-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
Copy pathNewsletter2(Faith edit).html
479 lines (434 loc) · 70 KB
/
Newsletter2(Faith edit).html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
<html>
<head>
<title>E2F ~Club Health~</title>
<link href="myCool.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.png"/>
</head>
<body>
<h4><a href="index.html" ><img src="demo_header_image.jpg" style="width:70%;"/></a>
<h2>
<a href="audio.html" >Audio</a>
<a href="newsletter2.html" >Newsletter</a>
<a href="social.html" >Social</a>
<!--<a href="video.html" >Video</a>-->
</h2>
<h6> <a href="newsletter.html">Previous Newsletter</a></h6>
<h2>Newsletter 2:</h2>
<!--<h1>V I B E</h1>-->
<div id='stuff'>
<h3> <center> <img src="clubHealthMan.png" style="width:60%;height:700px;" color:pink> </center> </h3>
<!--<a> this is where the club health buff dude goes </a>-->
</div>
<nav>
<h5>
<!--- This is the menu item source -->
<a href="#part1">1. Healthy Living Bureau</a> <br><br>
<a href="#part2">2. Club Neurosis</a> <br><br>
<a href="#part3">3. Living Well: Turiya</a> <br><br>
<a href="#part4">4. C.T. Green's Club Prescriptions</a><br><br>
<a href="#part5">5. The 6th House</a><br><br>
<a href="#part6">6. Guided Meditation for 6 AM Burnout</a><br><br>
</h5>
</nav>
<!--</div>-->
<a NAME="part1"> </a>
<h2> <!--2 SOFT K BLURB-->
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
A Nice Blurb About<br>
Healthy Living Bureau's Issue #1
</h2>
<h6>By Hayden Anderson </h6>
<!--
<div align="center">
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3037509459/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://easy2find.bandcamp.com/album/soft-k-gymnast">Soft K - Gymnast by Easy 2 Find</a></iframe>
</div> -->
<div align="center">
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 350px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2595566299/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://easy2find.bandcamp.com/album/healthy-living-bureau-issue-1">Healthy Living Bureau - Issue #1 by Healthy Living Bureau</a></iframe>
</div>
<p>A few minutes before taking over the turntables at our first Easy 2 Find party,
I got nervous. I’m not a natural performer, and my hands can get a little shaky
when I do. I needed to chill out a bit. Fortunately,
I’d recently picked up a strange tactic to do so. For now, I’ll call it “visual
ritualization.” So while DJ Jor wrapped up his set of emotive, bumping deep house, I went into the bathroom to perform one of these rituals. I decided I would visualize
a local spirit from the past who could grant me power and confidence. I immediately
thought of Larry Levan. I closed my eyes, but not before glimpsing a graffiti drawing
of Snoopy the dog above the toilet. When I visualized Larry Levan, he now had Snoopy’s
head. It was weird, but I let it happen. He leaned forward to kiss me. As he neared,
I summoned a calming spirit to act in tandem with this spirit of power: I felt hands
on my shoulders, rubbing the tightness out of my muscles. They were Arthur Russell’s.
A wave of serenity rolled through me like a dubby echo. Larry’s lips touched my
forehead. I was still a little nervous, but I was ready. I think I did an ok job that night.<br><br>
I tell you about this because I’m telling you about Healthy Living Bureau, a sonic
organization that soundtracks this kind of experience. They are also a house and
ambient duo consisting of Faith Harding (<a href="https://noveltydaughter.bandcamp.com/releases">Novelty Daughter</a>, <a href= "https://soundcloud.com/faycheebynight"> Faychee</a>) and Cory Todd
(<a href="https://noaxiom.bandcamp.com/">No Axiom</a>, <a href="https://dramasection.bandcamp.com/"> Drama Section</a>). Issue #1 is their first release, a three tracker of
live bass guitar and programmed synthesizers and samples. The first track is as
suitable for the club as it is for the morning come-down. It peaks with the most
infectious key-riff I’ve heard in a contemporary house track (no, really), and a
spoken sample of a meditation leader instructing us to “encourage the sensation”
and “make this experience feel real.” With a base of punchy drums and staccato
percussion, the airy, swirling synths open the space for your mind to wander as
you listen, to see yourself from a new perspective, up on high. The second track,
“The Deep Breathe,” centers around a bouncy and driving bass guitar line. It’s a
track that has a lot of motion to it, that feels like it’s pulling you through
something. Strange elements pop up around you in the stereo field, it gets a little
disorienting, but there’s that bassline, still chugging, and you just breathe
through it and it works. The closing track is a seven minute ambient piece called
“You Are Part of Everything.” While the title suggests easy New Age universalism,
the song gives me flashbacks to the strange, lethargic moments of the deep psychedelic
experience—when you zone out with the warm sun on your skin, watching tree leaves
do their dance in the wind. We are a part of everything, and it is weird to be a
body, and temporal.<br><br>
We live in a time where alternative thought, holistic medicine, occult practices,
and self-care are slipping into mainstream capitalism, offering a healthy mind,
body, and spirit for the price of an iPhone app or a ten dollar drink. It's too
easy to be negative about this -- for many people, these sites will be an introduction
to more meaningful, unquantifiable journeys of self discovery. Yet the true process
of healthy living requires work and the strangest type of work -- opening yourself
to new, sometimes uncomfortable experiences. At the least, these experiences provide
new insight and empathy, and at the most they can create complete paradigm shifts,
total dissolutions and reconstructions of the ego. Sometimes, they make you feel
like a freak in a bathroom.<br><br>
This process of opening is the very seed of life. It’s also what Healthy Living
Bureau sounds like to me. I'd love
to hear what it sounds like to you, too.<br><br>
</p>
<div align="center">
<iframe width="60%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EQIQxEf2yVc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen align:"center"></iframe>
</div>
<h3><img src="Carmen_1.png" style="width:100px;height:100px;"></h3>
<a NAME="part2"> </a>
<h2>Club Neurosis </h2>
<h6> By Faith Harding</h6>
<p> I danced for an hour straight, then hit a wall at 2 am. I have no real way to know what caused it. Perhaps indica was an unwise choice. Perhaps my near-constant consumption of music that day had left me burnt out for the night’s festivities. More likely, and more frustratingly, it was simply the random, microscopic, and ill-fitting dance taking place in my brain, a circumstance of some things firing and others, just…not. Whatever the case, by 2 am I found myself numb to everything occurring around me. And everything occurring around me was supposed to matter intensely. The fact that Omar S was DJing in this very moment was absolutely supposed to matter to me. Sugarhill Disco, its inviting carpeted floors and impeccable energy, surely mattered to me. The people around me, the fact that they were enjoying themselves, and enjoying each other enjoying themselves—this was, in theory, one of the most important things to me in my life. Other nights, at other venues, I had stood just outside of a crowd like this one, watching this merged mass of pleasure, and thought that this was the best version of ourselves we could be. And that was a real, internalized feeling. But now, that same feeling stopped being a feeling and became only a thought, an idea, a sterile blueprint of who I was and what I cared about. And thoughts, unlike feelings, can not keep you on a dance floor longer than you want to be there.
