..Shamania

The Rise of the Artist

	So, with the encroachment of modern industry (and economic supremecy) on not only our 

landscapes and fair lands, but on our very PSYCHE, it is no wonder that an incredibly large per-

centage of this world's babies being born are predisposed to becoming artists of some sort. 

	As a culture, we have seen the artist's role in society reign from village leader to 

village idiot. The use of art has ranged from creating symbols to relate experiences from one 

human to the next, to the creation of symbols for the purpose of conveying inner thoughts, ideas and 

meaning from one to another-- or from one to many. 

	The tribal Shaman was the survival leader to the tribe. The Shaman was religious/phylo-

sophical leader. At a time when early humans were stepping from being automatic creatures of 

habit, ruled by internal schizotypal hallucinations implanted by the singing of the Shaman in 

the form of instructions for the survival of the tribe, to becoming self-aware creatures of pre-

meditated action, art was absolutely imperative to the success of relaying survival instructions 

to more individuals than could fit into the "lodge" or "holy den" around the Shaman. The symbols 

of pigment on cave walls, the symbols of carvings in stone, the symbols of plant ink on paper, 

even BLOOD (for the more intense messages) were used to help relay the Shamanic message to the 

few surrounding the Shaman. In turn, those few would take the messages to the people of the sur-

rounding area (the village) and they could be sung out in strings of hallucinatory meaning, to be 

repeated habitually by the listener in a hallucinatory mantra of auto/meditated transitory ob-

session. Just like when you can't get a McDonald's jingle out of your head, except more like, "Keep

digging, keep planting, keep on walking, I need water for survival, long live the GOD...etc."

	That's right, the intense reason for the creative, musical, hallucinatory habits of the hu-

man mind has been reduced to selling hamburgers.

	For centuries, the role of the artist as shaman; artist as the King's muse; artist as 

public servant, has been eroded into an obscure form hidden beneith the ground of economic growth 

and political propogandaeic rhetoric designed to control the thoughts and minds of the masses for 

the purpose of the survival of the systems in place that control the flow of currency, rather than 

for the purpose of the survival of the society as a whole-- rather than for the prosperity of the 

flow of the chi (or inner vitality) of the individual.

	All of this erosion is resulting in the creation of mountains of creative forces, thrust-

ing into the eroded, featureless landscape of highway billboards and car insurance jingles. Just 

as the birth of the Rocky Mountains was a cataclysmic eruption, so will be the rise of the artist 

as Shaman.

	The visionaries are coming, and their children are delivering.

	You had better pay attention, and use compassion when the contemporary shit hits the fan, 

because their will be (and already is) much resistance to the individual creative urges that 

everyone is experiencing, and few are acting upon.

	When the irrational starts to make more sense than the sensible, it is time for a re-

versal of the flow of inevitability, and the catastrophic winds of change to blow the minds 

off of the shoulders of the elder children in ruling positions.

	If you can decipher these words, and sing the song within, then you will begin to ascend 

above all sin. Sing your soul. Paint your mind. Sculpt your body. Be yourself.

	Watch for the bleeding hearts and the artists to make their stand. Roger Waters is...

Hallucinatti

I slipped away, only for a second, but when I did the sounds around me took a real choppy route to my ears—or at least to my self at the end of a long chain of conjoining places. The sounds were as chopped as suey. But then I snapped to and the sound was instantly on track with my head again. So I let myself fall asleep again, and when I did the phenomenon occurred again. So often that it became my habit—or at least one of my habits of pre-sleep awareness—every time I prepared my consciousness for sleep. I was able to recognize when it was about to occur, and when it was occurring. I became good at hearing my hearing break up into surreal bits of unconsciousness. It-hop-stop-chew-d’you-chop-chow-n-sup-n-chup…

I now fly whenever I want to…(7 out ten times at least)…I lie awake while my body is fully asleep and listen to total and complete awareness around me (sometimes even moving objects around the room in some weird Stephen King style state of mind)…listen to occurring thoughts and even conversations taking place around the Universe…I live other lifetimes…I compress time indefinitely, dreaming long epic dreams in proven spans of times occurring in less than five minutes, some even as short as a second or two…I receive answers to pressing questions from my higher self…I commune with my higher self more uninhibitedly than ever in my life…I can invent incredible things in my dreams, and I can consciously influence that process to bring those inventions out into the awakening world…I have even played unbelievable guitar or piano or saxophone in my dreams, I really feel the difference the dream experiences have made for me when playing or learning more on those instruments…

Sleeping in deep conscious awareness is the only way to fly…but it works.

