My Blog

Nikki Rae Fire Dancing video

NOIZ23 — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:36:08 GMT

Check out this video that Nikki and I made of her fire dancing to Massive Attack. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmmVkX8sc2I

Birthday Party & Visual Performance

NOIZ23 — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:00:46 GMT

This Saturday August the 4th @ 10pm, I'll be doing visuals at the Urban Lounge with Our Time in Space. We'll also be celebrating my birthday. Stay tuned for more information on the pre-show party and gathering.

how to bless your enemies....

NOIZ23 — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:03:30 GMT

I bless my enemies that they may find their true will, and no longer bump into me. 93

Be Your Own Guru

NOIZ23 — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 20:38:59 GMT

I've decided to blog a couple of really well done articles by one of my favorite minds, Douglas Rushkoff, who is in the Disinformation DVD that I've shown some of my friends. Enjoy! --------------------- My good friend Jody Radzik – the guy who first introduced me to raves, actually - started up a blog this year. Jody is about the most loving and optimistic person I’ve ever known. That’s why I was surprised that instead of touting a new spiritual or cultural phenomenon, Radzik had decided to bash one. Guruphiliac.com is dedicated to exposing the profoundly manipulative legions of grifters preying on the spiritually hopeful, as well as those teachers who simply go around letting people think they’re God, one guru at a time. It’s is an entertaining website, to be sure (for those of us who enjoy watching false messiahs unmasked) but it’s also important ongoing work. And the more I think about it, the more guru-bashing is starting to look like a form of optimism, in itself. We all have gurus of some sort, whether we realize it or not. Even just for brief moments during the day. Haven’t you felt yourself regress to a childlike state, say, when talking to the auto mechanic about your car, the doctor about your test results, or your bartender about which Scotch to drink? In those moments – for an instant – the person becomes something of trusted authority in whose hands you trustingly place yourself. He will take care of me; he has my best interests at heart. And in most cases, there’s of no great negative consequence to relinquish that authority. It’s just a drink, after all. And while we may want to self-educate a bit before undergoing surgery, we don’t need to learn how to remove an appendix in order to have one taken out. Unless we’re chronically ill, the doctor doesn’t remain our guru. Even in situations where we’re learning to do something – say hang-gliding or building a campfire – it can be helpful to surrender authority to the teacher. Certainly in their area of expertise, and for the duration of the lesson, the teacher is the master. Where it gets tricky is when we assume that our protector’s expertise in one area makes him or her, somehow, better than us in all in all things. The Outward Bound leader knows how to build a fire and eat nettles – so in the context of the wilderness, he’s certainly got a leg up on you. But does this mean the little life lessons and platitudes he drops on you during difficult moments on the trail are universally valid teachings? They sure seem so in the moment, and they may occasionally be applicable to some other situation. But they’re just the musings of some guy. Yes, it’s terrific to be able to surrender to the unassailable mastery of your cello teacher. She has stories to tell, techniques to share, and a holistic understanding of her instrument and music that you’d be well to emulate. And focusing on her brilliance, holding her phrases in your head like a mantra while you’re running your scales can make those interminable hours of practice more bearable and even productive. But nowhere does there exist a genuine Bagger Vance or Horse Whisperer. There are no shrinks like Judd Nelson in Ordinary People or Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. Sure, there are great golf pros, horse trainers, and therapists. But they’re just people. The successful therapeutic ending is not surrendering to the loving embrace of a psychologist, however much we may feel the need for a parental substitute or emotional surrender. In the trade, they call this transference, and at best it’s a means, not an ends. It’s also a terrific technique for engendering loyalty. Back in the 90’s, I did some studies on coercive tactics. From the CIA Interrogation Manual to one of Toyota’s sales handbooks, I found the same basic strategy: confuse or disorient the subject until they regress to a childlike state, then step in as a parent figure and offer relief by accepting a confession or sale. The guru operates the same way. At the end of the post-modern era, those brave souls courageous enough to see through the religions they may have grown up with emerge frightened and confused. An ex-orthodox Jew or a “recovering” Catholic is also a disoriented, vulnerable person. Although the latest cool bumper sticker says “Eastern religions suck, too,” it’s hard to go through the world suddenly without a ready system and someone to administer it. So, like people who end up in the same bad relationship time after time only with partners with different color hair, people who liberate too quickly or angrily from one system often end up adopting the next one that comes along. The path of devotion offered by gurus is also a natural fit for those of us who are fed up with the relativistic haze of a world where there are no discernible rules, yet equally disillusioned by institutional religions that appear to have sold out to American consumerism. The guru offers absolutism. Certainty. A point of focus. As one slick guru, chronicled on Guruphiliac explains on his website: “When you meet a master, you have two choices. Transform or walk away. You cannot be in his presence and remain the same.” Uh, yeah. In other words, conform to his reality or scram. The guru is the starting place from which all other decisions are to be made. You start with the guru as the one perfect point in the universe, and from there everything