New category for posts that concur with the many film-doodles I do.
Film Doodling by Hudely Flipside
It is the creative endeavor that is real and mine to share.
I love my garden and am so close to the ways of nature. Yet as a human being I endure the other man-made things. It is a life I was born to. Yet I think we can learn the power of nature by listening and hoping for the best to inspire us to be better human beings.
I think there is a relationship with how nature is and us in general. Our feelings and emotions.
Yet often even though nature speaks to us we don’t listen.
As I am a listener and follow the ways of ancient traditions I like to share.
Creatively embracing and helping for a better world.
Wild ways, music and nature are how I endure and so it goes.
The Bumblebee Performs Live on Purple Anarchy Flowers.
Yippee-ki-yay!
How do I balance out the conflicts in life? China and the USA Military now near Alaska confronting each other, our own x- USA president indicted repeatedly. Then there is an answer…
Nature is consistent like the Bumblebee who visits the same time every year. I hold in my dislike of big punk festivals galore and settle into the world around me.
Up front and personal. A pint of beer at the local pub and a delicious bowl of Grits.
Creativity and my spirituality. What is the difference between discernment, insight, instinct and fantasy or the big one active imagination. I use all of these, but the best is active imagination.
“An active imagination when a person engages with the ideas in their imagination, using it as a mental strategy to communicate with the subconscious mind. In Jungian psychology, it is a method for bridging the conscious and unconscious minds.
Instead of being linked to the Jungian process, the word “active imagination” in modern psychology is most frequently used to describe a propensity to have a very creative and present imagination. By examining the most evident manifestations of the unconscious mind—dreams—a person can learn how to execute this method on themselves.
It is thought to be a crucial aid in the process of individuation. It employs creative imagination as an organ for “perceiving outside your mental boxes.” ~ Analytical psychology
And for me nature always knows when I am doing it… lovely.
The song I created for this is personal but it is from my fantasy and our fantasy is a must if we wonder how the world could be destroyed over computer chips.
We endure the minds of weapons and war!
A catchy tune.
Taiwan produces over 60% of the world’s semiconductors and over 90% of the most advanced ones.
In the Mediterranean world Dove was related to mother goddess Astarte. Sexual love and fertility. Goddess Aphrodite – love, and Eirene – Peace.
In fact, pigeons live on every continent except Antarctica. However, seeing a white pigeon is rare even as only 1 % are all white. The White Albino Pigeon has special symbolic meaning for people all around the world.
July 30/23 Waxing Gibbous Full Moon Tomorrow.
Tonight about 7:30 PM I went out for a short swim to cool off. The sun was hot and up closer to the west of the horizon.
I saw a new bird high on the telephone wire. One I had not viewed before. The bird was intensely white and had a soft aura about it. I thought it was larger than a dove or pigeon. Yet with a small, charming head and beak.
Slowly this bird came closer and closer as my body was covered in water up to my head. A few times this bird flew over me and around me. It landed on the pool side table’s umbrella. Then flew down on the ground across the pool from me.
Walking around the pool closer to me. It pulled its head down to take a drink of water from the small Jacuzzi. I was standing very calmly in the water and saw that this bird had very black eyes and moved its head round as eyes were blinking. Seemed to me a kind of Morse Code. Staring at me for long moments of time.
Looking this way and that way expecting movement from any variable possible before flight if necessary. Here in the same parallel line, I found a praying mantis exoskeleton floating on the tip of the water.
We spent a good 30 minutes this way and the white bird flew up on a telephone line. I watched and waited until the white albino peace bird was out of sight from my view. An amazing experience, incredibly special and very overwhelming.
I’ve lived here 24 years, and this is the first time this beautiful creature, with golden leg bracelets, ever visited me. A focused bird, unafraid and deliberate. Not showing interest in the ravens’ food or songbirds’ water bath.
“Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung believed in our unconscious communicating with our conscious through symbols. Birds play a huge part in this archetypal symbolism as they represent the space of air, and this is a bridge between the human and spirit world.”
