Rolling off that fresh Spring energy with another new instrumental, Melek Taus.
This one was tricky to mix – I seem to have selected sounds that occupy a lot of the same bandwidth, so I had to do some careful EQ’ing. Still a tad muddy, but I think I’ll leave it alone for now.
Spring is definitely here now. Funny, it seems like just a couple of weeks ago we were shoveling snow and watching the Winter Olympics….
With Spring comes new life, and new music. Right now, National Public Radio is previewing Jeff Beck’s new album, Emotion and Commotion,..in its entirety(!!!).
How cool is that?
Dusted off this old thing I did six years ago. Never liked how it turned out (sloppy playing, weak composition), but there are some good ideas in there, sticking out of the mud so to speak.
I rarely revisit songs I’ve recorded, but I’ve wanted to make some improvements to Hungry Ghosts for a while. Finally got around to it tonight, adding some funky clavinet to the mix, and tweaking the dynamics to make the overall sound a little more cohesive.
Listen to the new version, available on the Music page.
Here I go blogging a blog again…but this story melded so well with my last post that I just couldn’t resist:
Via Wildmind, a story in the Australian Herald Sun entitled The Business of Meditation, about meditation and the corporate world.
The title’s misleading in that the article is not about people making a business based on meditation, but that meditation is becoming mainstream enough that some companies are promoting it, in recognition of its beneficial effects.
Ignoring the goofy photo of the woman sitting in Lotus on a desk, it’s a well-written and informative article.
An interesting article at Miller-McCune describes recent psych studies that demonstrate how one’s sense of personal power is linked to how we perceive external threats. The less control one feels over one’s life, the more likely one is to perceive influence over one’s life coming from a single enemy.
It boils down to how well each of us deals with the universe in which we live, which is an essentially chaotic place.
…people can eventually accept a certain lack of control and eventually become resigned to this idea to the extent that they no longer react defensively against it.”
This has huge consequences for all of us, especially now, what with the numerous economic, political, and environmental challenges facing us.
For instance, our reaction over the past eight years to the 9/11 attacks has been to tense up, and to take a harder look at those who may not appear to be like us. What we need to understand is the lesson that 9/11 is teaching us – that, practically speaking, there is no real security. All the weapons in the world will not make us safe. Trust is the only way forward.
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is & knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”
- John Allen Paulos
Taoism is mentioned at the very end of the article; both Taoism and Buddhism focus largely on accepting uncertainty. There are numerous types of meditation coming from these traditions as well as others that may be employed to condition oneself to deal with uncertainty.
There’s a new blogger in our household. I just set up Donna with her own blog Collage Universe.
This was too cool to ignore:
Well, fancy that. According to this
AP News story, Norwegian hospitals are far less prone to contagious
infections than those in the US, because they’ve cut way back on medical
drugs, especially antibiotics.
Is more evidence needed that we’ve need to give up on a health-care
utopia based on so-called “wonder-drugs?”
Why should we be afraid to go to the hospital, risking our health? This
isn’t the Middle Ages, after all.
N900: Because every cell phone should be capable of running X Windows, Apache, and MySql.
