I've Moved - Come Join Me

Hey there! I've finally set myself up on a real site of my own.

Come check it out sometime - www.chrisotchy.com.

Looking forward to seeing you over there! 

Richie Hawtin on Using the Tools to Channel Something Deep

Here's an awesome interview with Richie Hawtin I came across. He's got some cool things to say about using technology to create electronic music.

"I've done my 10,000 hours." he says of the guitar wielding naysayers who think that techno is easy because you use a computer and machines to create it.  "You can't do what I do."

"It's not just the tools--it's the intention... whether you channeling something from deep within you, through that apparatus and coming up with something unique."

Seeking and Finding

From Hesse's Siddhartha:

Seeking means to have a goal.

Finding means to be free, to have no goal.

When one is seeking, he only sees the thing he seeks. He will be unable to absorb anything because he is only thinking of that.

When one is living in the present with no goal, one is in the mindset to be free, one is in the mindset to find what one might not have even known they were looking for.

Struggle and Surrender

For my entire life, I have been oscillating between two philosophies or approaches to life. They best can be summarized as struggle vs. surrender.

The first philosophy is one in which you identify a goal in life, something worthy of your time and effort. Something you truly believe in, either for your own good or that of others around you. It could be that you want to start a business, or gain success in a certain field. It could be that you want to achieve something in a sport or artistic field. As you go on the path toward that goal, you encounter a great deal of adversity—you must struggle against all sorts of obstacles to get to that goal, both external (people naysaying, people against you or competing against you, lack of time or resources), and internal (lack of patience, lack of ability, a constant testing of your fortitude). You are constantly looking forward, hoping for future happiness, forgoing the present unhappiness for the future goals achievement. But eventually, one hopes, you get closer to that goal, and therefore gain some degree of satisfaction in that struggle.

The second philosophy is one in which you acquiesce to the winds of fate and happenstance, and let your life be directed by whatever comes along. You might have certain aspirations, but you let fate decide many things in your life, and along the way you try to be happy, you try to be free in any way you can. You support yourself and those around you by being there with them. Often you might fall into groups of people that don’t necessarily align with your goals or your interests. Often, you find yourself compromising, drifting into strange jobs and occupations. Often you ask yourself, what am I doing here? How did I get here? But there’s a lot less struggle on a day-to day basis. You surrender your fate, and in doing so, attempt to live in the present and try to be happy with that.

The question in, which approach to life leads to more happiness--struggle or surrender? 

In the Dawn Light

Wake up before the sun
Paint the sky with clouds
Sail through light, through shade, through shadow, through mutating colors
Dance in the dawn’s friscalating sunrise
Wander aimlessly through shreds of your own memories, your own dreams, your own fantasies, the water below you a colored mirror of cloud, pandemonium on its lips, spectrums of chaos racing across its palate
You woke in an abrasion of morning anxiety, then sat in the back of the car and waited for it to disseminate into the sobriety of a midday spent waiting, waiting, waiting for the night to begin
Finally signaling and end to the relentless monotony of office life, of rote tasks meaninglessly executed
And all the petty fears, the petty annoyances, the hates, the burns, the frustrations, the stupid meaningless words and empty gestures that tie together this dollhouse, poorly stitched, in which we all play our roles,
Here we are again, watching the advertisements and secretly, unconsciously wishing we were them, that we had those retarded jobs, that we could take on those stupid roles at least once, just for a moment, and live that flesh fantasy
Like anything could actually approach the sexiness of a Hollywood projection
No, we will go on
We will thrash forward with something that bears resemblance to cold grey steel and concrete
Worn wood and leather, cold machines, working without wifi connections
No longer directed by the mother ship
No longer in communicado with our source
Cheap pants and shirts, discount jackets, jeans, ties, knit hats, cheap suits, scarves, 15% off MUNI rides, armpit hair, coffee breath, 2 for 1 dinner specials, frozen pizza, Netflix, Facebook
What more is a life composed of than these mundanities?
What more can we lay claim to—the things we fuel and cloth ourselves with, the tickets we buy and pin on our jackets
Our coat checks, our baggage claims, our incense carriers.
What more? What more? What more?
If the sun is bothering you, just let me know. Just let me know.

