Compassion, Creativity, Buddhism, The Quest for Truth & Wisdom, Psychology, Health & Wellness, Music, Films, Literature, Art, Revolution, Healing, Critical Thinking, Mental Health Advocacy, Social Justice, Resilience, Reflection, The Beauty of Melancholy, Gothic Sensibilities, Spiritual Development, Consciousness, Memento Mori, LOVE…
I heard somewhere that 2020 is the year of soulmates. I love how that sounds but I am not sure if it is true. We shall see.
I really don’t know how I feel about the soulmate concept. I used to faithfully believe in it. Unfortunately, when the wrong people cross your path and/or hurt you, it causes you to lose faith.
The truth is that I want to believe in the spiritual concept of soulmates.
“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself- and especially to feel, or not feel.
Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them.
That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is.”
-Jim Morrison
*
For this reflection, I had to use a clip from the brilliant comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Larry David’s and Richard Lewis’ friendship is based on brutal honesty. Only an authentic friendship can withstand the weight of such raw truth.
Perhaps the measure of a friendship is how much truth it can withstand.
Richard Lewis says, “we have enough good stuff in the bank to get over this.”
He is alluding to the history, friendship and mutual respect that they share.
Richard Lewis and Larry David at the Playboy club in the early 1980s Courtesy of Rolling Stone Magazine. https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/richard-lewis-on-stand-up-sobriety-and-trusting-larry-david-193075/ “Richard Lewis met Larry David at summer camp sometime around 1960. They were both Brooklyn Jews with working-class parents, but they hated each other on sight. They became tight years later on the stand-up circuit, and David helped Lewis get his life back together when he quit drinking.”
Larry David’s and Richard Lewis’ friendship grows stronger with time…
Radiohead came to be my favourite band out of all the many bands/artists that I love.
I simply adore them.
My faith in humanity, life and love is restored when I listen to them.
When I watch this video, I am reminded of how much musicians and artists are so necessary in this world. They are vital because they are alchemists who can transform pain and suffering into beauty and enlightenment.
They are also healers that greatly contribute to the healing of the world.
I have a great reverence for musicians and artists.
Hello everyone. I thought I would start this year’s blog posts with a memento mori reflection on death and life. Since it is impossible to divorce death from life, we can use reflective energy to focus on how we want to live.
The beauty that Brandon Lee speaks with is eloquent, timeless and utterly peaceful. I am sure most of you know that Brandon was tragically killed while filming The Crow in 1993. This video clip was shot a little while before he died.
{I hope to do a post on The Crow and possibly Brandon Lee in the future}.
Let’s reflect on life and death with the same peace and gratitude that Brandon exudes.
Brandon Lee…A Beautiful Soul That Lived With Electric Vitality
and yet everything happens only a certain number of times and a very small number, really.
How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood?
An afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four, five times more. Perhaps not even that.
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?
Perhaps twenty and yet it all seems limitless.”
-From the book The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
This quote is on Brandon’s Tombstone. Brandon is buried next to his father Bruce Lee in the Lake View Cemetary in Seattle, Washington.
Here is a closer look…
Brandon loved this quote so much that he had chosen it for his wedding invitations.
He was to be married to his soul mate Eliza Hutton one week after he finished filming The Crow on April 17th, 1993. Brandon tragically died on March 31st, 1993.
“Rows of houses all bearing down on me I can feel their blue hands touching me All these things into position All these things we’ll one day swallow whole And fade out again and fade out
This machine will not communicate These thoughts and the strain I am under Be a world child, form a circle Before we all go under And fade out again and fade out again
Cracked eggs, dead birds Scream as they fight for life I can feel death, can see it’s beady eyes All these things into position All these things we’ll one day swallow whole And fade out again and fade out again
Immerse your soul in love Immerse your soul in love.”
SONG INFORMATION
Released: March 1995 Found on: The Bends & Street Spirit single. Acoustic version found on Fake Plastic Trees CD2.
This song was written in 1993, around the same time as “My Iron Lung.” “Creep” is Radiohead’s American hit, this is the British equivalent. Noted by singer-songwriter and guitarist Thom Yorke as “one of [the band’s] saddest songs” and describing it as “the dark tunnel without the light at the end,” “Street Spirit” was released as the band’s ninth single and reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, the highest chart position the band achieved until “Paranoid Android” from OK Computer, which reached number three in 1997.
Yorke has suggested that the song was inspired by the 1991 novel The Famished Road, written by Ben Okri, and that its music was inspired by R.E.M. The track is built around a soft melody in A minor with an arpeggio (broken chord) guitar part.
