There are no free lunches and no rubber bullets.

In a study of 90 patients struck by "rubber bullets," 2 died, 18 were crippled, 44 were hospitalized and 26 were merely cured of believing in a benevolent Government.

One of the tricks employed in modern propaganda is to put a seemingly innocent word in front of a clearly ominous word in order to disarm it. Prime example: the "rubber bullets" now being fired at those resisting the construction of the North Dakota Access Pipeline.

Let's break this down. We associate rubber with toys, balls, bands, erasers, condoms, and say, headphone cables. Just about zero percent association with harm, death, or threat thereof. We associate bullets just about 100 percent  with harm, death, or threat thereof. Split the difference and you'll see what this phrase does to deceive the public about the threat of "less-lethal" rounds (once called nonlethal until an awkward amount of people died).

The effect for most folks is the perception that rubber bullets are probably kind of like paintballs: obnoxious but not like, evil. In fact, they are most often solid steel spheres or hollow metal cylinders, with a covering of rubber. Like most things these days, only the surface is referred to. 

The perception of potential harm goes down in direct proportion to how much empathy one feels with those being shot at, and the media machine serves well to minimize this through spin and silence.

They can't get away with openly labeling the Water Protectors as "ornery Injuns keeping 'Merican oil hostage," as much as they'd love to do that and please their owners, so they do what they always do in these situations: they play dumb.

These days protests are not spoken of at all until there is video of violence (often provoked by police or other agents provacateur) that can be spun into a narrative that justifies the inevitable bringing down of the hammer. 

It should be noted that while the police-turned-terrorists who strike from within armored tanks are employing everything from these rounds to high pressure hoses in freezing weather, sonic cannons and grenades that have maimed at least one protector, language itself is fast becoming the ultimate weapon in the struggle between sane sovereignty and psychic slavery. Realize now that all journalism has an agenda and look for yourself. Discern the truth, decode the spells, divest from the lies, and learn to duck, because they bought a lot of bullets.

As long as we treat them like masters, we give them permission to treat us as slaves.

They won't re-count the votes. They won't read the petitions. If you write them, you'll get a form letter. If you call, you'll be on hold while interns pretend they're busy. They'll laugh all the way to the Fourth Reich and the Third World War.

They have and will switch off hashtags and subreddits and FB trends that mess with their death grips on The Story. They will continue to skew search results and send you to Snopes anytime you hesitate to join in the chant. Your outrage is their entertainment and your despair is the butter on their toast. Don't wait for the big stories to break. The press is a corpse that dances when the right buttons are pushed. Control of the narrative is the main organ of coercion. They save money on ammunition that way.

They will put people in power that will keep them in power. They will send the muscle to beat down resistance. They will lay the pipelines and frack every inch of the world they don't live in. They will do unspeakable things with impunity, and use our money to do it all behind the veil of blind trust and incredulity.

So we have to stop treating them like the bosses, the parents, the gods. We have to remind them who they are. Mosquitos and ticks. Ankle biters. Tapeworms. And we have to remind them who we are: the overwhelming majority.

We have to stop helping them divide us. A lot of what's wrong will just have to go into the grave with the blind and stupid who keep it here, but the rest is down to our choices. How we treat ourselves. How we treat our neighbors, and how often we remember that they're all our neighbors, even the human speedbumps who insist on impeding progress or reversing direction entirely.

I'll leave it to those of you with eyes to see and ears to hear to find your way to do these things. No authority is higher than the will of your heart. I'll see you in the future, where we belong. Let's laugh these ideological ghosts out of the house, and stake the vampire institutions when we must.

New podcast! Finding your true Voice with SORNE

After a considerable hiatus, Beating a Pale Horse returns triumphant! With me this time is Morgan Sorne, a multi-dimensional artist working in color, story, and voice. As SORNE, he has produced an amazing catalog of transcendental music ranging from opera to "space folk" and genres unnamed, singing in a stunning 5 octaves and weaving worlds between your ears.