Out of a pressure to be a certain kind of someone, I pushed myself until 2:10, shuffling my feet and stubbornly ignoring my apathy. At 2:15, still shuffling, I took a harder look at this pressure to be a certain kind of someone. By 2:25 I had fully and silently deconstructed it: who do I need to be this person for? Does anyone here really care what I do, how long I stay here? Who is wasting their time questioning my intentions? Shouldn’t they be minding their own business? And on that note—shouldn’t I be minding my own business? Shouldn’t I cut the self-obsessed crap and understand that this is not some point system where everyone is pretending to dance but actually glancing furtively at the behaviors of others, keeping tabs on each other, approving of this and condemning that? Isn’t the whole point, here, to liberate ourselves from all that bullshit? Shouldn’t I just go home, because I want to? Wouldn’t that be the most authentic thing to do? Isn’t this whole thing about authenticity? And right now, aren’t I authentically dead to my own senses? <br><br>
My feet passed the threshold of Sugarhill Disco at 2:30 AM. It is a timestamp that makes all kinds of eyes bulge. My father’s, for example, who afterwards remarks that he is usually asleep by 11. Or, in this case, the eyes of the man working the door, who, as he saw me stepping exhaustedly out onto the sidewalk, shook his head in stern disappointment.
<br><br>“2:30. She’s leaving at 2:30.”<br><br>
I laughed non-threateningly, in the way I always do whenever an older man of some authority makes fun of me. (Because, you know, why take offense? In actuality, no one really cares what I do. No one really cares what I do. No one really cares what I do. I feel like I have to repeat this to myself a lot. Usually after someone makes a remark on something that I do.)
He did not laugh. He just said it again. This time, deeply and unmistakably disappointed.
<br><br>“2:30.”
<br><br>
2:30. The next morning this figure was branded in my brain like a scarlet letter. Melodramatic, I know. I knew it was melodramatic then, too. Why was I so caught up in this offhand aspersion cast upon me by some stranger? (What is that old Dr. Seuss adage…something about how the people who mind don’t matter, and the people who matter don’t mind? This one doesn't work for me. Nearly all people matter to me, whether I want them to or not. And a lot of people who matter to me do mind. They often mind immensely. Seuss was better at allegories about environmentalism and xenophobia than aphorisms.)<br><br>
Later that day I got the chance to speak to someone I trusted about the interaction.<br><br>
“I did have fun for a while but then, I don’t know, I just stopped feeling it. I mean, the music was still great, but…I don’t know, something turned off for me. So I left.”
<br><br>“That’s cool, though. You know, you just commit as long as you can and do your thing. That’s cool.”
<br><br>Relief commenced its warming spread.
<br><br>“Yeah. But the bouncer was kind of weird about it as I left. He just kept giving me a really hard time for leaving at 2:30. He was like, shouting after me as I walked down the street.”
<br><br>I saw the shock manifest in my companion’s face as he registered this, and I happily anticipated his response: ridiculous behavior on his part…disrespectful of your autonomy… obviously has some hang up, etc. etc. etc.
<br><br>But this is not what he said. This is not even close to what he said. What he said was this:
<br><br>“You left Omar S at 2:30?”<br><br>
<center>***</center><br><br>
<p>Karen Horney published her magnum opus “Neurosis and Human Growth” in 1950. An amateur summary of Karen Horney’s role in psychoanalysis: first Freud did it, then Karen Horney did it better. I mean, even she says as much at the very end of her book: “Freud’s philosophy…is a pessimistic one. Ours, with all its cognizance of the tragic element in neurosis, is an optimistic one.”
Which is to say that Freud regards the mental disturbances of humans like one would the floor-shit of an untrained dog: with dismay, but no real surprise, and a large amount of resignation. Horney, on the other hand, treats neurotic affliction like a rite of passage, a process that is, yes, disturbing and difficult, but also invigorating and life-affirming. “To work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation,” she writes, “but at the same time, in a very real sense, the prime moral privilege.” In reading Horney’s theory of neurosis, the near-instant recognition of your own neurosis will worm through your insides like a mild electric shock. But the surprising part of this revelation will be the sense of validation and even excitement that comes with it. Because Horney makes you feel like your neurosis is totally fine. It’s no big deal. But at the same time, it’s totally a huge, enormous deal. You have uncovered a treasure that most people will never in their lifetime attain. That treasure? The pure and precious knowledge that you are a big, big mess, girl. And now it’s time to undertake the most extreme existential makeover you will ever know.
<br><br>Cue montage.<br><br>
We’ll check back in on that later. What I want to talk about now is a more specific idea of Horney’s: “The Tyranny of the Should.”<br><br>
In Horney’s view, neurosis begins when a person’s self-worth is eroded by the hyper-demanding judgements (or cold neglect, or both) of others. And why are these cruel others acting in such a way? Because they themselves are already neurotic. And how did those people get that way? I think you are catching on.
<br><br>(This part of Horney’s theory, though not dwelled upon by her, is for me, crucial. Because what she is saying, in other words, is that suffering begets suffering. Pain is not generated in a void, but transferred from human to human, because it is so uncomfortable to keep in one place, and because we are not often taught the alternative, which is healing it. And this fact is particularly important to me here, because it grounds me in the motivation to make sure this essay is not a takedown of anyone or anything. I am not interested in the victorious think piece that grants superiority to those who agree and damns all others to hell. I am interested in exploring the alienating force that circles through everyone, assigning us the ever-changing roles of both perpetrator and victim. I write with the hope that I am not the only one who has felt this force compromise their own well-being, particularly in the context I write about here. And if I am the only one, well, I am still a one. Anyway.) <br><br>
The way that a person deals with this feeling—that their real self is no longer acceptable—is through the creation of an ideal self. This is the person that they can strive towards being, instead of that other dolt who got them in this whole mess of un-loved-ness in the first place. The neurotic person thus begins his errant journey of trying to become someone he is not: “He holds himself before his soul his image of perfection and unconsciously tells himself: ‘Forget about the disgraceful creature you actually are; this is how you should be; and to be this idealized self is all that matters. You should be able to endure everything, to understand everything, to like everybody, to be always productive’—to mention only a few of these inner dictates.”
These inner dictates comprise the Tyranny of the Should, the moral perfectionism that allows no leeway for being, well, a fucking human. “The inner dictates, exactly like political tyranny in a police state, operate with a supreme disregard for the person’s own psychic condition—for what he can feel or do as he is at present.”
Who knows where my own neurosis began. Who knows who or what made me feel as if I was not good enough. I definitely have some ideas, but those ideas do not belong in this essay. They are better suited for a 75 BPM song with some gloomy, pitch-bent Wurlitzer samples, a song that I will probably write in, let’s say, two months from now. The point is, by the time I arrived at the Omar S show in May of 2015, I was a reluctant patriot of the Should’s police state. My whole conflict had to do with the fact that, like a good, dedicated “head,” I should stay until the sun began to irritate my eyes, that leaving would be a betrayal of my ideals. “…you should be able to endure everything…” And then came the moment when I could not deny my psychic condition any longer, or at least considered the option not to keep disregarding it. But then, multiple others disregarded it for me, reinstating the social fear that I had tried to convince myself was false and foolish. What I hadn’t understood, was that the same tyrannic Should that I thought was only making me suffer, was in fact a transpersonal one, one that has grabbed hold of an entire culture, making its authority all the more pervasive, and making the chance to be liberated from it all the more difficult. It also makes it harder for me to place blame solely upon the individuals who made me feel like shit in this particular instance. The judgment imposed upon me that night was as inevitable as my failure to behave in an acceptable manner—for as Horney explains, the perfect self cannot help but despise the actual self that does not meet its standards. And so here we are together, operating as one monstrous self, holding a teeming collection of unique psyches to one rigid ideal, in service to an impossible uniformity that we mistake for community.