Thom: “Street Spirit is our purest song, but I didn’t write it. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers; its biological catalysts. Its core is a complete mystery to me, and, you know, I wouldn’t ever try to write something that hopeless. All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve. Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition. We all have a way of dealing with that song. It’s called detachment. Especially me; I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn’t play it. I’d crack. I’d break down on stage. That’s why its lyrics are just a bunch of mini-stories or visual images as opposed to a cohesive explanation of its meaning. I used images set to the music that I thought would convey the emotional entirety of the lyric and music working together. That’s what’s meant by ‘all these things you’ll one day swallow whole’. I meant the emotional entirety, because I didn’t have it in me to articulate the emotion. I’d crack…
Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don’t realise what they’re listening to. They don’t realise that Street Spirit is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he’ll get the last laugh. And it’s real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I’d crack.
I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that song.”
“I have never understood the concept of infatuation.
It has always been my understanding that being ‘infatuated’ with someone means you think you are in love, but you’re actually not; infatuation is (supposedly) just a foolish, fleeting feeling.
But if being ‘in love’ is an abstract notion, and it’s not tangible, and there is no way to physically prove it to anyone else…
well, how is being in love any different than having an infatuation?
They’re both human constructions.
If you think you’re in love with someone and you feel like you’re in love with someone, then you obviously are; thinking and feeling is the sum total of what love is.
Why do we feel an obligation to certify emotions with some kind of retrospective, self-imposed authenticity?”
“The breath of the morning I keep forgetting The smell of the warm summer air
I live in a town Where you can’t smell a thing You watch your feet For cracks in the pavement
Up above Aliens hover Making home movies For the folks back home
Of all these weird creatures Who lock up their spirits Drill holes in themselves And live for their secrets
They’re all uptight Uptight.. [x7]
I wish that they’d swoop down in a country lane Late at night when I’m driving Take me on board their beautiful ship Show me the world as I’d love to see it
I’d tell all my friends But they’d never believe They’d think that I’d finally lost it completely
I’d show them the stars And the meaning of life They’d shut me away But I’d be all right All right..
Men and women whisper to each other because they have turned a sacred gesture into a sinful act.
This is the world in which we live. And while robbing the present moment of its reality can be dangerous, disobedience can also be a virtue, when we know how to use it.
If two bodies merely join together, that is not sex, it is merely pleasure.
Sex goes far beyond pleasure.
In sex, relaxation and tension go hand in hand, as do pain and pleasure, shyness and the courage to go beyond one’s limits.
How can such opposing states exist in harmony together?
There is only one way: by surrendering yourself.
Because the act of surrender means: ‘I trust you.’
It isn’t enough to imagine everything that might happen if we allowed ourselves to join not just our bodies, but our souls as well.
Let us plunge together, then, down the dangerous path of surrender.
It may be dangerous, but it is the only path worth following.
Let us forget all that we are taught about how it is noble to give and humiliating to receive.
Because for most people, generosity consists only in giving, but receiving is also an act of love.
Allowing someone else to make us happy will make them happy too.”
“With his arms around your love Oh no, here comes the pain that you can’t ignore
With his arms around your girl He’ll do all of the things you didn’t do before You had every chance, but you closed the door
[Chorus] Now you’re just gonna have to take it (‘Cause if you didn’t know) She’s gonna make you pay for it (Price you can’t afford) You’re just gonna have to take it With his arms around your love [Repeat: x3]
Oh, yeah
Pretend that you don’t mind But you know everything that you left behind
And it would have been alright If you’d gave half of the praise that you held inside You thought she’d hang around for the ride
[Chorus]
Coming clean feels so dangerous Just a little bit would have been enough But you never said all the words caught in your head
As if your heart was dead Well now its surely bled and broken up
And it would have been alright If you’d gave half of the praise that you held inside You thought she’d hang around for the ride
[Chorus]
(Take it) With his arms around your love (Pay for it) With his arms around your love With his arms around your love With his arms around your love.”
I really feel that it complements Rumi’s poem “Love’s Alchemy.”
Isn’t the cello along with Jon Crosby’s soulful singing so hauntingly beautiful?
“Close your eyes let me touch you now let me give you something that is real close the door leave your fears behind let me give you what you’re giving me you are the only thing that makes me want to live at all when i am with you there’s no reason to pretend that when i am with you i feel flames again just put me inside you i would never ever leave just put me inside you i would never ever leave you.”
We need to love. Even when it leads us to the land where the lakes are made of tears, to that secret, mysterious place, the land of tears!
Tears speak for themselves. And when we feel that we have cried all we needed to cry, they still continue to flow. But when we believe that our life is destined to be a long walk through the Vale of Sorrows, the tears suddenly vanish.
Because we managed to keep our heart open, despite the pain.
Because we realised that the person who left us did not take the sun with them or leave darkness in their place. They simply left, and with every farewell comes a hidden hope.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
“Broken bottle won’t hurt me
Nothing worse that I have dreamed Gun shot in my chest you’ll leave
I can take that you will see
Late at night is when I dream
Horrible things are what I see
Hard for me to believe
I wake up and I won’t freeze
Car crash highway tragedy
Nothing worse than I have dreamed Loss of my best friend I grieve
I can take that you will see.”
Love You Jimi…