Then I discovered the aborigine…

And the didgeridoo…

The line has begun to fade…

I dream while awake…

The distant voices…

Calling through time

Through twisted destinies

Missed vicissitudes of crystal chimes

I fall beneath the lines committing crimes collecting rhymes

Seeing mystic dancers silhouetted on the setting sun’s horizon

A future is risin’ to answer and wizen

These instants of chances

That fall on the mind

Like petals of steel…

From roses that feel…

In thin screams of real…

I sleep and dream surreal…
So, needless to say, I have an interesting time of it. It is tricky, sometimes, to engage in the waking world and communicate in a way that will be accepted or understood at all. Leaving people behind is completely pointless. One man should not be the only one that slips away from the crowd. The crowd is free to fly and not ask why. The man can stay engaged while high in the sky and can cry in the eye but sigh at the lie, laughing all the while.

This is all necessary for survival—or at least the revival—of the infant we used to be. The infant that used to see. The one that started to be me. You’ll see…

Hallucinatti

Ashley Jessica Lance (her mother named her) (It was supposed to be Jessica Ashley, but her mother was so frazzled after having given birth, that she just said it that way when the nurse asked her what the child’s name was.)

September Musical Sky Casals
(On the day she was born, as she lay sleeping in the hopital bed with her mother, I stood and reflected on the days events as I stared out of the window. I had the music of Mozart in my head at the time, and the sky looked just like a symphony with swirling crazy clouds. It was September.)

River Wolfe Montana Casals
(His mother had visions of a red river rushing around her about the time he was conceived and I thought he looked just like a little wolf when he was born [almost named him Wolfgang] and I thought he was something strong like a mountain but “Mountain” seemed silly and one of the midwives said that Montana [pronounced Montanya] meant mountainous in spanish.  Casals is a family name from Catalonia, Spain, so Montanya it was!)

Ananda Cosmos Solaris Casals
(The kid did a somersault onto the bed and into the midwife’s hands when he popped out of his mom and made everyone incredibly bubbly with laughter so Ananda (meaning ‘full of bliss’ in Hindu) was it. And something very deep behind his eyes and behind his mind and behind my whole universe was coming through him but it seemed to be very at home (like from our region of the cosmos) so the blissful cosmos from the center of our sun he became.  [Incidentally, 'Solaris' was a completely made up name on my part. Polaris is the north star, or the star at the center of our sky. So I thought Solaris described the center of our sun!  But low and behold a truck came out called the solaris like the next year!! What the heck!?  And then some MOVIE!? Sheez! Turns out the ficken movie was a frickin book a long frickin time ago! Sheesh!])

Mahogany Wood Rain Leaf Casals
(Born 3 months early, tiny little thing…reminded me of a little leaf that fell off of a great big tree and it was our job to try to catch it before it hit the ground…it was terrifying.  Mahogany Leaf was first, then as we went on the roller coaster of him getting better and then worse then better, etc., His strength gave him the name Wood. As I chanted  to him for weeks on end, the word rain seemed to pop up unconsciously a lot, so without denying that, four weeks after he was born, his name was complete.)

“A tiny leaf falls
From a great big ancient tree–
A hand reaches out
To catch it–
Wood flows like rain…”

From skins and strings the pulse of things
streams from the heart into the limbs
a river in the wilderness
of music flowing through warm flesh
tumbling and pouring, splashing down
like sweet rain beating on parched ground

fertility on chaos thrives
and gods and demons of destruction
gazing down out of the future
shine foreknowledge through the dramas
made of fears and dreams and wishes
played out by wayfaring humans

shuttling endlessly in circles
back and forth from birth to wisdom
death to folly & returning
while swift elemental spirits
quivering alive in every tree
dance orgiastically

*    *    *    *    *
drummed into being out of nothing
in the firelight of a clearing
on the ever shifting border
between bush and agriculture
predatory dreams and ghost gods
rise to take possession of us
we become what they imagine

wild horses to be ridden
deer for hunting cows for milking
fated to go round in circles
grinding out the salt of sorrow
hungrily towards tomorrow
at the mercy of emotions
that don’t change
are not transcended
filled with memory and knowledge
draining empty wafting onwards
in the breezes blowing through us
always dying to be born

in caverns and on windy ridges
all along the twilight sea coast
like the wild grain of the hillsides
sprung from tiny seeds and thoughtlings
in our green and midnight darkness
we bear deep within us traces
of untold immortal longings
and the world is also ours

. . . and we the world’s
tied like a knot
twinned inextricably entwined
unto the kindling of delight
masked headless burning bright
deep in the jungles of the night
where tiger’s roam and languid snakes
coil silent through the undergrowth
forever dying to be born

*    *    *    *    *
and everything is as it is
and nothing is the way it seems

and all is well.

This is where I tell you that I will tell you much more in the near future! I have just set this blog up and will be explaining much more and in great detail as to why it is here and why I care.