– general in-depth perception… open to interpretation!
The White Birds
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea! We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky, Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew dabbled, the lily and rose; Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam:
I and you! I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more; Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
-WB Yeats
The “Danaan Shore” refers to Tier-nan-Oge (Gaelic), an imaginary land where mortals live as long as do fairies. Danu was the queen of the fairies that inhabited this land. Yeats interpreted Gonne’s wish to become a seagull as a wish for freedom from sorrow and time.
Republished by his Great Grand-daughter Holly Duval Cornell / Hudley Flipside.
The Seminary of Praying Mantis Publishing
Click on Image to Order
Wheal Gramper: Known as ‘wheals’ (Cornish for work/working) the instantly recognizable engine houses of the tin and copper mines sit near mine shafts, and there are over 200 of them dotted around the UNESCO Cornish Mining World Heritage Site
* I placed as a Finalist in the April 2023 Competition. So much art… yet the renegotiation is satisfying. Below is the inspiration. A quote from a book.
“One day, having noticed my covetous gaze, he presented me with a tiny golden pendant of my own-two bees entwined together around a tiny honeycomb. It glistened in the sun light, so rich and burnished that I thought the minute drop of honey would melt and slide away in the heat.”
Daedalus gives Ariadne a gift. ~ Ariadne Page 7, by Jennifer Saint.
“Entries from many countries across the world: South Korea, Hong Kong, Ukraine, USA, Taiwan, Austria, Italy, Canada, Poland, Singapore, South Africa and Portugal. Enjoy the show and thank you for expressing an interest in our competition.”
I have often been afraid or uneasy or did not believe in competition. The means of doing anything is an obligation I took for myself and the world a long time ago. Acknowledgement is a new feeling for me, and I like it.
What really turns me on here is that so many countries unite through sharing their art in a competition without hate or dismay. That the world can join here in peace and beauty and reflection.
This is so good. That is why I love my WordPress site. It lets individuals communicate all around the world. Communication is the key to peace and though we can get angry, expression is always best. Creative expression is our superior and the best of our collective human nature.
It says pencil in the competition. It is pencil, sharpie pen ink and watercolor.
In Greek religion, the staff was carried by the votaries of Dionysus. Euripides wrote that honey dripped from the thyrsos staves that the Bacchic maenads carried. The thyrsus was a sacred instrument at religious rituals and fêtes.
Light and shadow magic comes to visit at different times in life.
The wind was strong and pushed over my angel solar light. I just got home from shopping as I was looking up at Jupiter and the waxing moon.
I have been changing my routines a bit. I go shopping at dusk now and take my showers in the morning or in the middle of the day.
Taking morning walks is something different too.
When I saw the angel at an angle, I ran to fix it when I noticed the shadow playing on the wall behind it.
I said aloud, “A Ghost Mantis holding a Thyrsus.”
I will let the angel be.
I took a picture and played with the image on Adobe Photo Express.
On Fallbrook and Victory in the San Fernando Valley
Punk Rock Historian and Professional Consultant
Hudley Flipside
Life is so contrary and beginning and ending all the time. The stars seem stable, as they dance their astrological dance. The moon and sun and seasons are very dependable but not the storms or the opposite whispers of joy and enlightenment we may find. This earth will always be a contrary place sweetened with continuity and music.
Yesterday before the rain, Sara and oldest son walked over from their apartment. They are counting their steps. Later they left and we decided to join them halfway on their journey home. A longer walk than my usual mile per day.
It was easy all the way until we said goodbye and then we walked slowly onward, and we headed home, husband, youngest son, and I.
Would we get something to eat?
“No, it is past 6 PM and I don’t like eating much after then.”
That is what they get for always asking what MAMA wants.
On the way with Sara and oldest son I noticed a broken book on the ground. The pages danced below our feet for a long while.
I picked up three of the pages as a focused random moment of finding something wandering and enlightening me from the dirty street of trash. On this dark cold evening of winter.
