FEATURE 48 - Matlock Bath Snaps

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With leave time to use up before the end of March, I took a fortnight off. one week was spent writing a Closing Ritual, going to see exhibitions in Cambridge,and visiting London to look round Westminster Abbey ( £15 entry fee!!!!) and a matinee performance of the play by Jez Butterworth called Jerusalem, starring the brilliant actor Mark Rylance.

The second week Jnanasalin and I took a few days break in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire. The Cables B & B where we stayed was simply the best - Highly recommended. We found the Regency Cafe, which was also excellent, with a great range of cakes, and innumerable types of coffee and tea. We ate out every evening, Italian, Thai and Indian, none of them was a dud meal. The Balti Indian Restaurant must however be singled out as probably the finest Indian meal we've had, stylishly and beautifully presented with a great range of flavours. We've eaten in curry houses where everything we ordered looked the same colour and consistency. The Balti was not like that. it was also heaving with people on a Wednesday in mid February.

As you can see from these pictures, we were blessed with good weather.

DIARY 122 - Getting Into Rituals

Looking at the date of my last entry, its been two months since I posted a fresh diary. During that time I've been putting my creative talents to writing/compiling rituals and pujas for work. Just after Christmas I spoke to Keturaja about Right Livelihood at Windhorse needing to catch up with the profound changes in the business. In my opinion, this could only begin with a revived vision for rituals. We've been in our current warehouse for eight years, and we simply imported most of our spiritual practices from the old warehouse, and I'd say never really embraced the potential of the current warehouse as a ritual space. Well, I should have kept my mouth closed if I'd wanted a quiet life.

As it happened other folk were also thinking about how to revive Right Livelihood too. So in February we launched a months intensive practice in the warehouse, for which I conceived an opening and a closing ritual. Both of these were a great success, if the amount of positive feedback about them is anything to go by. This has personally been immensely gratifying. I do get a real creative buzz out of devising them, because they utilise my previous arts performance/theatrical experience and writing skills so well. A happy melding of my talents and interests. It could almost seem like everything has been unconsciously preparing me for this.

My main focus when devising them, has been to build in elements that will actively engage people in the creation of what happens in the ritual. Rituals can all too easily be passive affairs, emptily mouthing the words, whilst ones emotions stay stalled or in a low gear. So I find I'm thinking about others most of the time when I'm writing them, on what the effect or benefits will be for them. It therefore fits into my recent decision to do more things that are for the benefit of others.

I'm learning quite a lot about myself in the process, how I work on them, how to lead them, what works best in a ritual, and what blunts its impact. Simple ideas, simply executed seems to be the watchwords. Complexity easily leads to confusion, and disengagement. So any tendency from me to over egg the pudding by putting too much into them has to be watched. I like to keep elements in a ritual secret, so people don't know what they are going to be asked to do. consequently they have to respond more directly in the moment, and can't so readily slip into auto-pilot.

I've also realised how a kinaesthetic experience of the rituals spacial organisation is vital for me. If I don't get that kinaesthetic experience early enough, ideas stay lodged in my imagination, not concretised internally, buzzing away like very persistent bees. I have to be able to put them down. I get increasingly tense and stressed if this planning stage becomes too protracted. I'm not happy holding the entire weight of responsibility myself, either. I've done three rituals over the last six weeks, and I've been in a semi-anxious state throughout this whole time. Not a good thing for me, at all, not being able to mentally/emotionally put it down. My energy and sleep get depleted. I had a serious intestinal/stomach upset after the closing ritual, and I was right off food for four or five days.

In future, I need to build a more collaborative role, either with one other person, or a group of folk to devise and organise rituals. For the moment I've become 'Mr Ritual' at Windhorse, though I'm sure there are other folk out there capable of organising one, its just a question of exposing them. There's planned a series of events running up to Wesak at the end of May, which I'm sure I'll be involved in. I'm hoping the responsibility will be distributed more broadly. If not I have to have a fall back position, or a better way for me to be the deviser, organiser and leader of rituals. This might mean only doing specific rituals spaced out throughout the year, and not allowing myself to be on a ritual conveyor belt, creating one after another.

FEATURE 47 - Those Sneaky Gays

Here's a 'Sue's Corner' from the very wonderful GLEE. This is brilliantly written stuff,delivered with great sarcastic relish by Jane Lynch, the second most famous Amercian lesbian after Ellen Degeneres - in fact her former partner no less. Tongues firmly in both cheeks guys n gals!!!