<br><br>
What I am getting at, if it is obvious at this point or not (I can never tell), is that the dance scene can sometimes feel like one neurotic organism, the Shoulds shuttling down like synapses from its central cortex to the lesser nerves. Thump writes op-eds like “If You’re Facing the DJ, You’re Doing Dance Music Wrong,” and “Is Trying to Dance In a Nightclub Ever Acceptable?” (To be fair, the latter piece actually contains a good amount of nuance and humor.) Selectors like Moodymann are canonized as infallible legends, and then, blasted via numerous Tweets for having the audacity to play a Kings of Leon song at Field Day (“There is a time and a place, Kenny,” types Jamie, 23, from Central London, regarding the artistic choices of a Detroit native twice his age. Thanks for the tip, bruv). If you ask what a track is on a Soundcloud comment for a mix, there’s a good chance someone will respond, chiding you for being a knowledge-hoarder incapable of just enjoying the music in that moment. But then, if you haven’t heard of x producer or don’t recognize y track, “What are you even doing?” I don’t know man, what am I even doing? I’m holding phone against my leg so no one sees I have Shazam open, that’s what I’m doing. What is Moodymann even doing when he plays Kings of Leon at a major gig? I like to think he is doing what he feels like doing. And as Karen Horney says, “[f]eelings are the most alive part of ourselves; if they are put under a dictatorial regime, a profound uncertainty is created in our essential being which must affect adversely our relations to everything inside and outside ourselves.”
<br><br>I have seen this profound uncertainty in action. I have been literally pulled off of a wall at a sparsely-attended techno show by a rambunctious gentleman who did not feel I was contributing enough to the vibe that was supposed to be going on. Sure, at other times, I’ve relinquished my self-consciousness to be the only fully moving person on a floor, and felt good about what that did for the space around me. This was just not one of the times. It didn’t feel right. I was trying to respect that feeling. Just as at some times, I have not really felt bothered to stop dancing and identify a track for myself. But other times, the desire to know is too strong to deny. Yet, for a culture whose entire rhetoric faithfully circles around the great principle of desire—or indulgence, or spontaneity—it does feel like certain desires, the less fashionable ones, are often disqualified, shamed into nonexistence.
<br><br>
Lest we forget what I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, and mistake me for clinically observing some external phenomenon: I am neurotic too. Even this piece, as much as I try to make it empathetic, reveals the unfortunate strings of my own judgmental attitudes (apologies to the Jamies in London who are smarting). And I do think that acknowledging the way this collective neurosis has made me act or think poorly, is a more honest and hopefully more effective way to approach this problem. So here is a damning example:<br><br>
A couple of years ago I attended an event that you could only go to if you had received an email about it. (This same email had a lot of things to say about the sanctuary and inclusivity that this event offered, which…I don’t know. I suppose this is the part where I would insert a snide emoji to confirm that I have triumphantly revealed this delicious hypocrisy, but I really just bring it up more to say that…I just don’t know where I stand on this contradiction. The sense of loneliness I often experience from emails and blurbs that tell me how included and accepted I should feel make me wonder if something is wrong with me, and whether I should just keep my mouth shut. But I’ve made it this far. I guess we’ll keep going.) At this event, I saw a girl around my age wearing heels and a small handbag that rested just below her armpit, looking like she didn’t know what to do with herself. I felt better than her. I thought to myself, “What is she even doing here?” (There is that question again: What is she even doing? What are you even doing? What is everyone even doing? I am beginning to think this phrase is not a rhetorical barb but an honest inquiry, a plea for clarity in the midst of confusion.) I felt like she was doing something wrong just by being herself, there. Just by not knowing to wear a tiny drawstring backpack and Doc Martens and side-step to the kick drum with her face towards the floor. It’s difficult to make this thought public, as it was a thought that, in a more perfect world, with a better version of me living in it, I would never even have in the first place. But I share it to make more palatable the fact that you, and so many others, are also me in that example. I have seen the posts sneering at the Bossa Nova Civic Club attendees who obviously live of off the lesser L train stops. I have seen the memes damning Lo-Fi House as a genre for Pratt students, reposted by NYU students. With one hand you point your finger at someone for being a bandwagon-jumper, while with the other you delete the photographs of yourself at a Disclosure concert in 2012. It is a momentarily satisfying, but ultimately exhausting enterprise. And this leads to the other reason why I mention my own bad behavior. Because the line between cause and effect feels at this point, blurred, and more importantly, irrelevant. None of this is actually anyone’s fault. Victim. Perpetrator. I am repeating myself, I suppose, but there are a lot of things you have to repeat before you internalize them. <br><br>
Let’s go back to Horney: “[i]n a competitive society, if one does not feel a sense of belonging, one feels the desire to lift themselves above others.” Horney is talking about the feeling of inadequacy in a society that measures human worth through capital. A society like this is why subcultures like ours exist in the first place. And such a subculture can be invaluable if it really does grant you an escape from a capital-oriented value system. But that is a big “if,” and one that I think is sadly, very often not met in this scene. If we follow Horney’s ideas, we have to admit that by the time we feel so neglected by a dominant culture to turn to this one, we are already bringing a deep neurosis with us. And we have to keep an eye on the judgement, resentment, and contempt towards which that neurosis compels us. It is not our fault that it happens, but it is our fault that we do not pay attention to it: “For his well-functioning, man needs both the vision of possibilities, the perspective of infinitude, and the realization of limitations, of necessities, of the concrete.” And, I would add, a perspective of compassion, when that limitation manifests in the form of a person who is not the perfection we want them to be. Who is unsure of herself, who is not ready, or not willing, to be a certain way, who is trying her best, but not necessarily trying to be someone that she is not. Or perhaps still trying to parse one from the other.
<br><br>
When Terre Thaemlitz spoke at 2016's Sustain-Release…well, first let me say that this clause alone is enough to provoke loaded looks of recognition as to what happened, both from those who were there and those who were not. I am sure there are many interpretations of what took place in that idyllic wooded forum, but here is mine: a large group of twenty-to-thirty-somethings had their uncomplicated idealism challenged by someone whose greater realm of experience has lead them to find some limitations that contradict said idealism. Some of the limitations considered: perhaps the corporate-controlled music sources that we use with relish are not as democratizing as we like to believe, perhaps our appetites for unlimited exposure and constant archiving have harmful elements to them, perhaps this culture that we believe to be perfect and pure and infallible is actually a mere shadow of what came before it, a fun and vibrant diorama of the past, but a diorama nonetheless. I didn’t walk away from this lecture entirely sold by any means (mostly because it would require some ethically admirable stands I just don’t feel like taking—I like using Soundcloud, for example, though it be arguably crooked), but I sure did enjoy hearing new ideas that destabilized our collective complacency. Forget psychedelics—have you ever had the paradigms most strongly connected to your sense of identity and pride chipped away by the exacting social critique of an intensely contrarian mind? Now that’s what I call a good trip.