SORNE was here in Tucson performing in the All Souls Procession, and I was fortunate to interview him at legendary gallery and venue Solar Culture. He has been a mentor to me and it was an honor to have him as a guest. Enjoy the program, and take us up on our invitation to find your voice! We need it more than ever.

And here is the video for the song which closes the episode:

Piercing the Veil and seeking the Grail

Quite a show, this time around.

We've watched dark mud and dried blood slide right off the backs of both major parties. We've watched the cash-collared media work both sides, keeping the story artificially small. We've seen alternative voices and candidates marginalized and edited out of this movie. Whispers of those deleted scenes are drowned out by the din of consensus in a desperate shot at maintaining a sense of control. We've been worn down enough to play ball against ourselves.

Since the first hominid picked up the first bone club, a certain kind of person has always sought dominion through force, and a certain kind of person has always sought control through deception. Morality is an option to that subset of our species. We forget that we are the vast majority, not this sliver of sociopaths that weave their webs around us.

There will always be those among us who see past the Hologram and work for change. Some will be cut down. Some will be corrupted and absorbed. Some will just get tired, for it is exhausting to be shown again and again that there no limit to depravity, no level of horror impossible.

But this is not the whole picture, just the crude oil on the surface of the deep green sea. We must remember that there is also no limit to kindness. In our Great Game, people take on the character that calls to them, either dragging down others for power or lifting up others for its own sake. And here we all are to play our parts.

As in all things, the difference is choice. Personal choice, based on one's own direct experience and the wisdom that comes from mistakes as well as success. Hivemind is great for building fortresses and invasions, but we are not here to mimic the ants.

As the next sticker coming out from Apocalypse Fatigue will say, "No masters' voices, just true will and choices." But for today, vote with your conscience, whatever that means to you. May you meet no obstacle and no adversary.

Today and all days, choose love over fear whenever you can. The greatest good for the greatest number, where possible. More options and opportunity. Incremental positive change. Rome was not built in a day, and it won't be taken apart in a day.

I have temporarily overcome my disgust and voted because the local ballot initiatives may help others, but it is only one small act. Enjoy the dopamine but understand that The Work is bigger. It is not enough to rise from the grave every four years and enable a ruling class. Vote, and then keep going. Keep your ear to the ground to hear the music beneath the noise. Flip over rocks to find hidden truths and act on them when called. Lift up your neighbors and we will all rise above the pyramid schemes.

Acknowledge the darkness, but bring a candle to your corner. Make great art, tell your story and support others who do the same. We can only build a better world from inside out. Whatever happens today, the real game is yours to play. 

Continue?

When the engine won't start

(Continued from last post)

But sometimes you don't get ideal sleep. Sometimes there's construction next door. Sometimes you snore like a demon with asthma. Sometimes there's a draft. Sometimes your mind won't release you until your body collapses. Sometimes you just had gas. These things happen. How to get back to a decent baseline? Well you can try this. It worked for me today.

5-5-5: We'll cycle through the triangle above, counter clockwise first to banish the haze. 

5 minutes to Lubricate:

I like to hydrate as I caffeinate since the latter can steal from the former, so I started today off by sipping coffee and water for balance. If you like, raise the mug to the Sun and thank the anonymous lovely people who make it possible in what you hope the package says is true about decent working conditions). This just works better than chugging and it builds in a little period of phasing into day life. When my coffee and water took today, my little brain cloud lifted and I knew I would write something.

5 minutes to Activate:

I'm just barely learning yoga but my wife is kind enough to teach me in baby steps. I resisted, and you may too, but know that even without spiritual decoration it's stretching your body needs and appreciates. I did Sun salutations because we're in California where it doesn't feel like you're being microwaved and I appreciate that., with a little Warrior pose at the end for focus. When I finished yoga, I saw a bee on its back and got it back to higher ground. (This seems to happen here pretty regularly.) I saw the triangle and today's post was almost formed.