FEATURE 46 - Hans Richter

Went to view an excellent exhibition at Kettles Yard called Modern Times - responding to Chaos. The curator Lutz Becker has chosen mostly line work done on paper and covers artists from 20th and 21st Centuries. I was struck by the intesity of their graphic explorations, and the complete absence of any definite perspective visually or culturally. In fact this era could be called 'The complete loss of perspective'. The new fieldwork that this opened up for art to explore was liberating at the time. I get a sense that its well exhausted now, and all we are left with is the feeling of not knowing what we are looking at, or looking for, any more. The multiplicity of ways of seeing is confusing, if not overwhelming. We've now moved into the era of 'Too much Choice.'

My favorite bits were the early film experiments of Hans Richter. Crudely executed by modern day standards, but experimenting with what the new art form film could do in visually abstract ways, once robbed of the need to tell a story.

FEATURE 45 - Turning Japanese

Though this is fun,it also has a sense of unease to it. What exactly is Murakami implying by having Kursten Dunst prancing around like a figure from a Manga comic singing the old Vapors song 'Turning Japanese'? I strongly suspect that any answers are probably not going to be all that helpful.

FEATURE 44 - Brian Eno - Nerve Net

Here's a really terrific video collaboration with Eno for the track Ali Click from his 90's album Nerve Net. It's a visually sumptuous feast, composed of pattern, rhythm, that has a stimulating hypnotic power welding together with real skill, of both sight and sound.

DIARY 121 - Cultural Exchanges

Last weekend on January 17th, was Jnanasalin & I's 5th Anniversary since we began our a relationship. We celebrated by going to London for the day. First, we went to shop. Once they opened that is, what's with London shops only opening from midday on Sunday? So we cruised the shop windows disconsolately for a while. In Carnaby Street, we bought each other shirts in a mod clothing shop called Lambretta, me tartan, he pale blue. Whilst in the Ben Sherman Sale, I saw a red & white striped shirt, that I fell in love with instantly. Oh, the delight of impulse purchasing, that we regret at leisure. Basically, I mustn't put on weight or it will quickly become an extremely nice, but unworn adornment. I also bought JS a black perspex 'moustache' ring he wanted (what's that? You may well ask. Its pictured on the top right ) from Tatty Divine. Once we located where it was on Monmouth St, how easy is it to miss a bright vicious pink shop front, eh! JS purchased the new CD from Vampire Weekend for me, which is a great addictive treat.

Second, the food of life -to eat muffins and drink coffee. It was also surprising, to us none metropolitans at least, how few restaurants/cafes were open in SoHo on Sunday. Eventually we found a small independently run Japanese noodle place called Taro, which was actually rather fine. It being one of the few places open, it quickly got full to bursting. There seems to be an outbreak of gimmicky takeaways, called things like:- Noodle Oodle, Siam I am, Wok in a Box or Ping Pong, whose tag line is 'little steamed parcels of deliciousness' though this could just as easily evoke associations with gay steam rooms, rather than Dim Sum.

Third, the cultural consumption - the Pop Life exhibition at Tate Modern, on its last day. It took some later Warhol's as its starting point for exploring the 'Pop' sensibility in Art since then. It took in on route, Tracy Emin, Damian Hurst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami. The ephemeral nature of popular culture, and transitory celebrity were two strong recurring themes. Much of it seemed to rehash or put a different twist into Warhol's ideas, or merely provoking offense because that's what modern artists have to do. So some of it, by Jeff Koons and Cosi fan tutti, explored the porn and celebrity sensibilities simultaneously. Though neither was that enlightening about it. The most honest, and blatant, was a video by an artist who's name I forget, who arranged for a famous gallery owner to have sex with her, and covertly filmed them in action for over an hour! A difficult metaphor to watch, but the idea of it expertly presents success or celebrity as a type of prostitution.

Some of them, I'm thinking Murakami here, seem to revel in, and celebrate popular culture, highlighting the tackiness of its delights. This seemed a cleaner, more genuine approach, than that of ironic exploitation with all its attendant accusations of charlatanism. From a Buddhist perspective, the ephemeral in popular culture, driven by novelty, fad and fashion, is primarily about impermanence and craving for momentary pleasures. That our enthusiasms and interests come and go, so fleetingly, can, with awareness, be instructive.

