Showing posts with label Room to Dream. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Room to Dream. Show all posts

Friday, January 20, 2023

Slow 30s Room


My first re-watch of the original Twin Peaks since 2016 is digging up all kinds of deep memory and psychological stuff that has 1990/1991 fresh in my head again. I will never be able to overstate my gratitude that I found this show when I did, as a 15/16-year-old stoner; it changed me for all time, for all the better. This morning, while I sat on my porch drinking coffee and reading from Lynch's Room to Dream, I played several of the soundtracks on my turntable - I still have all the CDs, and I put up the $77 back in 2011 for the digital music archive Lynch released through his website - ALL the music from the series. Everything. Then Mondo put out Twin Peaks Season One, FWWM, and the two soundtracks from the 2017 series on vinyl a few years ago, and I grabbed them all. 

So I get around to The Return's score and hit "Slow 30s Room," and immediately remember that, at some time in the not-so-distant past, I found this hour-long loop of the track on youtube. 

Presto - here you go.

Also, Happy Birthday David Lynch!!!




Watch:

Since moving, I have fallen a bit behind on all the podcasts I listen to; my primary podcast time was in LaLaLand traffic, and being that I work from home now and pretty much listen to music all day, there's no equivalent time. So I have to make that time. To accomplish this, I've begun making a concentrated effort to set aside time, usually on Friday afternoons, specifically for podcats. In this way, I've knocked out a few of the Bret Easton Ellis show but not much else.

One podcast I am currently behind on is the brilliant Cinematic Void. Cinematic Void is a monthly cult film screening series in Los Angeles at L.A.'s American Cinematique Theatres, as well as a pretty damn great Podcast with online Cinemadness Screenings that showcase some of the best in Horror and Exploitation Cinema. For some time now, The Void has been hosting January Giallo screenings in L.A., and now it appears they have locations in both Massachuttes and Chicago, as well.        


I don't think I've been to Chicago's Music Box since I saw Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-Tep premiere there back in 2002. I am heading into town next week, but unfortunately, I probably won't make a screening. I wanted to put the word out there, though, for all my Chicago folks. I can vouch for The Void's programming, so next year I will be all over this!




Read:

David Lynch and Kristine McKenna's Room to Dream is currently having an indelible effect on my mornings. This book puts me in such a good mood; it's remarkable. The book has led me back to my recent inclinations to begin meditating again, and this time, I think I'm going to attempt Transcendental Meditation, something I've always been intrigued with but felt self-conscious about.

When I began serious meditation back in my former life, circa 2014, I used an hour-long tone I constructed using fundamental principles of the Binaural Approach - something I'd learned about and messed around with long before it became a hokey product called binaural beats that populated the 'new age' section of music shops. Using a tone generator, I built a multi-layered mediation track in Pro-Tools and would take periods out of every day in totally random places to use it. For one regular spot I favored, I'd walk up to Olympic Blvd, just North of Bundy in L.A. There's a CBTL there, so I'd grab an Americano, then walk down Olympic to a bench-like ledge in front of an office building there, and with my headphones in, I would sit and meditate for 9 minutes. This is directly across from a bloodbath and beyond store and a block or so down from a Trader Joe's, so it's a high-traffic area. I always got an extra charge out of creating a little bit of novelty in the middle of this area where all these L.A. People tended to be so L.A.

Anyway, because I'd meditate anywhere back then, I avoided trying TM because making audible noise just seemed as though I'd be really calling attention to myself, which in turn would make me self-conscious, which would make it impossible for me to actually achieve any kind of meditative state. I no longer have any of those problems, and after things went a bit batty in 2015 (a story for another day), I have been reticent to use that old Pro Tools track. Thus, my impending return to Meditation will require something new. Reading Room to Dream, I think TM might be just the thing. First, though, I want to re-read Lynch's book on the subject, Catching The Big Fish.
 

Hearing the first-hand accounts of the people in Lynch's life talk about the change that TM produced in him when he first began practicing, I think this could be a very good tool to rid myself of some of the residual anger and frustration that I've fallen prey to lately, living with and helping to take care of an elderly person who just epitomizes a lot of the ignorance and blind consumer mindset I have such a hard time with in the human race. 




Playlist:

The Police - Synchronicity
David Bowie - Outside
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Iggy Pop - Every Loser
Iggy Pop - Lust for Life
Final Light - Eponymous
Godflesh - Pure Live
Low Cut Connie - Get Out the Lotion
NIN - Hesitation Marks
David Bowie - The Buddha of Suburbia
U2 - War
G Love & Special Sauce - Yeah, It's That Easy




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.


I love an easy Pull! An emotional breakthrough that will provide a solid foundation for moving forward with a sustainable degree of patience and cohesion.

Monday, January 16, 2023

Seven Days of Bowie: Day 6 - Sue


I had not even heard of this track's extended version or the accompanying 'film' before Saturday night. I love that I'm still discovering things about Bowie now, seven years after his death.




Watch:

Continuing my own personal seven days of Bowie, I watched Francis Whately's documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years on HBO this past Saturday night. Really great film; I've never made any bones about saying that Bowie's last few albums are among my favorites of his (2003's Reality is my favorite, to be exact), so this one was sure to strike a chord with me.

 

The film begins by setting the stage with the Reality Tour, where Bowie first fell ill, and then moves backward and forward through his career to give the proper context to Reality, 2013's The Next Day and finally, his final album, Black Star.
 


Read:

I finally started David Lynch's autobiography Room to Dream this past weekend. About 85 pages in, it's every bit the balm I knew it would be. 


Actually a hybridization of bio/autobio, the book is a collaboration with writer Kristine McKenna. McKenna interviews an enormous cross-section of people from Lynch's life - she's talking to childhood friends in the first few chapters! So one chapter is her speaking to these folks, the next is Lynch reading and reacting, filling out what others have said about him. The technique is genius, in my opinion, and makes for marvelously joyous reading. But then, it's David Lynch - no artist I know of makes me happier.




Playlist:

Deafheaven - New Bermuda
M83 - Oceans Niagara (single)
Ministry - Animositisomina
G Love & Special Sauce - Yeah, It's That Easy
Frank Black - Live at the Utah Hotel Saloon
David Bowie - A Reality Tour
David Bowie - Nothing Has Changed
Lustmord - Hobart
Metallica - Kim 'Em All




Card:

Just a quick one from my trusty Thoth deck:


Off-the-cuff reading - "Applying Will to Wonder in order to learn and grow."

This gels. I'm poised at a position where I've done some deep reflection on my own ins and outs, motivations and hangups, and I find that I have a short attention span - I want to start and finish projects within a very brief time, or they give me anxiety, and I avoid them. The only place this is not true is in writing, although my mileage varies there, as well. Hence, I need to address this, and the one big elephant in my room that I am 100% aware of but avoid like the fucking plague is returning to Meditation. I really think applying my Will to restarting that practice will reap huge benefits, I just have to do it.