5 minutes to Motivate:

Zazen is a 2 dollar word for sitting quietly. Lotus is fun but definitely not necessary. Criss-cross applesauce will do as long as your back is pretty straight and your tailbone isn't squashed. I recommend just counting breath. Pick a number then use it to time this sequence by counts:

1. Inhale fully

2. Hold it

3. Exhale fully

4. Pause empty

A couple of minutes in, this post was clear in my mind. I was more or lessinished meditating when my daughter ran outside and hugged me on my lap. That was lovely. 

Now, after this is done you've spent 15 minutes making the next 15 hours more doable. That's a pretty good return on the investment, wouldn't you say?  If you have time later, try running the sequence clockwise to invoke balance if you start to slip. And like the last post said, repeat as necessary. The power is in getting back to the practice instead of kicking yourself for stopping. 

There's a Zen quote making the rounds you may have heard by master Zen master Lin Chi: "Eat when hungry. Sleep when tired." This is pretty good advice on its own, reminding us that animals have no shame meeting their needs as they arise. When you add the first part, usually left out by squeaky clean instructors with candles and mats for sale, it's a better reflection of our condition. We owe it to ourselves to honor and meet our needs without shame, or as Master Chi said, to "shit, piss, and just be human." 

So if you wake up feeling like handmade turd, have a sense of humor about it, give yourself a break, and play the Triangle of Kindling to warm your engine up so you can do well and be well. I can't promise what will happen to you, but I can say with some confidence that something positive will happen. This is you tuning the part of the day you can control to your pitch instead of trying to keep up with the music that blasts you from passing cars. 

Happy tuning! 

Repeat as necessary

Here's a little secret: Your good day starts the night before. Respect your body and its needs and it will thank you with more optimal function that allows better living.

Intoxication is only slightly younger than our species, so you will find no judgment here if you're getting lit to let some steam out. Have a wonderful time, but respect your body and meet your needs. Eat a real dinner, drink water, and go to bed before you're too tired to think. One day you will start feeling the difference this makes, believe me. Youth is not eternal, but the availability of increased vitality sticks around quite a while if you have the will to invoke it again and again.

Wake up earlier, drink more water, and give yourself 5-15 solid minutes before any duty. Serve yourself first so you may be of use. A lot of you probably have a morning ritual, but this is pre-coffee. Meditation and some kind of exercise are the lattice on which you can grow a better experience. Making the time will pay for itself. It gets better.

Do yoga even if it's one pose you suck at and even if you think it's Starbucks Mall Girl Stuff. That's just the version for sale. The thing itself is older than cities.  I'm still mastering not falling over during Sun Salutaions but thankfully my wife gets me doing it anyway. Actually kinda sucking at it is great because you have to focus to avoid mild injury and "monkey mind" shuts off. Meditate in whatever form you can hang on to long enough for stillness to arrive. It can be as easy as counting breaths. Totally portable and no props.

It's very easy to dismiss these things as privileged fluff, but remember this: we are all warriors in the struggle to break character, individuate, and live. Intelligence and health are swords of the spirit. They must be honed, folded, and sharpened constantly. Ask any athlete or engineer if they went straight to the top of their field and they're likely to tell you that they got to great heights by climbing the hill of bones rising from the mass grave of their failures.

The Verbal Hologram/Mesmermachine won't stop telling you that it can sell you success. It's not there to help you with anything but spending money. You just have to stop listening to its desperate howls and climb at your own pace toward the foothold you desire. Then on to the next, and the next, and so on.

We are either growing or wilting from moment to moment, and the determination to transcend the haze of the Hive is the purest fuel we can burn. To do that, we must forgive ourselves for the neglect and self-abuse that is labeled normal and get back at the controls of the game. The point of finding practices for body and mind is to maintain the means by which you shape reality through choice and action. To be frank, if you treat yourself like shit, your world will swiftly become a latrine.

Self-care is heavily marketed by people who aim to sell you their version, but you can and must define what works for you. Being functional is not a luxury and you don't need special gear or magic phrases or a steady flow of disposable income to ratchet your life up in doable increments. You owe it to yourself to make the time to reboot one of the best computers nature ever developed and to take care of the most adaptable vehicle for this kind of consciousness we are aware of.

