Saturday, February 25, 2006
Life is complex, email detritus (salvaged, revised)
(psssst - I’ve been reworking parts of emails into blogs lately. Appropriately, I think. Just the impersonal rambling pretentious parts. Saving them for you, to read now and here. Aren't you lucky? :)
No, seriously. I was talking (emailing) to my friend (good guy I know) Jeff (rhymes with... wait, what does Jeff rhyme with?). Jeff got me thinking about stratified layers of thought and feeling, peeling them back or laying them down like layers of a... what? onion? roll of wall paper? pile of winter jackets? pizza toppings?
So you see my dilemma here, or you will as I explain that Jeff is somehow combining poetry and spirituality and politics and stream of consciousness in his emails which, peel onion-like as I may, I can't penetrate. So I feel encouraged to ramble back to Jeff, sometimes confrontatively, but posited with the appropriate emoticons :)(=:-)) so that everything is congenially blunted and/or confused with a smile.
This time I tried a different approach, and one no less obfuscatory. I preluded the following (as opposed to postluding the previous, which would be chronological but unremarkable) with some talk of a certain grand artistic project I know of that I'd help with if I had time but I don't so would he care to. You see, people have said that I'm a connector kind of person, and apart from some heightened glial cell awareness that may occur I have no idea what they're talking about, but it seemed worth the trouble to combine a few directions of thinking and share them like bon-bons in the hopes of helping a friend. Such is the nature of connectionism, a confusing job but someone's got to do it.
So I said: )
Life is complex, isn't it. Can't imagine how these people have time to go to wars. There's so much art and thinking and relating to people to do. Between you and me, I think they have emotional addiction problems. There's an underground comic book from years ago called Addicted to War, critical of Bush senior. Who'd have thought years later we'd be under Bush Jr., who is using the phrase America is Addicted to Oil, but he says that we should remain calm because a big breakthrough is just around the corner. They told him, he knows it, really. Bush says technology is going to solve all problems soon. Technology plus democracy. Two of the biggest and best words I know. Plus Freedom. Bush has all these great words on his side.
I can't understand why Hamas was so rude as to run for elections. They should know they are bad people, and bad people don't run for office. That's democracy. The right choices for the right times. Now Bush has to do something to stop them after winning their country's democratic elections. Something like cut funds, even if that further isolates and extremizes the situation. Either you're for us or against us. It's all going to come out sooner or later.
We are so good, we really are. Us, that's why they call it us you know. United States, that's Us. We good. They bad. Simple, right? I mean, the worst we can do accidentally is nothing compared to the worst they are trying to do intentionally. They're trying to kill women and children, disrupt markets, terrorize innocents. We're accidentally hurting some people with our ammunition in self-defense on our freedom-promoting missions of charity. We are liberating these people.
I mean, I know that whenever China invades someone they say it is to liberate them, like they did in Tibet. I don't mean like that. Us, we give real freedom, the true freedom of democracy. Afghanistan and Iraq will love us, you'll see. Because they'll have peace. Highly commercial, highly developed, highly consumer-oriented peace. Given, paid for, a gift from Us. United States, that's us!
That's why you're either with us or against us.
Am I right, Jeff, am I right?
What do you think of this email? Honestly, is letterwriting a dead art? Is it so provacative to empower the author to dump their consciousnesses onto the faster-than-thought internet? And to cut and paste pieces into a blog before you even check your email, so in fact by the time you read said email there will be others separated by time and space but not by befuddlement or rapture, reading it right there with you, including perhaps but not limited to, a housewife in Des Moines, a rancher in Texas, a call center attendant on break in New Delhi, an artist in Switzerland, a monastic pygmy in Peru, and a bird breeder with a curiously prominent nose in New Guinea?
How do I know these things? Because email encourages spontaneity, action without thought revealing deeper thought, automaticity, automatic city, a tomato kitty. Surrealism is more real than reality because it exposes the deeper rubbish.
Email is good, I wrote Jeff an email. But the name of the inner character who said these things in the spirit of the garden path shall remain, um, nameless.
No, wait, Ed. Eddy Tyler Scopeneck. He said it all, he told me to write this to you.
(click here to stop receiving emails like this)
Hope you're doing well Jeff,
Carl
PS - Jeff's email included a copy of Gore Vidal's impressive anti-Bush polemic The Enemy Within, published in The Observer, London, 27 October 2002. He really did write this, I find, (Vidal I mean), and the article accuses Bush of acting for a global economic domination plot. Which I can't disprove, can you? By the way, did you know that Gore Vidal is the same Gore as Al Gore? Yeah, they're related, it's weird, somebody is saying their name backward. There should be a law against that. I'll sic the neighborhood anti-terrorist watch on anyone that I find has reversed their names, like some artsy fartsy anti-Christ. Anyone says fartsy artsy, I'll know, I'll turn them in. Or my name isn't Eddy Tyler Scopeneck.
No, seriously. I was talking (emailing) to my friend (good guy I know) Jeff (rhymes with... wait, what does Jeff rhyme with?). Jeff got me thinking about stratified layers of thought and feeling, peeling them back or laying them down like layers of a... what? onion? roll of wall paper? pile of winter jackets? pizza toppings?
