from the wonderful Nadia: Secret of Blue Water (episode 16) –


See this flower in the darkness, and know the Joy of Life.
This flower is verily the Force of Life.
Learn awe of the Darkness. Close you eyes and think of the Darkness.
Darkness is the Lord of Unease. Darkness is verily the Kingdom of Death.
Do not forget Darkness when there is light.
Do not forget the flower when there is Darkness.
Do not forget the unmerciful and unfeeling nature
when you look into the Darkness within your hearts.
Be in awe of the Darkness. Close your eyes and think of the Darkness.
We say unto you, rest in unbroken sleep
until the day when we return to our home beyond the stars.
From this day, we become inhabitants of the Darkness. Each of us
offers flowers, and an uneasy peace within our hearts.
Farewell.

For the past few years of my life I have become increasingly aware of how the worlds you can create in a CD can, on a larger scale, be applied to life, the dreams can come true in every sense that you imagine them to be; that there are no limits in life, which is the temple of materialising dreams. Not just the cover art, but my albums in their entirety have become sigils in a personal sense, in that they help structure the world around my head matrix, which is like my will but uplinked from other people’s heads and the life experiences I am able to create for myself there. For example, I belong to the first church of Lenny Kravitz in West Hollywood. My membership there has helped me with this process: trying to download someone else’s headspace – sometimes the most extreme being that of a virtual celeb image – opened up different aspects of consciousness and life potential and interactions beyond my wildest dreams. I try and bring this to fans of my music via the albums, hoping that the listener will tap into the different worlds represented through the two-step flow of cover art observation to it, then opening up in multiple dimensions through the music joining in, in a progression, to create a virtual reality experience, thereby tapping into their own dream/our dream.

– James Ferraro (https://perfectionofperplexion.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/hipnygogic-poop/)

from Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko:

The word he chose to express “fragile” was filled with the intricacies of a continuing process, and with a strength inherent in spider webs woven across paths through sand hills where early in the morning the sun becomes entangled in each filament of web. It took a long time to explain the fragility and intricacy because no word exists alone, and the reason for choosing each word had to be explained with a story about why it must be said this certain way. That was the responsibility that went with being human, old Ku’oosh said, the story behind each word must be told so there could be no mistake in the meaning of what had been said; and this demanded great patience and love.

…

Ceremony

I will tell you something about stories,
[he said]
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
all we have to fight off
illness and death.

You don’t have anything
if you don’t have the stories.

Their evil is mighty
but it can’t stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories
let the stories be confused or forgotten.
They would like that
They would be happy
Because we would be defenseless then.

He rubbed his belly.
I keep them here
[he said]
Here, put your hand on it
See, it is moving.
There is life here for the people.

And in the belly of this story
the rituals and the ceremony
are still growing.

There’s a famous Chinese saying that “the misery of the state leads to the emergence of great poets” (guojia buxing shijia xing)–or more literally, “when the state is unfortunate, poets are fortunate.” These words come from a poem by the Qing dynasty historian Zhao Yi (1727–1814), observing the phenomenon in which classic works of poetry often appear during times of calamity: war, famine, dynastic downfall, and so on.