What we give artistic value to is constructed around a whole nexus of personal and cultural value judgements. Art, whether High or Low, Elitist or Commercial, Non-utilitarian or utilitarian, is affected by these aesthetic assumptions. Both are prone to novelty, the shock or addiction of the new, the fleeting innovations of the present moment, the ideas of profit and progress. The Pepsi can is a product of the commercial imagination, using aesthetics to attract you to buy it,to consume then dispose of it. Once its drunk it has no further value, it becomes trash. Yet Art, is equally a product to be bought and sold, it has no intrinsic worth, until, that is, someone takes it off the wall and buys it. Once Charles Saatchi buys an artist's work, its automatically accredited some artistic value, and a market for their work emerges that wasn't there before. To buyers in the world Art Market, it can be as much, if not more, about a good investment, than simply appreciating an artists work. Art, and artistic value, creates an illusion of permanence. In the end all these distinctions can seem a chimera, bogus ideas, that we either buy into and propagate or not. Whether we purchase a painting or a can of Pepsi, we are endorsing the value it has been given, we are buying into a way of viewing it, and placing a value on it.

Murakami, by making miniature versions of Pepsi cans, packets of Doritos, or cupcakes in gold, and encrusting them with diamonds, is simultaneously highlighting what we readily overlook, the aesthetics of disposable products and all pervasive recognition of brands, whilst also undercutting the art cultural biases and personal prejudices that support them. Something traditionally with little or no artistic value, by being made out of valuable materials by 'an artist' suddenly gains financial worth. This creates confusion within our prejudicial perceptions. How should we now view this? This is fascinating territory to ponder on. Value and worth, artistic or otherwise, as a co-conditioned phenomena.

FEATURE 43 - Hurts

My second favorite tune of 2010 Hurts -Wonderful Life. Very much in the Pet Shop Boys mode of electronic twosomes, bland faced static men shot in stylish black and white, one singing, whilst the other twiddles and looks disinterested, sing profundities to encourage a woman not to kill herself over love ( we presume ). Though I sniff something that's a tad gay about them, the visuals are so perfected and knowing. They toured as support to Gary Numan recently, and the lead singer has captured Gary's knowing tongue emerging from the side of his mouth routine,with a flick of the head away from the mike, down to a T. For me it's the brokenness of the rhythm that makes this song special, plus the mental dancer adjusting her skirt hem is a hoot.

FEATURE 42 - The XX's

Their name kept coming up in all the 'Best of's' for 2009. So I searched them out on Spotify, and since then they've become a permanent fixture on my play list, my first musical addiction and resplendent joy of 2010. They wear their influences proudly on their sleeves, but make something uniquely all their own of them. Vocally reminiscent of early Tracy Thorn, their music evokes the spirit of that short lived band from the mid-eighties Young Marble Giants (look out their one and only album Colossal Youth). Unlike the YMG whose music had a fragility that was forever on the edge of shattering, the XX's seem more confidently grounded in their melancholy muse. Something fresh and innovative emerges from their use of instrumental sparseness, that is more than just imitative. Their sound has a simple unpretentious clarity to it that is gentle on the ears, without becoming depressive or sentimental. This doesn't mean its unadventurous either, they push the possibilities of their soundscape all the time. Here they're well served by the production, which features the best use of echo on a guitar in years.

Like the YMG, it may be they've emerged too perfectly formed, There could becomes no way of moving the sound forward without the band splitting due to 'musical differences'. One of the band has already parted company, so lets see. I can't see them ever becoming mega-big, their sound is too low key,and intimate. It lacks the huge ego, and showy brashness often required to be hugely popular. But they do already have a substantial cult following, and some effusive critical acclaim as a result. Enjoy them whilst their star is still small polished and shiny. The critical knives will no doubt be out soon enough.

Their videos are quite minimal and cool too.

FEATURE 41 - The Last of Last Years Best

I can't help but post a few highlights of the last year. so here they are.