I suggest we imagine a world where everyone is doing and giving their best. Will everyone show up at that roll call? I don't expect it. But you can make the shift with minimal effort, so why settle for the standard script when that movie sucks and everybody dies frustrated and sad, soul-first before the body burns up?

I'll pass, and so can you. 

Public Service Announcement #235

San Diego is a different world. Beautiful and more open. Just different enough atmospherically that my respiratory system works for once, intuition/synchronicity is almost too strong, and we can find something great to eat anywhere we go without awkward questions. It has everything from tiny secondhand shops to gargantuan theme parks, the ocean is two long songs from anywhere, and the weather is the way the whole planet should be. It has been interesting and remains so.

From the piano bar next to the hotel, I present the following:

Being human is terrifying and wonderful. We're driven to enforce order but the order that exists is so far beyond our comprehension that it looks like chaos, and it makes us crazy. We strive to protect ourselves and our beloved but all we can do is bend in the wind and try to add to the light.

Existence is an incredible piece of luck but beyond billions of strong opinions over thousands of years has no objectively apparent inherent meaning. The Blank is yours to fill in. Believe it or not, this is good news. It just hurts like hell to accept until it starts to take.

This said, it never hurts to choose to help, choose to love, and choose to enjoy as often as possible while we while away the seconds, hours, days, and years.

And now, back to what you were doing.  

Coming soon: Put On the Glasses

In "1984" we were introduced to a future of endless war, doublespeak and hidden history. In "Brave New World" the model was one of information overload and convincing the population to love and participate in their confinement. First year Philosophy majors have argued about which way we're going for decades, but the answer is obvious. 

Americans have largely given up on proper meals, so it's logical that the future-come-present has assumed the shape of a combo platter. "Brave New World" at home, "1984" abroad (or if we stand up to the octopus when it does things like digging up graveyards for oil pipelines, killing children with the impunity of a badge, or hijack votes).

Force is largely unnecessary to control Gen Pop in the ZooSA because the mass media has the national attention so firmly in hand. Now, many of us don't believe the news anymore, but we're still letting it drive the national conversation. People who belittle sports talk politics as fervently as any superfan. It's all the same routine dressed up in different outfits. While sports fans enjoy a mostly healthy competition, however, people who take politics seriously are being backed into smaller and smaller corners of paranoia. It's a wonderful time to be selling concrete bunkers, MREs and precious metals. Just swap Y2K for 2012 for Jade Helm for.. Whatever.

Just like with sports, we're encouraged to identify with a team that has little if anything to do with us. As George Carlin noted, the real power is a Big Club we aren't in. On a local level some shifts are possible, but in the District of Columbia it's all shadowplay.

The red versus blue/right versus left farce is there to hide the real issue: the grand pyramid scheme where the arbitrary "top" siphon all the power and resources from the mesmerized "bottom" while we bicker over surface level hate-bait. The media may once have served as a check of corporate and state power, but now it is there to parrot the party line, polarize and divide. With some exceptions, it keeps people in either fight or flight mode or longing for some fiction to be made flesh, and all of it encourages spending by providing the illusion of relief via product in the all too few frequent commercial breaks. The machine is doing a damn fine job. 

To me, the whole setup reeks of a kind of black magic meant to keep the majority as a kind of psychological cattle for the parasitic stress farmers, but ultimately it isn't that important whether our behavior is manipulated by malevolent magicians or marketing experts with an acute understanding of psychology. Our situation is the same: we are surrounded and caught by nets woven of company logos and archetypal symbols, sound bites and trigger words, all dressed up as our fondest desires, which are themselves engineered by the same well-worn means.

