(yes, it's the itunes visualizer I'm referring to here.)
as mentally suspect as it might sound, (and he knew this) billy wanted nothing other than to hunker down in front of my laptop again and listen to music accompanied by the itunes visualizer effects.
"no problem" I told him. "that's what the visualizer is there for, old buddy."
(deep down in the silence, deep darkness, deep mercy, deep hiddenness)
some of you have been pestering me to describe billy's appearance and I'll get around to that eventually- it's something I'm deliberately putting off until the appropriate moment.
several years ago I burned him copies of 3 particular motion picture soundtracks that I thought he might enjoy. I didn't hear anything about them until about maybe 5 or 6 days ago, when he showed up, somewhat bedraggled, to report that he "finally understood what those rascally fellows were up to...the tracks bleed into each other in mystical ways that the composers- completely unknown to one another as far as I'm aware- could never have explicitly planned for..."
my response was: "ok, billy- delighted to hear that you're enjoying the music."
I haven't even seen the films for which the music was written, and neither has billy (people in this era are a little convoluted sometimes) but I have, at his gentle insistence, settled down with him a couple of times in front of said visualization apparatus to try and understand what all the fuss is about.
(admittedly, there are some pretty cool effects)
I can hear you wondering to yourself at whatever great distance you happen to be: "does that rogue billy mix and mingle/scramble the various tracks into a sequence of his own choosing that speaks more personally to his subjective experience of living alone in a small log cabin outside the small town of mt. zion?"
well, f.y.i- that's what he told the UPS man as he was leaving my house the other morning-
you will obviously want to know which soundtracks he has become so enthusiastic about and I'll get around to that eventually- I want to be like that sort of generous/anonymous narrator, so beloved in the world's various storytelling-based cultures, who provides his or her patient listeners with the deep and dark satisfactions they hunger for.
billy stopped by again last night (sorry- still no word from siberia) wait- didn't I already go over that? hmm....well, he just wanted to spend a little time alone with the visualizer! he doesn't own his own computer and considers that to be a pretty unfortunate thing- always having to barge in on friends and associates at inopportune moments just so he can listen to music or record random musings and observations for strangers.
(you'll also probably want to know what version of itunes I'm referring to here and whether we're using standard or "classic"- well, sort of like billy's physical appearance, these are all sensitive matters that I intend to carefully sort thru in due course)
(deep snow, deep forests, deep ethers, deep bodies)
(dig in deep snow) (winter echoes) (hidden chambers and ventricles)
the one thing I can share presently is that my poorly groomed friend keeps mumbling something about "indra's meshwork or web." w.t.f.? I hear you mumbling- yeah, well, I mumbled it too- we're all mumbling something or other these days! it's the holiday season!...the holiday season...so whoop-de-doo...and dickory-dock...and don't forget...to hang up your sock...cause just exactly at 12 o'clock he'll be coming down the chimney down...
so like any responsible citizen of the digital era, I logged onto wikipedia to find out just what this meshwork or web could possibly be, or was it just another strange coinage direct from billy's bizarre private mint-
well, whaddya know! it exists.
(here's a few excerpts from the wiki entry- the page was last modified on march 11, 2010 but that doesn't mean that someone hasn't swooped in in just the last couple of minutes and rearranged or even sabotaged it completely- in any case, there's no need, no need at all, to physically go to wikipedia yourself so as to confirm that I'm not just making all of this crazy shit up-)
"...also called indra's jewels or indra's pearls) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of emptiness, dependent origination, and interpenetration in mainstream buddhist philosophy...holds that all phenomena are intimately/infinitely repeated mutual relations existent...imagine, if you will, a spider's frail web in the early morning covered with dew- and now imagine niagra falls- well, they have a subtle agreement apparently...far far away in the tin shack of the mid-level god indra there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a weird manner that it stretches out quite far in all conceivable directions- and in accordance with the extravagant taste of all self-respecting tin shack enthusiasts, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" or "ear" or "nose" or even "mouth" of the net, and since the net itself seems to be damn near infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number as well- that's a lot of friggin' jewels, you guys! ..............................