LADY GAGA

She's not particularly original either as a singer or as a song writer, but what she does is good for what it is. Yet to focus solely on this profoundly misses the point and appeal of La Gaga. If you watch her early videos you can see lower budgets highlight her musical weaknesses. She comes across as a rather low rent Madonna. From the 'mini opera' video for'Paparazzi' onwards, with larger amounts of revenue behind her, her visual imagination seems to have just gone berserk. This reached new heights with the video for 'Bad Romance' which is simply the most gloriously barking video yet made. There are also real moments of jaw dropping beauty in it, particularly when she's encircled with floating jewels, or the intersecting circles of metal. If she can top this in future remains to be seen. I personally have not tired of seeing this one yet. The 'Bath Haus of Gaga' like the high fashion houses she's aping and obviously loves, is all about style as content. Lady Gaga's visual richness bellows loudly who she is, much more than her musical production, tunes or song lyrics ever will. She dresses to kill.

RU PAUL'S DRAG RACE

In the same sort of territory as La Gaga, i.e. dress outrageously over the top, and have a huge gay following. This Channel 4 import from America became addictive viewing for Jnanasalin and myself. Sometimes these drag queens behave just simply appallingly towards each other, and at other times there is something very touching about how supportive they are towards their fellow contestants. For me Nina Flowers was always the winner, even though it was Bebe who actually won. So here is her original audition video for the show.

NORAH VINCENT - Self Made Man

I bought this cheap (£3) in Fopp, and what a peach it is. Simply the best analysis of the masculine predicament I've read, by a man or a woman. Any stereotypically 'feminist' responses are largely absent here,or come under renewed scrutiny in the face of her experience being male. Norah Vincent possess a high degree of empathic observation and real sympathy for her fellow human kind. So she attempts to really see,hear and bear witness to how men cope with being the so called 'dominant gender'. Dressing as a man allows her to go places and experience things no woman would normally hear or know about in close detail. There were a number of real 'Yes!!!' moments when she really nails something very clearly.

FLORENCE & THE MACHINE

Much hyped, but she did live up to it, Florence Welch's album 'Lungs' dominated my CD player for several weeks. Bold, brash and broad in its emotional range and the styles it takes on and conquers, it is such a confident debut it seems hard to envisage how she can better it. She is currently in great danger of overexposure, and in some of her recent appearances on TV her singing has sounded sloppy and careless, which she does not on this early BBC session.

OUTNUMBERED

By far the best new comedy on the BBC for quite a while. The little girl Ramona Marquez won the best comedy newcomer in the Comedy Awards for 2009, which was well earned. Her semi -improvised responses are often very witty, yet unknowing, and hence frequently spot on.

KARL LAGERFELD

Yet another bonkers fashionista, who occasionally says something which cuts right to the nub and makes you think. Early on in 2009 he became a new found heroe of mine, if only because this man is in his seventies, and there's not a knitted cardigan in sight. This photo also proves he's not without a self-deprecating sense of humour either.

TIME TEAM

Has become a bit addictive for me this year, there's hardly a week goes by without a visit to a back episode of this long running archeological investigation programme. I just love Phil, Tony, Mick, Helen and the small but perfectly formed,but forever in the background Henry (the Hunk).

CORMAC MCCARTHY - The Road

This week the film version of this book has just been released. The reviewers have remarked on how bleak it is, but that the film softens some of the books real grim power. From what I've read of his other writing, which isn't admittedly much, 'The Road' is different in style, with a much stronger narrative, evenness of authorial tone, and no gross out blood strewn grotesques. But my god it is unremittingly desolate none the less. Powerful stuff.

THE KNIFE & FEVER RAY

Late entries into my years favorites, The Knife - Olof Dreijer & Karin Dreijer Andresson, and Fever Ray - Karin Dreijer Andresson on her own. Both these electro outfits have a distinct air of bleak beauty, arty, but not without a slightly off kilter sense of humour. None of the people singing in these videos is either The Knife or Fever Ray, for instance. I find them both sometimes deeply impressive and moving.

BRIGHTON

Before Jnanasalin became Jnanasalin, before he left for the Ordination Course, we had a long weekend together in Brighton. These were five really delightful days, where we hung out together, shopped, went to cafes, relaxed, viewed the Brighton Pavilion which was amazing, ate out in superb vegetarian restaurants, saw the film 'The Watchman' which slightly freaked me out, and saw a National Theatre touring production of 'Gethsemane' by David Hare, which both

of us were deeply impressed with. We stayed in a great B&B, the weather for early April was bright and clear. Definitely a major highlight.

