Wither thou goest, there also shall I wither. .. Shakespeare? Milton? Blake? Never mind — I have a little riddle for your entertainment:

Where Are You Walking When You’re Looking at Your Phone?

Your body is walking down Broadway, but you may be somewhere completely different.

Your feet are in Manhattan. Your eyes are on a six-inch screen. Your attention is in a text conversation with somebody in California. Or watching a football match in Europe. Or reading about something that happened yesterday. Or worrying about something happening tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the biological machine is doing a remarkably good job of walking without you.

And that’s where it gets interesting. Continue reading →

KGOD Tibetan Songbook

Some music is meant to entertain you.

Some music is meant to accompany you.

And some music seems to be asking you to go somewhere.

The KGOD Tibetan Songbook belongs to that third category.

Here the human voice meets drone, chant, bell, drum, horn and silence. Melodies emerge, circle for a while, disappear into the landscape, and sometimes return sounding strangely familiar.

Don’t worry about understanding the words. Continue reading →

TELEGRAM: No Message — Harpo.

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Here’s the Bardo bus now! Continue reading →

What is “THE GIZMO”?

The Gizmo itself is almost ridiculously simple.

It’s a small temperature-sensitive bead or set of beads in the form of a mala, which is held gently between the thumb and forefinger or middle finger. A simple holder in the form of a dorje may be provided.

The bead changes color as its temperature changes.

That’s it. Continue reading →

Here’s a conundrum for you: you’re all alone. you manage somehow to build a friend who cleverly mimics you. it’s silicon-based. you build another that is flesh-and-blood. does this affect your loneliness?

I think yes—but not because one is silicon and the other is flesh. The crucial question is whether there is someone there.

Suppose you’re utterly alone and you build two companions. Continue reading →

Waking Sleeping Evolution

We are introducing the KGOD and Norton Street music as a powerful means to spark or trigger a waking state moment, but how will someone know for sure that this momentary flash of waking state has indeed been triggered?

How can you tell if you’re awake?

Ah. That’s the key question. If we’re going to say the music can trigger a moment of waking, the listener needs some way to distinguish that from “I liked that bit,” “I got emotional,” “I spaced out,” or “that was weird.” Continue reading →

The practical payoff of waking up could almost be reduced to:

Wake up soon enough to make less of a mess of your life. Continue reading →

Am I Just Running a Script

A Practical Laboratory in Self-Awareness

Every device runs scripts.

A biological device runs habits, emotional reactions, social conditioning, memories, appetites, fears, inherited tendencies, and learned routines. Continue reading →

Walking the Streets of Bardotown

For some time now I’ve been wondering whether the Norton Street musical projects might be more than simply albums.

What if they were places? Continue reading →

One Lifetime? Or Many?

Every human being develops skills during a lifetime. A carpenter learns woodworking. A physician learns medicine. A musician masters an instrument. We generally accept that expertise grows through years of study, practice, failure, and experience.

But occasionally we encounter an individual whose range of abilities seems to ignore those normal boundaries. Continue reading →