I was standing around an enormous piece of red cloth. It was probably 15+ feet in diameter and there were people underneath it. I was being trained how to work with a lion that was on the other side of the cloth. My goal was to keep it at bay so that it wouldn’t harm anyone. I was asking how to do this but the answer was that it could only be taught in practice. I was basically trying to keep it opposite me across the distance of the cloth and keep it distracted while the people underneath could keep safe. It seemed that I was called to leave thru a hole on one side of the cloth which meant that I needed to give up staying opposite that lion and give into having to approach it. I went over to the hole and laid down at the face of it and curled up to get ready for the lion to approach me. I laid there as still as I could. I could sense the lion approach me. Then I felt it sniffing me and could feel it’s hot breath on me. I waited and it started to walk away. I proceeded to crawl thru the hole and as I did, I heard a loud echoing voice bellow, “Kumara.”
Sacrifice and FreedomJuly 31st, 2011
I was in a back yard of a small house. Lauri was standing in front of a dark plastic trash can. My hair was really long, probably almost two feet in length. I grabbed a hand-full of it and in a stroke, cut it off and dropped it into the trash can as a sacrifice, tho to what I wasn’t sure. As I did so, it thickened into an almost spaghetti-like wad. Lauri turned and dragged the trash can away around the house toward a back door to the garage. I asked her what she was going to do with it but her response wasn’t clear.
Next, I’m standing in a very dimly lit bathroom of slate and gold. It was beautiful of what I could see of it, but it was only illuminated by a small led light standing in a power outlet. I was holding a hair dryer in my hand and immediately wondered what I was doing here. The bathroom was opulent and very large and I was standing in front of the mirror with the door to my left. I felt out of place and walked thru the door into a large foyer near the front door of an enormous house. Standing around and sitting were a group of men that seemed to be in a sort of trance. Mel was there near the front door. I had a sinking, uneasy feeling about being there and realized that I need to leave immediately. I walked over to Mel to coax him to leave with me but he sat there with a blank look about him. The other men started to descend upon me as if to prevent me from leaving so I rushed out the front door to a sidewalk and proceeded to turn right away from the house. A young man that looked of East Indian descent with long, black hair came out to persuade me not to leave. He told me that I was very important to them. I told him that I was not returning. He became even more persuasive, telling me that they would give me anything I wanted. I told him that the only thing I wanted was the only thing he could not give me… freedom.
I’m Playing Friday Night @ Blair Lair House ConcertMay 5th, 2011
If you’re interested, I’ll be playing an hour set, probably starting around 7:30-8ish at Blair Lair in Sunnyvale. There will be some really great poetry and other performers that do cameos as well. It’s going to be a great evening. If you’re interested in attending, email me back at news@rhythma.com for the address.
Playing Out Tomorrow @ Campbell Farmer’s MarketApril 30th, 2011
I got asked today to fill a spot at the Farmer’s Market in Campbell tomorrow, the first day of May. I’ll be performing from 9am -1pm. Lord help me. I’m going to bring out my keyboard and computer, and looper and create some ambient textures. I wasn’t sure I was ready to play out with this equipment and style but I’ll give it a go, probably earlier in the day and see how it feels. It’ll be a live experiment and I should be partially asleep and probably still dreaming so that should add to the whole design. Come out and say hi.
Downtown Campbell. Can’t miss it.
Method to Win the LotteryApril 13th, 2011
I was in a very large Victorian house that had been converted to a hotel with a meeting hall. I was chatting with a young lady who was sitting behind a desk checking in the visitors to an event that was being held in the hall. In between check-ins, she was telling me about winning the lottery. She was only work this desk because it interested her to participate in this activity and not because of any monetary compensation. She asked me if I wanted to know how she won. Well, of course I did… duh! She told me to invest $10,000 in lottery tickets, spread out over the course of a year. That was how I’d be able to win, as that’s how she did it, and she’d won millions. I needed to get more details on this procedure so she got up to go for a walk with me, but every time we’d rekindle the conversation, someone would walk up and start talking with us about something. It took so long that I eventually woke up without ever getting the change to hear her whole story.
Thorium, The New Nuke – A Must ReadMarch 16th, 2011
I was digging thru some stacks of magazines and papers searching for something I never found and what I came across was really interesting. No, I mean REALLY interesting. I’ve been a subscriber of Wired magazine for eons. It’s a magazine that closely aligns with my sense of design and my desire for information that feels relevant and untainted, sometimes controversial, and often enlightening.
This article in particular was enlightening because my education in the sciences was minimal. I always leaned toward the liberal arts and away from anything that required too much memorization of intangible concepts and “things.” Thorium can be found on the periodic table along with other actinides like uranium and plutonium that are currently used in 100% of the world’s nuclear reactors. Interesting that I found this article right when Japan is having a serious problems with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. I don’t believe “authorities” to tell you the truth when it comes to the risk involved in the radiation that’s leaching from the plant and how it will affect the planet at large when that radiation gets spread about the planet by our weather system.