AND IN CONCLUSION.......

THE ESSENTIAL SANGHARAKSHITA

An excellent introduction to this deeply complex but impressive man's writing about the Dharma. He's not always easy to find acessible, but this compendium is.

KAORU NONOMURA - Eat, Sleep,Sit.

I always wondered what it would be like living in a Soto Zen Monastery, let alone the one that Dogen founded. But Nonomura does so for a year, and what an eye opener it is.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND - COUSINS

It was available in 2009 on YouTube almost two months before its actual release. The new album is due out on Monday 11th January. So strictly speaking its a favorite from 2010, but I'll put it in here because I so love this track.

DIARY 120 - Back to Basics ( Part Two )

Bodies eh! who'd chose to have one? Perhaps, if you could be a being composed of ether, or of the empty space between trees, we'd feel less tortured or dissatisfied by our experience. Though maybe its somewhat inevitable for any form of sentience. Human suffering is, it seems, so predominantly tied up with being embodied in this physical bodily form. Though its not just about our body falling ill of ailing, but also our minds falling ill or ailing, or our sense of self, our identity, falling ill and ailing, that will cause us to suffer. All of these different aspects struggle with each other, like cats inside this bag of perishable flesh. All of them so tightly bound up with each other that they appear inseparable from this complete physical entity we call our body. Everything about how we inhabit this body is incestuous.

So, what's brought this line of thought on? Well, after all the careful preparation and maintaining over the last ten months of those core back exercises, so I could do warehouse work, something on a psycho-physical level kicked back, and kicked my back hard this week. I began the week physically OK-ish, though in retrospect I've realised my body has been issuing severe weather warnings for a

bout a month, that things were not entirely hunky dory. It was after doing those core back exercises on Monday evening that something felt not quite right. The next morning it was about the same, only mildly uncomfortable, but I know this sort of thing can quickly come and go, so I went to work as usual.

It was a day when I was working in the Warehouse Kitchen, preparing food in the morning, washing and cleaning up in the afternoon. As the work progressed I found I needed to sit down with greater frequency than usual. By the end of day both my left hip and back felt raw, inflamed and I could feel the roughness of my bones as they moved. It was painful whether I was standing, sitting, or cycling. When I went to bed every move I made induced a sharp intake of breath. By Wednesday morning my entire back muscles had spasmed and clenched. I took a day off work,then two, then three, though things were slowly improving I went to see a doctor anyway, and he signed me off for a further 7 days.

On the mental and spiritual plain I'm OK, its just the body I'm carting around with me that's become troublesome. This disparity in experience between my body, my mind and my sense of myself is what has struck me the most. It really feels like there are two Me's, my awareness of my body, and my awareness of self-consciousness - of this body and of this other me watching and observing it. The back pain, has also highlighted the gap between this bodily discomfort and my lack of control over it. How little mastery I have, I feel like a king who has been usurped by his serfs. No longer am I the ruler of my own body, my body is now ruling me. Any willpower I exert is easily undermined by my bodies rebellion, as we live and grow old, simultaneously together and yet apart. We're uneasy bedfellows, like passionate lovers who've fallen out of love with each other, but continue living in the same house and sharing the same bed. There is no trial separation, no divorce is possible, other than by death, so they just have to learn to live with each other. Though its my body that has the upper hand, not I, whoever that I is.

I can feel at times a bit of a fraud, because I do feel fine in myself. I don't feel ill, yet physically I've been walking around like a decrepit old man. It's as though a salutary spell has been cast upon me as a punishment, in order that I experience what my body will be like as I move inexorable towards old age, sickness and death. That spell will not be broken merely by my determination or wishing for it to do so. I'm no longer the Manager of my body, but the deputy Supervisor, who can only monitor my activities, or contain them so they don't make matters worse. As long as I stay within limited parameters of movement i.e sit down a lot, move carefully when I walk, and don't make abrupt changes in posture, it can seem as if all is mended, healed and ultimately vanished. Stepping outside these restrictions is the only way to test how illusory, or not, that feeling is.