Orwell missed the mark a bit. The unaccountable powers that work behind the facade of scapegoat-able "leaders" have full spectrum dominance, with no shots fired, at least in suburbia. This works as long as we cooperate as willing puppets. That may sound like a strong word, but if you don't think we're hypnotized, try to walk a mile without seeing 100 people living in three dimensions but habitually staring into a flat plane of pixelated light patterns. It's not an accident that television has been made utterly portable.

What to do? Make the switch from passive to active, consumer to producer, using the same dazzling technology you're reading this on and taking advantage of the same portability. As Jello Biafra suggests, don't just hate the media, become the media. As Neil Gaiman and Terence McKenna suggest, make good art! There's no better way to change culture for the better by adding your genuine voice to the mix, and we are in a Golden Age of opportunity in that regard. Best take the chance while it is there. 

In that spirit, in the near future I will be doing articles and then videos with an eye to catching and decoding the messages buried all around us for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. I'd say stay tuned, but I'd rather you did your own tuning. 

Come When Life Calls

I've said before and will again that life is a game you can play as you will and that it can play with you right back. In fact, I'll go as far as to say this:

It wants to. It may even be The Point of being here.

Now whether you believe that it's all neurology and that a brain in good shape can work so fast at filtering and steering that its efficiency feels like magic, or that it's kindly souls one step beyond who play the guiding hand, or if you've come through practice and peace into union with the Tao and have the wind of the universe at your back, you're welcome to it.

I don't know which of these or which of the infinite alternatives it may be and I wouldn't spoil the fun and tell you if I did. There's room enough in 8 billion minds to carry the balance of possibilities. The point is to show up for the game.

Storytime. About 20 years ago, I was in college and taking woefully full advantage of the steady internet connection. I was disproportionately shy. I found it much easier to stare into the all-seeing eye of America Online and converse with people scattered across the country but sorted into a pool of more or less like minds. I met some lovely people and many of those bonds survive to this day, but the dark side was that I was missing out on the joy inherent in discovering new friends out in the wild.

I already knew quite well the value of digging through the shelves and racks of secondhand shops and the used bins of record stores to keep myself supplied with new things to explore and enjoy, but I was too shy to apply the logic to meeting people. I was lucky and managed to find a great little crew anyway, because you always find the people you need, but that's getting off the point. One of these digital pals was named Greg. Being local, he decided it was worth it to him to break into my physical reality, and he did me a great many favors.

One day when I was distracting myself from the combination of prerequisite courses and social anxiety, overloading my senses with television, AOL chat and my first real forays into electronic music, Greg messaged me out of the blue one day and told me he was coming by to pick me up. I was pleasantly surprised, having no idea what to expect when I hopped into his car. He got right to business. "Have you heard of The Legendary Pink Dots?" Not yet knowing this was a band, my mind scanned for a reference and found nothing. He didn't wait for me to answer. "We're going to see them now."

We did, and I was blown away. The opening act was the Silver Man, a soloist making dense and beautiful structures with electronics. I was mesmerized and inspired. I was overjoyed when I found he was just part of the main band, joined by Edward Ka-Spel, a golden-throated front man straight from Alpha Centauri who played loops and synths while weaving worlds with his voice, live drums/bass/guitar, and a horn section. It was an absolute banquet. I had seen a fair amount of live shows but nothing came close. Some bands get labeled as "psychedelic" and all you get is swirly guitars and too many colored lights. Like whoa, man. The Legendary Pink dots never bother to use the word, but they create the state without requiring the drugs.

It was a real touchstone moment for me. The bar had just been set very high, not only for the kind of music I'd grow to enjoy seeing live, but the kind of music I'd wind up making. We enjoyed the show so much that on a whim we decided to follow them to the next stop, a few states over. We slept in a Denny's parking lot and made it in time to meet the band. We were too spent to stay up the extra 6 hours to see the show, but it was worth it. I had just met these musical gods and it was now clear that they were just people excelling in their element. That lesson stuck.

