Just a Minute

Calendar alert. Tik, a gnawing anxiety. Tok, the whispering suggestion and calling in the mind. Visit me. Visit me. I’m here. I have something show you. Wait?! A phone call; Caller ID Stamford CT. Spam and more spam. A voice message in the can, “Hello, this is Ashlyn. I’ve been trying to reach you about student loan…” IRS debt? Your ATT bill is due, and the cable bill too. Early detection is the key to surviving the disease. Screening, call to schedule your screening appointment today; don’t wait. You need security in these uncertain times. Vote for change. Vote for… Don’t miss. The tire pressure light is on. The insurance has come due. The drain is clogged. We just bombed the enemy. Armageddon? Erectile dysfunction? Severe weather alert. Flash flood warning. Fire weather alert. Did you check Facebook, Fanduel, Instagram. To access your account download the app. www. Forgot your password? We noticed a new device. If this was you can ignore this message. Amazon, Wayfair, IKEA. Your account has been hacked. Smart phone, meters, TV. Apple Fit. How many steps today? Plan your vacation. Shop now these savings are coming to an end…

Where did all the time go?

The Gilded Portal

It’s not a surprise anymore to find people on this timeline, most identified as the year 2025, that have a conspiratorial sense that something is afoul in the structure of social organization, culture, and governance. The inconsistencies and incoherence of reports from around the world, as well as, progressively more suspicion regarding history initiates and drives this sense. When that sense crystalizes into understanding, a reconciliation of terms becomes an issue and a challenge. Why are so many elements of our lives so mixed up?

If it were just mixed up, that would be one thing. Existence in the terrestrial realm is under threat. So whether your medical treatment has intensified, your education confusing, your environment contaminated, swamped or incinerated, or some missile has just hit your neighborhood threat is manifesting. It’s spread like wild fire. It’s near impossible to miss, and the initiation of the threat is sourced. Earth is, and has been, threatened by predatory beings. Shameless parasitic beings that have leveraged a key amount of informational and linguistic twists to mind boggle the human race so severely that we’re actively participating in suicide on an installment plan. The last bastion of survival instinct is manifesting as a sense of conspiracy. There can’t be any compassion in the drivers of this destructive programming. In my view, the state of affairs would never have reached this point, could not have reached the point, if the agencies pushing it were capable of stopping. The predatory class will not stop pursuing its mission until everything is wasted. Period.

The spiritual force pushing this movement of unwell ness, domination, and harm feeds on conflict. This is a spirit entity that has no regard for fact or truth. It doesn’t care about wrong or right, as long as there’s a fight. The predators feed off conflict and fighting. I realized a way to infect the systems of hurt with a love virus… I have been in perpetrator space.

Innocently enough, I found myself in the home of an international banking conglomerate family member. I hadn’t previously had any idea who these people were. There was no opulence in this place. It was a cluttered, dimly lit, musty place. It was also modest and surrendered to the kind of housekeeping you might think of as a type of forsaken lazy. There’s not a lot going on here. The homeowners are off to one of their other homes. The man of the house stops by occasionally to use the local airport at which his plane is parked. The home itself seems to be a repository of once used domestic artifacts, and an abundance of tchotchkes. All these knick knacks everywhere create cheesy cheap feel. I’ve been hired by this burly contractor to work on this place. The home is in state of can’t be bothered overall neglect, and needs improvement, repair, and maintenance. Now I find myself in this cluttered room with a task to do. The boss is off somewhere, and I’m trusted to be in here by myself. No problem. Just got to make room to get to the inside of this window that needs replacing. This little table with these little foreign land figurines needs to be moved. I do the next out of order thing. Rather than clear the table and then move it, I just grab it and try balancing the stuff on it while I move it. Of course… tip, spill, fall! Two of these little eastern looking figures hit the floor. They both break.

Now what!? After beating myself up for having been negligently lazy, a plan began developing. Fix them… The fix it plan was juxtaposed with the more responsible thought of telling the boss. These two thoughts volleyed back and forth as the broken pieces were gathered on to a paper towel. All in all, the two figurines that broke added up to the size of two matchbox cars. They were two of thousands of little statues that were placed all about, in every room, stairwell, and hallway. They were everywhere. The final shot of the thought volley landed in the wrap it up and run court. The wrapped up paper towel holding the pieces was placed safely in the back seat of my truck.