<br><br>But what interested me more than the lecture was the deeply insulted reaction of a large amount of the crowd. While some audience members asked follow-up questions that invited dialectical activity, other people concocted defensive and manipulative “gotcha” questions that are really better suited for the likes of Fox News pundits. Thaemlitz responded to most of these questions with the indifference that their irrelevance deserved. But sometimes, she actively agreed with the hypocrisies that existed in her arguments. In fact, the essay that she recited that day includes the sentence: “I attempt to be openly hypocritical.” Personally, I love this attitude. Accepting the imperfections of one’s own beliefs, accepting the limitations of one’s personhood, this is the best action one can take to mature out of the indignation that gripped a large portion of us the day that we were told our lovingly-crafted subculture is not as perfect as we believe it to be. Why be so intensely angered by this fact? Of course it is not perfect. Of course there are things we can improve on, things we can think about to make its flawed reality less flawed, or at least more tolerable. This will be my last stab at pathologizing here—I promise—but the response Thaemlitz received that day was neurotic pride in a nutshell: “The pernicious character of neurotic pride lies in the combination of its being vitally important to the individual and at the same time rendering him extremely vulnerable. This situation creates tensions, which because of their frequency and intensity are so unbearable that they call for remedies: automatic endeavors to restore pride when it is hurt and to avoid injuries when it is endangered….The most effective, and it seems, almost ubiquitous one is interlinked with the impulse to take revenge for what is felt as humiliation.” I watched people attempt to exact quick revenge on Thaemlitz by catching her in contradictions, contradictions that might distract from the ones they felt in their own mind. We could have instead accepted what we were: a bunch of contradictory fools, sitting in a forest, trying to get at some haphazard version of the truth. What are we even doing? We could have asked that question earnestly, for once.
<br><br>The idea of a scene that strives for ideals while also accepting its limitations and the limitations of those within it excites me. I do feel as if I have experienced it as a reality, at times, and I like to believe we are trying to get there, in small but promising spurts. Ironically, one of the places I felt it most was at Sustain-Release, in the moments outside of Thaemlitz’s lecture. The decentralized nature of the space—a sprawling campsite in which the individual could choose various states of visibility and invisibility—combined with a group ethos that was remarkably good-hearted (perhaps brought on by the relief from escaping the city for a minute), counterbalanced the more grueling aspects of the 48-hour experience. It was here that I sensed that happy medium of being cared for while also being granted a respectful distance to be one’s self. It was here, also, that I overheard a man on a neighboring cabin porch helping his friend through a difficult moment, when the marathon-like nature of the weekend had gotten to be too much. I myself had reached a nadir of fatigue and anxiety at this moment, and hearing his words spoken just off-screen of my vision—“It’s normal to feel this way. It’s okay. This is a strange experience.”—calmed me, as well. I think the capacity for the rave as a healing space could be so much greater if we could move our language closer to this kind of ambivalence. I am generally unmoved by some uncomplicated, utopian phenomenon in which we are all experiencing an unwavering state of joy and release through the always transformative nature of music, never straying from this surefire response. What would truly tug at my heartstrings, what would make me feel safe, and heard, would be some flyers posted up on the walls, next to the condemnation of photography on the floor, that said: IT IS NORMAL TO FEEL THIS WAY. THIS IS A STRANGE EXPERIENCE.
<br><br><center> *** </center> <br><br>
<p>I bought a Jus-Ed record a while back called “Explicit Message!” The reasons why I bought it (good production, when speaking about Jus-Ed, goes without saying) had to do with the fact that there was a song on it about reciprocal oral sex between a man and a woman called “Mutual Consent,” and I wanted a record in my collection that was both about healthy sexual attitudes, and nasty as hell. I didn’t actually listen to the B1, “Jack Rmx” until months later, when I was mixing at home and transitioned it in, on a whim. The vocals, recited by Glenn Thornton, had me embarrassingly tearing up at 3 pm on a Tuesday, alone in my apartment:
<br><br>
“Let me tell you about Jack. Jack done lost his groove…He went out to get elevated and was not lifted. He tried to seek shelter, and got soaked in the rain. Wanted to be delivered, and was deceived. Tried getting the spirit, and lost his soul…Wanna know who Jack is? Jack who lost that good groove…Was seeking love and found nothing but despair…Walking towards the light, and was in a total eclipse. All of you is Jack at one time. You come to the party and leave bored…you ain’t having fun…You got man problems, woman problems, mom and daddy problems, problems with your child, with your money, with yourself. You’ve got to leave it outside the door! If you ain’t feeling salvation, ain’t feeling deep, ain’t feeling a house or home!? Now get it.”
<br><br>
All of you is Jack at one time. While the traditional house vocal screams with joy about the moment when everything is perfect, when transcendence has been fully attained, this one starts in the midst of despair, at the moment when the journey to a better psychic state is only beginning. This song is about striving, not attainment. We must appreciate striving if we want to get past neurosis, for the neurotic “has no appreciation for all that is “merely” striving and not accomplishment. He rather discards, for instance, the honest striving to get to the roots of his trouble.” I do not want to ignore striving any longer. I want the club experience to be about Jack in the way that this song is about Jack. I do not want to begin at the end of the story. I want to start at the moment I stood outside of Sugarhill Disco at 2:30 am, feeling sad and alone, and wanting to be better. I want to dance about this moment. And I think if I can encourage myself to dance about my limitations, my difficulties, I will actually end up dancing harder, and longer, than I ever did when I was trying to do so with perfection. I want to see a space where those who can dance for 15 hours straight meet those who can only hack it for forty-five minutes. I want to see a person who tried, but could not feel it, could not check their issues at the door, could not get lifted, and wants to leave. And I want to hear the person who sees them off not drive home their failure, but instead say “I am sorry for your trouble. Thank you for your honesty. Get home safe. Please come back and try again soon.” </p>
<h3><img src="Carmen_1.png" style="width:100px;height:100px;"></h3>
<a NAME="part3"> </a>
<h2>Living Well: Turiya </h2>
<h3><img src="twisty1.jpg" style="width:40%;height:80%;"></h3>
<p><i>Living Well is a feature where we ask people about their home and the
practices they engage with to keep their innermost selves protected and
thriving. For our second interview, we spoke with Turiya Madireddi, a long-time
friend of Easy 2 Find. Turiya is (among many things): a producer/DJ performing
under the name Rrao; a certified reiki master; a sound engineer working with
subBASS and Output; a performance and visual artist; and a great friend with
an infectious laugh and an insatiable seeker’s mind. She keeps a full plate,
but when you catch her, a conversation with Turiya often sprawls across topics,
gets deep fast, and bounces back to lightness on many goofy jokes. She recently
hosted us in her Bed Stuy apartment where she and Clay Wilson shared homemade
lemonade and we listened to Sound Warrior’s Warrior Love compilation. We talked
about club snacks, meditation, fuzzy rugs, essential oils, and always keeping
some humor on your shrine. Enjoy :)<br><br></p></i>
<p>TM: I definitely had a period of life where I was just subsisting on snacks. Even if they were healthy. But it was a thing because I was literally always working, and I didn’t have time. There was this long running joke that I was addicted to protein bars.
<br><br>
E2F: Protein bars! So what’s your favorite protein bar?
<br><br>
TM: Wow… There are these ones that are called Shanti and they actually have green powder in them, and they’re amazing. It’s like goji berries, greens, hemp seeds, spirulina, I think wheat grass or something. Those are good but I think the go-to for long-term sustenance are those Macro Bars. The sunflower butter one. Done. Actually, at a certain point, I was carrying around an entire jar of sunflower butter. Just in case [laughs].
<br><br>
E2F: Just of the butter?
<br><br>
TM: Yeah. I would just eat it with a spoon.