A man was covered with such trash in the middle of the sidewalk next to the shopping mall and restaurants. He was pretending to sleep as cars raced by and we walked around him.
I sadly declared.
“He is going to get mighty wet when the rain hits?”
Husband quickly responded,
“He is most likely waiting for the shopping mall to close down. I am sure he has a safe place there.”
My feet got sore, and my back ached and howled as we headed home.
Now today I read the book pages tossed on the ground like leaves in a storm.
One thing that stood out were the lyrics for a song.
The pages are filled with words about music, slavery, finding a voice and hope. Someone was looking for their roots, history, and family.
I thought about my own family history. I think this is a push to get going with my own pages filled with words about music, slavery, finding a voice and hope. Hope from lyrics. A song inspiring us to dance to the hopeful dream of music.
What makes me the happiest is enjoying the continuity of songs that inspire my animus, helping in the process of my individuation.
To be who I am in this mysterious world. Conflicts and war, religiosity, and a woman’s right to choose moving through the air like bombs of emotionalism.
Poor anti-leaders who abuse their power in our world. War… Many things that make my voice in a world ridiculously small. Yet I keep speaking up and writing. As a mother… I have done well enormously proud of my decision to give birth, to create.
I am responsibility and caring. That is me and I am grateful to all the individuals who have nurtured me over the years.
Love is worth speaking about…. also, the love of a song, the ones who sing and create… that is my wonder to cherish as I am also my mother’s wild child.
In my active imagination comes a whisper in my ear declaring,
“I guess we meet where genius hides.”
I think of my three solids. One I will see tomorrow.
It shatters any genre of my three solids. The alchemy is in me. Yet tomorrow I just don’t know how my mind will embrace the sounds of his guitar, of Ed’s frequency live?
Will I implode and turn to ash. When Ivorplays his drums, will the vibrations go-go down my spine and shatter what’s left of this fragmenting crone vertebra?
Their vinyl has sustained me these many many years… but we all know that is simply different from the wild variable of a live ambiance’s charm!
Oh, unbearable is this waiting to see The Saints live!
What a turn on! The whole current line- up!
3: Colin “Jock” Blyth image from Flipside Fanzine.
Stephen Stills
“For What It’s Worth,” “Bluebird” and “Rock & Roll Woman” are three of my favorites moving songs performed by Buffalo Springfield’
Ed Kuepper
“Nights in Venice,” “Demolition Girl “and “Church of Indifference” are just fucking profound songs.
Jock Blyth
Playing his hardcore punk sounds “Freak,” “Pins and Needles” and “Stormchaser”
Songs that sample their sound… I love them through and through. Thanks!
* Stephen Stills born Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area; Buffalo Springfield 1966–1968.
* Ed Kuepper: Edmund Kuepper was born on 20 December 1955 in Bremen, then part of West Germany. His family migrated to Australia in the 1960s and settled in Brisbane. The Saints 1976-1979.
* Colin “Jock” Blyth: GBH were early pioneers of British street punk, often nicknamed “UK82”, along with Discharge, Broken Bones, The Exploited, and The Varukers (Charged) GBH: 1978–present.
As I awoke from my existential childhood there are three guitarists who have had a profound wake-up call on my soul, body, and mind. From generations the 60s through to the present. Making me happy because these three guys are still moving around the planet and continue to play their songs.
Though I never had the privilege of meeting Stephen Stills, or Ed Kuepper I have met Jock Blyth.
I am friends with Ed on Facebook and Instagram and maybe my annoyance as a fan has zapped him now and then. Because my only addiction in life is the band The Saints.
I don’t ride my generations as a cult but as scenes mingling amongst sounds and friends. In real time, life and on the internet. The 1960s, 1970s and beyond had the most influence on my life as the DNA that makes up my soul.
As a senior citizen, I am pretty well saturated. Open and way past the need to wake up now. It is the sound of these three that calm me, set me free and make me feel bitchin’.