On the kitchen table back at my house the figurines underwent a type of emergency layman’s kintsugi. With a little extra Crazy Glue gilding over the fracture and some blended water color paint these items were ready for return. The next day they went right back into the original location from which the handy man had so carelessly moved them. Life goes on. There they were left in hidden posterity with only the wonder about whether or not they would fall under the kind of scrutiny that would reveal the repair. Who knows?

Years later it stuck me that these pieces were ‘out there’ somewhere. What if either one, or both, are still in the space shared by members of this banking behemoth family which is so often credited with the kleptocratic monopoly activity that glaringly seems to be running the world down? I’m imaging an access port; a quantum access port. Through these figurine kintsugi fractures is an entry way. A means of making a quantum incursion. Ah ha!?! Without having to trespass I will intentionally stream a love signal into the space about the figurine. Let love work its magic. I mean them no harm. Any influence that relaxes the determination of this “stop at nothing” monopoly quest seems welcome to me.

We’ve all got our own inside work to do in terms of reconciling the intense violence suffered in the modern world, and I would prefer to do that without this protracted down pressing by these corporate kleptocrats. There is more than likely an abundance of prayer and intention driven love and healing energy flooding the ether in effort to stop the proverbial bleeding. The kentsugi crack love drip is one person’s life by the drop contribution to a more just and relaxed world.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

-Jimi Hendrix

Viva la Shakedown Citi

One of the preeminent underestimations is how much alive everything is. Resonating with such constancy in so many ways, understandings about life are left compartmentalized into this or that form thought to be alive. Meanwhile, every perceptible thing is alive in an everlasting living flow field. So, from the sublime to the subliminal, life is the everywhere, all the time, everything. The human kind possess blends of mastery that make expressions of life artistic. Art abounds with the myriad of forms flowing through happenings. From the popular to the underground many of us are drawn to art forms of those that have created in ways that can be tasted, seen, felt, and heard. Notes flow through the ether, meet listeners, is felt, and returned with emotion that is in turn felt player. This closes a circuit of collective creativity. We’re in it together. This is the real dynamic living essence of performance art. It’s alive.

After untold of hours of pursuing performance art, both live and recorded, it’s fair to say that there is a demographic of music people out there. To a certain degree, I’m one of them. Innumerable hours have been spent in all types of listening zones; with radios, phonographs, stereos, and stages. Senses, feelings, responses, and understandings both common and unique have evolved with the listener. Many of these are shared with other listeners. Community comes about. There’s no reason to qualify one artistic form from another. It all has merit, and relates to the verities of existence. Without speaking for others, this is a commentary that is similar with others. The Grateful Dead’s work really hits home. It has made, and continues to, make contributions to my being that can be sensed. There may be other catalogues being covered as much as theirs, but the Dead’s is a lot. It is coming on strong. There are so many people covering Grateful Dead music that some desensitization has happened. So I get a tip. My buddy turned me on to Shakedown Citi.

As far as I can tell, Shakedown Citi is involved with the music, and it with them. This does not seem like a call to reproduce something we loved, liked, and repeatedly listened to. It feels like a living response to a call to expression. The song is the entry point to a vibrant space of spontaneity, improvisation, and jamming. Musical notes make the eternal audible. The dynamics of life played out a note at a time. While popularity may be reserved for the cursed in the modern world, one can only hope that this free feeling space of joy and expression can be held for another minute. It feels like a challenge to make a way through this plastic facsimile world of enforced obviousness. Whenever the genuine artistic article becomes noticed by a critical type of mass it is immediately commandeered for material greed, and exploited. Right now that is not the case with these people. I was standing right next to a person that identified himself as a well informed music culture person. “I thought I knew all The Dead cover bands. How come I have not heard of these guys!?”, he said. A few moments later his spontaneous smile morphed into a mouth agape wonder astonish as the next climax poured over us. “Holy shit…” was his last exclaim.

This online blog is not popular. Neither is Shakedown Citi, as far as I can tell, if the numbers of people in these clubs is any indication. That said, they are playing a special brand of rock and roll right now. Rock and roll in its most metaphysical combinations; inviting, original, vibrant, affirmative, and delivered by a group that works together as Jerry Garcia said, “Like fingers on a hand.” Shakedown Citi is a high achieving ensemble. On top of that, we’re not in security laden antiseptic arena environment. These guys play the rootsy bar/club dens we grew up in. It feels like a type of shelter from the claws of commercialism. These are events for sure. Sweating out the groove together. Privileged I am to have made it into this space. This has been as refreshing an introduction to an art formation, and living essence, as could be hoped for. Fare you well. Till we meet again…