Black Crow

“How am I ever gonna know my home when I see it again?”

Joni Mitchell is singing on the radio. It’s two summers ago, and I’m headed south on an uncharted highway. I’m lost but feeling it in my bones that I’ll arrive where I’m supposed to, that I’ll come out of the daze of the cracked pavement and turn just in time.

—

I made it to my eventual destination, and never could find that highway again, the old road that slipped through the hills and low granite cliffs. That romance is gone, but I’m still looking for my home. I don’t recognize it in myself, or in all the people I meet. I take up a hundred hobbies and none of them seem to fit. Bewildered, I’m looking to be filled up, wandering from place to place, entranced by the dance of feeling.

There is nothing to be filled, and nothing to do the filling.

Don’t Be a Tourist, Be a Citizen of the World

By KC Owens, Guest Writer

The best time to travel is while young and not yet burdened by mortgages and families to support. However, being a college student also means that there is often not enough money to travel the way most tourists do. So, how can I travel the world and broaden my horizons without going into debt or without spending all of my tuition funds? It is possible to travel the world during school breaks without spending too much money.

By KC Owens

During my school semesters I always work a part-time job to earn money for airfare and train tickets. It can be difficult to balance work and studies with any sort of leisure time, but I remind myself that while I’m beefing up my work resume, I’m also making money for experiences that will last a lifetime. And the friends and contacts I make in my travels will be invaluable to me later as I’m building my career. I can always catch up on sleep on the plane when I’m on my way.

Before my first overseas excursion, I fell short of my budget goal and had to find another way to fund my trip. After some research, I found I was able to get a student credit card that would world well for me overseas. Using a student card while traveling is a smart way to make sure you have funds when you need them. It also keeps you from having to carry cash with you when traveling, which can be dangerous if you carry only cash. I also found it useful because it automatically exchanges currencies while I’m on the go so I never have to worry about stopping at little kiosks and changing my currency.

When paying off the credit card bill later, don’t forget that you can use your travel experiences to make some money when you get back. I’ve had success selling articles and photographs from my travels. Check with travel magazines, travel sections of newspapers, and airline journals as well as online travel sites.

Aside from transportation costs, there are ways to travel and experience the world for very little money. I have had luck looking for volunteer opportunities where I spend some time working for an organization in exchange for room and board, and there is plenty of free time to explore the city and country I’m visiting. One place to check out is WWOOF. This organization matches up students with farms all over the world where the students will work for a place to stay and food to eat – often some of the freshest and most amazing food you’ll find anywhere. You can get a year’s membership for $40 and gain access to some amazing job opportunities abroad.

Not wanting to work while you’re traveling? Couchsurfing is a great way to look for a place to stay while in another city or country. The site is free and a great way to meet people who live where you are visiting. There are hosts in over 100,000 cities. While staying with your host you’ll get the inside scoop on the best places to shop, the newest clubs, and the places where the locals like to hang out. This is one of the best ways to learn about a place – by staying away from the hotel districts and staying where the residents live. Be sure to contact your host before you show up at their door!

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KC Owens is a college student who loves traveling, college life, fitness and a good survival kit. He enjoys studying different cultures, meeting new people and leaving his footprint somewhere most people only read about.

The Future Now: Are you happy yet?

My readings in old Germanic and Norse lore have revealed to me a peculiar concept of time. It diverges greatly from the Greek/Roman system that the Western world thinks in today. How so? There is no future.

Instead of thinking in Past, Present, Future (as personified by the Fates), Germanic thought breaks down time into Past, Present, and Future-Present, with the Present being the most critical moment of all. The future is predictable yet unknown because it doesn’t exist yet and never truly will. Rather, it will be a different moment of presence — thus “future-present.”

The predictability of the future-present ties directly into Fate or Wyrd, a force woven and embodied by the Norns. It’s easy to divine the future-present: whatever you’re doing now will directly affect and lead to whatever is about to come. The action-reaction principle is key to understanding what is about to manifest and become the present reality. For example, if you are spinning a web of lies and continue to do so, that web will eventually grow to an unsustainable size and collapse in the future-present. Your “future” will contain the misery of that fallout. Guaranteed or your money back.