else can fall into place. If the guru has instructed you to eat a certain food or do a certain practice, then – according to the logic of gurudom - everything else you have to do for this to happen is part of the perfection. Slowly but surely, surrender to the guru requires you to reject pretty much everything that doesn’t fit whatever model of the world he’s offering you. But, honestly, that’s what the devotee was after in the first place. An excuse to do or not do all that other confusing stuff in life like encounter people with different ideas, wrestle with the questions of existence, and accept that nobody really knows what happens when we die. Most of us who have had gurus eventually see something awful – like sexual exploitation, financial abuse, or faked magic – that turns us off. (If we see the guru as perfect, then those blowjobs and false claims get justified: perhaps the guru is testing us, or breaking our hang-ups, At least for a while.) Or we decide that this guy is just too much of an asshole to really be enlightened. Or we simply tire of the idea that “enlightenment” is around the corner, and decide that life is just fine without enlightenment. And getting to that point is a beautiful thing in itself. If an experience with a guru really teaches one the futility of aspirational spiritual quests, then it can even be worth the time, money, and humiliation The biggest spiritual victim in the equation is the guru, himself. He’s just a person, after all, who probably had a profound spiritual or psychedelic experience and began to speak or write about it romantically. Charismatically. And this invites admirers and would-be devotees. The guru-in-waiting may not even mean to attract this sort of attention – at least not at the beginning. It’s just the kind of positive reinforcement that naturally comes to a person who speaks passionately about something. I’ve felt shades of it myself, especially when I’m doing a book tour or a lecture about a transcendental topic. Wide-eyed audiences, especially those in areas where don’t get many weird authors, gobble up every word. College students want to hang out late into the night, talking over drinks (or better) about alternate realities, magick sigils, or the nature of time. How hard it is not to speak about magick in a magickal way? And it feels good to give people answers – something to chew on for a while, even if, like a Zen koan, it eventually turns out to be little more than a puzzle to keep them occupied and less afraid of death or existence for a while. To accept this path of the guru, though, however tempting, is certain doom for the artist, writer, or philosopher. It turns his existence from a question into an answer, from flux to certainty – from a life into a death. Most of the generation of weird sages above my peers and me has died. So now we’re the ones invited to run workshops at places like Esalen and Omega, to speak to groups of young spiritual people or counterculturalists, and to share our insights on the occult, psychic realms, and religious practices. Lucky for me, I’ve been on the receiving end of the guru dynamic, so I know how and why to avoid doing it, myself. Avoidance usually entails deconstructing an event before it begins, decrying the self-help bias of America’s spiritual community, and then teaching in the most straightforward manner possible, even at the expense of mystery. (I’m married with a daughter, now, so the temptation to succumb to the consequence-free fringe benefits of retreat weekends has diminished, anyway.) But as I look around me, I see other members of my generation claiming to see the weirdest things, to be enlightened, or to be able to offer access to energies from alternate realms. And it makes me sad and just a bit angry. The insights, such as they are, get lost in fiction. Even if a few of us do happen to be carrying some fragment of real wisdom, the object of the game is to get out the way so the wisdom can be shared. I mean, if I really thought I was channeling something or someone, I’d do it over the radio, anonymously. The answer, of course, is for all of us to get over our need for gurus. Remove the demand and the supply should dwindle, too. I mean, most of us have already endured one set of parents. Why go through that again? The stuff they didn’t do right simply cannot be corrected. Mourn what you missed and move on. (Meanwhile, if it’s magic you’re after, go to Vegas and see a show. No one can teach you how to walk on water or be in two places at once. And if you do get awakened someday, whatever that means, you’ll realize this very need to talk to God or see the light is what’s been getting in the way of your clarity the whole time. Besides, is it really magical abilities and transcendent experiences you’re after, or merely escape from the pain of everyday experience?) The truth about the great spiritual quest of our species is that it just can’t work with followers and leaders. There’s way too much duality built-in to such a scheme. Hierarchies are fun, but they’re a construction. I’ve been around the spiritual block more times than I care to mention, and have read the work of the very best teachers and philosophers I can get a hold of. And as I’ve come to see it, there is no such thing as awakening. It’s a ruse. Think about it: the whole concept of reaching enlightenment is so steeped in dualism, expectation, and obsession with self. The word “enlightenment” may sell books and earn devotees, but it doesn’t refer to anything real. It doesn’t exist. The true spiritual path may just be a matter getting over that fact, and in the process, learning to express and enact as much compassion as you can. That’s why I see guruphiliac.com as an optimistic effort; it assumes we’re ready to let all this go. If you’ve got to start with some perfect point in the universe, start with yourself. There’s no path to take, no one else to follow. And you don’t need anyone to tell you this for it to be true. All the places you might get to are equally valid, because everyone is just as lost as you are. The sooner we all admit this, the sooner we can begin to orient to one another as siblings and partners in the great adventure. http://www.rushkoff.com/arthur/guru.html

