This one was a long one coming for two years...alot of pain and anguish but eventually I think I got it half-way decent. A mixture of procrastination and hardware issues making it a real pain. It is what it is, but I hope some of you can get some kind of enjoyment out of this one. Jump Man, an instrumental prog piece, followed by a short little prog metal jam called Kenoby's Strut. I was so bummed out after finishing this that I didn't bother posting it, I felt like I couldn't get the mixdown just right, but I think its at a level where its kind of passable as a decent piece of music. Hoping to release more soon this year if I can get out of my overthinking regarding mixing decisions. Cheers now, I'm gonna go to sleep...
I dedicate this eulogy to a friend of mine who passed away yesterday on 4/28/2021 around 8-9pm from a drug overdose. His name was Alex Mounzer, aka CptVideoGames, aka KARMA. A man with much confidence yet a man with horns as stubborn as a bull, an Aries who at times collided with my Capricorn nature. We worked on music together, and although we never finalized our chemistry, he did not give up on his journey, although at points he had doubts.
I had talked to him a few days prior, when I ended things with my on and off girlfriend. He had recently graduated from rehab, and relapsed and released himself to the next world.
Calling his girlfriend when finding out she wanted to pick him up and hearing her say "He's dead!" is an experience difficult to replicate, and put into words. At once, I felt a surge of blood rushing to my head, a loss for words, and a sense of contemplation. Recalling days I would bike with him and often would joke regarding his aggressive cycling with phrases such as "you ride like you have a deathwish!" to which he would simply look back at me and smirk.
Although he is no longer in this realm, I shall continue his journey in his stead, in my own way, the way of sound, the way of the musician. The way of Rock, and the way of Metal. Once more...The Way of the Sound. Different than hip-hop and trap, which is what he was into, yet similar in it's meditation on the present moment.
Though we had our differences and collisions, I shall honor him when I reach the apex of different mountains with an acknowledgement of his name. Through various degrees of lust when I had met my first girlfriend, our chemistry as musicians faltered and weakened. The least I can do is make it up to him this way. May he find solace knowing that in many ways through the brotherhood of sound, his journey is not over.
A man mocked and assailed through middle and high school who found his victory and viral fame during the infant stages of the Youtube gamer craze as CptVideoGames, those who knew him shall remember and honor his iron will. Perhaps we will meet again someday. Be at peace, my brother, and remember what I used to say: It's a new reality.
He had danced with the devil too many times,he almost died a year or so before but his friend resuscitated him with CPR. He would often tell me he was gonna go out like this. So surprisingly I don't feel too much sorrow. Bunch of morbid fucks we all can be...
These kids are playing with the concept of mortality, going all in everytime they wanna have "fun." That's what I don't like about this modern day music culture. It toys with the mortality of children.
It relegates it all to a joke. A life of sin and overindulgence. If you're not getting shitfaced on drugs, you're banging someones girlfriend or wife, and then bragging about it or worse yet, bragging about violence and crime. This is what they have to offer to us.
But you talk to them without the mic and they are all just nice kids, much of them shy, uch of them who would never shoot up someones neighborhood or commit violent crime.
Yet unknowingly they are poisoning the subconscious of the masses. Unbeknownst to them, they are a tool of propaganda and corruption. It's the ultimate chess move: Destroy your enemy from within, as well as mock the holiness of the music artform.
The only question remains: Why? This I do not know. By the time they realize they have fell for it, it is too late. The damage has been done. They end up like Alex, battling their demons until the end.
Who are the puppet masters? Or is it human nature itself? But it cant be, or we'd have heard this kind of music in the 70s and 80s being mainstream? No?
The reality is we are all fighting a war, and musicians are no different. Yet unlike traditional warfare, this war is different. It is spiritual warfare. Your actions are a ripple effect which can influence the battle in more ways than one. So much so that you may not even realize it.
Musicians have the ability to tap into the core of this battle, manipulating the emotions of others. With great power comes great responsibility.
Something that should be taught in school to be sure.
It is a symbol of unity, of something that embraces the whole universe. You can interpret it in many ways. In one way, you understand that this totality is made out of a paradox. That a lot of truths about the universe are contradictory, but nevertheless what makes it real. For instance, "there is no absolute truth and this is an absolute truth." But more than that, something that is finite (like a snake), but infinite in its shape.
