, and then the question is asked first: 'Why.' 

And then you get an answer from what ought to be a void.

Sure, listen to the voice - but watch the eyes

The Shrink's Couch

So this person I know really well asked me more or less, something along the lines of THE QUESTION: 'what is the purpose of life/why are there more difficult things than easy things that we encounter here...'

Well, it was something along those lines, anyway.

'You know,' I told her, 'if you consider the consultation suites of psychoanalysts and traditional psychotherapists, you have this 'shrink's couch' thing going on, this comfortable, quiet, dim-lit, warm, room, with a chaise that you can lie back on where you can close eyes to think; or not, as the case may be.'

And I of course expanded on the simple image description, and endeavored to weave my own perspective into it - which goes like this: even the learned, deep thinking, and very experienced people like Freud and Jung and Adler and Rank and Reich and Ritter and whoever else, all seemed perfectly sure that for most people the world was a psychologically, or a spiritually, inhospitable place, and that they might as well not add to the problem by assuming urgency, or anything in fact, that was liable to or inclined to, increase anxiety.

Hence the creation of this comfortable and intended-to-be relaxing space in which to set out from, on the journey to self-discovery or understanding of the world.

Human personality is about the clothes -
the clothes and the person are one.

Psychotherapists proceed from the position of assuming that everyone who comes to them is 'suffering.' And generally the suffering has a root cause in a sense of meaninglessness.

Well, that's what I hear a lot of psychotherapists say.

But I think far and away the most important thing is the very first proposition - namely, that the world is or can be, a psychologically inhospitable place. We don't need to employ the word 'spiritual' too much for our purposes here. It isn't necessary right now - we can get away with using the entirely secular 'psychological.'

...There is a road though, and a doorway, to the solution to everything.

Manu Zain - 'Without You'

Very Tempting, But No

There are still a lot of 'amazing' headlines all over the news and commentary channels and papers and platforms. And yes it is a touch tempting to go back and re-visit what are essentially old themes to me now.

But no, I shall not. Things have moved on and only the dogs are still barking. 

This is the new cocktail bar manager
 at the Paris Ritz - Aurelie Pezet

When I say 'old themes' I simply mean the idea of openly revealing something that is supposed to be covert and usually, runs counter the interests of ordinary law-abiding people. By 'openly' I mean actively telling you that I am doing it.

I'm not in the business of revealing anything too much these days. Today, we require more silence and less revelation. Do we not? I mean, for 'truth' and 'revelation' one need but go to simply any 'news' page. The BBC is of course, priceless - here we even have the suggestion that we should just 'ignore it.' This is in reference to something they want you to 'just ignore.' You see, if you just ignore it, then that will mean it never happened.

Whatever you don't care about, never happened, of course.

And they think they can make you care about some things, and less so about others, and not even at all, about others still.

We shall see what we shall see.

What do you think? Do you think the future has arrived yet? 

Do you feel happy and good about today and about the future? Or worried? Depends, I guess, on a lot of things - on the sorts of things you want, the sorts of prices you have to pay, the kinds of income you can attain, cultural and social inputs that are available; cultural and social wealth that can accrue to you and be experienced and absorbed by you.

Modern Pow Wow Season

There are a very large number of people around today, who if you introduce some new idea to them, immediately talk about 'evidence' in order to handle the unknowns (to them) of the idea itself.

'Evidence' is a modern process template element which is a kind of contrived foothold in the chaos of the living Universe... (LOL - and I hope you know from whom I am quoting here).

Human beings are largely losing certain key higher levels of intelligence capacity that they very nearly all captured into the normal human systems not that long ago. Yet, almost no sooner had they acquired these than that they quickly began to 'dis'-acquire them. You see, people are currently running on automatic pilot. Even the seemingly idiosyncratic behaviors, and pet foibles, are not really that - they are forced iterations of behaviors and pretended motivations and joys.

The music is 'Changes' by Airdrop

I have placed the video here, so that you can play it while reading...

You will see here and there some people 'seeking sentient alien life' for example - but I say, in the main, human beings today are not themselves sentient any longer.

There is a political struggle which abuses valuable things like science and 'evidence' and skepticism, in order to gain a contrived foothold in the creative and unpredictable mind.

Once you have creativity and unpredictability scaled up into the broader human society, you will then have the chance of noticing alien sentient life. These things are around us all the time. 