So you see my dilemma here, or you will as I explain that Jeff is somehow combining poetry and spirituality and politics and stream of consciousness in his emails which, peel onion-like as I may, I can't penetrate. So I feel encouraged to ramble back to Jeff, sometimes confrontatively, but posited with the appropriate emoticons :)(=:-)) so that everything is congenially blunted and/or confused with a smile.
This time I tried a different approach, and one no less obfuscatory. I preluded the following (as opposed to postluding the previous, which would be chronological but unremarkable) with some talk of a certain grand artistic project I know of that I'd help with if I had time but I don't so would he care to. You see, people have said that I'm a connector kind of person, and apart from some heightened glial cell awareness that may occur I have no idea what they're talking about, but it seemed worth the trouble to combine a few directions of thinking and share them like bon-bons in the hopes of helping a friend. Such is the nature of connectionism, a confusing job but someone's got to do it.
So I said: )
Life is complex, isn't it. Can't imagine how these people have time to go to wars. There's so much art and thinking and relating to people to do. Between you and me, I think they have emotional addiction problems. There's an underground comic book from years ago called Addicted to War, critical of Bush senior. Who'd have thought years later we'd be under Bush Jr., who is using the phrase America is Addicted to Oil, but he says that we should remain calm because a big breakthrough is just around the corner. They told him, he knows it, really. Bush says technology is going to solve all problems soon. Technology plus democracy. Two of the biggest and best words I know. Plus Freedom. Bush has all these great words on his side.
I can't understand why Hamas was so rude as to run for elections. They should know they are bad people, and bad people don't run for office. That's democracy. The right choices for the right times. Now Bush has to do something to stop them after winning their country's democratic elections. Something like cut funds, even if that further isolates and extremizes the situation. Either you're for us or against us. It's all going to come out sooner or later.
We are so good, we really are. Us, that's why they call it us you know. United States, that's Us. We good. They bad. Simple, right? I mean, the worst we can do accidentally is nothing compared to the worst they are trying to do intentionally. They're trying to kill women and children, disrupt markets, terrorize innocents. We're accidentally hurting some people with our ammunition in self-defense on our freedom-promoting missions of charity. We are liberating these people.
I mean, I know that whenever China invades someone they say it is to liberate them, like they did in Tibet. I don't mean like that. Us, we give real freedom, the true freedom of democracy. Afghanistan and Iraq will love us, you'll see. Because they'll have peace. Highly commercial, highly developed, highly consumer-oriented peace. Given, paid for, a gift from Us. United States, that's us!
That's why you're either with us or against us.
Am I right, Jeff, am I right?
What do you think of this email? Honestly, is letterwriting a dead art? Is it so provacative to empower the author to dump their consciousnesses onto the faster-than-thought internet? And to cut and paste pieces into a blog before you even check your email, so in fact by the time you read said email there will be others separated by time and space but not by befuddlement or rapture, reading it right there with you, including perhaps but not limited to, a housewife in Des Moines, a rancher in Texas, a call center attendant on break in New Delhi, an artist in Switzerland, a monastic pygmy in Peru, and a bird breeder with a curiously prominent nose in New Guinea?
How do I know these things? Because email encourages spontaneity, action without thought revealing deeper thought, automaticity, automatic city, a tomato kitty. Surrealism is more real than reality because it exposes the deeper rubbish.
Email is good, I wrote Jeff an email. But the name of the inner character who said these things in the spirit of the garden path shall remain, um, nameless.
No, wait, Ed. Eddy Tyler Scopeneck. He said it all, he told me to write this to you.
(click here to stop receiving emails like this)
Hope you're doing well Jeff,
Carl
PS - Jeff's email included a copy of Gore Vidal's impressive anti-Bush polemic The Enemy Within, published in The Observer, London, 27 October 2002. He really did write this, I find, (Vidal I mean), and the article accuses Bush of acting for a global economic domination plot. Which I can't disprove, can you? By the way, did you know that Gore Vidal is the same Gore as Al Gore? Yeah, they're related, it's weird, somebody is saying their name backward. There should be a law against that. I'll sic the neighborhood anti-terrorist watch on anyone that I find has reversed their names, like some artsy fartsy anti-Christ. Anyone says fartsy artsy, I'll know, I'll turn them in. Or my name isn't Eddy Tyler Scopeneck.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Update on the Mystical Arts
I just had a nice productive 3-day weekend. I'm making good progress on many projects this month. Like in the prodigous use of words that start with pro-. Except procrastinate, I'm tired of that one.
I spent hours researching Christianity and working on the dialogue of a theological fantasy called "Jesus and the Time Travellers". Whatever you think it is, it's probably not that. Last week I read the first section of the story to my new writer's group, a fine supportive club that I didn't start but got invited to, called something appropriate like the North Shore Writer's Group. I'll have to ask. My friend Andy Lutts invited me, he's been working on a new age treatise called Manifesting Magnificence. The woman who runs the group is researching for a novel about the wives' point of view around some 19th century spiritualist treasure hunters that lived nearby. I like writers, this is great.
