Big Lazy | Music for Unsettling Times
Big Lazy | Music for Unsettling Times
Cover Photo | Marco North
Stephen Ulrich is a guitar player, composer and leader of the band Big Lazy. Big Lazy is an instrumental trio from New York City. Their music dwells in the unmistakable landscape of gritty yet gracefully crafted American music. Simultaneously noir and pastoral, gothic and modern, Big Lazy conjures images of everything from big sky country to seedy back rooms. With sparse instrumentation—electric guitar, acoustic bass and drums—the trio creates richly evocative soundscapes with a distinctly narrative quality and an undeniable sense of place.
Stephen composed music for the HBO series Bored To Death and more recently, the film Art and Craft.
Kosmos | Stephen, what did you want to be when you were growing up?
Stephen Ulrich | Music was always a natural place that I thought I might end up. When I was a little kid, I remember looking at the Beatles’ album, Rubber Soul, and thinking they made it for us personally, that there was one album and it was for our family. I also loved the album cover itself. It could have been shot in our driveway, the pine trees, it just felt like a family portrait or something. That’s the connection I had to music. Playing music started relatively late, at 13. I thought about being an anonymous studio musician because those are the kind of people I studied with. Guys like Sal Salvador, legendary guitarist in New York, part of the RCA Orchestra. Not a rock star, but just earning a living playing music.
Kosmos | What influenced you to focus on instrumental music?
SU | I studied and played jazz, and that’s where I was headed. My mentor, Sal Salvador, taught in a dusty back room in the Ed Sullivan Theater and instrumental music became part of my DNA. I listened to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, classic stuff. I got into punk rock because I felt like jazz was somebody else’s music. Punk was the music of my generation. The incident that turned us into an instrumental band was a gig at CBGB’s Gallery in 1998. We had been working with a singer, Dino Ray, again reinventing by putting words to these dark, atmospheric tunes. The singer didn’t show but we went on anyway. Suddenly, it just felt natural. Within the first song, the crowd came right to us. It was a random act but it wasn’t an accident. Playing strictly instrumentals felt like a bit of a curse at first but it evolved into more of a blessing because now I license music and I write for films.
Kosmos | I’ve heard listeners describe your music as ‘the soundtrack to my life’. It connects at a visceral level with people who are experiencing turmoil in their lives. There is a raw honesty at the core of your work.
SU | Thank you. Yeah, the music is not consoling. It’s saying, ‘everything’s open and everything’s gray, not black and white’. The songs don’t have a happy ending. They don’t have a sad ending. You get to make up your own ending. I also get the description ‘good driving music’. It’s about the trip – telephone poles passing – not necessarily the arrival. There’s an element of human resistance and the power to act when you can actually write your own script.
Kosmos | There’s a yearning in the music, and also in your performance of it.
SU | There is an unresolved quality to the music which gives it a sense of danger but also sadness. Most of the tunes are in minor keys and to our Western ears the minor key lacks resolution. That quality of danger attracts film makers to use the music in dramatic situations. What I love about composing music is I’m using math – music theory – to affect people’s emotions.
We’ve gotten much better at performing this music over the years. It’s not exactly party music, although people do dance at our shows, but it does celebrate life and a has a how-goes-the-struggle? element.
Kosmos | Who are your fans?
SU | We have this new generation of punky kids that like the band and come to shows. They remind me of myself, approaching bands in 1980. When we were on NPR years ago, 1999, or thereabouts, on the show Weekend Edition which aired on Sunday mornings, I received thousands of letters. Thousands. I still have them, – they’re in boxes. The letters were from a whole variety of people. NASA people ordered the CD. Farmers, cops, film makers, skate punks, just the craziest mix of people. Maybe that’s NPR but I felt like the music struck this chord with people, and it just went across the whole spectrum.
Kosmos | That is archived at NPR. Here is a link
SU | Ooh thanks – I need this.
Kosmos | What is the role of the artist in these precarious times?
SU | People have told me this music enabled them to write their own script. I suppose that could sound like escapism, but it could also be about taking control. In that sense, there is an element of understated compassion to the music. The world’s just held together with duct tape right now. It’s hard to not be political personally, but in my music, it’s more of a crusade to stay free and not be beholden to these powers. The word noir is used a lot in our music. What is noir and what does that mean? It literally means darkness. It could be guys in trench coats but actually, I think the music has an underdog quality to it that appeals to people.
Kosmos | The licensing of the music and the work you do scoring television and film, is that a solo project of yours, or do you do that as a band?
SU | Originally, it started out with the band licensing material. We put out a six song EP, Amnesia, and the entire album was licensed by NBC for use in the crime drama Homicide: Life on the Street. We also appeared performing onstage in an episode. Later, I wrote the music for the HBO series Bored to Death. The director, Alan Taylor, was a fan of the band and he used a bunch of songs in the pilot. HBO was like, “Let’s just hire this guy whose music we are already using.” It led to some odd moments where HBO would want me to copy ( industry term: ‘knock-off’) my own composition! The initial interest in licensing came from the band, but as far as scoring for film and televison, I’m a one-man operation. I do however bring the guys in to play on them.
Kosmos | Is scoring different than making songs for records?
SU | Totally different. When composing for an album I’m relatively free, but film composing is all about being in service of the film and director. At times you’re writing not so much what the actor is saying but what they’re thinking, or linking the scene to an earlier action. There’s a whole underlying structure that the viewer will sense but might not be fully conscious of. The best film music pulls you into the film emotionally; you don’t always keep track of what the score is doing. I once sent in a piece of music, and the director was having trouble with it. He commented, “This character is about to be in danger, but he’s not in danger right now. Okay, go. Send us something.” There are so many layers as opposed to writing music for an album where you’re just free. When I’m writing for a film, they’ll say, ‘We need a tango by 4:00 p.m.’ Done!
Kosmos | To what degree does licensing your music keep the lights on and the Big Lazy machine rolling?
SU | That’s where the money comes from, and that definitely keeps things moving, especially for me because I have a very large catalog of music that is used in a lot of different places.
Kosmos | As leader of Big Lazy, do you feel like the business guy, the conductor, the producer, the artist, the guitar slinger or all of the above?
SU | It’s more like cheerleader, cab driver and production designer. I’m constantly the one that says things like, “We’re going to drive 400 miles, but it’s going to be an amazing transformative night.” We’re a band of good friends. They love what we do, but I have to sell them on stuff. The music is obviously front and center but there’s also the presentation, the aesthetic, how everything’s defined, the fonts, just crazy detail.
Kosmos | It’s funny because on the cover of that early EP you referred to, is a picture of you wearing a bunch of hats.
SU | That’s funny, yeah. I never thought of that!
Kosmos | As part of a group, was it difficult to define and refine your low-fi film noir style? Was this something you had to sell them on or did the band members contribute to that?
SU | The original band was called Mild Thing, it was me, Paul Dugan on bass and singer Mark Rounds. This was 1990. We played despairing but humorous drinking songs. We added drummer Willie Martinez, Mark left us and we became Lazy Boy, playing moody instrumentals with too much reverb. We started dabbling in writing music for films and touring. The touring experience made us into more of a rock band, I was just feeling the need to make a racket instead of playing music that made people stare into their drink. The music became less theatrical and more visceral. In 1999 we were sued by the La-Z-Boy chair company for copyright infringement and with the addition of drummer Tamir Muskat, we became Big Lazy. We cultivated a kind of raw, bluesy sound full of fire and recorded 4 albums. After a hiatus starting in 2007 I reignited the band with Yuval Lyon (drums) and Andrew Hall (bass). The lo-fi film noir style was a slow and painful evolution!
Kosmos | Growing up in the punk rock era, we used to plaster the town with our DIY posters to create a visual and a band awareness and announce gigs. Has social media made things different for getting the word out now as opposed to how we did it back in the day?
SB | I’ll never forget that feeling of having a big stapler and an armful of flyers, and making Xeroxed artwork. I did that in early Big Lazy. Nowadays, with social media, everyone’s posting pictures of their sandwich. I use it sparingly. It’s really helpful if you have a gig in Nashville and you need to contact people. On the other hand, I feel like I’m taking part in the Evil Empire. It’s supposed to be about reaching people but there’s all these strange limits to it.
Kosmos | Do you feel like social media is helping you to build a community of fans?
SU | Yes, but in a way, email feels a little more respectful. “Here, we’re playing. If you want to come, you can come. You don’t have to respond.” A lot of what we do is completely done on our own. It’s just another tool.
Kosmos | To what degree has crowdfunding and crowdsourcing provided artistic freedom for your band?
SU | It’s not that different for us. We’ve never been beholden to a record company in terms of what we do artistically. What I did with both crowdfunding campaigns was, I individually emailed 2,000 people. Each time, it took me a month. That’s been the most connective thing I’ve done in terms of social media. I actually had hundreds of conversations with people through email, sometimes on the phone. In that way, it was a transformative thing, connecting to everybody directly.
Kosmos | Where do you go when you perform music. Can you describe your inner landscape at all?
Stephen Ulrich: When I write a tune, I almost always have this sense of place where the tune the piece lives. It could be my mother’s attic, or a parking lot that I was in once but somehow, the piece dwells in a specific location that haunts the song for the rest of it’s life! So I have a faint sense of that place when I’m performing. On a great night I just walk off stage and think to myself, “Where was I for the last hour?”
Kosmos | Nice. You have a new album coming out too, right?
SU | We do! It’s called Dear Trouble. It’s coming out in mid-October and we’re really excited. We brought in a bunch of New York luminary musicians as featured guests; Marc Ribot, Steven Bernstein, Peter Hess and woman named Marlysse Rose Simmons who’s a keyboardist. Checkered Past Records in Chicago is putting it out. It’s actually the first time we’ve used a label.
Kosmos | What about touring or gigs in support of that? Any immediate plans?
SU | Initially, we’re doing Northeast states; Philly, Boston, New York, New Haven, Connecticut. We just did a southern tour and we have plans to go to France in the spring.
Kosmos | Thank you Stephen. Just to leave you with a thought regarding the power that you wield, I found a quote by Ludwig van Beethoven. He said, the guitar is a miniature orchestra in itself. I thought, ‘Wow. That sounds like Stephen.’
SU | That’s great! Thank you!
VISIT | http://www.biglazymusic.com/
Kathy Thaden | An Inner Fire
‘At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.’ (Episcopal Book of Common Prayer p. 370)
These words from the Eucharistic Prayer articulate the environmental focus and inspiration for much of Kathy Thaden’s mosaic art. She writes, “As an artist, my work is informed by my Christian faith – expressing awe at creation and the Creator, as well as responsibility, a divine call to stewardship of all that we have been given. As a mosaicist, I treasure glass and stone scraps or discarded items from our ‘throw-away’ consumer culture. It is important to me that nothing be wasted, finding beauty in what was once broken.”
Linking her art to her faith Thaden says she tries to be always open to God’s possibilities, giving rise to sacred art formed in prayer. “How do I discuss the impact of environmental issues – on both our natural surroundings and the rest of humanity? What can I contribute to the narrative of healing and restoration? By imagination and inspiration, I believe as artists we can be truth-tellers.”
Using found objects, discards, and glass remnants or other unique materials Thaden creates something new. Mixing a variety of materials enables her to tell a visual story. “Working with these fragments is transforming. The pieces are broken, change shape, fit together, and then made whole again. There are no leftovers. This is my voice, my vision, my life – exploding with precious bits and pieces assembled over time.”
Thaden’s study of fine arts and degree in Commercial Art first led her to a career in broadcast design. For 25 years, Thaden worked in television as art director, animator, and graphic designer, winning numerous honors for design, including seven Emmy Awards. Seeking something more tactile she was drawn to contemporary mosaic art 17 years ago, finding her way back to fine art.
Thaden often crafts her mosaics on hand-formed substrates as with Rising and Fragile Earth. The irregular shapes offer a more organic sense to the pieces.
Incorporating natural elements such as fossils, twigs, tree bark, river stones, slate or shells also speaks to the beauty of Creation as in Living Water, inspired by the fight for water rights at Standing Rock. Fragile Earth and Earth in Pieces were born out of the Eucharistic prayer above regarding this, “our island home.”
In Oasis the three gold pieces of smalti on the horizon are a reminder of the Trinity. The spiritual desert is lonely, foreboding place. But within the solitude, there is a sense of the Creator, glimmers of hope, and the realization that we are never alone. Sanctuary offers a sacred place of refuge, shelter and protection.
“The Lord built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth that he established forever.” Psalm 78:69
Found objects can include a zipper (Ripple Effect), or bits of broken auto glass (Rising), or colorful magazine paper bits as in Living Water and Fragile Earth. Thaden does use more traditional materials as well, combining stained glass, smalti (both Italian and Mexican glass), millefiori, beads or marble as in Oasis, Sanctuary and Ripple Effect.
What You Cross the Street to Avoid
You assume that a blind man can sing
and that he can afford a guitar.
You say, “Less is more”
to a woman whose children need new shoes.
You don’t listen to your daughter’s questions.
She stops asking them.
The one time I went without eating
my thoughts ran away from me.
Handed a bowl of soup, I felt its weight.
I nearly dropped it.
W.C. Handy’s song about St. Louis
doesn’t mention his empty belly
or how stiff his back was
from sleeping on cobblestones under a bridge.
He sang of a man whose heart
was a rock cast in the sea.
A Long Convalescence
It is the small things tell you you are home—
cotton sheets, linen clouds, Dutch rabbits
nibbling greens. It is close to sunset
when you remember why you went away.
Never again, I swear on the Bible,
I hear you say to yourself as if no one
listens. Mama hurries the last crumbs
into a basket, sister sings her song.
However many hours He wore that crown—
that’s how long you lay anesthetized
while the surgeon scraped nerves and stretched bones.
Meanwhile the jackrabbit comes to blend in
against tan grounds and cottonwood. Windows
hold a million trees full of ganglia.
Accept that for now you will be going
between only two rooms—one with a bed,
one with a sink. Its grave porcelain eye.
New Spirit, Wise Action
Dear Reader,
The times we live in ask much of us. How can we know the best ways to respond to the converging crises we face? How can we live lives of deep meaning and joy in the midst of confusion and pain, and be catalysts for positive change?
If you practice on a spiritual or ethical path, you already see that chasing wealth, power, or egoic pleasure has lost the appeal it may have held earlier in life. You have been called in a new direction, your heart-strings vibrating to a more complex chord. And as activists, you have felt the recent shifts away from ‘sustainability’ and ‘reform’ to ever more sober purpose: resilience, restoration, ‘deep adaptation’, alliance-building, and taking personal inventory of what you are willing to ‘lose’, as you make space for the new. How will you integrate and transcend all you have learned? How will your metamorphosis unfold, and what will you become?
The Fall edition of Kosmos Quarterly explores the dynamic between our inner work and outer actions. Creating this edition, we kept our focus on emergent ways of being and doing in these challenging times. For veteran activists like Lisa Fithian, this takes the form ‘conscious organizing’; for Professor Jem Bendell, it is a personal set of skills for surviving climate despair. In the Nevada desert, ‘burners’ annually create and dismantle a post-apocalyptic city for artists and lovers. Gary Gach follows Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s Five Mindfulness Trainings – a global ethic for humanity. Extinction Rebellion uses Holacracy, a framework for decentralized decision-making developed by Brian Robertson. And enigmatic musical artist Kendra Smith, chooses life off-grid, ‘chopping wood and carrying water’.
Each of these actions, among others, is a valid response as we navigate the liminal space between the disintegrating ‘flat’ worldview of objective rationalism that allowed us to marginalize anyone and anything that did not conform to its model of progress, and the incoming convulsive energy of a new integral era. How we ‘show up’ now is nothing less than the greatest test ever faced by a known species. Unlike the dinosaurs, we alone have the capacity to awaken, to cherish our living Earth, and to recognize our interdependence with all Life.
Never have the stakes been so high, the choices so profound.
For elders like me, there is restitution to be made, an inner and outer reckoning for decades of naïve belief in man-made systems of modernity. The least I can offer now is my full being, in service to Life for all the days I am given. For young people, the test is far more severe. They know that a dark night of the world soul lurks on the horizon, to be endured and ultimately transcended, only by the wildest love and most creative, painful birth-effort imaginable.
Many young people tell me they are reluctant to bring new lives into the world. That is understandable, yet consider this – our care and teaching of children, in loving families and communities, is very likely the most important practice we can offer the world at this time. Laughter, joy, family, warmth, stability, ceremony. Each new generation is the prayer of Creation. Let us focus our loving attention on all children and work to protect all beings.
Our wise actions matter, and only our sincere inner work can reveal the way forward. It is the mission of Kosmos to walk together on the path of transformation. Join us!
Please join me also in wishing Nancy Roof, our beloved founder and Editor Emeritus, a very happy 90th birthday. This wise world-server is a beacon of light to anyone touched by her vision and her love.
In Gratitude,
Rhonda Fabian
Editor
God Becomes a Hairdresser
Things are going badly. Handbasket badly.
What sort of things? you ask.
The usual: the Red Sox season, war, those wild cells
proliferating to kill.
So God borrows scissors from the Three Fates
and opens a salon downtown, unisex, no less.
People come and sit in the chairs under nylon bibs
like agreeable oversized babies while God runs
His holy fingers through their hair.
He clips and snips and sprays them with lotions.
He twiddles and crunches and poufs, and holds
up a mirror behind, until His clients look and see
that it is good.
At 8 p.m, God combs out a last perm, accepts a tip,
and pulls down the shades.
So has His work made this world any better?
Beats me.
Previously published in Gold Man Review and How I Became An Historian, Cherry Grove, 2014.
Men at the End of Their Strings
After the cars carefully search for
and lurch into their parking spots
and the extra pants are packed
in case of a wave’s sneak attack,
the blankets are tugged out from under
coolers stuffed with drinks and sandwiches
and little plastic sleeves of condiments.
We are families on the way to the winter
beach, toting soccer balls to launch
through driftwood goals, frisbees that
hover like some day-glo, latter-day vultures
waiting for a feast. We stalk the huge
gulls as though they are mastodons in the sand.
We surround and suddenly rush to invoke
prehistoric panic. They lift and criticize
our silly gravitational habit. Nigel is going
thin at the top, and I am going soft
in the middle. My son’s foot marks a print
larger than mine. Nigel’s bests him
in the rite of passage race. The kids
collect feathers, dig up mussel shells,
study the crabs’ broken husks hidden
in the sea wrack. Phew! — where there’s
sandflies, sure as hell there’s stink.
Finally, we pose together in front of
the sandcastle’s ruins. But before we
leave we fly the kites. The shark face
in the sky scorns the kids’ persistence,
and soon they lose interest. Once again
Nigel and I tend the nagging little presence
on the end, wondering what it might have
been like to live on the margins in Bolinas,
run an antique shop in Sonoma, become
the Sebastopol fortune teller. Something
binds us to this moment, something we
might call quiet dignity, or something the soul
of the wind has summoned. Up ahead of us
are the kids trying to roll a waterlogged
trunk into the sea. One, two, three —
they all heave at once while Nigel urges,
Push, lads, push.
The Sun of Darkness
Excerpt 1
As a culture or a civilization, we are undergoing a polarity switch between what we consider central or essential, and what we find to be peripheral or unimportant. The center and the periphery are, in other words, changing places. This is part of a larger epochal shift that we can best understand through a mythological and cosmological lens. In the simplest terms, the polarity switch is between prioritizing the material and seemingly objective external reality or the internal dimensions of consciousness and subjective awareness.
Sergio Magana is a Nahuatl, Aztec, Nagual (sorcerer) from Mexico who has written fascinating books including The Dawn of the Sixth Sun. Magana was trained by Nahuatl elders in Mexico City and carries their ancient knowledge forward into today’s world. According to this tradition, we are currently in a transition between what they call a “Sun of Light” and a “Sun of Darkness.” These transitions happen every 5,000 years or so, as our Solar System passes through different regions of the galaxy.
Magana’s perspective aligns with the Long Count calendar of the classical Maya. He believes that 2012 – 2021 represents the in- between phase as we transition from a Sun of Light to one of Darkness. During a Sun of Light, humanity explores the material and physical world, the exterior, or surface dimension. This includes materialist science and rational logic. As we plunge into a Sun of Darkness, however, we collectively dive back into the more evanescent realm of the dreamworld, into the shifting, shimmering waters of the Psyche. Reality, itself, becomes more psychically malleable; the world becomes increasingly like a waking dream. For those who don’t have an esoteric worldview, such a shift can be deeply destabilizing and disorienting, even fatally so.
From our current vantage point, I do think we can acknowledge a profound, still-deepening shift in the collective field of both the outer and inner worlds over the last decade. Everything has changed to such a degree that even the recent past seems sepia-toned, vaguely inaccessible. It is as if we have entered a different frequency, or in the esoteric philosopher GI Gurdjieff’s term, “octave,” of consciousness. It almost seems like humanity, as a whole, has embarked on a prolonged psychedelic trip together – a journey that may lead, eventually, into entirely unforeseen or previously concealed regions or dimensions of being.
What Karl Marx once noted about the innate tendency of modernity – “all that is solid melts into air” – now seems true across the board. Our environmental support systems, to take one example, have been destabilized to such a degree that all future bets are off. That our financial system is entirely evanescent, based upon collective faith, was starkly revealed by the massive crash of 2008, as well as by the rise of blockchain-based currencies able to generate vast fortunes without any known utility. An ongoing breakdown of outmoded patriarchal structures is underway as women join forces, amplifying their voices through the Internet. At the same time we witness the rise of “fake news” which impacts popular opinion and elections, and the new threat of “deep fakes,” doctored video and audio that can convincingly show any person saying or doing anything. Then there is Artificial Intelligence, CRISPR, three-dimensional printing, new technologies capable of reading our thoughts, total surveillance systems, and so on.
The Illustrations of Dallin Orr
Dallin Orr is an award winning illustrator from Salt Lake City, Utah with a Master of Fine Art in Illustration from the University of Hartford.
He has been recognized in Society of Illustrators Los Angeles, 3×3, and Creative Quarterly. With five years of international stained glass mural design & painting experience, he currently works as a lead artist at Holdman Studios.
He is continuing to pursue experimental and comprehensive storytelling through collaborative and independent projects. https://www.dallinorr.com/
The felt sense that we have moved from a time of clarity to one of murky ambiguity, confusion and corruption is, of course, exemplified by Trump’s Presidency as well as the rise of the Alt Right. In many respects, Trump’s ascendancy has a dream-like, surreal quality to it. Trump himself seems a liminal, trickster, or Loki-like figure – akin to the Lord of Misrule from a fairy tale. The Trump card is the one that automatically and unfairly wins over all of the others. Symbolically, this reflects the impermeable psychic field surrounding his meteoric rise as well as his astounding capacity to shrug off scandals that would have annihilated any previous president many times over. Trump has trumped the system. With his victory, it feels as if we have fully entered the realm of the hyper-real or what the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called the Simulacrum.
Excerpt 2
Of course, the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung did the most, in the twentieth century, to reveal the dream-like nature of reality, which he saw expressing itself through synchronicities that reveal the bridge between mind and matter, as well as archetypal symbols and processes that unfold through both the individual and collective Psyche. Jung’s last book, The Flying Saucer Myth, focused on the epidemic of UFO sightings in the years following the end of World War Two. Noting the round shape of the saucers, Jung interpreted them as symbols of psychic wholeness – like the center of the mandala around which the Psyche spirals in dreams. He proposed that the prevalence of UFO sightings suggested we were approaching the crescendo of the Apocalypse. The word “Apocalypse” means uncovering, revealing; the “unveiling of the hidden thing.” For Jung, the inner meaning of the Apocalypse was not destruction but “the coming of the Self into conscious realization” – the incarnation of the complete human personality, comprising both dark and light, unconscious and conscious, elements.
In fact, until this point, the most compelling thinkers on the phenomenon of UFOs, Extra- or Infra-Terrestrials, and abductions have applied a psychological, psychic, or mythological perspective, rather than a literal one. UFOlogist Jacques Vallee linked alien abductions to ancient folktales in which humans trespassed or were cajoled into the realm of the fairy folk. He found these episodes belonged to “the domain of the in-between, the unproven, and the unprovable, . . . the country of paradoxes, strangely furnished with material ‘proofs,’ sometimes seemingly unimpeachable, but always ultimately insufficient. . . . This absolutely confusing (and manifestly misleading) aspect . . . may well be the phenomenon’s most basic characteristic.” He examined many accounts of abductions by faeries in the Middle Ages and noted that the contemporary accounts simply substitute a kind of faceless technological matrix for the more baroque aesthetics of the faery world.
A brilliant chronicler of the realms of the soul, the alchemical imagination, and the otherworld which he calls the “daimonic reality,” Patrick Harpur explores extraterrestrials and the abduction phenomenon through a framework that deconstructs our modern literalism which he finds flawed and limited. “We cannot see the world except through some perspective or imaginal framework – in short, some myth,” he writes in The Philosopher’s Secret Fire. “Indeed, the world we see is the myth we are in.” We easily forget that our model of the world is just one way of relating to reality, one picture or idea.
Literalism, in particular, blinds us from being able to envision the multiple or even myriad levels of reality that may exist simultaneously.
Excerpt 3
In the course of writing 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, I kept returning to Nietzsche, who somehow reached a profound understanding of the invisible biases hidden within our language and thought, even without access to psychedelics. In his work, he relentlessly exposed these biases. His speculations meshed with my findings as I explored esoteric subject matter such prophecies, crop circles, psychic phenomena, and alien abductions. I would contemplate Nietzche’s provocations, such as this one: “Why couldn’t the world that concerns us—be a fiction? And if somebody asked,“but to be a fiction there surely belongs an author?”—couldn’t one answer simply: why? Doesn’t this “belongs” perhaps belong to the fiction, too?”
What I gleaned from my study of the crop formations is that there are extra- as well as infra-terrestrial and other-dimensional forces working with and for humanity, as well as those working against us. The technique for contacting these more benevolent forces requires, I believe, attaining a heightened state of humble receptivity, on the one hand, while on the other hand, finding an appropriate, active way to reach out toward them. In other words, melding the feminine, receptive, and masculine, active, aspects of ourselves in an occult investigation.
As Rudolf Steiner explored in depth in books like How to Know Higher Worlds and An Outline of Esoteric Science, when it comes to navigating what he called the “supersensible” realms, we are always in danger of projecting our shadow material and receiving contacts that mirror and amplify our darker aspects. In the individual’s journey toward initiation, in fact, such an episode is inevitable, and invariably frightening. Steiner calls it the encounter with the “Guardian of the Threshold.” While we meet the Guardian as a separate being, this entity reflects all of our darkest and most malevolent aspects.
Perhaps, if humanity and the Earth as a whole are undergoing a phase-state transition to a Sun of Darkness – a more psychic or lucid- dream-like level of reality, as the Aztecs foretold – we are currently confronting the Guardian of the Threshold collectively. It seems to be happening in politics, in the breakdown of our planetary ecology, in the exponentially malignant potential of futuristic technologies, and in the alien contact or abduction experiences that so many have recounted.
These excerpts are from Daniel’s recent self-published book, The Occult Control System: Ufos, Aliens, Other Dimensions, and Future Timelines and can be purchased here.
Two Poems
Two Poems
Metal Mothers
To follow up that classic
experiment done in the Sixties
on young primates fed by wire
figures, how they always rushed
right when the bottle emptied to snuggle
with some padded forms
though those never fed them
anything nor ever hugged them
back. What hunger
that softness satisfied
science wanted to know.
So now to have the facts
on this early lack of mother,
a modern steel-lined crib
for infant rhesus monkeys
without the former cotton
clutter, each in its own
cylinder, sealed.
(The scientist had quite a bent
for lab language
who named that place
“a well of despair.”) Forty-five days
and forty-five nights
of maternal deprivation.
While it lasts
each babe gives science its best
moments through one-way glass
as their spindly arms
trying to cuddle the smooth steel
sides of those metal mothers.
Oxen
Last night a calf was born
to my yoke partner’s mate
and we moaned though low
because it is to live as we
and all before us live
we who have never lived
wild. Nor will this new tiller
already stumbling
after his mother as she returns
to the grindstone rounds
rise up to rebel
and lead us out of slavery.
Oxen have no other fate.
We gave up
counting our steps in the fields
or the persistent prods of the rod.
We know no longings
but for food. We drag
over the difficult earth.
But sometimes the smell of dew
on new-cut grass or the shadow
of a bird rippling over
the furrow ahead
lets us know our despair
we who tow the boats and bear the loads
we who turn the wheels and push the carts
and feel nothing
but the soft powdery explosions
of the clods that burst beneath our hoofs.
Yet when times are bad
and men eat the grain
meant for us
then the fear of nothing
finally makes us yearn
to hold even this
treadmill life of pulling.
Rhino Conservation
I literally won an auction. It was a live auction for a trip to Namibia. That was completely on a whim, but it was a bucket list item that I always had. I am the quintessential animal lover, the little girl who was picking up the strays and the little birds. I’ve always loved animals. I’ve always liked being out in nature. I probably never would have taken the plunge to go to Africa because it was daunting to me. Where do you go? How do you figure it out? It seemed so foreign.
When I got to Namibia, the first large wildlife that I saw wasn’t a bird or baboon but a giraffe. It was actually a group of giraffes walking towards a waterhole. The sauntering and the movement of those giraffes coming above the trees, that was it for me. I was so… taken. That’s what sowed the seed.
I happen to have a friend at work, Dr. Mullen of Penn Medicine, who’s also a wildlife lover who has been to Africa a number of times. He is a National Geographic supporter, and connected me with Dereck and Beverly Joubert, National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence. They were on tour in the US in the fall of 2015 for their film Soul of the Elephant which was debuting and had won some awards. The Jouberts came and spoke at the Department of Surgery at Penn Medicine on leadership from their perspective as conservationists.
Connecting with them after their talk, I had one question for them, “How can I help?”
They had just started their joint program Rhinos Without Borders. There has been lots of press around big cats and elephants. Not as many people know about the plight of the rhinos and, in fact, I did not. I said, “Fantastic. If the rhinos need help, then we are here to help the rhinos.” That was really the beginning for PARCA.
Since then, our mission has been to educate about the plight of rhinos, contribute to their conservation as well as the preservation of their larger ecosystem.
Over the last year, I’ve realized how profoundly wildlife affects people. The prior President of Botswana had a very animal-focused mentality. He was very much about the environment, very much about photographic tourism. They stopped all hunting in the country, and they’ve seen wildlife rebound.
Yet as wildlife has rebounded, it has encroached further upon humans. Women who have to go to retrieve water, are not able to get to their water source because the elephants are blocking it. Farmers are also affected by crops that get damaged. There have actually been incidents of elephants killing humans, and many other effects of their encroachment.
The new president is not as environmentally focused. He says he is more about the people and looking at what the people need, like crop protection. The environmental ministers presented him with a plan a few months ago that included elephant culling and reinstituting hunting.
As Westerners, when we make comments on social media or in petitions about ‘saving the elephants,’ some of us are intending for that to mean we have to protect the elephants and the people, but we haven’t been saying that. So the people of Botswana weren’t hearing that. What they were hearing was Westerners—who think they know the situation yet who don’t have conflict with these enormous land mammals—just saying ‘protect the elephants,’ while locals are losing family and friends sometimes to this conflict.
The Extinction Report
In the midst of our global climate crisis, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services report sheds light on the rapidly declining biodiversity and worsening health of the planet’s ecosystems. The 40-page summary for policymakers, published this May, compiles evidence from various scientific studies and reveals a reality that cannot be softened–one million species face extinction, and their loss further compromises surviving ecosystems. Without the restoration of their habitats, nearly 500,000 species will face extinction in just the next few decades.
The drive of this crisis is clear: human activity–development, deforestation, resource extraction, overfishing, hunting–as well as climate change (also largely driven by human activity) has put these species at risk. The extinction of such scale threatens human well-being, as biodiversity is foundational to our livelihoods, health, and, ultimately, our survival. The consequences of ecological and climate changes will disproportionately affect urban and poor communities.
