Lately I’ve been pondering a line from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal: “I often wonder why people torment themselves as soon as they can.” It’s an excellent question without an easy answer.
As of today, I haven’t had a drink in twelve years. There are dogs and teenagers who’ve been sober longer than this, but there was a time when I thought I wouldn’t make it twelve hours, let alone twelve years. I’ve lost so many people to this thing. Like my mom, who was so much smarter, kinder, and tougher than me. When I cleaned out her things after she died, I found a yellow book tucked under her mattress called Sobriety for Dummies. Addiction is a disease of isolation; if you’re struggling, please reach out to someone. (I’m here.)
Twelve years ago, I found a community that told me to meditate. They said it would help me learn to live in my skin and might even introduce me to a higher power. I thought meditation was goofy new-age woo, but I was desperate not to drink again, so I said okay. This was a year or two before mindfulness became a lifehack for greater productivity because end-game capitalism devours everything, even the ancient practice of staring at a wall. Nowadays, people who talk about meditation tend to be insufferable, and I do not intend to do this here. I only want to tell you about the rain. And the stick.
At first, I could not sit in silence for thirty seconds without wanting to fuck with my phone, but eventually, I found myself at a Zen temple where I was directed to a small pillow and told to face the wall. The others were middle-aged men. They had shaved heads and wore black kimonos. I wore skinny jeans and smelled like cigarettes.
The temple belonged to a small ancient monk for whom the only adjective is wizened. He paced behind us with a wooden rod the length of a baseball bat. If our spines sagged or our shoulders went off-kilter, he would whack us with his stick. Actually, he only whacked me. He was remarkably strong for an 86-year-old monk. Meanwhile, the men on either side of me remained like statues, radiating intensity and seriousness. (As a general rule, I’ve found that no matter what you enjoy—music, running, photography, cycling—there’s always a middle-aged man nearby who is taking it way too seriously.)
The introductory meditation was three hours. My mind gnawed at itself. I listened to my veins until the blood pulsing in my vessels became a form of entertainment. But deep within the second hour, a light rain began to fall, and I could hear each drop. Then came a hush I’d never known, and I thought I had glimpsed beyond the veil.
Then came the stick.
A few months later, I mentioned this experience to a friendly nun, and she smiled. “We’re hard enough on ourselves as it is. We don’t need somebody hitting us with a stick.”
In other news, the Late Heavy Bombardment was a cosmic event that occurred four billion years ago, and it feels like it’s happening again. So I’m returning to my spiritual practice of slowing my favorite songs down to a reverberated crawl as an antidote to these chaotic subzero days. There’s a lot of Echospace on this outing, particularly The Coldest Season, the best winter album ever made. (I think it sounds even better 48% slower).
One of tonight’s tracks is called ‘Abraxas,’ which might be the ancient form of 'abracadabra'. The Wikipedia entry starts like heavy science fiction: “Abraxas is a word of mystic meaning in the system of the Gnostic Basilides, being there applied to the Great Archon, the princeps of the 365 spheres.” It gets wilder from there.
- TM404 - 202/303/303/303/606/606 (43% slower)
TM 404 | Kontra-Musik, 2013 | Bandcamp - Topdown Dialectic - A4 (44% slower)
S/T | Peak Oil, 2018 | Bandcamp - Echospace - Aequinoxium/Sunset/Abraxas (48% slower)
The Coldest Season | Modern Love, 2008 | Boomkat - Von Schommer - Wuerfel/Wuerfel Version (45% slower)
Deepchord, 2000 | Bandcamp - IMAX - Concorde (47% slower)
Deepchord, 2000 | Bandcamp
Also includes snippets from Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Leonard Cohen, Yazoo, Skeeter Davis, Rebekah Del Rio, and 10cc. (The moment at the eight-minute mark when a Joy Division fragment lands on a half-speed synth is my favorite thing yet in these fifteen mixes.)
Listen below, or here’s a premium executive mp3 you can play while you ponder whether or not to root for this asteroid. (And here’s a Spotify playlist of the songs at their normal boring speed.) Now I’m about to board an airplane to Chicago because C. surprised me with a birthday trip to see three of my favorite paintings.
Thank you for listening. The request lines are open.