The Yard Dogs Road Show in SLC June 14th

NOIZ23 — Wed, 31 May 2006 16:07:31 GMT

June, 14 2006 at Club Vegas 445 S 400 W , Salt Lake City, UT 84101 The Yard Dogs are coming to town!!! Burlesque inspired, hair on fire, electrified cartoon music played by a well dressed gypsy jug band in a dark circus tent with dancing girls, dancing girls, dancing girls! Born from the saloon vaudeville that toured the Wild West in the late 1800's. SLAMMED into the underworld of modern American road culture. The Yard Dogs combine the elements of vaudeville and burlesque - creating a timeless space for the union of ancient theatrical alchemy and modern POP culture. A true story on stage. Sword swallowers, fire eaters, burlesque, rambling hobo poetry and sideshow oddities all animated by the live sounds of the Yard Dogs cartoon gypsy band The Golden Wings of Glory. The times have demanded it and HERE it is: The new emergence of road show nobility. http://www.myspace.com/yarddogsroadshow or http://www.yarddogsroadshow.com

Musefest - Sat. April 15th @ Saltair

NOIZ23 — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 16:26:16 GMT

MUSE FEST: ARTS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL APRIL 15 2006 @ THE GREAT SALTAIRE!!! MuseFest is an experience of community awakening through music, art, and participation. It will have 3 stages, more than 10 live band and DJ acts, hours of music, dozens of performers, and copious amounts of interactive art. For one day the Great Saltair will turn into an art and music festival that will allow the audience to travel through various worlds of interaction and atmospheres. Two domes will be erected outside at the edge of the baron salt beds. One for relaxing from the madness that surrounds you while chilling to some of Utah’s greatest downtempo, the other bumping beats from Salt Lake Cities finest DJ’s and producers. The Great Saltair, gleaming like a desert mirage will house 50,000 watts of sound transmitting some of the finest acid-rock and electronic talent to ever play in Utah. Break Beats, Indy Rock, Acid Rock, Experimental, Shamanic, Drum & Bass, Trip Hop, Down Tempo, Mid Tempo Tech Hop, Tribal, Jungle, Intellectual Glitch, and a little spontaneity will be rocking the dance floor non stop. Multiple stages will be set through out the event colored with amazing costumes and performers including Fire Spinners, Stilt Walkers, Jugglers, Hula Hoop Girls, Go Go Dancers, Cultural Dancers, Drumming, Spoken Word, Live Art, Graffiti Artists, and a plethora of Performance Artists. Any artist can display or create their art at MuseFest. We welcome artists and interaction; The Salt Air creates a blank canvas upon which any vision can be realized. Most art installations contain an interactive element allowing participants to fully engage with the piece instead of viewing it from a safe distance as we are use to in our museum and gallery oriented world. Whatever your tastes, MuseFest will have something to inspire and elevate everyone. Come prepared to participate and find a muse to mix up the mundane. www.muse-fest.com