You can also interpret it in the sense what the universe does, it does it to itself. You can't act on anything out of it and there is nothing acting on it. Enclosed circle. The snake is a symbol for what is earthly, animalistic, receptive, concrete and not abstract, something that crawls and lies in our unconscious.
The ouroboros is, like the circle, a symbol of being complete, full, eternal and at the same times this can only be because you are also finite, incomplete (like a snake seeking to bite something) and momentary.
Horns often signify power or a wild/animalistic nature. Current thinking is that the prevalence of horned figures arises out of respect for the importance of various horned animals in hunting and agriculture.
The first crowns were made of horns. And in many languages both words are close, e.g. Corona/Cornus. When humans were hunter-gatherers, horns were a symbol of a hunter's bravery. And as people began to breed livestock, horns also became a means to show off one's wealth.
The horns are just one of the many prehistoric symbols, connected to the all-including great goddess whose traces can be found all over Europe and beyond.
Behind those symbols lies a key, a pathway to what some call enlightenment.
Here is a very easy, true fact to acknowledge- bowing to the ego is the opposite of willpower. This doesn't mean this ethereal "EGO" that seekers are scared of, it is those moments where you subconsciously think "hungry" so you walk to the fridge without consciously, mindfully deciding to. It's when you hit a roadblock in your studies and 'decide' to distract for a bit. It's when you have a conversation with someone but find your eye wandering to a nearby TV left on.Ego-death (not in the drug sense at all) is willpower. Taking a step back from this base reactions is the ONLY way to gain willpower. There is not a single thing more or less that you can do than by constantly (gently! without ***SHAME***, or else you just fall into a new trap) withholding from whatever "you" want. This "you" that reaches for junk food, turns on the TV, checks your phone, ignores work, puts off chores, etc, is the one that will forever prevent you from growing.
The concept of gods gaining their power from worship is a very modern one. Back in the day gods were, and had power, irrespective of worship.
In fact, from a pagan standpoint you don't even really worship gods. You might revere and honour them, but it was largely a transactional relationship. We give you these offerings, and in return you help us win this battle, or give us a good harvest.
There are in fact instances where after disasters or bad harvests offerings were actually withheld because it was felt that the god didn't hold up their end of the bargain.
There are two ways to gain godhood - or any power, really.
I've always had the idea that the afterlife was linked to who you were in your previous life. For example if you attained the skills of a legendary musician, I always played with the idea in my head that you could be reborn a God or a personification of music
Because this is what I feel when I would watch music videos of Steve Vai or Oscar Peterson.
I would feel they were almost master meditators. It seemed like they weren't thinking at all while playing, as if they are in deep trance or no thought. Unfortunately this is a level most musicians, even professional ones never reach. I mean PURE virtuosity. Becoming the music itself. Not just playing it.
Chick Corea has passed on and if he chooses will join the Gods as well as Apollo and her muses. If he so chooses anyway, since he was a scientologist I believe. It's up to him at the end of the day. Romantic Warrior live at the Whistle Test completely changed my life, I used to watch it every day in my college rec room.
May he live on as an Angel of Sound. It's the Sound... The Ultra Zone. Perhaps that is what all musicians want to reach in their life, staying in The Ultra Zone forever...It's so profound, damn...
Maybe the ones who get it reincarnate as Sound. Rahsaan Roland Kirk said once he wanted to reincarnated as sound, because he would be truly free . "You can't capture a note."
The fastest way to learn Chaos Magic that I am aware of is to imagine that you are literally living in a virtual reality. Most chaos magicians that I have met lose their minds after this point, when they lose track of where their imagination ends their perceptions of physical reality begin. If you lose track of which is which, then your soul's wave form will collapse, it will become ordered and your chaos ma gic will have no efficacy. It is the uncertainty of your mind's own fluctuating coordinates in the web of consciousness that generates power for your magic.
The imagination is a powerful tool, because it can see where eyes can not. I will link you a clip from a movie that uses creative visuals to demonstrate the power of the imagination:
