Circumambulating the stupa
Hello friends. Have been through what feels like another round of frying-pan-fire, with cars breaking unexpectedly (quick pushing onto median strips at lights with other cars waiting), songs going out into the world without much fanfare, money on the mind, and as usual the riot menagerie of dogs, kids, and chickens, with 17 new babies (chicken variety) hatching out his week.
Oh and before that, in fact on the same day and same hour nearly as my car broke, the US election delivered its ugly verdict on us all. So i’ll be shortly dusting off all my protesty songs that were almost beginning to sound a bit too cynical in what we thought were the post trump years (but we now discover were the inter-trump years). And i have some new ones on the go too – another album full in 2025 maybe, demos are already sneaking out on soundcloud and the other usual places.
But i actually feel less concerned than i did in 2016. I was there on twitter firing off about it back then, now twitter is a swamp and the other places don’t really have the same game, i’m not going on bluesky out of stubborn principle, and tiredness, tiredness with it all. Sure i will protest in my own way. But a million voices shouting mean nothing when the rich can cut the microphone, or distort it all, or raise their own rabble, whatever you want to say about it. And in a way i think i have become more certain since 2016 that things are as they are and must simply play out according to the rhythm and the music and the poetry we cannot fathom. It could be the beginning of a new dark age. It could be something else. We all have our role and we will find out what it is as the moment arrives.
And so i am making songs and also thinking about Buddhism and temples. I am looking at what’s left of Buddhism in south India – not much – but i wonder how much is there hiding. Great website called way of bodhi has articles about it. I feel like Buddhism got absorbed into Hinduism as Advaita Vedanta in a way (controversial opinion). The philosophical depth is there. But without the monasticism and all those rules. It was stripped of those. That’s why Advaita appeals to me but i do like the kind of asthetic of the buddha and especially those early monasteries like Sarnath and Sanchi, and the Ajanta caves and Nalanda. I have had lucid dreams about stone temples, quite a few. I think i want to visit some of these Buddhist places, and Kanchi too and all its temples. Not sure why i suddenly feel this.
Out at Burra it’s been dry but today the rain was falling. Rainsong was released and there is a video that i made with the kids. It was a lot of fun to make that, we spent half a day out at the Parkes HARS aircraft museum. One of the planes a P3 Orion was quite recently retired from the military and Mike who was showing us around it told us a story of how it had nearly crashed while in Iraq cause a flare took out some of the hydraulics. They had to land it without using breaks which was pretty dicey. But they pulled it off. It was full of all this anti-sub computer equipment – fast becoming redundant, but not too fast, they were still scavenging bits of it for a sister plane that was still in service. We also poked around and filmed in their c-47 Dakota which is my favourite kind of plane, apart from the Lancaster bomber i suppose. They’d only recently acquired that too and were saying that they nearly flew it there but decided to get it delivered by truck and it was lucky ’cause as they were dismantling it they discovered that the wings weren’t properly bolted on. But they do think it’ll fly again one day. Wouldn’t that be great.
I wore a navy warrant officers hat for much of the filming in the planes which was just my little joke.
