The usual problem with “How do I stay awake?” is that people try to produce a state. They strain, concentrate, become solemn, monitor themselves—and pretty soon they’re sound asleep while working extremely hard at being awake.

I’d turn it around: Continue reading →

opinion:

HOW TO TELL WHEN A GOVERNMENT STARTS OPERATING LIKE THE MOB

By “mob,” I don’t mean a crowd of angry people running through the streets. I mean the Mob. What used to be called “The Mafia”. Continue reading →

• The Song You Didn’t Notice — You hear fifty songs. Forty-nine go by. One suddenly catches you and changes your internal state. What happened? Why that song, at that moment?
• Who Is Listening? — A companion to “Who Is Walking?” Music is playing. The body hears it, emotions react, memories appear—but is anybody actually listening?
• The Three-Second Experiment — In the middle of any ordinary activity, become completely present for three seconds. No meditation, no preparation. Then ask: What was different?
• Background Music for the Human Machine — We constantly provide a soundtrack for ourselves. Does the music merely accompany the machine—or can it interrupt it?
• You Don’t Have to Like the Music — This one could be especially useful for KGOD/Norton Street. Transformational use of music may have almost nothing to do with musical taste. A song you dislike might actually be more useful because it won’t let you comfortably disappear into it.
• What Exactly Are You Doing on Zoom? — Everybody thinks they’re attending a Zoom meeting. But you’ve actually got fifty little laboratories sitting in fifty different rooms. Put on one piece of music and something different happens in every laboratory.
• The DJ as Experimental Scientist — This one fits today. The DJ isn’t merely entertaining the room. He’s introducing one stimulus after another and watching what happens. Change rhythm, language, voice, emotional temperature, familiarity—and the room itself becomes the instrument.

I particularly like The DJ as Experimental Scientist for this morning. It connects directly to what we’re doing, but underneath it is the whole teaching: we aren’t necessarily playing these songs because they’re good songs. We’re playing them to find out what they do. Continue reading →

Spent the entire night working on arrangements. I’ll demo those this morning at zoom. Continue reading →

Looking for a rap that people can use with friends to introduce the idea “you are asleep”? I know you’d like to tell someone, but … how to say that to a friend? Continue reading →

A Clinical Application of Norton Street

What happens if we stop treating Norton Street as entertainment for a moment and treat it as an instrument?

Not a medical instrument. We’re not proposing to cure arthritis, remove your gallstones or straighten your teeth with a three-hour performance of Norton Street. We’re talking about an instrument for the observation of attention, automatic behavior and momentary waking. Continue reading →

Forget enlightenment as a grand spiritual trophy. Suppose somebody asks:

Okay, I wake up. I evolve. I become more conscious. What do I get?

The first answer we already stumbled onto is extremely practical:

You get a chance to make less of a mess of your life.

But I think there are several deeper payoffs. Continue reading →

no mail ballots? Screw you

There appears to be a great deal of excitement these days about the government to deny the people their customary mail-in ballots. Apparently somebody has had the brilliant idea that if you make it difficult enough for the ballot to get through the mail, you have somehow solved the problem of the voter, which is they might vote Democrat this time. Continue reading →

Spent the entire night remastering old videos, which I’ll show today at zoom. Continue reading →