After the meditation/mental rupture occurred last year, the one that brought about Lost in the Woods – things have got … interesting on the mat.

In the last few months I have become acutely aware of, and sensitive to, the types and qualities of attention/mental states that I can achieve and experience.

The Buddhists, Hindus, or the Saints, all have their own words and technical terms for the different types of attention you can experience/give/receive. I’m not going to name them as they’re not that important. What’s important are the actual experiencings. The difference between them, the contrast, the cycling of registers and modes. We all pay different types of attention to things throughout our daily lives but rarely are we aware of which kind, and how deeply we are paying attention in the moment. Are you aware of the register of attention you are paying to a TV show whilst browsing your phone at the same time? What about when chopping onions, mopping the floor, working hard on a spreadsheet or driving.

Things are happening to/inside of me that unless you have been though it all yourself (and we can compare notes) it’s not worth talking about or trying to articulate.

Anyways,

I say all this as I spent all day today at a 6 hour band practice. I have (IMO) this year suddenly become a *much* better musician. After 30 years, a music degree, concert grade flute performances, I’ve finally learnt to listen properly. I’ve learnt or discovered that it’s important to pay attention to what is going on in the room. LOL.

As I type this, I realise I spent hours today in a mental state I can only describe as being adjacent to mantra. I was playing my bass sure, but I was listening – really listening – to everyone else in the room. I was feeling the music rather than just using my ears to hear it.

Just as with meditation, I would be playing and then catch my mind wandering – and I would fuck up. Or the other way around – I would fuck up and realise I’d been thinking about how much the gas bill is going up soon. I was not been giving the correct or due attention to the task at hand.

It also dawned on me that I was in a room with 3 other friends communicating the whole time. Communicating and interacting in way far more rich and less socially exhausting than if we had been talking to one another all day. I’ve always felt that I’ve played along with my band mates or orchestra. Today (when the headspace was right) I felt like I was playing with them. The guitar part wasn’t being played by Paul, it *was* Paul.

I makes me wonder. If listening in this way, paying deep attention, is where dancing comes from inside of other people – something I have never been able to do. I’ve always danced like a janky jangley marionette. A simulacra of a creature with rhythm.

I am suddenly interested in playing jazz and improvising with people. Something I’ve traditionally been hopeless at too. I feel like I’d like to be in a impro noise or drone band or something.

Since the ‘event’ on the mat last year, and the instruction to turn the touch around, I’ve realised that giving my whole attention to things makes me feel alive. Never more alive than when I pay attention to God.

The words of the Eucharist instruct:

The Prayers of Penitence include the following lines:

Maybe, just maybe at the age of 37, I have finally understood and experienced what this means in practice.

Permanently Moved

How to Listen to a Podcast

Unravel the concept of attention density, and learn why it is essential for a valuable podcast experience. Seek out shows that offer more.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Went to Berlin and back!
• Calls and booking in further workshops
• Research
• Writing
• Correspondence. So much correspondence. EMAILS

Terminal Access

After reading Blood’s “The weblog handbook’ I’ve been experimenting with proper old school linkblogging using my public pinboard rss feed. It’s zero effort to add a bit of colour and commentary to the bookmark as I’m saving it. Making an effort to link blogg reminds me of ‘the good old days’ when I had a big following on Google Reader and was Bigg on Digg as we used to say.

In a recent newsletter, author Edward Rathke mentioned his love of Tom Waits’ song Make It Rain from the 2004 album Real Gone. God damn. That song soundtracked my life for years.

Dipping the Stacks

Cyborgism – AI Alignment Forum

This post proposes a strategy for safely accelerating alignment research. The plan is to set up human-in-the-loop systems which empower human agency rather than outsource it, and to use those systems to differentially accelerate progress on alignment. 

A Compound That Reverses Gut Inflammation Developed – Neuroscience News

Researchers have developed a new compound, dubbed FexD, that can prevent and reverse inflammation in mouse models of inflammatory bowel disease.

I tried to buy a Rolex and fell into a grey market for luxe watches | Financial Times

I wondered if my local Rolex dealer was secretly sitting on a cache of watches, somewhere out back, behind the empty cabinets.

A 3D Printing Renaissance Is Coming for Tabletop Games | WIRED

You don’t need to print thousands of units of the product at once and live with the results, basically being a disempowered client of the plastics industry

Here’s me on this 2 years ago

Indexing, filing systems, and the art of finding what you have

I have a ton of material that never makes it online, and I need to get it out of my notebooks and into an indexed and fully searchable system. I think this will be easiest if I do it as I go, and keep it simple: the minute I finish a notebook, go back and type the whole thing into a .txt file and save it. (And back it up.)

Reading

I read ‘Wow to Write Useful Books‘ by Rob Fitzpatrick. It’s a practical guide for doing what it says on the tin. I like its focus on iterative, data-driven and reader-centric process approach to non fiction.

Started listening to Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion by Harry Sword on the plane this week. This book is so much more than the history of extreme / drone music. But about drone itself and its relationship with humanity. It references Pandit Pran Nath in the same breath as Sunn 0))))) in the introduction. Can’t wait to explore this book!

Some other books came into my possession this week. I posted photos on my tumblr.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952-2023)

In honour of the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto, here are my two favourite Yellow Magic Orchestra tracks.

I first heard YMO at university in 2003/4(?)ish. In one of my many pop music lectures. I was instantly hooked, like nothing I’d ever heard before. YMO were so far ahead of the curve. Sakamoto, along side YMO founding member Haruomi Hosono they transformed the cultural zeitgeist of Japan.

Technopolis – Solid State Survivor (1979)

Whilst not the most famous track off YMO’s second album (that has to go to Rydeen) Technopolis has got to be one of the most famous uses of the Roland VP-330 vocoder (brand new in 1979). The song sounds like driving in a neon lit cyberpunk world. Unlike other YMO tracks of this era, this song is mostly performed live, not manually sequenced.

Chinese Whispers – Service (1983)

Chinese sits in the middle of the A side of the album Service. It sounds like a Bowie song. This track’s instrumentation also sounds *very much* like a megadrive soundtrack. Something like Wimbledon Championship Tennis. Love this song. its so good.

Remember Kids: