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Water the Plants

Watering the plants can put the mind in a state of Zen-like relaxation. The trick to it is to use water at low pressure from the garden hose. When the water pressure is too fast it won’t work. Today I was watering the plants in the front of the house and I had the pressure pretty low. And I was using my thumb to regulate the water flow. That way I was able to control the sounds that the water was making. Then when I held the hose over the plants, the droplets hit the dirt and plants in a repetitive pattern. This pattern of sounds is both randomized and familiar. It made a certain type of white noise, that when I focused on the sound of the water, my mind was able to concentrate and relax at the same time.  The part about watering plants that I sometimes forget is that when I water, I am standing still for a few minutes at a time. This standing still is perfect for initiating a Zen Relaxation state. In many relaxation gardens people have expensive fountains that make certain sounds. These sounds are supposed to help you slip into the relaxed state of mind. They aren’t the actual purpose of the experience.

If relaxation is the destination, then the water sounds are the roads. Let them take you there.

Another thing to remember is breathing. My best results when watering the plants and reaching Zen is to breathe slowly and easily through the nose and exhale through the mouth. After breathing and standing still for a while I mosey on to the next plant. After a while I get in this chilled state of relaxation that isn’t really concentrating yet it is daydreaming either. It is just being in the moment without needing the moment. Appreciating the serenity and tranquility without trying. Slipping into relaxation like stepping into a luke-warm bath after being out in the snow.

-Tyler

Cantaloupe Vortex

Today I only ate some Trader Joe’s, “Joe’s O’s” brand cereal at around 11AM. Then I didn’t eat or drink anything for hours. By the time 5PM rolled around I was irritable and tired. But then after I ate a few pieces of cantaloupe I felt better. I had energy and I wasn’t in as much of a bad mood. So what was really going on here? My Dad says that I was feeling the effects of having low blood sugar. But I don’t believe that for a second. I think I was having, “Communion with Parasites via Cantaloupe.” Did you know that if you eat sushi you probably have parasites? And if you have pets you more than likely have parasites. Some of them are big and wormy, others are smaller. Some do beneficial things for your body. And others eat you from the inside out. I’ve found out that some parasites interact with my emotions by excreting chemicals into my bloodstream. So what I think is going on is that there are parasites that genuinely want me to be healthy and have a good life. Why? Because if I’m healthy and happy they get to eat more and prolong their lifespan.

So should I embrace my inner parasite? The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that I need to trust them. If little worms and creatures give me suggestions and emotional input, then maybe I should learn how to take advantage of their intellect and wisdom.

I ate a huge dinner. And now I feel really good. I ate scallops with ham and onion sauce. I also ate a salad with fresh buffalo mozzarella. I also ate red snapper that was baked in olive oil and spices. My body and mind feels great now. It is almost like I am rewarding my parasites for my state of mind. Who cares if my parasites are going to eat more of that dinner than I am? Lately I’ve lost more weight and stayed healthier by actually eating MORE than eating less.

Communication with my cells has something I’ve believed in for a long time. Since my body is made up of billions of individual cells there has got to be some way to tell them what I want. But that’s just the thing. I spend so much time telling my cells and body what I want FROM it, that I forget to tell my cells and body what I want FOR it. Maybe my parasites can be the intermediary life forms that can send my message to the rest of my body. I want to tell them that I love them. That I appreciate every little cell and all the hard work that they do. I want to tell them that together we can experience wonders and pleasures that go beyond simple things like food and sensory stimulation. We can experience the emotions and the chemical responses that coincide with feeling like we have a true and good purpose. We are going somewhere with our lives and that we don’t need to regret or look back.

As I write this I feel more connected to myself than I have in years. Too often I go through life like a mind loosely connected to a disoriented body. I am taking my gloves off. I’m breathing through my nose. Pleasure should not be the point of all this. It should be a byproduct of entering and staying within a nexus point. I am alive, yet I am not alone.

-Tyler

Psychic Banana Forester Experience

Have you ever had a Psychic Driving Experience? Maybe you have and you never even noticed it. Sometimes I’m in the car, and I stop at a yellow-turning into a red light. And if there is a car on my left I’ll sometimes slowly turn my head and look at the person in the car. Here’s what’s weird. Almost nine times out of ten, when I look over there is someone else either turning their head to look at me, or else they are already looking at me. Not psychic enough for you? I remember I was in the car with an old friend and we were about to turn left into an empty street. And I said to my friend, “Hold up a second,” and my friend asked, “What’s up?” And while he asked that a car drove super fast, blazing by at rapid speed. It totally could have crashed into us. Still not psychic enough for you? Back in the day I was listening to Alice in Chains, “Man in the Box” over and over again. And during that week I was eating a ton of bananas because bananas seem to always get ripe around the same time. I was doing the dishes, putting away the glassware. I was putting some drinking glasses away into the cupboard and the glass in my hand was a little bit wet from the dishwasher. Then when I put the glass down on the shelf I had this feeling. It was kind of like, “You can move this.” And so I put my hand near the glass but I didn’t touch it. Then I concentrated on moving the glass with my mind. No joke the glass moved about an inch or so in the cupboard. I thought to myself, “Whoa.” I tried to reproduce the effect but I couldn’t.

Anyway I ate three bananas today and so that made me think about psychic stuff. I was looking up psychic quizzes on the internet and one was taking so long to load I thought, “I sense that I will…NOT wait for this page to load and will navigate away!”