<br><br>
E2F: What are the nutritional—
<br><br>
TM: It’s just, like, I don’t eat peanut butter because peanuts kind of spike my blood sugar, so I just eat sunflower butter instead. It’s basically the same thing. And then I would always have a banana in my bag. Always almonds. Coconut water. Coconut water is the ultimate club snack.
<br><br>
E2F: Really? Why?
<br><br>
TM: It’s just the life force, because you’re in this space and you’re getting so dehydrated and tired, and that’s the one thing that I’ve found to actually truly save my life. Like after a load-in when we bring this whole sound system into a place and then you’re like, “Ok, now I’m exhausted enough by this, but then now I’m going to work eight hours.” And then you have to just drink the nectar of the gods. And revive yourself.
<br><br>
E2F: What else helps you get through long sets like that?
<br><br>
TM: Um. Wow [laughs].
<br><br>
Clay Wilson: Boiled eggs.
<br><br>
TM: Yeah [laughs]. Boiled eggs.
<br><br>
E2F: Wait, how do you carry a boiled egg?
<br><br>
TM: You know what—I live dangerously [laughs]. Sometimes I’ll put it in a plastic container, but a lot of the times—throw it in a plastic bag, throw it in there. As long as it’s hard boiled, you’re good. Yeah, I’d say: boiled egg, banana, coconut water. You can survive almost anything. It’s a marathon.
One time—well my first shift—I went and meditated in the back of this boat, and that was helpful. But you can’t really meditate always at parties [laughs]. And I want to. Like, if I could just go meditate for five minutes or even two minutes I’d probably feel better. But maybe I should just normalize it?
<br><br>
E2F: I think so.
<br><br>
TM: Because I could meditate in a loud room. It’s not that. But it’s just the whole thing of, like, I’m working and everyone’s dancing, and I would be sitting on the ground with my eyes closed. But also, in the parties that we’re working with subBASS, people probably wouldn’t care. Or they’d just probably be like, “Oh yeah, Turiya’s doing the Turiya thing.” [Laughs] So I should probably just do that. Because right now, sometimes I’ve started to meditate when I have a long shift at Output; we have these different zones on the roof, and there’s a little nook where we usually do sound and so I’ll like creep back there and meditate for ten minutes and then get back in there.
<br><br>
E2F: What kind of meditation is that?
<br><br>
TM: I keep it simple. I mainly just focus on my breath and allow everything around me to become abstract and new. I have certain chants or things that I do say sometimes just to settle into it, and usually one that I say just to kind of set my intention and just connect with that thing. And then I just sit and watch my breath, feel my body, go into that space and then I usually feel better. I find that it’s actually more restful than sleep. Usually. Unless you’ve worked yourself physically to death and you, like, physically cannot stay awake. There was a period of my life when I was not really sleeping more than six hours ever. And I was meditating a lot. And I think that’s the truest rest.
<br><br>
E2F: Do you feel like your meditation was heightened when you weren’t sleeping as much? Or did you feel it just replaced the need to?
<br><br>
TM: I think it just replaced the need. But the interesting thing with that, too, is that by being in that space more often, I became more in a flow and so it was like I would trust whenever I woke up early rather than being like, “Oh, I want to sleep another hour.” If I opened my eyes I would just get up, and then I would meditate and go about my day. I think the crucial things was just that I was still meditating at night at that time, and that was really helpful to just process stuff in your subconscious before you sleep. Because otherwise your mind is active all night. You’re dreaming, so what is resting actually? And a part of you is present because you are aware that you dreamt, and you’re aware of a dream, so it’s like..are you resting? I don’t think so [laughs]. I need to get back on that train. It’s been tough. But now I’m finally in a place where my life is becoming a little bit more scheduled, and I have the ability to maybe say “no” to things or just make more time. It was hard. I had to let some things go, because for a while there I was always doing something. And when I wasn’t doing something I had all these goals and other things that I wanted to do and so it’s like, working four or five jobs and also having creative pursuits, and then you’re like, “I can’t give up half an hour to meditate after work because I want to do these things.” But actually I should have just done it because it would have made the other things better and energized me... hard to say.
<br><br>
E2F: When you were in the midst of working four or five jobs, often at super unconventional hours, what role did this room play?
<br><br>
TM: Well that’s what was weird... I didn’t get to nest that much for a while because I got back and then I just threw myself into everything. I wanted this to be a very grounding space, but then for a time I was really just coming here to quickly rest and then leave. And so once I had the time to add things that I connected with, it did become a very important place for me, especially as a space for me to feel like myself because—just the way that I am, I’m incredibly sensitive to other people, and with a lot of the work I am doing I am constantly in crowds and that can be really confusing for me sometimes because often when I’m with people I feel more like I’m that person than myself. That’s something I’ve definitely worked on and tried to always keep in the front of my mind so that I can stay in my own space. But my room definitely started to become kind of a safe zone in that way, to remind me of what I’m doing or who I am, and deeply served as a space to cleanse.
<br><br>
E2F: What are some of the objects that remind you of who you are the most?
<br><br>
TM: Um [laughs]. Actually, this painting that’s on the wall is the most special thing to me because it’s a painting that my mom gave me. I think it was my sophomore year of college. And that was a really transitional time for me, too- there was a flowering within myself and, you know, existential crises [laughs]. I was reevaluating a lot of things, and this was always really grounding for me. Probably also because it reminds me of her love, but mainly because of the meditative nature of it. It’s also pretty big, so whatever space I had it in from that year forward it was always such a focal point.
<br><br>
<h3><img src="yantra.jpg" style="width:55%;height:75%;"></h3>
<p>E2F: Can you explain a little bit about the painting?
<br><br>
TM: Yeah. So this is a Sri Yantra, and it is tied back to Hindu practices, mainly the Hindu tantric practice. The idea behind it is—you see where these triangles are overlapping? So there are four triangles pointing upwards that represent the male energy of Shiva, and there are five of the feminine Shakti pointing downwards. And then through the building of that pattern, the middle point is supposed to represent the elusive and abstract center that you can never really see, that is giving birth to this entire environment, everything that exists. So it’s kind of this thing that’s representing the meeting of the masculine and the feminine, or creation, but beyond that, if you leave that out of it, it’s about the three different layers of existence. So it’s consciousness on the physical plane, consciousness of Prana—which is life energy, and then the divine consciousness. Then that is surrounded by the lotus flower, and there’s supposed to be, I think, in the traditional one, there’s supposed to be four breaks on each side that represent glimpses of breaking through and seeing all of these things at once. But yeah, so it can be a meditation on that and it can answer a lot of questions.
<br><br>
E2F: Can you talk a little bit about how you got into your reiki practice? Or what lead you to that field, specifically?
<br><br>
TM: Yeah, so for me, with Reiki, it arose from this place of—you know I was talking earlier about being sensitive to other people, so there was that and then that was starting to become really overwhelming, and the more that I was deepening my practice of meditation and things like that, the more sensitive I was getting. So I really needed to find something to help balance that, and to protect myself as that grew. I just thought, “This is stupid. I want to find a way to make this a productive thing for me and something that is beneficial rather than feeling stifled by it.” I was mainly looking into things to understand how to manage that sensitivity. And through that research I found out about Reiki. So when I came back to New York, I listened to this one woman giving a talk and she ended up becoming my teacher. Her name is Corinne Feinberg. It also kind of stems from my mom, who does a similar practice called “polarity” that I think..I don’t know if it’s Swedish..but it’s similar to Reiki. It’s also energy work with a different name. I think the source must be the same with these sorts of practices. But yeah, so that was mainly it, just trying to find something that could turn my sensitivity into strength, and that was a tool that I could use to help people, and to share the things that I discovered through meditation. I don’t think you can communicate these things with language. It’s really special to me when I have a session with someone who has never felt these things, or other states of consciousness. You know, I don’t think you necessarily have to meditate to experience it, but a lot of times if you do meditate you have easier access, or a clearer image. People who have never meditated or have never had a practice—like making music or doing whatever that gets them in that state—and working on them [through reiki] and just seeing them have this profound experience of, “Whoa I didn’t even know there was other stuff going on up there or wherever it is!” [laughs] has been really beautiful. And beyond that, it is just physically helpful. So there are people who don’t believe in anything but have physical ailments, and can experience and feel those benefits as well. I think it’s kind of exciting, too, later in life, if I wanted, to pursue working in a hospital or anything like that. That sort of practical level of it is exciting for me, too.
