I Trance, Therfore I AM!

I was given an amazing website link, http://www.undergroundfilm.org/films/viewer.tcl?reso=2&wid=1015176&oftype=lar
have a look. It is a live stream that lasts about fifty-minutes. I play it with realtime player, do have your speakers plugged in. It is very sixties, trippy, Burningman, higher consciousness. It really inspired me alot the way the whole movie was put together.
Well, last night was yet another solid Fall Party night. The Sat before Hallows eve to boot. I knew about six parties, don't ask how, I just knew. Several parties in Brookline, Somerville, Cambridge and South Boston. I opted to go to "Southy" as my friend Ivan's studio is on Broadway. So I drove there parked my car and immediately see a bunch of partygoers dressed up in their costumes. At the door to my friends studio nonetheless. Upon entering the threshold I got an upclose look at some great costumes and much effort. So I met Ivan, we had a drink and then decided to head out to the Distillary somewhere nearby cause that was one of the party destinations. I said, "we should go check this thing out here in your building first as it is on the way out." He agreed and we went down to what I can only describe as a Lithuanian Moshpit with good European Beer. As soon as we showed up, before we knew it, two of the revelers grabbed our arms and dragged us on to the dancefloor circle where everyone was pulling each other around at the speed of drunken sound. It was good fun, very old-school Euro. Over the course of an hour or so we stayed, I got checked, elbowed and I thnk punched in the chest, all by accident. I was talking to a Lithuanian women at one point and she said, "why are you at a Lithuanian party if your not Lithuanian, da." I said, "this Lithuanian party happens to be in the city I grew up in so whats your point."
We left there, walked to the Distillary but ended up at a place called the Foundry which was wrong. We were on East second st walking the wrong way, eight to ten blocks the wrong way! So I said" alright, one more block then we turn around." As it turned out, at that final block on the right was this HUGEEEEEEE glass space with hundreds of people, I thought it was a rave for a second. I was in utter dis-belief, we were both astonished and decided to check it out, "when in Rome!" So we couldn't enter through the main entrance as it was too late. So I took a page out of my college days and both of us entered through the smokers door on the side of the building. We got in there and the place was HOPPING. Costumes, Dj, catered food. Kegs, wine, WOW! So then at about one oclock the house lights came on and I was thinking, oh this is not good, time to move on to the next party. After the usual post party smoozing, I grabbed Ivan and we went outside. We proceeded to hail a cab for twenty-five minutes but were having no luck. Finally we got one and it took us to the Distillary. We were just about there when this homless guy was like"the party is there, points to the door." It felt pre-destined. So we scaled four flights of stairs to find a pumping loft party, full bar couches, huge dancefloor, loud music, peole moving. So like the proverbial fish to water, we dove in. I love this City on Nights like that. We agreed afterward that, either of the three parties on any normal Sat night would have been adequate, but the fact that we hit three awesome ones within walking distance of each other was indeed, SPECIAL.

Speed of reality

Is it my artistic imagination or is reality really moving fast. When I say reality really moving fast I mean things seem very urgent lately. Not just on a collective earthquake, hurricane level but on all levels. This month there has been so much stuff happening that it has unhinged my previously established calm meditative bedrock that I have been building up for years.
It is very good to have a social network and have things going on. A funny thing happens to me when I am socializing. Instead of feeling like, okay I went to a great party, or concert or gathering or whatever now I can go home and chill out. Its different, socializing, for me almost breeds more socializing. Its great but distracting. There was a span of years when I was totally non-social and stayed in and made art all the time. The thought of making plans wasn't possible as I felt no nourishment from being social. Now its like the need to stay in and make art and being hyper-social are wrestling with each other. One of the good things about this cold weather and the winter in general is that it breeds studio time for me. Not that there are less things going on around (BASTAN) but the need to be outside warming myself in the sun like a reptile has ceased.
I see people all around who should be staying in being productive but instead are getting strung out on whatever social scenes their on. I try to keep myself in a mindset where I get stuff done during the week and weekends and still maintian time for going out. I am a proponent of a well-balanced mindset. I find it really interesting how much stuff people I talk to have going through their head. I always say, do you MEDITATE and I am looked at like a child on the back of a milk carton. People don't realize, because this realization only comes from doing, but meditation is the answer to neurosis, suffering, depression. Not all at once, and it does take years but it as important as jogging, at least as much as text messaging.........