Check this out: Time Travel. Whenever you think about what you want to do and imagine yourself doing it that’s one thing. But if you actually imagine yourself doing something in the future and then you actually manifest yourself doing that very thing. That’s almost time travel. The reason why I say that is because reality is only a mixture of sensory input that we experience. So if you can experience in your mind exactly what you are going to do in the future, there is almost no difference between the two and it is as if you Time Traveled to that very moment. This is an artform and something that must be practiced. The “Secret” and all those movies that try and tell you that you can get whatever you want by just thinking it try to touch on this piece of information, but they charge you $19.99 for it. They also sugar coat it for you, they try to act like getting what you want doesn’t take work. And people listen to that and gladly hand over a few buck and then get frustrated because they didn’t get exactly what they wanted from it. Here’s the whole deal broken down in a couple sentences and for a lot cheaper.

First, pick a target. By target, I mean choose an actual experience that you know you could attain during your lifetime. You may be thinking, “I want a million dollars.” It doesn’t work like that. You need to actually pick an EXPERIENCE. But that doesn’t mean a million dollars can’t be a part of it. So a possible example may be, “I see myself selling one of my houses for 1.7 million dollars. And I feel OK about it.” Can you see how that’s different? You’re actually doing something. But I don’t think the house thing is the best way to start with this. I’d start with something that is achievable in the short term, so you can hone your skills. For myself I was blogging every day, but I wanted to start blogging twice a day minimum. So I actually visualized myself blogging twice a day or more. I imagined myself sitting in my desk chair, drinking San Pelligrino and maybe a Starbucks drink. Having my headphones on. Listening to music. Can you see how this is a more complete visualization? And then here’s the trick to it. After the visualization is complete, actually do exactly what you set out to do WITHOUT FAIL. Don’t let anything get in your way. Complete the visualization. That’s the key. It’s kind of like opening a worm hole to another time. Let the actual work getting you there be the fun part, and focus on the goal. So I did that and it worked so now I’m moving on the bigger things. For example I had real trouble contacting one of the professors of my school to help me figure out my graduation issue. And I just visualized that I was going to call him during the day on a Tuesday and he’d give me the thumbs up on my request. And I called him multiple times to no avail. Then finally I did it again and it looks like I have the go ahead to complete my last two classes and graduate this Spring 2011. It’s pretty cool. So now I am imagining myself working out the details to getting my diploma mailed to me. I am actually visualizing myself calling the person in charge about making sure the diploma gets mailed to my Orange County address instead of my old San Francisco address. I’m going to make that happen. Just as a side note. This is my third blog post today. We’re talking bonus stage here people.

I visualized when I was going to be ASB President of my High School when I was in 8th grade. I saw the current ASB President at that time give a speech. And I said, “I’m going to do that.” Now, there are things that I’ve visualized that haven’t come to fruition yet. For example, I wanted to have my own spaceship by now. And in reality I drive a 4 cylinder car. So I have a long way to go on that one. Am I giving up? No way.

-Tyler

Multitrack View

My brain gets stimulated in a unique way when I write or remix music. I can actually feel my mood change. It is a form of creativity and labor that accesses both hemispheres of the brain. On one hand, it takes the left side of the brain to figure out panning and volume levels, as well as navigating through the several programs used like Adobe Audition and FL Studio. While the right side of the brain has a load of work to do because it determines the “Sweetness” of the sounds that are being created and it senses emotional shifts in mood due to the frequencies presented. I’ve been working on a Remix of a song that is way overdue and I only recently have had the guts and determination to open it up. The project was really daunting because the artist I’m working with created a very long and complicated song with multiple pattern changes. And I want to make sure to do real justice to the track. But all the remixes I’ve been listening to lately has given me a boost of inspiration and determination to work on the track. I really want this track to crank hard.

There is a methodological process that happens when writing and ReMixing music. Right now I am taking a song that was written in FL Studio, and exporting samples to be used in Adobe Audition. When working with FL Studio you use patterns that are usually short sequences of samples placed in time. What’s interesting is that these patterns can be converted into MIDI sequences and then imported into REASON which is a very cool program. The only problem I have with doing so is that I will lose the original sounds for the pattern. But the good thing is that I feel that REASON will do a much better job for specific sounds, specifically the drums. As for Adobe Audition I am working on the intro right now and I’m able to do manipulation of effects and panning of the samples. There is one pattern that was using a piano roll that was pretty complex. So I broke it by cloning and copying the channel and then splitting it into several single lined phrases. This way I was able to export the pattern one channel at a time into Adobe Audition. From there I was able to do some good panning techniques to make the intro much more punchy and compelling. Because in today’s music if you don’t hook the listener in the first few seconds there is a good chance he/she will skip to the next one.

One major thing that I’ve noticed from working on music is how fast time flows by. I can literally spend hours on a few patterns without noticing. It’s not like blogging. When blogging, I notice time by how many times I’ve listened to a piece of music. Isn’t that strange how we track time through music, not hours or minutes? I remember when I used to drive from Santa Barbara to Orange County all the time. I used to gauge my trip by how many albums I’ve listened to. If I had listened to an Orbital album, I was about one-third closer. If I listened to Lifeforms by Future Sound of London I was making good progress to getting to my destination.

When I wrote, “Time in Horizon” it was a very stimulating and spiritual experience. The day I wrote the music for the verses, It all flowed out in one stream. Layer after layer, everything came together. The part that solidified the experience for me was when I added the flutes to the song. That gave a dimension of fullness and depth that made playback more palatable and it inspired me to move onward with more orchestration. I remember when I went to sleep, or at least tried to, I was lying in bed with the song playing over and over again in my mind. After lying there for at least an hour I decided sleep was futile so I went back downstairs and created the chorus of the song. Then and only then, was I able to sleep. It was like there was a piece of creation that had to happen before I could rest. Certain pieces of information can’t stay in the mind. They need to exit and experience the universe themselves, without being confined in your body.

-Tyler