Connect The Goddamn Dots!
Blogworthy news this week was the rare opportunity to see one of my all time favourite industrial thrash metal bands ‘Ministry’ play live (almost) on my doorstep at the O2 Arena in Bristol. I’ve seen them play live once before in London, so to travel a stone’s throw away was a real treat.
A couple of virtual friends arrived in Bath to pay my wife and I a visit, then we headed off to Bristol to see the band. These days I tend to shove earplugs in before live events like thisas I’ve rather grown fond of being able to hearthe day after a gig. My wife and I had found that the last time we saw Ministry that earplugs also made it easier to listen to the wall of sound emanating from the stage. It has to be said, apart from the dulling of the higher frequency noises, earplugs don’t affect the ability tohear the show in any kind of detrimental way.
Ministry played a blistering and furious one and three quarter hour set covering tracks from the most recent album ‘Relapse’ all the way back to ‘The mind is a terrible thing to taste’. The Bristol crowd seemed a little subdued to begin with but by the halfway mark, the audience energy ramped up into a suitable frenzy of jumping around and slam dancing at the core. I managed to get into the full swing of dancing like a loon but sorely regretted wearing my knee length New Rock boots which were heavy on the feet and made me feel like I’d been nailed to the floor, apart from that, the rest of my body got a good workout!
The highlight of the show came with the encore when the band played a couple of numbers from the album Psalm 69
NWO and Just one Fix, they also played Thieves and the infectiously danceable So What. The later, I went a bit mental dancing to.
Just as quickly as the evening began, it all seemed over in a flash. I’m hoping this won’t be the last time I get to see them live, they put on such an awesome show and I feel like I’m seventeen again when I dance like that.
As we piled out of the arena, I heard my name being called, I turned around to see my old chum from Norwich, Matt D standing behind me. We haven’t seen each other in a couple of years, it was good to see his little bawldy head again.
And then the rest of the week commenced, the usual stint of 5:30 am wake-ups and 21:30 Bed times. The space between is full of clambering around on scaffolds attending to an assortment of stone masonry jobs. I’m pretty much in my element with it all, there’s much to be said for doing work that you enjoy, it seems so much less like work.
On the building I’m working on, I’ve spent a bit of time building a radial wall into an area where there used to be some crunky old fire escape. Here’s what I’ve put in its place.
There’s now a sash window above the stonework, simple pleasures and a contribution to the historical arc of the building.
This week I’ve also been reading up on Hermeticism, following the observation that its symbology occasionally appears in my dreams in an explicit manner. What I mean by explicit, is that the symbology leaves little room for interpretation other than being of itself. I live my life with an enquiring mind, though not religious and not an atheist, my own spiritual perspective is one very personal to my unique field of experience. I won’t deny that there is an overall odd facet of reality that tends to point beyond the otherwise quantifiable world. So far I’m certain that the very nature of the mind is an intrinsic link between the outwardly normal world of predictable experiences and those things that happen on the fringes of ordinary reality. It could be argued that all psychic and preternatural occurrences are nothing more than extensions of how the individual’s brain operates.
Scientifically, it could be argued that universal oddness is nothing more than a mental condition, however, In my experiences, many of these mental conditions have had the unusual quality of containing information particular to future events …which as time has unfolded, have revealed themselves to be highly detailed and specific. I don’t think that my thoughts are a time machine and I’ve put consideration into the notion that I might have subconsciously projected my own ideas into an event to make the proverbial ‘shoe fit’. It really isn’t that, I am merely a witness, and It would appear that some things that I experience, appear to occur by my coincidentally being there to then know that I’ve seen them previously within a dream state.
I have been fortunate in two or three cases where I have discussed my dreams with a person, who has then been with me at a later date to witness particular specific details come true. While they’ve gasped at the transpiration of the uncanny, I’ve been quietly relieved that I’m not just imagining the synchronicity of it all.
Having lived this life for forty years, I don’t feel that my understanding is any greater, only that certain borrowed, bullshit ideas and notions I once held as factual have fallen away. I don’t think anyone can tell it to you, nobody can give it to you. The closest experience I have to life containing an otherly , spiritual* dimension is my nightly excursions into the realm of dreams. I consider myself fortunate that I have artistic ability and a general command of language to express that state of consciousness in an effective way.
So, I’m currently taking an interest in the branches of esoteric thought that is covered by Hermeticism. It could be a dead end, or it could be another piece of my personal jigsaw puzzle. I think that the explicit symbology that I’ve mentioned earlier warrants an investigation of sorts, If I find anything notable, I’ll probably mention it in these pages at some later point.
There does seem to be a rhythm in nature that underlines the principle of “As above so below” I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I was in St.Lucia a few years ago, sitting on a jetty overlooking a small bay. The waters were calm, I noted a large flying insect buzzing along the water’s surface. In a split second, a large fish leapt from beneath the surface and caught the insect in its mouth before plunging back into the sea. Within that same brief moment, a large seabird dived into the same spot of water, only to emerge a second later with the same fish caught in its beak! It flew away to enjoy its piscine meal. I felt so fortunate to have observed that incredible moment of symmetrical predatory dynamism, it has stayed with me ever since.
I am an aspect of the universe observing its own nature, we all are. This I believe is a fact of life and not enough of us are realising the simple truth of that reality. But I don’t think I can tell it to you, if you know that already and you really just know that, then consider yourself a little more enlightened than the average shoegazer…I just couldn’t say that above that realisation, that I know what any of that truly means, but I’m still travelling, still looking, still listening to the inner and the outer. Perhaps with time deeper meaning becomes apparent.