The Norns

Now don’t take this as a way to explain away life and don’t forget the existence of chaos. Out of chaos all things originally came and we ride the waves of this chaos as our everyday life — the rippling force of creation keeps all things fresh and in a state of constant flux. Do consider the practicality of the future moment, however.  Your fate and the outcome of many of your actions and choices are predictable. Your actions now will tell you what will happen in the next present, the present to be, the future-present. If you dislike what you see, remember that boldness is what the Germanic heroes are known for — like them you can decide not to defy your future but to change it before it manifests by changing your actions, now.

So are you happy yet? If you’re in a suffocating situation, a place of misery, a stagnant state, a world of general melancholy, there is a way out. If you keep on your current path it is likely your future-present will be similar to your present. I decided not to dilly-dally in my writing and finally make a stand, even if it starts with this post. When you take a chance anything is possible.

Stick out your neck, walk that plank, be unafraid of hunger or homelessness. Let the Universe take you in and with every breath, screaming, accept the beautiful gift of life and presence. You can only live now.

Experimental arts – you’re the cast!

I’ve been working through some ideas for my Etsy store lately. Two friends of mine run a shop and sell their art to great success. I’ve had a few nice pieces lying around that I’d love to send to some deserving person. If I can make a few bucks from it to supplement by income (or lack thereof) and get the chance to hone my craft all day, why not? My lazy blogging acts as my writing outlet so I can sustain my relative sanity between projects, so this sounds like a good visual outlet.

Now, to the sweets. I have a few prints that I’m willing to sell (and get re-sized, re-printed, re-edited) based on a customer’s desire. However, I need more than just a few. I’ve got a head full of ideas and it’s driving me insane. So, dear readers, help me get those ideas out. Here’s the plan:

I’m going to open to a “blank page” and put whatever my readers want on it. You get to take the steering wheel of my artistic mind. Choose a form, choose a style. Painting? Collage? Something else? If I’m capable of it, I’ll do it, and the driving force will be my interpretation of your ideas. In the end it’ll still be through a dense, cloudy filter of mine, but I believe that to be the fun of it — ideas melding together and passing through this crazy mind of mine, being spit out on the other end as a masterpiece. We can hope. 

In the comment section below post any criteria or ideas you might have. Subjects, objects, backgrounds, foregrounds, colors. Anything. I’ll stir it all into a great big cauldron and the result will be something beautiful. If it happens to be nice enough I might even do something special with it. This is an experiment in art. Help me and we could really get something going.

I hope to hear from my frequent readers and new browsers and skimmers alike!

Detoxing Down with the Ship?

I’ve been absent for a few days during a move across the state. Now I’m stranded in the disconnected world,the shadowy place off the grid. Connections cut. Digital severance. Oh, all of those words are a bit too harsh; I can walk down the street two minutes and be here at a free 24/7 computer with high-speed web. And I’ve got electricity, mind you. But no longer are the days of opening the laptop screen in eager anticipation for the instantaneous, roaring blast into cyberspace.

Well, it isn’t all that bad. On this topic, I might as well share an exciting idea promoted by a favorite magazine of mine. Digital Detox Week. It’s passed, but it’s a yearly thing. Here’s an explanation from AdBusters:

Turn off that glaring thing!

Did you just have to click on a link? What is it about our technology that is so addictive? As much as we hate to admit it, we are hooked on the digital world. Whether it is texting, gaming, downloading or emailing, so much of our time is spent in the virtual realm.

Luckily, the off button is easy to find. Take a week to cut back on digital stimulation as much as you can. The goal is not to dwell on the pitfalls of our electronic devices but to reflect on ourselves. And who knows, if the magic begins to creep back into your life, the digital detox may never end.