The apparent problem of traversing distances in light years and greater, and seeming lack of evidence of visitation - whether mechanical or physical visitation, and therefore hard evidence left for such, or some kind of non-physical, perhaps information/data types of ingress upon our world from far away - is due to our relatively inadequately subtle sensitivities and sense perceptions.

Modern shamanic dancer image - Shamans
have access to, and influence in other worlds

And what I mean is not that there are no obvious, hard evidence-type, alien beings actually present anywhere, and only some kind of ephemeral or 'subspace,' tenuous 'presences' - but that we cannot even properly tell what is already in front of our eyes now and present to our seven scientifically acknowledged senses.

We have the senses, but we don't use them, and our brains are variously hyper-tuned away from reality towards the commercially-activated and politically-driven fantastical - or down-tuned into perceiving only the grosser ranges of data input.

Reality is about what is actually there - and not what social convention says ought to (only) be there.

Shamans are people who have access to, and influence in... a more subtle world.

Modern Shamanic skin paint

The famous speech or letter of Chief Seattle, discussed by the historical writer Albert Furtwangler, is looked upon skeptically today on account of the many variations of it. This speech appears to make highly prescient statements about today's world. The fact remains though that a speech was given by Chief Seattle in 1854 and there are peculiarities about the text which extremely knowledgeable people about the English language and language construction generally, will tell you have to do with someone's unique, personal genius.

In other words, even if the original reporter were heavily editing the speech in order to make contemporary sense, nevertheless he was capturing someone else's unique ideas - because those ideas are not part of outward modern cultural systems at all, and to some extent the Shamanic turn-of-phrase style reflects this.

But you see, Shamanic presence is always part of inward human cultural systems - everywhere, at every time.

It is not easy to find a genuine Shaman, as opposed to someone who dresses like caricatures of them or like cultural expectations about them. 

Shaman not only have access to, remember, but have influence in... If you find them, they can change your world. They can change the world.

The New Spring Tide...

I was going to do a post about the Pow Wow season - which happens around now, around Spring.

The Pow Wow season, although those words are from Native American languages, goes on around the whole world because there are shamanic cultures spread everywhere.

All shaman know each other. And they all speak the same language.

Humphrey Bogart was a shaman. And when he played Sam Spade, he was showing his shamanic powers. Power, is energy into mechanical balance.

A Chumash tribal representative

Power ebbs and flows - it is a re-current path. Decline and re-growth.

There is a certain power to fantasy that walks unrecognized in the waking world. 

I will do the post about 'Pow Wows' that I was going to, later on.

I don't think I personally have Native America blood although we did have an ancestral individual in America called 'Nancy' Ward and she is recorded as 'Nanyehi' Ward. The idea that there is a 'John Walker' connection, rather than 'Ward' - a point that some people raise - is due to the fact that all of us Scots/Irish Wards have the nickname 'John Walker' and we are known for literally doing a lot of walking. Marching backwards and forwards to Khartoum, for instance! The surname 'Ward' is also a coverall for 'other things' I must tell you. As I have said here before, I am the first male son in our family for centuries who hasn't been in any active service in the military. I have lived in hot war zones, though.

Although we believe we live in this 'modern' urban culture, with the latest technology and all kinds of 'civilized' ways that we claim to have, the reality is quite another thing.

You can go into any major city these days and witness the night culture, the street people, those without formal dwellings, predators, victims, the vulnerable. 

Money gets victimized and murdered too! Why are we just fixated on the simple murders of people when behind it all, there are vastly more significant hidden crimes that lead to the more obvious outward violence to life and limb.

When money dies, where does it go? Does it die and go to dollar heaven?

'69 Chevrolet Camaro from Director Mason Dixon's
Dustin Lynch music video - a good detective's car

Can it return from the dead?

Can it be trapped, lying dormant in some basement somewhere... Awaiting the money detective to come and liberate it.

Darren Diamond never is as alive as when he spends his very own last hundred on a bottle of Bourbon and turns his mind to the problem that just walked into his office - the problem that spells 'where is the next hundred?' Not where is the next hundred coming from - it comes from wherever it is, Darren knows how to get it; he just needs to know where it literally is.

Up until very recently, governments around the world and their accountants and various other hanging-on parasites, killed off the cash and sucked the life out of everything that could make money.

Next month the interest rates go up. And everything starts to change. The rain is beginning to fall, and the waters will rise.