Greg did this sort of thing with me several times, subjecting me to music I wasn't ready for on road trips that became my favorite bands, making sure I didn't miss good shows (There was the time his car died and we missed Negativland, but I got to open for them this year so that one's all better), introducing me to all manner of fascinating people, playing music with me and just being a great all around friend. Then as soon as he came, he vanished completely, after boosting the novelty in my life by tenfold. I spent a few years trying to find him and nobody seems to know what happened. Based on Greg alone, part of me leans toward that angel theory. If they're only human, that's good enough for me.

So years pass, and I catch this band when I can. After a long hiatus I heard that the Pink Dots were touring again this year, and that they were crossing through Arizona. Twenty seconds after I knew, I took a page from Greg's book and informed my darling Christine that we were going. She was familiar with the recordings but we hadn't had the pleasure to catch the performance together. The nature of her job is random scheduling, so even though we got up at dawn the day of the show and she got there the minute she could start, it was still pegged to be a long day for her. Stormclouds gathered.

I decided to go stoic about it and accept the worst: the Dots had played a significant role in our courtship, so missing our first chance to see them together with no idea when the next chance might be was a hard pill to swallow. I made peace with it and sank a bit.

Then I meditated for a minute and asked myself, okay, but by contrast what's the best case scenario? I called ahead to see when they went on. It was doable but pushing it. I saw it clearly: We would get to the venue and walk in just before the Dots went on.  I was amused by how perfect that would be, and laughed it off as too much to ask. I decided to just play it as it came.

Well not long after, I heard that her day was going better than expected. It worked out that everything in my Dad/Daughter routine happened early and I dropped her off with the Grandfolks. I got back home just after she arrived. Standard progression of outfits, dinner in the car, and we were on our way. The drunken afterthought layout of Tucson means crossing the diameter of the city to get to the highway from where we live, so it was white knuckles for a while until we got to open road.

We were 5 minutes ahead of schedule when the gas light went on. We got the gas and got back on the road, which took exactly 5 minutes. At this point I knew that there was a sense of humor about the whole situation and that it would be fine. We navigated into a part of town we hadn't seen before, and found the music venue nestled into the corner of a strip mall between a nail salon and a Chinese restaurant. Surely this was not the place, but the venue name matched and I heard a guitar tuning.

I felt a pang of sadness, thinking these might be hard times for the Dots as they are for any touring band. Then I remembered how lucky we are to have these international acts coming through at all anymore. We approached the "Will Call" area (a card table with a laptop), got our wristbands, and the game was on. The venue was sized just right for a very intimate show, but with good sound and lights. The crowd was small but thickening. I looked around just in case Greg was still following the Dots. I felt relieved that this band would get the space and audience they needed. We walked in, turned to face the stage, and they played the first note. Believe it or don't, it was exactly as imagined, and worth all the stress on the way up.

It was everything I hoped. Phil Knight (Silver Man), Edward Ka-Spel, and some bloke I don't know calling down angels on guitar. They only needed 3 this time to do what all great bands do regardless of lineup. Time vanished, space expanded, and every spirit in attendance received the meal it needed. Seeing this band is always a Master Class in how electronically driven music can be performed with the heart of an orchestra, the balls of proto-punk, and the tenderness of a crooner in equal measure. As I said, there are loads of trippy bands playing trippy music, but tripping is stumbling. The Legendary Pink Dots are shamans on stage and gentle geniuses off. Christine and I had the pleasure of meeting and thanking them for our favorite record, (and catching them giddy over cheap pizza. The angels are human after all.) and I geeked a bit with Silver Man about gear. All in all, perfection.

So, lesson learned? Play, and play well. Take the chance all the way to its best outcome. As the Dots themselves have in the liner of every CD, "Sing While You May." And if you're able to, see this band while you can. If you're reading this in 2016, there are still chances on this tour.

Here are tour dates:

Now, I am clearly in post-show glow, and this is where I could link to live footage of the LPD on YouTube, and there is a lot. For me though, there is no comparison to Being There. No phone camera and pinhole microphone is going to relay the quality of the music, and only being in sight of performers gets you That Feel anyway. So instead, here's one of the pieces they performed, at the perfect time in American history to hear it.