rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

My job is pushing me to create and learn and explore and create some more. Constantly. First, an 88-key midi keyboard appears in my office (a “gift”) - which scared me for a good day - and little by little have gotten used to it… and two nights ago I actually performed with it. I accompanied Hank Hofler of Oh Astro (a college of mine at ISU) and a student of his, Katchmare (?) in playing a type of music I’ve never played before - Ambient Music!! I wanted to tell everyone it was harder than breastfeeding - so hard to fit the noises in at the right time, and the notes in at the right time. And worst, to make sure that what I played wasn’t CHEESY! I’m still unsure of the rules of ambient music.

Isn’t it funny that all music systems have rules? And you have to be careful about breaking them. A good friend (I think it was Heidi from Mercy Rule / 13 Nightmares) once told me about composing music for a major label, that she is very aware of which direction her hand moves. If it moves one direction (towards one chord) that might make the song commercial and sell copies, and the other direction makes the song more “cool.” I remember having that awareness while we were on Reprise, but not doing anything about it. If we had done anything about it, we probably would have moved our hand towards the anti-commercial direction.

Oh Astro’s new record just came out - it is really awesome to listen to. As much as I hate myspace, http://www.myspace.com/ohastro - you can hear some of their songs and you should buy the album.
So now my brilliant boss (who is calling me her “colleague” which is like the biggest compliment in the world) has listed my blog under her newly created blog, http://www.knottypinekitchen.com/Sharis_Stuff/Blog/Blog.html. By doing this, she’s forcing me to write more now, because she knows I’m gonna read her blog (she’s a brilliant writer) and I’ll see mine listed up there and feel like I’m defacing her blogroll if I don’t keep mine up.

And yeah, I know this sounds like kissing up, but I’m so past that. If I worship someone, they know it. That’s just the way it goes. I couldn’t care less how it looks.
Look, the woman came into my class today and totally added so much more literary cred. I realize I can be a tourist in so many different areas. We were talking about this: You Must Be Logged In To Do That! http://www.sevensixfive.net/myspace/myspacetwopointoh.html and Gilles Deleuze and she took the conversation to a whole other level, talking about how Deleuze defines ‘the discrete spaces of enclosure, the “prison, hospital, factory, school, family”’ - I missed family! –and how we think of ourselves, and whether or not it all boils down to commercialism … one distraught student asked, “if the commercialism and marketing were taken away from all this, would it be ok then?” There are individual answers for this (hope he figured that out.)

At some point the class deteriorated into how to make money off Secondlife - and then of course my DJs started thinking about making music in there…a question was brought up about the differences between making music in a virtual world or the “real” world (think about it, you need a music-playing device near you for both, and when it’s gone or off, the music’s gone)… but this was like “Duh, of course it’s the same” to the students. Not to me though.
So speaking of worship, let’s move on to His Holiness and His Other Holiness. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend $250 to listen to the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Bloomington, IN (where Shari went to school). The teachings were on something called Atisha’s Lamp of Enlightenment which I was going to read but I read stuff about New Media instead. The cool thing about his teachings was that they sort defined and elaborated upon the idea of interrelationship (nothing exists without being referenced or tied to something else) and then if you take away interrelationship, you get emptiness. He talked a bit about the idea of compassion: two types, one you feel for your family and friends and want something in exchange and the other type, is when you care for all living creatures; it’s that second type he’s interested in.

There was lots of other stuff but I’m going to sell that information on my paying site (just kidding). Robert Thurman (Uma’s dad) spoke one night at the conference and he was hysterical. People gave him a standing ovation. Both he and the Dalai Lama are great at making these types of teachings easy to understand for westerners. I’ve experienced some other Tibetan teachers and they are not always as accessible. Of course when I first heard Thurman, years ago, I had no idea what he was talking about. So maybe I’m getting advanced.

The basic thing to know for a western scientist is that Buddhist studies (about meditation, happiness, etc.) go completely along with current neuropsychology and cognitive psychological research, so much so that there are always studies going on with happiness and The Brain and How You Connect them. (and this is the subject of Rick Powers’ new book, I’m told… can’t wait!!)

I could say something about taking vows at the end of the lectures. We got to repeat a nice poem at the end of the lecture, which just happened to be my favorite poem. That and the Dalai Lama said it in Tibetan and the audience followed along in English. That pretty much floored everyone. People around me were bawling. I was so touched I had to call my dad and tell him about it. It was very nice.
His Other Holiness and His Better Half visited us on their way to Springfield Il - Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina, the Evens, are again on tour through the midwest. They stopped by to give us an hour of their time - it is so great that some bands are still touring. Back in the day, we’d be travelling around constantly and seeing our friends in different corners of the world. Now I guess we just have facebook. Or ichat. I’m trying to remember what we talked about for that hour. An hour of conversation with Ian MacKaye should count as about 1 year of graduate school. He makes you think that much.

How do these people get so smart?