I was overwhelmed and happy watching Billy Porter perform “For What It’s Worth” with Stephen Stills at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Or seeing Buffalo Springfield on an old episode of Mannix from the 1960s.
Or being moved deep down when listening to Ed perform The Aints’s song “You’ll Always Walk Alone” on YouTube.
Or reading Jock write about how he enjoys Tripel beer, a style of brew with roots in the Belgian Trappist tradition on Facebook as GBH tour Northwestern Europe.
No one can really possess a symbolic object since the prime function of symbolism is not accumulation and retention, but communication by way of exchange.
~ de Riencourt, Amaury. Woman and Power in History .
~ Honeyglen Publishing Limited. Kindle Edition.
A reading and understanding from both of Carl Jung’s Red and Black Books…
A journey after reading a random pick from Jung’s Black Books. During these disturbing times I often seek council with these living books of wonder.
While reaching from Jung’s Red Book a note fell to the ground and it said,
“The Gift of Magic.”
I was following through with Jung’s commentary after reading his Black Book. I was amazed by the depth of the commentary which is about Magic.
I am surprised by the beauty of these living books. I started to read all the commentary pertaining to this random subject in his Red Book. It is a story which answered many things for me while also somehow including my life. Reading the references and commentary is the best.
Jung Black Books: Random pick of paragraph from [v.4]
S. Are you sending me away?
I. I’m sending you away. You must not be far from me. But give to me out of your fullness, not your longing.
I cannot satisfy your poverty just as you cannot still my longing. If your harvest is rich, send me some fruit from your garden. If you suffer from abundance, I will drink from the brimming horn of your joy.
I know that will be a balm for me. I can satisfy myself only at the table of the satisfied, not the meager crumbs of those who yearn and desire. I will not steal my payment.
– Pg. 253 [v.4] (126/127).
126. The subject of this sentence was replaced by “We fetched.” (ibid)
127. For Jung’s commentary on this entry, see LN {Red Book},
pg. 439-40.
Red Book.
( translated as Philemon )
“Well, all you will do is laugh anyway. So why should I tell you anything? It would be if everything were buried with me. It can always be rediscovered later. It will never be lost to humanity since magic is reborn with each and every one of us.”
– Pg. 313
“You know, the wisdom of things to come; there fore you are old, oh so very ancient, and just as you tower above me in years, so you tower above the present in futurity and the length of your past is immeasurable. You are legendary and unreachable. You were and will be, returning periodically.
Your wisdom is invisible, your truth is unknowable, entirely untrue in any given age and yet true in all eternity, but you pour out living waters from which the flowers of your garden bloom, a starry water, a dew of the night.
– 148/149 pg. 316
“What do you need. You need men for the sake of small things, since everything greater and the greatest thing is in you. Christ spoiled men, since he taught them that they can be saved only by one, named him, the Son of God, and ever since men have been demanding the greater things from others, especially their salvation; and if a sheep gets lost somewhere, it accuses the shepherd. You are a man, and you prove that men are not sheep, since you look after the greatest in yourself and hence fructifying water-flows into you garden from inexhaustibly jugs.”
Anima and animus
I am always mindful of this equation within myself. Since often the anima and animus are interchangeable within a man or woman. Jung is a man and I am a woman… this activity of randomness is part of my animus work. This is how I collaborate with the male within me… and by the merging of opposites, as the male in me with the female that I am.
I will continue to study this yet this is enough for now.
The highest court of our land is making it impossible for women to care for their own bodies. When women are deflowered or devalued it is time to look at the other sex… the male, especially all conservative moronic males, and their bitches…. Time to address their sperm and ask the big question,
“If a man gets a woman pregnant without the holy affirming blessing of the great Baubo herself, then off with his balls, or head … whichever. What do you think about that justice?”
– A Flopside Comic- crew rhetorical question !
Over the last few years I have worked with the image, ideal, psychology, mythology or biology of Baubo.
We on crew made a FLopside cOmic awhile back with my art.
“A gentleman with the mad soul of an Irish convict poet’: remembering Chris Bailey, and the blazing comet that was The Saints.”