On one day, carrying a tray of crockery down stairs nearly kills my back, a few days later it is almost fine. Standing up whilst making dinner for the Community on Friday, needed to be peppered with rest spots, to sit down when preparing vegetables, and I still felt physically jiggered by the end of it. Walking out in the snow for the first time on the way to the Doctors Surgery, I slipped ever so slightly, and my whole back went into an alarmed, red alert spasm. I have so much more sympathy for the fears of the elderly,particularly in treacherous wintry conditions. Loss of independence is so intimately linked with the decay and resulting fragility of our bodies. When control over our own body grows more limited, the potential for suffering as a result of that, is ever present.

So, much as I'm eager for my back to return to business as usual, I know I'm going to have play it - gently does it. Resist mentally thinking I'm over it ( it ain't over till its over ) at least not before my body says so - 'yes you are now over it, you may now proceed, but remember whose really in charge!'

FEATURE 40 - Fever Ray

After the success of their third album 'Silent Shout', The Knife have taken time out, presumably to take a creative break from each other. Though they've recently been commissioned to write an opera. What Olof Dreijer has been individually doing we know not, but his sister Karin Dreijer Andersson, newly married, gave birth, and has followed that major life event with this solo project - Fever Ray. This impressive debut album bears some of the hallmarks of what Karin Dreijer Andersson brought to 'The Knife', an introspective, and distinctly North European electronic ambiance. Though there is something altogether more earthly and pagan going on here, as if you're hearing a shaman's incantations carried to you by an arctic wind, barely visible in the bleak Swedish half light. Quite what the subjects of the songs are, is not always lyrically clear, it works more on the level of a sequence of moods, these collectively explore a musical landscape that is isolated, with an all pervading sense of an individual alone with her personal demons, internal and external.

Dreijer distorts her voice to create a mood of underlying menace, her altered vocal tone bringing an edginess to it. You can rarely sit easily with a song, never mindlessly hum along. She appears to be using the sense of gender ambiguity this creates ( is this voice masculine or feminine? ) in a similar manner to the performance artist Laurie Anderson. In fact Anderson is one of Fever Ray's nearest musical antecedents, particularly on tracks like, Concrete Walls and Coconut. Search out Anderson's 'United States' mega performance piece from the eighties (its available on Spotify) and hear for yourself. The Knife, have often crossed over into what is performance art territory, with some distinctly Lynchian aspects appearing in the videos to their songs. Fever Ray,however, have an even more accentuated sombre tone, the humour is darker, it moves from the mundane to the sublime within the space of a sentence. As on the track 'Seven', where Dreijer sings:-

'I leave home at seven. Under a heavy sky, I ride my bike up, I ride my bike down.' - 'Accompany me by the kitchen sink. We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets, illness, and we dream about heaven.'

Anderson and Dreijer are somewhat kindred, both exploring the different ways we experience alienation within modern urban life. For all our improved means of communication and hi-tec gadgetry, our closeness becoming more attenuated, our remoteness from each other to only grow worse. On 'Concrete Walls', even becoming a mother seems to have isolated Dreijer, abandoned to the demands of her child, with whom she cannot yet converse, her own young child is not always the sort of stimulation she seeks or needs:-

'I live between concrete walls. when I took her up she was so warm. I live between concrete walls. In my arms she was so warm. Eyes are open and mouth cries. Haven't slept since summer. Oh how I try. I leave the TV on, and the radio.'

But then we are contrary beings, we want individual autonomy, yet wonder why we feel lonely. The more we spend our lives on our own, the harder it becomes to accommodate other people into it. The crowds in the streets, become a nightmare, a threat, we wish everyone would just go away, so we can remain untroubled by the presence of others. Dreijer's lyrics hint at an underlying fear lurking in the existential core of this:-

'Whispering. morning keep the streets empty for me. Uncover our heads and reveal our souls. We were hungry before we were born.'

We are starving, we crave food, yet refuse to eat what's offered to us. It's as though a subtle fever, slowly overtaking us, has suppressed our appetite for everything that provides human sustenance. Fever Ray explores this alienated split in human nature, it can be quite a moving experience to listen to. It displays a maturity and breadth very few artists are able, or would dare, to attempt on their first outing.

'This will never end cause I want more. More give me more give me more.'

FEATURE 38 - The Knife

You know when Amazon 'recommends for you,' well, just occasionally they prove to be correct and highlight something which is right up your street. Hence how I stumble across The Knife, a Swedish electro combo. Not your common or garden Swedish electro combo, but a decidedly quirky and unique one. Part Bjork, part Native Hipsters, part something altogether more dark or brooding, more Munch than Munchausen. If John Peel were alive today, I feel sure he'd be a fan. Of all my great 'enthusiasms' distinctive popular music remains an enduring one. This duo are terrific.