The off button actually isn’t that easy to find on some new, complex smart-phones; I’ve seen people wrangling to turn one off. But point taken, AdBusters. I’m interested in this magic — are you? Perhaps I’ll slowly turn off the rest of my digital, internet/web-loving devices and try it out. The mind I lost years ago to the great pulsing network may just return. For more information, check out the official page of Digital Detox: http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/digitaldetox

Until next time…

Afflicted, Rumblin’, Tumblin’: Let’s do the astral plane!

I’m sick! No, it’s not a fever — it’s a tumblr account! By default I can’t be too serious there (hell, should I ever be serious?), but I’m hooked on the postmodern spectacle of it all — the stream of consciousness through images and itty-bitty captions of text. Here is a link to my corner of the madness, a blog I’d like to somehow wire to this one so that they’d operate in unison. But I’ve got no clue if that’s possible. It’s making me hyperactive and breathless, whirling all over the place with my weird fetishes (oh, not sexual ones).

BLACK FEATHER ASYLUM: Waking Dreams, Cigarettes, and Half a Can of Coffee
(psst, click the raven to check it out)

On a second note, there’s a new musical bug in my ear that I just can’t get out. I’m digging a young, experimental, down tempo drum-and-bass artist named Flying Lotus, and I’m doin’ the astral plane over and over again. I just can’t help myself. Sitting in a quiet room, the lights low, with my surround-sound or my studio headphones on becomes sublime, transcendental. Now I’m sounding like a stifled avant-critic. I could use a hundred honeyed words but the only way to understand his music is to listen to it. So here you go, feed that curiosity! I’ll amp up your ears. Tumble around and do the astral plane with that zodiac shit of yours!

I’ll be keeping up with this place and flooding it full of music, poetry, and every type of art I can wrap my soul around. In the meantime, my Last.fm account is a fairly good musical guide to anybody interested in popular (and not-so-popular) folk music and off-the-wall electronica.

A Farewell to “Thought & Creation”

This old, rusty blog got a new look. I do hope you’ll enjoy it. My presence will continue to build as the days pass and so will the content! Check back as I continue redesigning this place and integrating my entire creative internet presence in this one place. As per tradition, I apologize to anyone who I have suddenly ignored; I’m back and prepared to read you blogs again.

So, henceforth are the waking dreams of a cyberdelic bohemian.

The Terminal Frequency

 

This winter marks my second year as a DJ for WUMF 91.5 FM. Last week we held elections and I was voted into the seat of the Hip-Hop/RPM director, my duties comprising of getting in contact with producers to get ahold of some new, rising hip hop, electronic or dubstep music that we can feature on our station. Because my father worked as a professional DJ, I’ve been exposed to electronic and synthesized music since the early 1990’s when I would run around and lay on the sofa listening to my dad blast the beautiful symphonies synthesized by Tomita. I’m hoping this experience will help me get some dynamic new music onto our station. The more our DJs play and like our music and the more we work with the bands the higher we can get on the college radio charts.

This year I DJ a show called “The Terminal Frequency” at midnight on Fridays until 2AM EST Saturday morning. Talking on the air and putting your favorite music in the queue isn’t nerve wracking whatsoever. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot of fun, especially late at night when everyone is out partying our coming through the student union (where the studio is located). I usually invite special guests into the studio to mix up the show and by 1AM it’s frequently a dance party. Since I play almost strictly electronic music mixed up with some 80’s-90’s hip hop and a little bit of indie, my new job is cut out for me.

I don’t know where this college DJ career is taking me. For now it’s purely for the love of music, dancing, and the novelty/mythos of FM Radio, an overlooked but extremely important aspect of our culture.  Perhaps I’ll follow my father and get into the more serious DJ business later in life, but right now I’m having a blast.

So now it’s time to plug for my show! You can tune into WUMF 91.5 if you live in Western Maine/Franklin County and perhaps as far as Livermore Falls and Manchester. If you’re not in Maine, you can tune into WUMF anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. I maintain our live 24/7 streaming server. If you like what you hear, tell your friends! The Terminal Frequency is on Friday at midnight (Eastern Standard Time) but you can find some awesome shows just about any hour of the day. Check out the links below. If you want to learn more or if you want me to play stuff on our radio station, just comment on this post.