~John Willsteed
“the world beyond, where men are whole and complete, unlike here. The saint’s halo also characterizes his transcendent shining light, his psychic being.”
Rendering of the band The Saints. Hudley Flipside, 2010.
Happy I bought tickets to see the reformed Saitns this November in Southern California. Autumn 2025.
The author reflects on their deep connection to the band The Saints, particularly after the death of Chris Bailey.
Hudley expresses grief for both Bailey and the passage of time over the decades.
The band has been a part of her life journey, leading to discovering a sense of belonging among misfits and a punk community.
Hudley connects her experiences with Bailey’s life timeline, moving from youth to adulthood.
In her grief, she turns to the works of Carl Jung for solace, recalling insights from The Black Books.
I call it random reading. I read from the last paragraph, allowing my mind to wander freely within the words. The intuitive response is amazing to me, as each reading seems to unearth memories and thoughts I had long buried.
Encouraging action also flows from this process, inspiring me to take bold steps forward. So, with this so much is shared, whether it’s with friends or in solitude, and I am content to move on past my grief, cherishing the lessons learned along the way.
Into a new season of life, knowing that, life endures and blossoms in unexpected ways… this gives me hope like finding the Sun, illuminating the path ahead and igniting a renewed sense of purpose within me!
“In this moment the enormous tension was released and like rain it swept away [57/58] everything that was tensed, too highly strung. And soon sleep returned and brought with it a curiously beautiful image.” {138}
(p.162) The Black Books, Volume Two, Carl Jung
“Forms walked clad in white silk in a colored atmosphere. Each surrounded by a strangely fragrant, glowing tinted aura, some reddish, the others blueish and greenish.” {139}
{138} “This paragraph was replaced in LN by “Then I had a second vision.”
Picture.. reversed. Picture by Judi Dransfield Kuepper.
Chris Bailey “a curiously beautiful image”
The Saints (Barry Francis, Ivor Hay, Janine Hall, Bruce Callaway, Chris Bailey) at The Hero of Waterloo, Sydney. 1980. Picture by Judi Dransfield Kuepper. Image taken from an article by John Willsteed. Link Below.
“Jung recounted this dream to Aniela Jaffé and commented upon it as follow: This is some kind of in-between realm (the term definitely occurs in the original version of the dream) The idea was that if one is confronted with the shadow- as was the case through the experience of Siegfried’s dream then the idea comes:
I enter into a twilight: I am this and yet also something else. And this doubleness an abdication of the unconscious, which reached strangely far beyond me.
Like a saint’s halo- This has a strange effect on the attitude toward the human being.
If one is in the company of several persons, and one knows them and knows about their shadows, one then sees these people as they are, but are also something entirely different. They are surrounded by a strange sphere.
They live in a strange, light-colored sphere, which circumscribes their ‘other’ state. This seemed to me to be like a vision of the world beyond, where men are whole and complete, unlike here. The saint’s halo also characterizes his transcendent shining light, his psychic being.”
{139} (MP, p. 170)
The reminder of this entry was replaced in LN by “I know, I have stridden across the depths. Through guilt I have become newborn.” (p.162) Carl Jung’s Black Books. Volume two page 175-6.
Watercolor illustrations of the Praying Mantis as symbolism in my art holds meaning in a refreshing way. It is meant to be humorous, provocative, and honest. I have practiced the Crone’s Crowning ritual for years now. It is seeing death on the same terms as transformation. One and the same, yet the idea of transformation is easier to deal with than death.
I have been working on this project for some time and waited until the summer solstice to complete. This ritual is part of the native American medicine wheel of nature.
It is helpful in times of change, pain, and grieving. All about transformation and death, yes, we are all going through a type of world initiation, making this small offering to help others seems a creative opportunity to share from the inside out. Where the feminine and nature come tighter together to heal.
It is almost as if humanity is collectively going through a civil war between the ego and the psyche, science and religion, common sense, and emotionalism.