I'm upgrading and promoting the Mystical Movie Guide more, and placed a news brief in Elisabeth Ward Taylor's Boston area franchise publication Natural Awakenings Magazine. She also needed an image that symbolized spiritual cinema, and I came up with the Buddha on dvds still life you can now see on the website.
My wife and I have been enjoying Joanna Priestley shorts I rented over the internet from greencine.com, and I'm happy to recommend both Joanna and GreenCine. And I got another great email from a director this weekend, Scott Prendergast who made one of my favorite short films. Scott wrote: "I was GOOGLING my movie THE DELICIOUS and was so pleased and happy and surprised to find it on your site. I LOVED your description of the short film and I totally agree. It’s all about connection!" This is one of the most gratifying times for me, when I can give back to an artist by letting them know how much they touched me. Mystical art is the greatest, I'm rootin' for us all!
best wishes,
Carl Schroeder
News Brief - copyright 2006, for permission to post somewhere, please just email Carl(at)astralresearch.org
Enjoy recommendations from MysticalMovieGuide.com
There's no doubt about it, the appreciation of a film genre called Spiritual Cinema has been growing ever since Oregon director Stephen Simon wrote a book about it in 2002 and later founded the Spiritual Cinema Circle. Here on the east coast, MysticalMovieGuide.com offers thousands of free movie listings and hundreds of in-depth reviews. MysticalMovieGuide.com specializes in research and esoteric perspectives that you won't find anywhere else. Founder Carl Schroeder says, "The site grew out of the Mystical Art and Talent shows we'd been doing in Cambridge since 2001 (more on that at www.SoulStirring.org). Some of us talked about our favorite metaphysical films, and I got to wondering how many there might be. I thought maybe a few hundred, but it turns out there are thousands! Many are forgotten treasures of the past, or great foreign films that US distributors deliberately ignore so you only buy their products. Latin America for example has some of the greatest movies that you've never heard of. How you can you beat a title like 'Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going'? That's by the great mystical director Eliseo Subiela, about a man realizing he’s the reincarnation of Thomas Edison's assistant after meeting his past life’s lover's ghost while inventing a talking robot and seeing auras. I mean, wow!" Fortunately with the increasing availability of DVD releases, many of these films can now be purchased or rented through links at MysticalMovieGuide.com
I spent hours researching Christianity and working on the dialogue of a theological fantasy called "Jesus and the Time Travellers". Whatever you think it is, it's probably not that. Last week I read the first section of the story to my new writer's group, a fine supportive club that I didn't start but got invited to, called something appropriate like the North Shore Writer's Group. I'll have to ask. My friend Andy Lutts invited me, he's been working on a new age treatise called Manifesting Magnificence. The woman who runs the group is researching for a novel about the wives' point of view around some 19th century spiritualist treasure hunters that lived nearby. I like writers, this is great.
I'm upgrading and promoting the Mystical Movie Guide more, and placed a news brief in Elisabeth Ward Taylor's Boston area franchise publication Natural Awakenings Magazine. She also needed an image that symbolized spiritual cinema, and I came up with the Buddha on dvds still life you can now see on the website.
My wife and I have been enjoying Joanna Priestley shorts I rented over the internet from greencine.com, and I'm happy to recommend both Joanna and GreenCine. And I got another great email from a director this weekend, Scott Prendergast who made one of my favorite short films. Scott wrote: "I was GOOGLING my movie THE DELICIOUS and was so pleased and happy and surprised to find it on your site. I LOVED your description of the short film and I totally agree. It’s all about connection!" This is one of the most gratifying times for me, when I can give back to an artist by letting them know how much they touched me. Mystical art is the greatest, I'm rootin' for us all!
best wishes,
Carl Schroeder
News Brief - copyright 2006, for permission to post somewhere, please just email Carl(at)astralresearch.org
Enjoy recommendations from MysticalMovieGuide.com
There's no doubt about it, the appreciation of a film genre called Spiritual Cinema has been growing ever since Oregon director Stephen Simon wrote a book about it in 2002 and later founded the Spiritual Cinema Circle. Here on the east coast, MysticalMovieGuide.com offers thousands of free movie listings and hundreds of in-depth reviews. MysticalMovieGuide.com specializes in research and esoteric perspectives that you won't find anywhere else. Founder Carl Schroeder says, "The site grew out of the Mystical Art and Talent shows we'd been doing in Cambridge since 2001 (more on that at www.SoulStirring.org). Some of us talked about our favorite metaphysical films, and I got to wondering how many there might be. I thought maybe a few hundred, but it turns out there are thousands! Many are forgotten treasures of the past, or great foreign films that US distributors deliberately ignore so you only buy their products. Latin America for example has some of the greatest movies that you've never heard of. How you can you beat a title like 'Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going'? That's by the great mystical director Eliseo Subiela, about a man realizing he’s the reincarnation of Thomas Edison's assistant after meeting his past life’s lover's ghost while inventing a talking robot and seeing auras. I mean, wow!" Fortunately with the increasing availability of DVD releases, many of these films can now be purchased or rented through links at MysticalMovieGuide.com