<br><br>
E2F: Do you find your music connects with that nonverbal communication?
<br><br>
TM: Completely. Completely. And also, the more that I’m exploring the healing arts, the more that I do want my music to be more connected to that. Probably more so in a subliminal way, working with frequencies that I think resonate with certain parts of the body and things like that. And that’s kind of what I want to explore, coming up now.
There are theorists who say that the frequency of Earth is always rising, and that makes sense if you think about things in an energetic way. I mean personally, we are kind of—we did devolve. I don’t know where we’re at now, if we’re evolving, devolving. I hope that we’re evolving [laughs]. So maybe the frequency is rising. I don’t know. But that’s something that’s interesting that I do want to look into. One thing that I found out, thinking about that, was that I guess everyone has their own personal tone...when I started meditating when I was a kid, I slowly began to hear just this tone that was always in me, and they call it your nada. So mine’s a C sharp, but I don’t know, I need to check back in with that, maybe it changed. So apparently everyone has their own tone and I thought maybe that was the tone of the universe. But then maybe everyone has their own tone. I’m going to go slap a C sharp in everyone’s ear and be like, “Is this what you hear at night?” [laughs].
<br><br>
CW: We were talking about that in relation to like, how some people are born with perfect pitch, but you can kind of teach yourself that by using [a certain frequency] as a reference. Your skull resonates at a certain frequency. If you find that, then you always know what note that is, and then you have the ability to hear intervals that you can always kind of—like if you really work at it you can develop this like alternate version of perfect pitch, working from that.
<br><br>
E2F: Do you know your frequency?
<br><br>
CW: I think mine was an F sharp. But I haven’t done it in a while. I would have to double check that. But that’s what I remember.
<br><br>
<h3><img src="img_6902.jpg" style="width:55%;height:75%;"></h3>
<p> E2F: Have you been making music in your room?
<br><br>
TM: I have been a bit, but I was mainly continuing older productions I had started when I was in India and Berlin, and I’ve realized that I kind of want to start fresh. Now I have some new gear and I want to create a new workflow. And, you know, I think all of those [older productions] were good as an exercise and now I have a better idea of what I actually want to get out there. But most of my time has been just working on DJing since I got back because it was something that I could do for an hour in between things. Also it’s calming and meditative, whereas with production right now there’s a lot I’m still trying to teach myself in terms of sculpting the sound that I want, and just a lot of administrative things I need to do, like sort through all my field recordings and doing all the things I don’t want to do, but I have to do. Pretty sure there are two recorders from India I still haven't even stripped of recordings and I’m just like, “I’ll do it. . . tomorrow!” [Laughs]. But now I’m getting really excited, and I really want to get in there. I’ve been able to make more time in my life for myself, and so it’s a work in progress. But I’ve been working on a remix for Clay’s next release on the Bunker, so that has been a nice way to just get back into it. It’s not really something I would have created on my own. It’s a pretty foreign land in terms of soundscapes, so I was excited by the challenge. It's been fun, but I’m ready to create my own little world and live in those sounds for a while. It’s been nice DJing, too, and bringing in certain elements I want to be present in my music but doing so by using field recordings, and using little samples, or certain tracks from India, or things like that. So that’s been cool. And I actually think I have my frequency on this little chimey-do here.
<br><br>
E2F: Where did you get that chime?
<br><br>
TM: This is my new favorite piece of gear [laughs]. I mean, I did get the Analog RYTM and I’m super excited to make that an extension of my being, but I got this at the Botanical Gardens in Fort Worth. My dad got it for me when I was home to see my family. [Plays chimes]. And I just love these tones so much. I’ve only used it once besides sitting in my room, and it was to fire off one tone at the end of my . . . at that other performance art chanting thing that I did.
<br><br>
E2F: And that was the first time you’d used vocal chanting in live performance, right?
<br><br>
TM: Yeah! It was really special. It’s the first time that I’ve really performed something that I’ve made as well, funnily enough. I basically reworked the accompaniment of an old chant- added some samples and changed the drums and patterns. But yeah, it was really exciting to share that side of myself too and have people be really receptive and respectful, because one thing that I do fear is, you know, bringing these really sacred things into a public space and having it not be sacred—you know what I mean? But that’s also fine, I think that’s something that . . . You know, it’s sacred to me, everything that I believe is a belief for me that benefits me, and just because somebody else doesn’t find it sacred, it doesn’t mean anything. You know? But I just don’t want to make anything disrespectful. That’s a big fear of mine. But people were there and a lot of people were closing their eyes and connecting with the strotam [chant], and it was really special. It’s nice. It also just felt good to perform, too. I was like, “OK, I actually have to make my music because that felt really good.”
<br><br>
E2F: Are there any sacred objects in your room? Or things that you hold sacred to you, either personally or culturally?
<br><br>
TM: There are. I have this little altar. Well, also, this lava lamp is very sacred [laughs]. This is so sacred it’s insane [laughs]. I’ve got to turn this baby on, actually, this is good. [Turns on lava lamp]. But yeah, I do have an altar. For a long time I was really adverse to doing anything that was traditional and I was like, a curmudgeon—I don’t know, I’ve gone through my journey with spirituality and what I want to take from religion, and etc. But I’ve found that that’s something that has really helped me, especially when I was in India and stuff, having these few things or putting energy into objects and allowing them to energize and hold a space for you. And so it became really important to me. This is my little altar here. And mainly—I mean there are some hilarious objects on here because I don’t want to make it too serious [laughs]. Like my favorite is probably this tiny baby [laughs].
<br><br>
<h3><img src="img_6895.jpg" style="width:55%;height:75%;"></h3>
<p>E2F: Oh my God. Where is it from?
<br><br>
TM: Where are they from? I think I found them in Berlin somewhere and I was like, “This is very necessary for my life.” And this little troll was from an event that I did Reiki at. It was called The Softer Image, and there was a pinata, and when they broke the pinata these little trolls fell out [laughs]. And so this is to keep it light. Keep the shrine light. My favorite other absurd object: when I was walking across India my friend Lizzy made me this little speaker box thing with her brother Peter’s laugh in it because I was obsessed with it at the time and she was like, “Whenever you get sad or lonely you can listen to this little laugh.” [Pushes button. Peter’s laugh plays].
<br><br>
E2F: [Laughs]. That’s an incredible gift.
