Momentarily I became soft, not soft exactly but like glass become thick liquid, melting, memories of hot silica, pliable, and if you knew you could reach your hand through to the other side to Alice's Wonderland.

Through the glass; through the invisible world.

It didn't last; edges returned,
and I continued on.

From Untitled

A long, slow process, clearly. While I don't yet know who these people are, I'm getting to know them. In a way I like this as is, the whitely drawn figures on swish of black paint. But colour inevitably beckons. Now that I've learned how to post large images in small packets, you can better see what's there when you click to full screen. This image is an unbelievable 1496×1872 pixels and is only 292KB!

Steven Kenny, The Wing, 2005, oil on canvas, 40" x 30"


Ah, Icarus... what was he imagining? Rising and gliding like a bird, that he could fly to the fiery sun on his golden wings? Did he immolate himself for that vision, which trapped him in its promises, drew him on, puncturing his skin with the shafts of feathers like hypodermic needles filled with a distillation of fantasies that made him feel invincible, like a god?

When he flew, it was with night vision.

A poem on love in The Writer's Almanac this morning, coming from an extraordinary place of wisdom:

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

"Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
Reprinted by The Writer's Almanac with permission.

direct link: Maya Meditation 2012: The 13 Sacred Tones

Vibrational, healing sounds: Energy Medicine

I downloaded this album to my iPod some months ago but each time I listened I fell into a revery and slept, to return an hour and a half later when it had finished. Today I listened all the way through to the 8th track, 'Pulsar3aDim,Espacio,' where I drifted into a deeper state of consciousness, beyond memory, returning in the middle of the final sublime track.

For me, each track corresponds to a "chakra," wheels of energy, subtle body vortices in the esoteric anatomy. Each interlude is beautifully composed, a perfect understanding of this system. Every time I listen the depth and richness of Quetzalbwattio's work increases.

Each chakra, and the array of sounds from various musical instruments played are accurate as far as I understand their tonal aspects. This music moves the energy in each wheel of light, Muladhara, Swadhisthaha, Manipura, Anahata, Vishuddha, Ajna, and Sahasrara as the Kundalini rises, until radiating out into the aura, considered in some systems a chakra, and then, for this listener, in the last piece, into the massive and intimate universe itself.

For a long time I played only 'Pulsar1aDimension.Vida,' which I guess would correspond to the Heart Centre, Anahata. It's fantastic. Though tonight, listening closely to 'MatizAutoexistente,' my 'third eye' was 'opened' by the phenomenal energetic serpent of blue crackling energy undulating through my brain and cracking the pineal gland wide open so that I could 'see in the dark.' So to speak! :grins:

While I don't know the Mayan system to which the title refers, I find the Sanskrit 'chakras' (found in Hindu, Tibetan Buddhist and Chinese descriptions of the energy body) work here too. Listen on headphones. This is a beautiful, healing album of vibrational energies.

Beautiful work, Quetzalbwattio.
_
I wrote this review last night, though I am now listening upright at my computer in the morning and not meditating and dipping in and out of revery, and I understand that it's not necessarily an 'orderly' progression, this Kundalini rising in Maya Meditations, but rather like we are, a complex interweaving of energies, and it is in the totality of the matrix that the vibrational healing occurs.

direct link: Quetzalbwattio: Sammasati FullMoonSpirit II:) Trip to ChrïstmaSoül

I love this album. It inspires a meditative mood that soothes and stills the inner maelstrom. While playing Sammasati FullMoonSpirit II:) Trip to ChrïstmaSoül this afternoon, my apartment flooded. A thick mantle of water spilling over the hardwood that took a dozen towels and a mop and bucket to clean up. Quetzalbwattio's ambient meditative music played throughout and so the flood and the clean-up felt in a rhythm, the flow part of the flood of being.

I would play this in a yoga class, while painting, or staring out the window, and during floods, yes :smiles:

So many instruments creating a slow torrent of creation, a spiraling star-birth dance, particles of light overflowing the darkness, a fluidity of rhythm: sitar, drums, didjeridoo, gongs, bells, singing bowls, flutes, trance, meditation, kriya, chanting, the Ganges River, it's subtle, gentle, very beautiful.

From Next Painting

untitled, 24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, acrylic bone black base, chalk sketch in-progress

No, I shalln't leave it as a ménage à trois, surely not. Each to each. Should I have waited until there were two to post?

A figure eight - symbol of eternity. :)) C'mon, try to flick it off your screen, like I did. Very cute bug.☆☆

From Next Painting

untitled, 24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, acrylic bone black base, chalk sketch

Titled, my 'next painting' until the images become clearer and I can see what is emerging. The first figure has been sitting on my easel for a week or two now. I hadn't intended to draw a male, or a figure like that, and it's taken some time to accept what arose in the chalk. Today I thought to add another similar figure, so traced the original onto parchment paper, cut it out, and quickly chalked the edges in to get what you see in the second image. Waiting for a title to make itself known.

This episode of Joe Halder’s ‘The Falling Room’ on CFBU 103.7FM aired on February 5, 2010. Brock U/public radio: cfbu.ca. It's an hour.

I found the pieces Halder collected and wove into a radio show inspiring, enthralling and just plain wonderful to listen to (though I have to admit the first piece was my least favourite - keep listening, some jewels to come). A short piece I recorded back in 2005 (1½min) is included.

His show features experimental, minimalist and avant garde music from independent artists. He came across my work at SoundClick. From our little bit of correspondence, he strikes me as a perceptive, brilliant guy. He engages in conversations with the artists he airs; quite young, my bet is that he will shape some of the independent music he plays. Already he is giving me ideas for how to develop my future poetry recordings, enabling me to see his ability to potentially shape a vision of independent music firsthand.

Here is the production sheet/playlist he sent me:

The Falling Room - February 5, 2010

ARTIST - ALBUM - SONG - LABEL - CANCON - TIME - TRACK

0 Minutes:

Steve Hansen Smyth - Internet Release - SUNDAYALYSIS - Independent - X 5:16 - TK 16

Elaine May Bowling - Internet Release - EAT MY WORDS - Independent - X 1:54 - TK 6

Brenda Clews - Internet Release - MARCH 4, 2005 - Independent - X 1:29 - TK 3

Indian in the Machine - Internet Release - TRIP ON MY FLUTES - Independent - X 7:25 - TK 3

Omni toner - Internet Release - GHOST DANCE - Independent - 2:39 - TK 3

20 Minutes:

Phenotypo - Internet Release - THE # 3825, PLEASE RECEIVE A MESSAGE - 7:46 - TK 6

30 Minutes:

Mickey Zero - Alphabetical Orders NAMES LIKE, SONGS LIKE Mickey Cohen - 3:30 - TK 4

Earth 2 - Internet Release - EUROPA SIRENS - Independent - 4:13 - TK 4

40 Minutes:

Tom Parsons - AZURE SPARKLE ON THE WATER - Parsongs - 4:40 - TK 1

Salatus Train - MYSTERY RAIL COACH - Independent - 5:30 - TK 7

Anahata - Internet Release - HEMI SYNC BRAIN WAVES - Independent - 9:32 - TK 4

60 Minutes

Note: Salatus-Poland, Mickey Zero (France), Phenotypo (Japan), Omnitoner, Earth 2, Tom Parsons, Anahata (USA)