WUMF 91.5 – U. Maine Farmington

Listen Live!

#Facebook Withdrawals: Day 24

As the first month of 2012 edges on, I get closer to a landmark in my daily internet life: nearly one month without any use of or affiliation with the enormous online community and network known as Facebook.

The world of the social network does not seem foreign to me quite yet. I still catch myself sometimes thinking within its terms. For example, I might find something interesting that I previously would have posted to my Facebook profile to share with all of my contacts. But even if those thoughts still exist, they are irrelevant. Not only am I disinterested in sharing such things, I am incapable of doing so. I’m logged off and locked out, for good.

At first the pain and difficulty was obvious. I was experiencing headaches and found myself constantly apprehensive. Generalized anxiety. My mouse searched around for the link to Facebook but could not find it. My settings were wiped and I received nothing. That is still the case, although my anxiety is close to gone. Another feeling has taken its place, though. With no way to participate in the digital community I feel left out, lonely and exiled. So I ask myself: what am I missing? The answer is that I’m not really missing anything. With such a distance from a community that became toxic to me, I don’t have to care about melodramatic issues between friends and all of the other memes flowing through that place. I imagine myself hiking into virgin forest of sorts. Perhaps that metaphor is too strong: I live on rural farms and in the woods, now, rather than the dense metropolis.

So what have I learned in 24 days? I’m not quite sure of that, either. And there is nothing that needs to be said on the subject other than the obvious. For now, I choose to live somewhere else. By doing so the adverts for Facebook stick out everywhere, where as previously they were seamlessly integrated with all forms of media. The television tells me to “‘Like’ us on Facebook” or “Check out our Facebook page” and I recognize this attempt to pull me in and, with pride, say no.

The power to choose is liberating.

The World in Place of Itself

I recently read this book and its excellence deserves a mention here on my blog. I’ll review it in layman’s terms that are easy to understand and not fanciful and gaudy like those pieces you see in the New York Times.

Cover, "The World in Place of Itself" (2007)

There is a certain feel of poetic enlightenment in this 65-page premiere by Bill Rasmovicz. Rasmovicz’s work has previously appeared in publications such as the Mid American Review, Gulf Coast, and The Cafe Review, among others, wraps itself together into a coherent a moving way in The World in Place of Itself. Organized into five chapters, his poems weave a story contemplative of daily life and curiosities among his lucid imagery, such as the recurring progression of an amorphous poem called “Abberations,” found at least once in every section.

More recurring than the instance of abberations, though, are the patterns in his images that give the reader a hint either to the nature of the speaker or the nature of the world. Crows and blackbirds appear in almost every other poem, calling at or watching the speaker, or lingering in a way that’s more familiar and comfortable than looming. No “quoth the raven” to be found here.

Rasmovicz also proves that he has an extensive and incredible vocabulary, but it’s clear that he doesn’t write in such a complex way just for show. I found myself pausing and thinking about his word choice often, but realizing that he was being as playful and introspective as the crows. He uses words in ways that the reader might not readily expect. It is this quality that gives life to everything. The way that his words jump around follows the way that meaning can jump around. To Rasmovicz, an accordian “prophesizes,”  human lungs are “evaporating” and late at night the stars can drool their light. Most profoundly, though, in his winding way he asks us to truly wonder  “What tethers us to consciousness?” This thought can be ultimately profound and thought provoking but a little bit scary, too.

When I began reading it was difficult to stop. There is a very high re-read value for this book and I expect that I’ll be keeping it close for awhile, referencing its poetic wisdom. Now that he’s told me I am my own “dispossessed muse” and commanded “pretend you are more humble than you are. / Pretend you are a god, that words / don’t matter, / that they are everything” I suspect I’ll be writing a whole lot more for awhile to come.

To learn more about the poet Bill Rasmovicz or the fantastic cooperative press  it was published by, visit the following link. Enjoy!

Bill Rasmovicz, The World in Place of Itself, Alice James Books