As I watch big black bumble bees take nectar from the praying mantis tree of purple and green… I can see that nature is consistent and dependable.
I look out the computer room window, my cave. and wonder and talk with the crones from the four directions.
“Rome is full of the sound of running water, near or distant, loud or barely distinguishable; running water and stone steps are almost as much the signature of the city as the cream-colored domes against the blue sky: and it was not a thing easy to believe, that the man standing at the other end of the window would be urinating against it.”
~ Tennessee Williams The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.
Within the story is a journey of the feminine. A journey that is not often revealed in our current culture. I have watched this film many times. The characters have depth and are interesting. I purchased a Kindle Book copy to read a year or two back. Today I read it and I am glad that I did. The film is an exceptionally good rendering but lacks the full depth of William‘s novel.
Two characters in this short novel are the opposite from each other. One is a shy beautiful young man who rests on an Egyptian obelisk and the other is an aged woman who has lost her beauty and rests on an experience she calls drifting.
“American tourists who had stopped a little space away from him, under the Egyptian obelisk whose cryptic pagan engravings the man was appearing to study.”
His clothes are worn and there are holes in his shoes while her clothes become more and more of the highest fashion. This beautiful Apollo has no name and the aged woman is a famous actress, and both find they are in Rome. One was born there the other is a rich tourist. The young man is fixed on her,
“for when a man has an appointment with grandeur, he dares not stoop to comfort…”
She is aware of him yet ignores him. He tries to get her attention and she is frightened by his common ways and poverty. His archetype is her Dionysus, that is reaching for that part of herself that is empty. He wants to fill that emptiness with passion and happiness. A stillness that speaks of illumination. He taps, appears in reflections from windows and gestures an ancient salute to try and get her attention.
“His beauty was notable even in a province where the lack of it is more exceptional in a young man. It was the sort of beauty that is celebrated by the heroic male sculptures in the fountains of Rome.
Two things disguised it a little, the dreadful poverty of his clothes and his stealth of manner. The only decent garment he wore was a black overcoat which was too small for his body.
Its collar exposed a triangle of bare ivory flesh, no evidence of a shirt. The trouser-cuffs were coming to pieces. Naked feet showed through enormous gaps in his shoe leather. He seemed to want to escape the attention which his beauty invited, for whenever he caught a glance he turned aside from it. He kept his head lowered and his body hunched slightly forward.
And yet he had an air of alertness. The tension of his figure suggested that he was continually upon the verge of raising his voice or an arm in some kind of urgent call or salutation.”
The film does not touch in on many of the especially important elements that hint upon the magic of female initiation contained in Williams’s novel. The film is much darker than the path of the story.
“…by the balustrade of the terrace. She looked down from it, absently, into the well of the little piazza below. The last remnant of sunlight was touching the pagan inscriptions upon the dull rose granite of the obelisk.”
Film December 28, 1961: Karen Stone (Vivien Leigh)
Karen Stone is waking up to a place within herself. A place that is not moving. She lost her husband to death and has given up her acting career. Karen lost her beauty and the pretense of years of heartless ambition. Her drifting is now partly filled with another young man. He has a name, a position, and has many of the ambitious qualities that she herself once had.
“Paolo is by way of being a little—what was the word she had used? Oh, yes, marcbetta! Something a little superior to a whore but still something on the market superior mostly in being more expensive, an article of greater luxury and refinement, what the French called poule de luxe…”
One difference is he awakens a passion in her she has never experienced before. Even after menopause she is now finding a new place in her life.
“The past was, of course, the time when her body was still a channel for those red tides that bear organic life forward. Those rhythmic tides had now withdrawn from her body, leaving it like a tideless estuary on which desire rested like the moon’s image on a calm sheet of water.”
Maybe only moments open to her where she does not experience that feeling of drifting.
“She feels as if time has stopped. in her heart, what would she find as she moved? Was it simply a void, or did it contain some immaterial force that still might save as well as it might destroy her?”
A shining happiness is approaching Karen Stone that may be something ancient and good.