Mind/Body expo 05

Hello there, I am feeling great and very calm as I have just returned from the mindbody expo in Boxboro MA. I won several free passes for the whole weekend so I decided to take full advantage as it was the closest I have had to a spiritual retreat in years. My whole mission so far this fall has been to get the heck out of the city and having a car with just fourteen thousand miles has been helping me do that. So I picked up a close family member yesterday and we headed up at about four in the afternoon. Today I returned by myself at noon and stayed five hours, it was worth it. The event took place in the functions wing of this Holiday Inn out in Boxboro. The best way of describing Boxboro is that it is the kind of place you only go to in the fall, because the leaves changeing along the way made for a perfect roadtrip, as opposed to the return getting lost in pouring rain and driveing an extra hour from 195 to route-nine then to the mass pike with an overly loquacious relative talking my ear off. That being said, the Holiday inn itself with its indoor pools and kids running around screaming brought me back to a time when I was a kid when my family used to go to these church conventions in distant towns in distant creepy hotels like this enormous Holiday Inn. There were free apples as we walked in, another sign that it is fall and that we were out of the city.
The Expo is set up in one GIANT room and has several smaller rooms which are used for one hour workshops. In the giant room, there is everything from acupuncture, to psychics, to flower essences, to reiki demos, massage, spontaneous healing, aura photography, books, crystals and my latest acquisition a salt lamp and lots more.... The workshops that occured, covered all sorts of areas, Avalon(celtic afterworld), opening the third eye, living consciously, sex and spirituality, world peace, past lives, feng-shui, healing the heart. I did about eight of these workshops and spent countless minutes moving from booth to booth, trying to absorb the different info. I liked and dis-liked different aspects of the whole thing. I dis-liked the whole sales pitch part of the booth area. I found some of the practicioners overly-aggressive in trying to sell me something or get me on their e-mail list or the like. Its funny that such spiritual pursuits still have the used-car salesman thing attached to it. The thing I'd like the most is when I was allowed to take my time reading about a subject or doing a demo and felt the connection with the subject or person teaching me about it. I had an AWESOME fifteen minute free massage by this french women, who at the end of the massage, started rubbing my head and seperating my ears and when she did this, it just acted as a catalyst for all the other rubbing she did and at that point, all the energy just spread through my body. I also got alot out of the workshops, alot of intuitive info I tried to absorb about the heart, the world, spirituality and relationships. So much info from so many classes I feel like it is still swishing around my head.
This Salt Lamp I just plugged in is very cool. It is a large piece of solid salt, mined (supposedly) at the foothills of the Hymalayas. It is hollow on the inside where a light fits in. What it does is emit, negative IONS which convert the plethra of positive Ions in the air and make whatever environment it is placed very serene. From my experience with other peoples ion machines, its like the difference between fog and clarity outside, but at a much more subtle level. I think it will go well in my studio as I know I am in positive Ion central with the busy street right outside my window and all of my electric gadgets, like the one I am writing on right now.
As I said earlier I am feeling overwhemlingly pieceful and spiritual and that is how I want to stay. I am becoming more de-tached from the day-day existence that is characteristic of life and particularly, life in the city. I want to return to more of a heart oriented natural spiritual existence, like the one I had in Vermont, years ago. I am not saying the city is bad or I am leaving right now but I feel better when I break out and have other geographic and heart/mind destinations, even if they do occur within a mind/body exposition in a Holiday Inn. -S.

Let It Flow

In the immortal words of Spirtualized, "Let it Flow." The only reason I ever bought spiritualized is because someone said they were a current Velvet Underground, back in the mid-ninties. No matter how many minutes I spend during the day stressed out that I am in my studio making art while others are out in the world making big money, this is who I am. Ten years prior to right now, I was wandering around the streets of Burlington VT. looking for myself. I was stairing at the clouds, the lake, going into different churches, reading all sorts of spiritual literature. I was in a dungeon of insecurity. It was almost like I was seeing something that noone else was and new I was in chyrsalis. Spiritual death and rebirth is a heavy subject that entails a place words can't reach. Suffice to say in all this misery there was a certain sense of rawness a pain junkies wildest dream. I wasn't into the suffering, I just suffered and longed for clarity, thoughts of my middle-class suburban past, my existential Phish Vermont present and the ever Mysterious future loomed.
My new rule is to never talk about any painting or sculpture until they are done as they become cursed. The last painting I mentioned, "turtle earth" got buried under fresh acrylic. Things are going well with the new work,(probably shouldn't have said that.) Something that saved my spirits this past week was time spent in Nature. Last Tuesday, I was at my witts end and was so unconnected with my painting. The usual Central Square run did not do it. I hightailed it to Walden Pond in Concord MA. Hiked around the Park and saw the sun set, the next day as well. These few hours in nature melted my anxiety about everything from bills, art, future, girls, parties etc. Being in the city is like being in a kitchen and only being in the oven. You literally have to break out to realize there are other parts of the room(strange metaphor, oh well.) I did some tree hugging, tried to do a sitting meditation in the woods, but could not keep my eyes closed because of the tremendous scenery. Upon getting back to work the next day I felt rejuvinated and nourished and in line with whatever it was My sub-conscious wanted to excorcise on to the canvas. No matter what blocks that come up with my work, I thank God that I have that little tiny spark inside me that reveals itself only after I've spiritually prepared myself for its cameo. Peace, Scotty.