Enter thorium… a once upon a time contender for the energy that would feed nuclear power plants. It lost out to uranium, not because it’s not clean burning, not because it’s less bi-product producing, and not because it’s mostly harmless (you can carry it in your pocket), and not because it’s hyper abundant. It lost to uranium because uranium’s by-product, plutonium is what war mongers like to use most in bombs. Isn’t that lovely? We have the radioactive by-products of nuclear calamities like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now the Japan crisis poisoning our plaent, and they could have been averted if we had chosen to not make bombs.
Take the time to read this article in the 2010 issue of Wired. It’s well worth the read: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
American Beauty and The Poet & PatriotMarch 5th, 2011
I was staying in a very large and extravagant hotel somewhere. I think the situation was music related and my mom was there. The day before we were concluding our stay, a large film crew checked in. They were there to film a new version of American Beauty, but with the edginess of The Virgin Suicides. I ended up in a clothing shop of some sort along the lines of Abercrombie and Fitch, the kind of place where you’d shop if you were 18 and had wealthy parents. I was laying back on a long cushioned bench chatting with my mom when a young Norwegian man and woman walked in and sat nearby. Both were very pale, slender and blond and had that Northern European character of everything having a proper place about them. As it turns out, the couple were working for wardrobe for the movie. The young man wanted me to try on a shirt for him because he was unsure of the size and whether it would fit whomever he was dressing. It was a polo style shirt with royal blue and white horizontal stripes. I told him I was a medium, but he wanted to see how the large would fit me. I took it and went into the dressing room which was more like a bedroom. There were benches, clothing hanging on the walls, and there was a salesperson in there. The shirt the young man had given me was part of a package; a hat, belt, and some other accoutrement all hanging from the same hanger. The salesperson was upset that I was trying to dismantle this set to get the shirt off just to try it on and insisted on finding the shirt apart from the package. She looked around the room and became exasperated at not finding the shirt in there.
Next thing I know, I’m in The Poet & Patriot in Santa Cruz. I’m walking thru the bar with a bicycle, thru a group of performers. I realize that they having an open mic and I’m thinking of checking in to see if I can play a song or two. I walk toward the bar and have this knowledge that the bar is different than I know it to be, that the beer is served deeper into the back instead of the bar that I’m accustomed to. As I proceed toward the back, I’m stopped by a young brunette twenty something with a clipboard who insists that I can’t proceed with the bicycle. I ask her why not and she starts talking about the number 1, and examining her clipboard. She finally acquiesces because she can’t give me a justifiable reason why I can’t proceed to the bar with the bicycle. So, I walk to the back and the bar is similar to a horse stable with corrals on both sides of the room. On the right were three of these where the dividing walls had been removed and there was a menu up above. In the corrals were large kegs where the beer was stored. There were all boutique beers. I recall looking for Newcastle but it wasn’t there. I settled on a beer with a green label that looked similar to Sierra Nevada, but I don’t recall the brewer, but the name of the beer was something like Bright Buffalo at Wounded Knee. It was a light ale which isn’t something I’d normally go after, preferring dark ales and porters, but it seemed to fit for some reason. I could order at the time because the servers were all in a corral on the left side of the room filling beers so I walked over to the wall to the left of them where there were rows of shelves filled with elaborate steins. On in particular caught my eye. It wasn’t particularly large but it had a button on the handle that activated a top the slid back allowing just enough space to sip the beer from the stein. I picked up the stein to examine the mechanics of this mechanism and see how hard it was to clean. I was impressed with it and it’s emerald green colour and decided to get it. I proceeded over to the other side to get the beer and asked the server who was now present how much it was. He wasn’t sure whether this was my stein or whether I wanted to purchase it. I told him I was interested in the stein the the light ale on the sign to me left, so he walked over to a cash register, punched in something and told me that it would be $3.50. I said, “I’ll take it,” surprised at the lost cost of the item. A guy had perched next to me at the bar so while the guy was filling my beer, I told him about the film crew in town to remake American Beauty but it didn’t appear to know about the original. I reflected on how many people have so little knowledge of the brief past.
New Videos PostedMarch 3rd, 2011
Four more lo-fi videos of performances of both Rhythma and Tarradiddle: Enjoy!!
The House Has ChildrenFebruary 21st, 2011
This dream came about the same day that I had done an EMDR session which went way back in time to unearth some dirt. I was in the big house. A family appeared to have moved in and they had two children, both under 10. They were playing upstairs when I came across them. In the back of my mind was a shallow memory of the house being haunted, but it was so vague, kinda like painted over wall paper. You may find a seem somewhere but the original image is gone. I looked at the children and realized something new was taking place and I was okay with it.
