scott walker

Jesus Camp sparked more interesting conversation between Darick and me. Apparently, getting saved sounds a lot like my mystical Reiki experience. And you can "get saved" more than once, every time you have the experience. I wonder what kind of monkey wrench it would throw into their world view if they knew that I've had the same sensation through Reiki and through Burning Man, that it's not exclusively an evangelical experience. For sure, it's an experience that feels so pure, so true, that you think you must be right. But at the same time, it could just be biological. Meditators have figured out how to have the experience on their own; evangelicals have found it through groupthink.

Ironically, Darick returned my copy of Living Buddha, Living Christ, which I've had since high school back when I just started to see the connections between all these different religions.

Sometimes you make the connections; sometimes the connections make you.

(That's my answer to the whole "fate" vs. "free will" debate that is at the center of Lost.)

I worked on the piece yesterday for the funeral. It is so helpful to have a few days off and approach a new piece with fresh ears. I feel like I should make this part of my routine: work feverishly on something until I hit some dead ends or get too tired to continue, then take a break. I can hear the moments that don't flow right so much clearer when it's not quite so fresh in my brain.

(I'm pretty pleased with myself that I was even able to get to work. Having the right set-up is so important for both overcoming my inertia to start working and then continuing. Learning a lot of helpful things to know when moving forward.)

So after discussing last night's Lost episode with Darick with tangents relating to Jesus Camp, I told him about some interesting documentaries I found on Netflix: the Examined Life and the Botany of Desire. We looked but instead found a documentary on Scott Walker, who I'd heard about from both Radiohead and my friend Ryan. I have always seen him as parallel or tangential to people like David Bowie but also maybe Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits--the latter two Darick likes a lot. But not Scott Walker. Turns out he just doesn't get it why all these great musicians in the doc are talking about how much they were influenced by his stuff: Johnny Marr from the Smiths, David Bowie himself, and Radiohead (minus Thom). He's growing on me in spite of his velvet-butter crooning voice.

I made a list for you on Grooveshark.