<br><br>
TM: It’s so incredible. She’s amazing. It’s so good. Yeah that’s definitely an object that kept me rooted to home. And that’s the thing—I want to just keep it light. I think the best thing you can do in life is laugh. So that’s there. And amongst that there are very sacred things to me. There’s a statue here of Sai Baba, who was a famous guru in India. He was pretty pertinent for my parents as well, growing up, and then this time when I was in India I went to his main temple, and where he was supposed to be—I think where he passed away, I don’t know if his body is supposed to still be there? Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s encapsulated in the actual temple—his remains are. And it was incredibly powerful for me, and shielding, and grounding. And so I picked up a little statue of him there. And then there’s Ganesha, who I grew up with. My grandmother was obsessed with Ganesha—actually my German grandmother, it’s funny. When she came to India she really embraced everything and it had meaning for her later on, and she gave me this. This is also her bracelet. So I keep those two together, to have her energy there and connect with that whole generation. And then her brother, Hans Juergen, he carved this saint out of wood. He’s a woodworker. And he gave this to me when I was living in Berlin. And so I keep that there as well.
<br><br>
E2F: Do you know what saint it is?
<br><br>
TM: I actually don’t, and he didn’t tell me. And the sad thing is he’s gone blind, and I don’t know if he knows, actually. But I’m sure I could figure it out. Sometimes when I meditate on objects then I figure out the story. So I really need to sit with this guy.
And then this is a shell that my friend Kaya gave to me when we were walking across India. She went to the beach one day and she found it in the sand, and then she came up to me and was like, “I need you to have this.” And then incidentally—actually, no. This one is from my reiki teacher. I have another unicorn shell. My reiki teacher gave that to me after my second training and it was a similar thing. She was like, “I found this and I think you need to have it.” So I have that there. I have some crystals that my brother gave me. They’re actually supposed to be used in tandem with reiki, they have the chakra symbols on them as well. So they’re there getting charged up. And like, this bracelet from my mom that she gave me. A lot of my fortunes. A gift from my dear friend Mantra who I think is a true goddess. And then I like to keep a lot of flowers, flowers that have a lot of meaning to me, I’ll keep them here once they’ve dried up. And I do like to leave money as an offering. I don’t know how I always feel about that, but I think there’s symbolism in giving. So there’s money—wow, I have a lot of stuff on my altar, I’m realizing [laughs]. And then I also put things that I want to see grow, so I have my reiki business card here, and little things that I want to bring energy to in my life. And then I have some paint chips from India because I think they’re beautiful [laughs]. And they’re just special. I literally took a sheet of them and now they’ve become broken from the travels but I can’t let them go for some reason.
<br><br>
E2F: What did they come off of?
<br><br>
TM: Just like a wall [laughs]. In India. Some side street wall. We were walking by somewhere and—I think it was part of some ad or something—and it was just so beautiful with these chips coming off. I also have these coins. There’s a holiday in India call Vishu, and you’re given a coin from a guru and it’s supposed to bring you good luck. And I feel like our relationship isn’t as much like that, but it’s special to me. And it was given to me from him, so I’ve got it there. The thing that I need most—the altar is nice for being grounded and paying my respects, and just to visualize things—but the thing that I couldn’t survive without is the herbs that I have here to burn. So I have sage and palo santo and pine and cedar and sweetgrass. And that definitely helps me, too. I burn them at least in the morning before I meditate, and then often at night, too, especially the sage. And in my Reiki practice before and after a session I at least always use sage and palo santo as a protective sort of thing. I used to bring palo santo around to the club, but I don’t do that any more [laughs]. But I should now that I think about it...
<br><br>
E2F:You should.
<br><br>
CW: We did it at—
<br><br>
TM: That one time at Unter, right?
<br><br>
CW: Was the only time.
<br><br>
TM: But I usually just bring my oils to the club. And just like in life.
<h3><img src="img_6904.jpg" style="width:55%;height:75%;"></h3>
<br><br>
<p>E2F: What would you bring when you go out?
<br><br>
TM: I can’t leave the house without lavender. Because that I find is the most anti-anxiety and grounding for me. It really depends on the phase that I’m going through, depending on what sort of emotional support that I need. I often find that frankincense and myrrh are really important for me, but since I am sensitive it can be like a little bit too much when you’re out because for me they’re very meditative, intuition supporting scents and that’s something I’d probably just put on in the morning to get into a zone. But rose and lavender are the most travel friendly. And also my roommate Erin got me this blend that is—what was in here—it’s like citrusy and it’s really good for waking up. I feel like it’s lemongrass and citrus and something deeper. But it doesn’t actually say on this one. Because it’s just a “chakra balancing blend.” This one is for the solar plexus. It is said to be empowering and it truly does feel empowering! But yeah, so I kind of have this squad of things. Sandalwood I find to be really sacred. That’s what a lot of deities are carved out of in India and also what gurus are said to smell like—sandalwood and jasmine. So I kind of keep that there to use more in an honoring way or for myself in recognition of my divinity. Practical ones—eucalyptus. Everyone needs eucalyptus in their life [laughs]. You know, fight off a cold. Cedarwood is also really grounding. I actually used to carry this around with me as well, when I was going through a lot of changes and stuff. Patchouli, clary sage, tea tree...This one you can also smell and be energized too. It just depends on if I need like a perk. [Holds it up to smell].
<br><br>
E2F: Ooh, that’s good.
<br><br>
TM: I just think tea tree is life. Just douse yourself in that. And there’s the frankincense of course—another practical one. This is one that helps with digestion. You can just rub it on your stomach. It has a lot of citrus and grapefruit and things like that. And that’s about it. I’ve been pretty solid with these for the past year. And it’s nice because whenever I have a Reiki session I’ll usually come in here the morning of and get a sense of what that person’s going to need and that’s been really fun because most of the time it turns out to be exactly true.
<br><br>
E2F: Really?
<br><br>
TM: Actually, I never had a time where it didn’t turn out to be exactly true [laughs]. So it’s been nice because I am introducing people to those oils and they’re like, “This made me feel really good. What is that?” And then they’ll go and get it. And that’s really sweet to me.
<br><br>
E2F: The one last thing I want to ask is about your new fuzzy rug.
<br><br>
TM: Oh my God [laughs]. The wall. I know, it’s so absurd and it makes me so happy. When I first moved into my room I thought about putting astroturf on every single wall, and then that was kind of insane. But then, yeah, I have this deep connection to the color purple and I wanted a big fuzzy purple wall, and so I got this, and Clay and I hung it up and now it’s just—it’s very comforting to me. And I just like to keep things absurd. Like, the absurdity makes me feel sane and I just needed a purple fuzzy wall.
<br><br>
E2F: What’s your connection with purple?
<br><br>
TM: It kind of goes back to the meditation thing as well. Ever since I was twelve, when I would close my eyes I would see purple. I just think I’m a purple person [laughs]. But it’s mainly that, like when I close my eyes I see purple and purple is grounding for me in that same way. And it’s just great, look at it, shimmering.
<h3><img src="img_6874.jpg" style="width:55%;height:75%;"></h3>
<!--<h2>Turiya's Reiki Ad<br></h2>-->
<center><img src="turiyareikiad.jpg" style="width:50%;"></center>
<h3><img src="Carmen_1.png" style="width:100px;height:100px;"></h3>
<a NAME="part4"></a>
<h2>C.T. Green's Club Prescriptions💊</h2>
<br>
<p align="center">💪For Natural Energy and to Counteract “Less-Than-Beneficial” Supplements💪</p>
<p align="center"> <a href="https://traceminerals.com/ionic-zinc/"> Trace Minerals Ionic Zinc </a> </p>
<br>
<p>Zinc can help make you present and energetic and strengthens your immune system.
