Every Grain of Sand

A Transcendent Moment

Have you ever had a moment when you connected with a song in a way you can’t really explain to anyone else, like a transcendent music moment?

I had one yesterday during an even larger transcendental moment, which happened like many deeply spiritual moments, while I was washing the dishes…

To put it briefly, and mostly to mark this moment in time for myself – I had a time of prayer that dealt with a lifetime of issues – in short, powerful bursts of forgiveness, enlightenment and restoration… like 10 years of therapy in 30 minutes.  It was quite amazing and I’m still happily discovering all kinds of surprising benefits from this sudden shift in thinking and being.

The song which was part of this moment was Every Grain of Sand – written by Bob Dylan, and sung by Emmylou Harris on her Wrecking Ball album. This song is track 7, and I had been listening to the whole album straight through when it came on…

The moment felt like the solutions to the questions I had just prayed minutes before came rushing back towards me like a tsunami, in waves that crashed on my shores, eliminating a lifetime of burdens and carrying them away.

It was such a powerful moment, one that’s really too large for words, but I just wanted to make a witness of it and remember it with this song…

Listen to the song here:

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Every Grain Of Sand

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

Copyright © 1981 by Special Rider Music

Dystopian Shifting

Note from Jon, onehumanbeing: I address this to you on the eve of a total lunar eclipse over North America, and just a few days before the Winter Solstice. We are on the cusp of a 30-year cycle of change as well as larger, era-changing moment in human history… these are significant times we are living in.

“People, I got to speak about something” – Tom Waits

I’m not really happy with the direction our country is heading.

Over the last month, the Obama administration has grappled (badly) with how to deal with the Wikileaks situation while trying to find it’s footing after the brutal November elections.

President Obama (or you can call him “Suzy Creamcheese”) is not doing well, and is looking for answers in all the wrong places.

Nope is the new Hope, Secrecy is the new Transparency, Censorship is the new Freedom of the Press, Propaganda is today’s FauxNews.

What Wikileaks has done over this last month has laid bare the wounded, fearful animal the Obama administration has become – and that’s a very dangerous thing.

Definition: Dystopia

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: bad-, ill- and place, landscape) (alternatively, cacotopia, or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian.

Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence.

A dystopia, thus, is regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government.

Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence. Dystopias often explore the concept of technology going “too far” and how humans individually and en masse use technology.

A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty for most of its inhabitants and a large military-like police force.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia

Calling Down The UFOverdriver

Due to a number of circumstances (a different story entirely) I recently started working again on my UFOverdriver sound collage project.

Since late November I’ve created a number of pieces following the latest political shift in our country, one that I’m now calling a “dystopian shift.”

Poetics, music, art, and the great, universal subconsciousness are all deeply connected. This is one reason poets, artists, musicians, dreamers and deep thinkers often tap into emerging events (regardless of how they interpret them) before they crash upon the awareness of the general population.

Those of us who spend our lives completely involved in the poetic arts tend to see new human events before they appear on the horizon. Many times we sadly watch our worse fears unfold before our eyes, but fortunately, sometimes, something else completely surprising happens.

Needless to say, I hope I get it wrong as I feel a dystopian tsunami coming at us from beyond the horizon. I pray people make different choices and change the direction of the future. It only takes one human being to change things – the right one at the right moment.

But at this moment, since the November elections, the Obama administration and our country has shifted hard towards a dystopian future, and that is the story presented here.

Four Sound Collages – One Story

Part 1 – December 6th

Rule Number Two Is The New Rule Number One

UFOverdriver - Rule Number Two Is The New Rule Number One - The Wikileaks Big Cable Dump Mix

UFOverdriver has been busy this last week (written December 6, 2010) working on this densely layered sound collage of mixed-media from the first week of the Wikileaks Cable Dump – a week that will be remembered as a historical battle in the history of the InfoWars…

This new remix includes music from U2, Talking Heads and Radiohead, lectures from Alan Watts and sound clips from an audiobook version of 1984, as well as numerous other clips, cuts, samples and various bits of audio debris from this first week of skirmishes in the new InfoWars…

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Track Listing

Track 1 (0:31) War is Peace – Freedom is Slavery – Ignorance is Strength

Track 2 (4:12) Rule Number Two Will Be Told To You In Reverse

Track 3 (2:06) One Step Closer To InfoWar

Track 4 (2:19) If You’re Going To Be Human

Track 5 (3:27) Life During InfoWar Time

Track 6 (1:45) The Infrastructure Will Collapse

Part 2 – December 11th

This Is The Voice Of Your Conscience

After being deeply inspired by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ filibuster/long speech on Friday (December 10, 2010), UFOverdriver worked quickly to make use of it in a sound collage. The goal was to capture the moment and preserve it in a form that would highlight long, uninterrupted stretches of his speech.

Sen. Bernie Sander began his speech at 10:25 AM and ended it over 8 1/2 hours later at 6:59 PM. Many of us who watched it as it happened felt we were watching a historic moment.

This sound collage is composed of 5 parts/tracks; with a short introduction, the beginning of the filibuster, a short interlude, another uninterrupted segment of the speech, and then the conclusion.