“Her head was remarkably quiet as if a savage bird had been locked in it which had now flown out through some invisible opening.”
I love the film but it is only a shy companion next to Tennessee William’s novel.
notes All quotes are from the film and or novel by Tennessee Williams The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
41°54′22.1″N 12°28′59.6″E Above the Spanish Steps. An Aurelian copy, although smaller, of the Flaminio obelisk of Ramses II in the Piazza del Popolo, for the Gardens of Sallust. Found by the Ludovisi and moved to the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano in 1734, but kept horizontal. Erected in 1789 by Pope Pius VI.
“It’s funny how pride and ego are the very last human vanities to go.”
~ D. Brinkley
Death is heavy on my mind these days. So many have died due to this virus all over the world. Putting politics aside I want to look at the fear we hold in us about death.
I have many books on my bookshelves that speak of life, death, and rebirth. One does not have to have a religiosity to participate in this rite of passage. It is out of our control. I do not have the direct quote here, but I remember reading about how William Blake felt about death in one of his many quotes. That he would rather see the afterlife as filled with lovely angels. His heaven was a blissful imagined place.
“The sensations verged on orgasmic, yet my thoughts were spinning a mile a minute.” ~ D. Brinkley
I took two books to look at today. To read and reflect upon once again. One is Dannion Brinkley’s book Secrets of the Light, and the other is The Tibetan Book of The Dead.
Both books complement each other in that they talk about death. Dannion was struck by lightning, died and was brought back to life. He has written three books about his near-death experiences. The Tibetan Book of The Dead is a creative and ritualistic book about death in a helpful way. It speaks of the Bardo.
“Bardo means gap; it is not only the interval of suspension after we die but also suspension in the living situation; death happens in the living situation as well. The bardo experience is part of our psychological make-up.” ~ Commentary
This is where the world finds itself right now. A gap between the dead and the living, between the staying home and going out and between the past and future. Each moment is the place of bardo, and we are, in a profound sense, all being struck by lightning. We are responsible for this, what is happening in our world. How can we make it better? Well, that is up to you.
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Punk Rock Colleague & Historian and Professional Consultant
Hudley Flipside
The Naked Grace.
These times are asking us to go within. Over the generations we have taken this journey within. By choice, by accident and spiritually. Through drugs, side effects from prescribed medication or by magic.
A song can amplify this reality. A writer can share the experience. Songs filled with lyrics are poetry put to music. The images come forth and touch us. These three songs came to mind today when I was out in the garden pulling tall grass from the rich soil. It all came together. The dark earth holds things. Pulling on the grass and releasing the soil is a forward effort of movement. The dark moist earth has a relationship with our psyches.
I believe that unless we willfully take this inward journey as an individual it will be forced upon us. On a personal level or a generational level is how it goes. Anytime we suppress our shadow, blame others, or spread hate it is bound to a generation. Are we not observing this right now? Songs can help us. I need them like I need flowers in my garden or kitty cats to hug.
Here are three songs that explain this journey variable. From the 1960s Catch the Wind by Donovan is a peaceful song. From 1985 Dead Man’s Party by Oingo Boingo is an amazing song that shares some interesting historical mysteries. Lastly from 1983 The Forbidden Zone by Charged GBH, one dose and you take their hand into a strange journey of a musician’s psyche.
♦Donovan is an unusual songwriter and folk singer that touches upon the light side of our psyche. He reminds us to remember the beauty in life. It is around us and in us if we go looking for it. Our psyches do often look back at us. We can reflect on this soft beauty from time to time.
“When sundown pales the sky
I want to hide a while
Behind your smile
And everywhere I would look, your eyes I’d find.”
♦Oingo Boingo’s song is remarkably interesting and worth listening to intensely. As a young punk back in the late 1970s I had an Oingo Boingo badge on my jacket. I was approached by a couple of punk chicks who mocked me and belittled me for wearing it. A time when the first signs of punk cultism started to show its ugly face.
“I was struck by lighting, walkin’ down the street
I was hit by something last night in my sleep
It’s a dead man’s party who could ask for more
Everybody’s comin’, leave your body at the door
Leave your body and soul at the door.”
“For English occultist Aleister Crowley, who was a painter himself, the artist ranked above the magician on the totem pole of illumination, and he considered poetry and art as precious tools for transforming one’s innermost psychic visions.”
~ Chapter Spencer Kansa, Pg. 92 Wormwood Star, The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron.
♥A wild journey inward to the shadowy psyche is found in the book City Baby from Highgate to Hawaii… Life, and GBH by Ross Lomas.
“This went on for hours. More and more of the same. It was incredibly intense. God and Jimi and Anne Carpenter and the devil and the fucking taxi driver, fighting over my soul right up to the point I passed out in exhaustion.”
~ Pg. 120.
“Take my hand and we’ll explore,
The forbidden zone.
When you’re in your own tree,
But don’t know if anybody’s home.”
Jimi Hendrix was playing guitar while Anne was a nun of salvation, this may show us that his journey was amplified by many elements as a fight for his soul. When the shadow opens to us it is always a powerful trip. Ross is stronger for his experience. A bite like this prepares us for outward tragedies as we are facing today.
( Sorry to say Covid-19 hit and this event was canceled. 2020 )
Amazingly we are still alive. Punk Rock Bowling with the celebration of 40 Years of the Circle Jerks and Charged GBH this spring. I am besides myself with joy to be attending. Yes, all the bands seem interesting, yet my history also includes Madness.
Madness:
When I was a 19-year-old punk I was looking for a 45 by Prince Buster entitled Madness. This stirred me on a strange journey to a Los Angeles record store. They never could locate that 45 for me. Then the band came touring. At least the name of the band was right. Playing the Whisky A Go Go.
I remember dancing to the band with Kick Boy Face from SLASH MAGAZINE (my first Punk Rock correspondence.) (Slosh and Flopside) It was grand beyond grand. Imagine it all coming together again.
Punk Rock Bowling 2020
Some of my best punk memories.
GBH:
Ross’s bass guitar case. GBH 1980s
I am standing in this image next to Ross’s first bass guitar case. He gave it to me. He bought a new one. I lost it. Yet, my mom had put it in a special place.
After her death we cleaned out the basement and their it was. How happy that mom preserved some wonderful punk history.
I still have it and will give it “will it” to my sons. I love it like punk rock. I hope I am not sucking on Ross’s “tits” when I say I love him too.
Thanks for thinking of me back then. All the best and looking forward to Las Vegas for a week of punk and beyond bliss.
“Eternity interrupts. It is as if there is a plane where there is clock time and then eternity puts its hand in for a minute and you have an archetypal experience. You have a feeling of what Jung said was “the infinite” and then very often the watch reacts to that.”
~ The Palace of the Cat: The Cat Marie-Louise Von Franz.
This is a short story about a friend. I find the best friends are not the ones that you make yourself but are the ones that find you. They stand the probability of time. They happen without planning and endure without much effort. She was like that. I first met her online on Facebook. We had common friends of friends. She was also interested in music as well as William Blake and Carl Jung. She showed up at my first speaking event at Whittier College.
Later she told me about a Punk event at UCLA college that I applied to and was accepted at. She was there for me and I shared many stories and my creations with her.
I think I inspired her to go to Pacifica Graduate Institute offering degrees in the clinical psychology, counseling, mythological studies and depth psychology.
At this time last year 2018, she offered me an extra William Blake calendar. I accepted it with honor. Every day I looked at the calendar and thought of her. Happy to have such a friend. Remarkable I am taken back by the last image of the calendar of The Archangel Michael Foretelling the Crucifixion. She passed away December 2019.
I believe that crucifixion is symbolic of a person’s day of release from their physical body.
As friends, have our souls not spoken to each other?
I think so.
“They looking back, all th’ Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon; [ 645 ]
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
~Book 12 Paradise Lost; Milton.
“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.”