Help yourself! Drop 1 mL into a cup of juice (I prefer orange) and mix it up. Try
to drink it quickly before it settles. Zinc tastes like…zinc. You might vomit. You
also might vomit if you drink it on an empty stomach, so take it 30-45 minutes after
a meal.</p>
<br>
<p align="center">💃For Better Dancing Effects💃</p>
<p align="center"> <a href="https://moonjuice.com/collections/power-dust"> Moon Juice Power Dust </a> </p>
<br>
<p>Take as directed. I prefer mixing it into warm almond milk. Don’t have it too late
in the day—unless you are going to a rave in its truest form and want to stay awake
until 9 am. Otherwise, have it around 3pm. It’s no joke.</p>
<br>
<p align="center">💓For Increased Empathy in an Event Setting💓</p>
<p align="center"> <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/492272430/open-heart-tea?ref=shop_home_active_34"> Resonance Apothecary Open Heart Tea </a></p>
<br>
<p>I suggest steeping 1 tablespoon of the tea in water fresh off the boiler for 30
minutes, and then strain into your favorite lil’ mug. Set intentions to be receptive
to connecting with your fellow human beings at the function. Sip. Repeat.</p>
<br>
<p align="center">💤For Settling Down at the End of the Night💤</p>
<p align="center"> <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/512397514/spiritual-oil-sweet-dreams?ref=shop_home_active_11"> Resonance Apothecary Sweet Dreams Oil </a></p>
<br>
<p>The properties of this blend will assist you in getting centered and falling asleep.
Use an acupressure guide for prime anti-insomnia application spots to give you a
double dose of sleepyhead syndrome. Give the oil a few deep inhalations. Lie down,
and say goodbye…for now. ;)</p>
<h3><img src="Carmen_1.png" style="width:100px;height:100px;"></h3>
<a NAME="part5"> </a>
<br><br>
<h2>Faychee Says: “Know Your Houses!”</h2>
<h2>The 6th House</h2>
<p><i>
The 12 houses in astrology represent the individual’s evolutionary process through
a cycle of 12 zones or themes. The 1st house represents one’s individual personality,
and the 12th house represents the collective unconscious and the self’s return to
the whole (through death, perhaps, but also through other ways!). In between we
grapple with such issues as values and resources, home and ancestry, relationship
to the other, ambition, social status, and role in the group. For this issue of
Club Health we will be stopping to take a look at the 6th house: The house of health,
service, efficiency, routine, work, and vocation.</i><br><br>
Since I was young I have been obsessed with the question: how does a perfect day
go? I spend about 80% of my waking life fretting over the most efficient way to
carry out my waking life. Yes, this sounds perhaps a little tautological and
unnecessary, but listen up—this is how I’m meant to be, dingus! I just happen
to have a stellium (that, is 3 or more planets) sitting in my 6th house, the
house that governs work and routine. My sense of identity (Sun), my sense of
vitality and will (Mars) and my mental activities and communication style (Mercury)
are all hanging out together in there. What’s more, the sign that rules my 6th
house is Sagittarius—the sign of questing for truth. It truly does feel like all
I care about is the search for the perfect routine that helps me carry out my
true vocation in service to others! When I fall back on my personal projects,
when I do not take care of my body, when I do not feel that others are benefiting
from or resonating with my work, I become agitated, I lose energy, I start feeling
alienated from myself. Some might say, “Faychee! Stop caring what other people
think so much!! Faychee! Enjoy a movie or something! Faychee!! If you weren’t
so obsessed with whether or not your work was a perfect representation of your
inner life, you would do more of it!!” And I know! I’m as frustrated as you are!
But by looking at my life through an astrological lens, I’ve been able to increase
my self-knowledge: to love this weird part of myself and work with its better
elements to manifest it in the most positive way possible. So to all you hyper-empiricist
curmudgeons who are sneering at this OBVIOUSLY PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC way of dealing
with reality—Get stuffed! I’m a happier person for it!<br><br>
Maybe that was a little rude. To make it up to you, I’ll start speaking about the
houses from a purely (*dons monocle*) archetypal, psychoanalytical point of view.
Are you more comfortable now? Not yet? Ok, let me try one more thing. *clears throat*
<br><br>
Carl…Jung.<br><br>
Ready to continue, my frightened intellectual? Good.<br><br>
Let’s look at the 6th house in the context of the evolutionary imperatives that
come before and after it. After developing a rudimentary sense of self (1st house),
we begin to understand what we are worth and the resources we have to offer (2nd
house). We interact with our immediate environment and see where we fit within
that scheme (3rd house), and we begin to establish our roots, our sense of home
and family that keeps us secure (4th house). Awesome. Now our most basic needs
are met, our lowest rung on the hierarchy of needs fulfilled. What do we have
time to do now? All the fun stuff, dummy! We get to express ourselves spontaneously!
We get to create external representations of this self we have established! Get
out your drum machine, doofus! Wash off your dusty paintbrushes! Make your hair
look cool! Have a freaking baby! That’s right, I said it! Have a baby! Who cares?
It’s the 5th house, the house of pleasure, creativity, fun! Now we’re getting
somewhere. This is good stuff! But…let’s be honest. This beat you made is pretty
terribly mixed. Your painting, while vibrant, looks a little nuts. Your kids are
like, completely feral. All was well and good when you were lost in the fervor
of spontaneous creation, but are you really ready to present anything that you
have made to people other than yourself, yet? That has to do with your relation
to the other, and that’s some 7th house stuff, friend. We seem to have skipped
a step. Take another look at that poem. It’s kind of embarrassing. I mean, don’t
get me wrong, there’s…something there. It just needs a little…work.<br><br>
And here we are. Work. It’s the 6th house! It’s time to get eight hours of sleep,
wake up at 9, do some revising until noon, eat a healthy lunch of salmon (good for
that brain you’re suddenly using so hard!), take a little walk, come back and do
some more work, unwind with a little video game or two (rest is a crucial part
of work!), and repeat, repeat, repeat, until your crusty little passion project
becomes something that is ready to share with the outside world. Sure, it may
not be as fun as what we had going on in the 5th house, but was the process ultimately
rewarding? Fuck yeah! Are you ready to share your resources with others and begin
the process of productive collaboration (8th house)? Have you learned a little
more about what you truly believe in (9th house)? Might you get some cool trophy
or respect from the public for what you’ve done (10th house)? Do you more clearly
see how your work in life contributes to a community and catalyzes a better future
(11th house)? Do you feel less alienated from the giant mechanism of the universe
by carrying out your small but important purpose (12th house)? Awesome! You did
it! Life is still hard and somewhat scary, but you have made it a tad more bearable
for yourself, and also helped some other people with their own loads in the process!
Keep your chin up, and I’ll see you next time.<br><br>
I love you! Keep going!<br>
—<i>Faychee</i><br><br>
<h3><img src="Carmen_1.png" style="width:100px;height:100px;"></h3>
<a NAME="part6"> </a>
<h2>Guided Meditation For 6:00am Burnout</h2>
<div style='text-align:center'>
<iframe width="50%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/341782232%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-RJs0A&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true"></iframe></div>
<h3><img src="Carmen_1.png" style="width:100px;height:100px;"></h3>
<h4><p>[email protected]</p></h4>
<h4><p>we care :]</p></h4>
<h4><img src="gimme_daps.jpg" style="width:150px;height:150px;"></h4>
</body>
</html>