Halloween w/ Kan'Nal & The Kali Ceremony

NOIZ23 — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:53:02 GMT

Wow!!! I feel so blessed to be surrounded by such incredible artistic and lovely people in my life. Thank you Kan'Nal for such an incredible evening of celebrations!!! We love you guys and definately will miss you while you travel down south. Thanks for the good medicine. Thank you to the 3 Goddesses who put so much effort into the Kali Performance, and of course to our Aghori - Shamus.. you are my eternal brother and yang! Thanks to my fuck'n tribe which always know how to celebrate in fine pagan fashion. Pics below.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/59524829@N00/sets/1276763/ and http://photobucket.com/albums/b19/noiz23/ as well as: http://www.aros.net/~jjm/k05/index.html Thanks to our Dark Mother Kali-ma!!!! I love you!

Drugs, art and the aliens who lit our way to civilisation

NOIZ23 — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:55:49 GMT

Here is a fascinating article....... snipets from the article: "Three years ago I decided to go back to the subject which fascinated me at university," he says. "I was interested in human origins, in what makes us different from the apes. I found that it wasn't the use of tools, as many people believe, but abstract thought and the ability to manipulate symbols." The answer was art. Cave paintings and writings which depicted thoughts and visions, none of which have ever been achieved by other species. In fact, even our human ancestors had no artistic capability. Or not until 40,000 years ago, at least. "Previously, we were very uncreative and boring. We used the same tools continually without modifying them. Then, suddenly, a light switched on in our brain. Fossils from 40,000 years ago show that we began to explore spirituality, looked for signs of life after death and innovated specialised tools. And we began to paint. In France, Italy and South Africa and all over the world, they've discovered incredibly accomplished paintings, but no explanation for this burst of development." This has been termed the "greatest riddle in archaeology", and many academics have devoted their career to its study. The reason behind the sudden transformation, the majority have concluded, is hallucinogenic plants. Magic mushrooms would be a relevant example, but all over the world, man stumbled across drugs which opened the possibility for spiritual, creative thought. What he has found - and what forms the basis of his new hefty tome - is a theory that to many will sound absurd. He believes that when shamans and drug users experience these hallucinations, they are actually tapping into a parallel universe. The visions - be they of fairies, elves or aliens - are real, they exist all the time, and they want to communicate with us. "Think of it as though the brain is like a TV receiver. In order to cope with everyday life, we have to tune into "Channel Normal" for the majority of the time. But if we retune our brains with these drugs, or alter our state of consciousness through rhythmic dancing and drums, we can see images of the parallel dimensions." read entire article here. http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=2068802005

Kan'Nal in SLC for Halloween

NOIZ23 — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:15:12 GMT

Anyone near and around Salt Lake City for Halloween should do all they can to make it to this show....the pre-show Kali ritual is going to be mindblowing!!!

BM 2005 pics

NOIZ23 — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 14:49:24 GMT

Burning Man 2005 pics Current mood: content Here are some pics from this years Burning Man. All I can say is WOW!!! Words and pictures are incapable of giving more than a hint of what it's like. Here are some of my pics...more coming... http://photobucket.com/albums/b19/noiz23/ Here are some pics of my good budy Weston.... http://photobucket.com/albums/a141/westonhall/

Burning Man Ticket

NOIZ23 — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:58:52 GMT

We are looking for 1 more BM ticket around the $200 range.... if you know anyone who needs to dump the ticket please let me know. Thanks

NYC trip - Call out for ideas

NOIZ23 — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 21:50:48 GMT

Ok, so Christine and I are going on our first trip to NYC in a week for our 10 year anniversary. I'm asking my friends to give some suggestions on must see attractions while in NYC. We are already planning on going to see: 1) Alex Grey's Chapel of Mirrors 2) Guggenheim 3) Maybe Spam-a-Lot on Broadway ============= Other ideas?

Help Wanted - Calling SLC Subversives

NOIZ23 — Thu, 23 Jun 2005 18:34:31 GMT

Help Wanted Temple Perilous needs a Location Scout. We are in need of a warehouse type location for our first three scenes of the movie. If you know of any leads or would like to help on the project, please let me know....ASAP.