These three videos go with tracks from their most recent album from 2006 - Silent Shout - they show that their colourful, unnerving streak extends into their visual world too - the tracks are - Like a Pen - Marble House - We Share our Mother's Health.

DIARY 119 - The path through the wood

This week I've felt overwhelmed, as if dense undergrowth and knotted branch spirits of an old folk wood have sprung up around me. My hip and back have been acting up more than usual, I guess largely psycho-physical in origin. A combination of physical, mental and spiritual dukkha, has, not unsurprisingly, dragged my spirits down into the leaf mold of my psyche. It made more acute a general dullness that's been hanging around my experience since Jnanasalins's return from Ghuyaloka, and I began working in the Warehouse at the end of July. There have been moments when a clearing has opened up in the wood, or peaks have thrust themselves out like mountain cordillera to bask in the high altitude sunlight. But these were brief periods and unsustained.

Whilst Jnanasalin was away getting ordained I was doing a less physically taxing job, it was clear to me what I wanted to achieve in those four months; to focus on meditation practice; painting my ordination gifts; and getting physically fitter in preparation for working in the warehouse. I planned ahead, and used my time well. I had some sense of renewed purpose as an Order Member too, to get myself back up to speed. I didn't want to feel myself as a spiritually laggard anymore.

Since July, I've not found it easy maintaining that momentum, its been hard work. I began experiencing periods of exhaustion, and persistent low level weariness early on through working in the warehouse. This was accompanied by lethargy blocking any creative work at home. This reluctance has been frustrating, but five months down the line its still been hanging around. My practice has consisted in letting go of any expectations I have of myself, being more humble, and cliche though it is, staying more in the moment and going with the day to day flow. This has created a moderate level of contentment, though it feels flimsy and incomplete, its just the letter, not quite the living spirit of it. Something has been shifting around ever since, like a theater set being rearranged for the next act, moved invisibly by black clad stage hands.

Previously the discontent I've experienced, arose out of desires for creative fulfillment being in some way thwarted. As my future work pattern looks like being largely unchanged in 2010, so this shift in my attitude has not only to continue, but go deeper. To further relax the tight grasp of this underlying aspirational archetype - to be creatively fulfilled. But if I'm not to be this type of person then who exactly was I to be - was being a simple warehouse worker ever going to be enough?

My osteopath, of all people, once said of me, that he imagined me as being like a specialist shop filled with highly precious objects carefully arranged in it, where only one thing had to be out of place for the whole presentation to be ruined. I'm afraid this seems very true of me. If only one thing appears flawed in my life, I'm unable to feel grateful or appreciative for anything else that's going well, or is good. I am beginning to see that the problem is not what I'm holding onto, but how I'm holding onto it - the preciousness. Too much depends on that long sought for fulfillment for it to be healthy.

Keturaja reminded me on Tuesday, that I'm a person of great enthusiasms. This has been so since I was a child. What has been worthy of remark about the last few months has been the lack of these enthusiasms. It's slowly becoming clearer that I can't motivate myself purely by doing things that are solely for my own benefit. I can't paint and write just for me, I just don't see the point of that anymore. The dilemma for me this week has centred around how I engage with my enthusiasms without them becoming precious self-intoxicating obsessions, ones I must do to the exclusion of everything else, that inevitable become embroiled in unrealistic and thwarted desires to achieve an ultimate fulfillment through them. I don't want to get caught up in that self-orientated tangle anymore.

The way forward, at present, seems encapsulated in the Tibetan aphorism 'if you can't do something for yourself, then do something for others'. To shift my focus away from egregious self-fulfillment, to what will benefit others. If I paint, to do so as a gift to an individual, Windhorse or Buddhist Centre. I had no problem painting seed syllable designs for Maitrigosha and Jnanasalin, it only foundered once I was doing one for myself. Quite how I move my writing in this direction, I need to give further thought too - perhaps preparing talks to actually give? I mentioned previously, after the National Order Weekend in early November, that I wanted to focus my dharma practice more in this 'other regarding' direction, I just need to settle on how I want to do this. This would appear to be where the path through the wood is currently leading me.