Nearly 25% of global land is owned or tended by indigenous or local communities, and proves to be healthier than nature managed by large corporations. Appropriately, the report consults and includes local and indengeous knowledge, and contends that improving the planet’s ecological health depends on a cultural shift away from primarily valuing economic growth toward perceiving ecological health as central to human quality of life. With human activity at the center of this ecological crisis, the solution also rests in our hands, requiring systemic change across every industry.
Key findings
- Up to 1 million: species threatened with extinction, many within decades
- 33%: marine fish stocks in 2015 being harvested at unsustainable levels; 60% are maximally sustainably fished; 7% are underfished
- 45%: increase in raw timber production since 1970 (4 billion cubic meters in 2017)
- >75%: global food crop types that rely on animal pollination
- +/-821 million: people face food insecurity in Asia and Africa
- 68%: global forest area today compared with the estimated pre-industrial level
- 29%: average reduction in the extinction risk for mammals and birds in 109 countries thanks to conservation investments from 1996 to 2008; the extinction risk of birds, mammals and amphibians would have been at least 20% greater without conservation action in recent decade
It caused me to pause and think about how I was saying, “I wanted the elephants to be protected.” It doesn’t mean I don’t want to protect humans. I want, hopefully, to find a solution that encompasses everybody.
It’s complex, and we can’t do it without the locals involved in the conversation. Understanding the disruption of social structures to both humans and animals is critical in the work of conservation.
Understanding how to extend my circle of compassion has been transformational for me in this work. Take poaching or hunting even here in Pennsylvania—when you hunt a deer, you’re removing an animal from is social structure. You have no idea if that deer has young to take care of. And then, when you consider folks that hunt as a food source, it’s not as easy to say, “No, it’s completely wrong, and you can’t do that.”
Taking time to consider the whole and listen to others’ perspectives is essential in this work. Articles like the latest UN extinction report are so important to keep the dialog going. I hope that folks find time to read these reports and really think about the scope of these issues. You don’t need to feel pressured to find the solution, but participating in the conversation is important, because you may have ideas that the experts haven’t thought about. And we need to find space for the voices of local communities, for those living this experience everyday. Otherwise, our solutions will fall flat.
Having been in the conservation realm now, I’ve become more aware of all of the plights that exist and the different animals who are threatened, from amphibians to birds, insects – it’s profound. We have a lot of work to do and it can be very daunting, but if you find your cause, you will love it and you will work for it. Of course, I would love for you to take my cause, because I love my cause. But, I want you to find your cause. We are pretty powerful when we put our minds to things.
When you lock eyes with an animal—whether its common or foreign to you–you cannot help but have that awe inspiring moment of, “Oh my gosh, I just had a connection with a wild animal.” Even if you go for a hike in your local woods or spend time in your backyard, take time to hear the birds. So often, we become immune to seeing and hearing the life around us.
I often think about book Silent Spring. What would it be like if you woke up in May, finally able to open our windows, everything’s coming back to life, and it was silent? It would be so void. Our lives are enriched by the animals among us, and we have to just take a moment and appreciate that. When you make that connection with another living being, and certainly one that you don’t expect it because they’re wild, it’s profound.
PA Rhino Conservation Advocates (PARCA) has been working to help protect the rhinoceros since 2015. First and foremost, our work raises much-needed funds to enable groups in Africa to protect and care for rhinos. We advocate for and educate the public about rhino conservation and the critical nature of this issue. We are a U.S. public charity under IRS Section 501(c)(3).
Dereck and Beverly Joubert
Dereck and Beverly Joubert are globally recognized wildlife conservationists, National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence, award-winning filmmakers, and photographers. They are the founders of the Big Cats Initiative with National Geographic, which funds 86 grants in 27 countries for the conservation of big cats. The Jouberts have been researching in Africa for over 30 years and are prolific in their conservation work. They have made 25 films for National Geographic, published 11 books, six scientific papers, and written many articles for National Geographic Magazine. They have received 8 Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, a Grand Teton Award, multiple Golden Panda Awards, a World Ecology Award, and a Presidential Order of Merit awarded by Botswana’s president, Seretse Khama Ian Khama.
One of the most beneficial things that the Jouberts did for me personally and for PARCA as an organization was to extend their full support to us, ‘What we have at our disposal, you have at your disposal,’ they assured me. ‘Use what you can, because we’re all partners in this. There’s no competition. If you’re jumping on board and we’re all going to do this, we’re going to do this together and we all have to support each other.’ Their generosity came in the form of advice and expertise, access to their staff, and even their portfolio of photography–Beverly Joubert-quality photography, of course.
Beverly Joubert is an acclaimed photographer, and her exhibitions have furthered the reach of their mission. The Jouberts recently launched Rhinos Without Borders in partnership with Great Plains Conservation and And Beyond which aims to move 100 rhinos from South Africa to Botswana to save them from the poaching crisis.