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Track Listing

Track 1 (03:30) Fortress America Is Waiting For A Message Of Some Sort Or Another

Track 2 (09:24) Mr. Sanders Goes To Washington – Part 1

Track 3 (03:21) I Am Equality 7-2521

Track 4 (10:30) Mr. Sanders Goes To Washington – Part 2

Track 5 (02:42) After 8 And A Half Hours, Truth Yields The Floor

Part 3 – December 16th

They Call Me The Breeze – Run Baby Run On Mix – The Wikileaks Version

In this episode: People are out to kill Wikileaks spokesman, Julian Assange, and some have made threats against him on FOX News, while the freshly-elected Representative Allen West (R-Fla.) suggested that we abandon the fundamental American principle of Freedom of the Press in his own statements about Wikileaks.

Thank goodness that Senator Bernie Sanders stood up on Friday and spoke with wisdom, compassion and truth for over 8 1/2 hours – it was brilliant and an outstanding moment that offered a piece of sanity in an otherwise insane time…

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Track Listing

Track 1 (1:19) They Call Me The Breeze

Track 2 (4:11) You Too May Come To Love Big Brother

Track 3 (3:47) Run Baby Run On

Track 4 (3:43) And Then The Senator Stood Up

Part 4 – December 18th

Dystopia (Is The New Utopian Dream)

Music to help you party like it’s 1984 – or use it as your getaway soundtrack when you’re on the run from the Suede Denim Secret Police.

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Track Information

Track 1 (1:22) You Know What To Do

Track 2 (4:20) I Never Lost Control

Track 3 (3:54) We Will Go

Download Album

4 sound collages – 18 tracks in all – one album: Dystopian Shifting

In the UFOverdriver tradition of D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) and G. I. A. (Give It Away), you can download a zip file of all the tracks in one long-playing album. An exclusive for UFOverdriver and onehumanbeing.com fans…

Download Here: UFOverdriver – Dystopian Shifting
18 Tracks – 1 hour 6 minutes

Listen, Enjoy and Share!

“Can I get an Amen?” – Tom Waits


Related posts:

Rule Number Two Will Be Told To You In Reverse

From my project site: UFOverdriver

Here’s the latest podcast from UFOverdriver – a sound collage about Wikileak’s release of over 250,000 confidential and secret U.S. State Department diplomatic cables to major news organizations around the world… Read more and Listen to the sound collage here.


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Latest Photos on The MMJ Lists

elviswillie_11_27_2010_full_3

I went up to The Treehouse Collective to take photos of a bunch of strains that had come in the day before. I was expecting 8 strains, but there were 12 different ones to photograph when I arrived. Lucky me!

It’s been a little while since I’ve visited my collective to do the photographing work I love so much, and it felt great to be participating once again in the collective process.

I was up till 3:00 or so in the morning processing the photos, and here’s the results. Read more on The MMJ Lists…


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Souvenirs From The Late 20th Century

The Zulu Lounge

Over twenty years ago, in May of 1990, Tania and I moved to Long Beach.

At the time we were involved with a group of artists, actors, musicians and short-film makers (who had migrated from Colorado to California together) which we had met through our job working at an interior design company’s warehouse in Costa Mesa/Irvine.

I was writing a lot of poetry, and one day at work I mentioned to Tania and our friend Brian that I needed a place to read my poems out loud, and get some feedback…

So we formed a Wednesday night group called The Zulu Lounge which met in the garage of Brian’s rented house in Irvine to read poetry, share our art, smoke cigarettes and drink.

I Like To Smoke by Jon Christopher – The Zulu Lounge – 1990

Here’s an audio recording of the first poem ever read at The Zulu Lounge. This was one of the “Smoker’s Rights” poems I was writing at the time called I Like To Smoke.

During the middle of this poem I try a flip a cigarette into my mouth…

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From The Lounge To Long Beach

When Tania and I moved to Long Beach, so did many of our friends from this group.

Three of the guys from The Zulu Lounge – Brian, Phil and Kirk – moved into an apartment on Broadway which had several bedrooms and, most importantly, access to the roof.

Soon after they moved in they threw a very big house-warming party…

I barely remember it, and I don’t think we have any photos of the night, but I still have the audio-invitation cassette tape and my Fish Pass.

When Cassettes Were King

In 1990 the cassette tape was king. We listened to most of our music on cassette tape.

If you wanted to share some music with a friend, you made a mix-tape and gave it to them… a special kind of gift you listened to over and over again.

That’s probably why I kept this particular cassette tape. It’s both a sound collage of audio theater and an amazing invitation to a party.

An Audio Invitation

Here’s the audio from the cassette tape – It’s about 31 minutes long and very funny, strange and unique souvenir from the late twentieth century.

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Included in the cassette invitation was a FREE Pass To See Chilly Willy Talk, and Entrance to The Attic of Doom – Enter and Worship

The Fish Pass

The prime party spot that night (if I remember correctly) was on the roof, which required a special Fish Pass – which we were suppose to share. I think the idea was to keep the number of people on the roof limited…

As you can see I kept mine. Here’s the photo I took of it today…

Note: If you have any photos from this party, please contact me so I can add them to this page…


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