Ray and the Seal Pup on the Beach

Ray sat on the beach, looking out at the grey ocean beneath a gray sky. The incessant white noise of the surf created a hush in Ray’s ears that felt like a huge white cushion. Three pelicans sailed silently overhead, violently peaceful. They looked like travelling monks looking for penitents. Ray looked up at them and confessed silently all the ways he had damaged the world, all the sadness he caused, all the men he’d destroyed, all the women. So many women. So many homes he had broken, so much bloodless violence, internal explosions, passive aggression. Ray closed his eyes and listened intently to the crashing of the waves, the blue black curls annihilating themselves, over and over, making the tiny bits of sand into pudding.

Gulls inhabited a rock 40 yards out in the surf, the whitecaps reaching up to grasp them, angelic spray all around them like a wedding party. Why did they come out here, Ray thought. Why did I? He inhaled the scent of the brine. Slow exhale.

A lump looking like a dead body floated about 15 yards off shore. It bobbed unnaturally above the surface of the water, then disappeared for a moment. When it reappeared, he saw the silky wet head of a seal pup. It’s eye was a pool of dark, inky fluid reflecting the dull shimmer of the water. The eye moved slightly, giving the signal of intelligence. Ray realized the spirit of the creature. Where did you come from, he thought to the creature, but he received no response.

There was a wild, unadulterated power in that place. It permeated every molecule of the air he breathed, every rock structure there, every bit of sand matter. He could feel the ocean of prana washing over him. Ray realized then his place in the universe. He finally understood that the world was simply a universe of energy changing from one form to another, raising or lowering it’s vibration and frequency with each transmutation according to its level of intelligence.

Cal looked at the seal pup again and thought, what form have you taken in the past? Have we met in another life, or will we meet again in another? Perhaps next time, I will be the seal pup, and you will be sitting on the shore looking out onto the gray sea.

Ray closed his eyes and thought, the intelligence I possess is the same intelligence as that used to create the universe.  I have access to all the intelligence of the Creator… in the same manner that I have access to all the intelligence of the seal pup… I have only to reach inside my mind, tap into that universal intelligence, that Collective Unconscious, and I can take hold of that knowledge, I can wield that power.

Ray thought rain, and then he stared up into the sky. He concentrated as hard as he could, rain being the only thought in his mind. He concentrated on the way the word looked, the way each of the individual letters came together in a way that produced a sound… rrrraaaaiiiinnnnnnn… he imagined each of the letters 50 feet tall, 100 feet tall, 1,000 feet tall, he imagined them like sky scrapers, touching the clouds. Ray chanted the word like a mantra, over and over and over. Rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrain.

But not a drop fell from the sky.

He looked up into the sky, then closed his eyes once more, and reached out with his feelings. He reached up and outward, until it felt like his entire being had expanded to occupy the entire beach, so that his head was in the clouds and his toes under the water. He imaged himself as a huge, transparent body… and imagined feeling the rain fall from the clouds like a single tear from his eye.

And then, he really did feel it. A single drop from the heavens hit his head.

Ray stood up and brushed the sand off his dungarees. He walked down the beach back toward his car. Before he left the sand, he turned once more, felt the cold wind against his skin. The waves continued to crash against the sand in mellow repose. Three pelicans sailed slowly overhead, violently peaceful, then they disappeared beyond the granite cliffs, silent as sentinels.

The Meaning of Life, According to Sagan

"The Earth is an anomaly. In all the solar system, it is, so far as we know, the only inhabited planet.

"We humans are one among millions of separate species who live in a world burgeoning, overflowing with life. And yet, most species that ever were are no more. After flourishing for one hundred fifty million years, the dinosaurs became extinct. Every last one. No species is guaranteed its tenure on this planet. And humans, the first beings to devise the means for their own destruction, have been here for only several million years.

"We are rare and precious because we are alive, because we can think. We are privileged to influence and perhaps control our future. We have an obligation to fight for life on Earth — not just for ourselves but for all those, humans and others, who came before us and to whom we are beholden, and for all those who, if we are wise enough, will come after. There is no cause more urgent than to survive to eliminate on a global basis the growing threats of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, economic collapse and mass starvation. These problems were created by humans and can only be solved by humans. No social convention, no political system, no economic hypothesis, no religious dogma is more important.

"The hard truth seems to be this: We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We would prefer it to be otherwise, of course, but there is no compelling evidence for a cosmic Parent who will care for us and save us from ourselves. It is up to us." --Carl Sagan