Effort or Luck?

you can occasionally get a house for that in the smaller towns around here

i suppose eastern montana/western north dakota qualifies as a third world country :cowboy:

thanks for the warm thoughts, but fire wood, heh heh, we have no trees out here [though some have been planted in the last 100 years]

most everything is coal- or gas-driven - the piles of coal only add to the third world effect . . .

 

It doesn't get as cold here as where 'Bluska lives...

I'm on wood heat only, splitting firewood is a daily activity for me.
lotta trees on this side of the state...not as many as there used to be. I can look out my front window and see a clear-cut mountainside from 40-50 years ago.

Hey Bluska, I think it would blow folks minds to realize, even though we live in the same state, just how goddam far away we actually live from each other...whats your estimate?

 

Six months and 7,600 views, god damn.

 

about as far apart as san diego and sacramento

or el paso and san antonio

or london and edinburgh?

i think you're a mile higher - though that might be the jagermeister talkin' . . .

:bobby:

 

naw, 3600 ft or so, jager makes me puke...uke:

 

In keeping with the topic just a little, many friends and neighbors were lucky recently as a tree next to our house had grown so large I decided to prune it heavily. With the combined effort of them and myself we each were able to acquire a huge quantity of firewood to share, including an elderly lady who lives alone nearby. Most people around me cook with wood, and prefer it to gas. In addition, for the last few days my wife and many other people have been helping another family cut and gather rice to market, with a choice of receiving a cash payment daily, or an agreed quantity of rice for each days labor once it has been threshed. The owner of the rice paddies makes out quite well, but then so do all those who provide their labor each year. I actually live in a area of a Socialist republic, ruled by a Communist government, where socialism is practiced in a way that I find acceptable as it is not imposed. It's much more like the America I experienced as a child, where everyone knew everyone around them and cared for one another in a way that was self imposed, not government imposed.

 

I'll bet most men where you live would give thier left nut to come to the "land of opportunity"

 

Where would that be?

 

You know exactly what I'm talking about... :computer:
...smuggy-smuggerton.

I hope you get malaria...:ack2:

ZW :mickey:

 

that's nice, except most people aren't capable of that, are they?

not around here they're not, or at least they're often not aware that they are - correction, a few are, but so many more are not, and they're generally the ones that run the show

digression - private charities, another big one here, chaired by one of the "richest" men in town [it's relative], recently had its books audited - and guess who had looted the thing into six figures and who no one wants to challenge and who is going to walk away without 99% of the town even knowing about it?

perhaps buddhism is playing a part where you are, or whatever cultural norms among the group you live amongst [subtle pun intended]

but the united states is a vastly different sort of place, and that's because of massive immigration, massive population growth, a filling-in of formerly "open" areas [ignoring indians for the sake of different argument], an overwhelming increase in both the number and density of urban areas

one of the tenets of marxism could be loosely interpreted as being that the imbalanced world of the industrial revolution needs to be corrected, and the victims and perpetrators of that imbalance taught cooperation - the end result being a voluntary working for the common good by communities that know [have learned] that it's in their best interest to do so

i don't know if that would work - it's never really been tried

for whatever reason revolutions tend to be petri dishes for sociopathic strongmen . . .

 

:rofl:

what the hell has gotten into you?

 

Well, I am a Dudeist priest in training, so I'm learning to "abide"...
Plus, I just got my first Gong gig, I'll be providing healing, meditative Gong tones for rich, white, Tibetan Buddhists in 'zoo town... if the networking plays out the way I'm hoping, soon I'll be playin' golf with Deepak Chopra at the Green Monkey!

 

these?

http://fwbomissoula.org/

or these?

http://www.fpmt-osel.org/

funny, i was gonna ask you about the gongs one of these days . . .

[shimmer]

 

The gig's for the Tibetan language institute.... They are connected with the "Garden of a thousand Buddhas" in Arlee.

One of my gong recordings made top 50 and another made top 100 in classical/symphonic on this site...
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1035901&content=music


PS; Effort or luck? :beatnik: dunno, but in my experience, effort's nuthin' without luck...

ZW

 

boy, tibetans, buddhas, you got everything out west

[if we had buddhas we'd probably blow 'em up - this is taliban country]

non-gong music of mine [with only occasional shimmer]:

http://alonetone.com/bugman/playlists/approximately-four-hours-of-computer-fan-recordings

will listen to your gongs when i have some download time, i'm on dialup ya know . . .

oh, topic, fuck, effort to record, luck that i thought of it [?]

 

Wow.. what can I say...you must be a fan of John Cage. :beatnik:

ZW

 

in theory yes, in practice no

cage is way too into luck for my purposes

i like lots of trickery, and that takes effort

 

[thouroughly off topic]

zom-

exploring now

very low and surprisingly woody tone

oh wait, there's a hint of shimmer at the end [nice]

it sounds like we are in our own very different ways, trying to achieve similar things

taking one out of one's head

you get the added benefit of performance, which i have decided to abandon

btw, i use bells somewhere in the last hour or so . . .

 

You would be amazed at the richness of the live experience...maybe you'll get to hear it one of these days...

Thats it! I feel the complexity of the gongs harmonic "flowering' tends to confound the seeking mind...:sultan:

Interesting comment.. my performances feel different than when I perform say on guitar or horn. During gong performance, the ego is not triggered. Though it takes skill and concentration,(the Physical movements kinda resemble Thai chi) I don't have any feelings of pride for my gong performances...I just dig the sound! :sunny:

I did listen to one with a bell at the beginning...very nice shimmer
Bells are gongs too, ya know. They are considered atonal and can serve the very same purpose as the gong. :2thumbsup:



ZW :beatnik:

 

balbus is gonna ban us

fortunately i don't really want to talk about music right now

i'm going through a weird phase in my relationship with it and am no longer sure what i think

the fan project was recorded a few years back and i've done very little since and wonder why i can't stop thinking about it

[lots of effort, no luck]

am mildly jealous of the gongs, i had never considered them much before [outside of various east and southeast asian music passions] but they seem like an ideal instrument in many respects

[thinking again - brain! stop!]