Needs A Re-String o_O

I begin tracking my first ever full length album tomorrow 06/10/2011.

According to marketing experts I should give you the spiel about this fantastic opportunity I have for you. But fuck that, I’m just gonna be real with you, because that’s what I believe in when it comes down to it… The truth is that this IS a cool chance for you to take advantage of a limited offer & be a part of what I believe will be a very cool full length album, BUT it’s a two way street & you will be helping me in the process.

Bottom line: I need your help. This album is not going to pay for itself & I am not signed to any major label, I don’t have any financial backers. Just you, my listener, my fan, my family & friend. But I’m not asking for handouts, oh no, you will be getting something great in return for your contribution & what you get will depend on how much you choose to invest. Recording a full length album professionally is not cheap, but every bit of cash helps me make it that extra bit special. You will see from the pricing structure below that the prices are very reasonable & once the album is done, there will not be much profit made on these pre-sales, just extra money to fund the damn album!

Before I get into the pricing structure, let me ask you a quick question… Did you ever have a favourite band/artist & then one day they broke up/quit? How much does it suck? Well here is my promise to you: I will never quit. Regardless of bands I may join / create, I will always be a singer/songwriter, it’s in my blood. So make ME your favourite artist & we can evolve & grow old together :)

I have a PayPal account setup so all pre-orders will be invoiced & you can be sure there will be no funny business.

As if you wouldn't trust this face anyway though right?

Here is the price breakdown

1) $20 gets you a Pre-order of the album in mp3 format plus the e-booklet as it will be sold on iTunes. That’s a minimum of ten tracks, but that’s not all. You will also get the b-side tracks which don’t make the album (& may never be publicly released EVER) You will receive the album ahead of the official launch date, how far ahead I’m not sure, but I’ll put it this way, there is no set launch date but I guarantee you will get it as soon as it is ready which will be before the end of 2011 and probably atleast a month ahead of the launch. But there’s still more (no steak knives) I’m also throwing in free entry to my next charged performance.

2) $40 gets you the above PLUS a signed copy of the physical CD with full artwork/lyrics posted to your door & a cool sticker. Plus a copy of my soon-to-be out-of-print EP from 2009.

3) $60 gets you the above PLUS a limited edition t-shirt featuring the album artwork also posted to your door, as well as a personal Thankyou in the liner notes of the record.

4) $150 gets you the above PLUS I will PERSONALLY deliver all items to your door & play the whole album live for you in your living room / backyard / dungeon. Full PA supplied!

5) $300 gets you the above PLUS I will play for a minimum of three hours. I’ll play any of my own songs from my catalogue of over 60 original songs or any covers I know or can learn (time permitting). This will be like a launch party at your house, invite your friends & we will have a super fun happy time. & you also get an EXTRA SPECIAL Thankyou in the liner notes.

6) $500 gets you the above PLUS I will write an original song about whatever you like & record it as a home studio production. I will also learn a cover song of your choice & record it for YouTube dedicated to you. Ontop of all that, you will be immortalised on a secret track on the album where you will be mentioned by name. & just to show you my gratitude for being a top tier supporter, I will give you three one hour guitar lessons (unless you’re a better guitarist than me). If you just want to buy more than one copy of the album, let me know & I can arrange something.

All prices are in AU dollars.

If you would like to make a pre-order, drop me a comment below or on any of my sites – Facebook or Twitter or even good old fashioned email – stanmorephoenix@gmail.com.

You have to live within an hour or two of the Sydney CBD for the ones where I travel to your house. Although, if you’re really keen then let me know & I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement.

So there you have it, it will mean so much to me if I mean enough to you for you to make a pre-order at any of the available tiers. & if you know anyone who might be interested, please do share this post with them.

Here is a link to a demo of one of the songs which will most likely make the album. Distant Beaches, It’s the only song being considered for the album which I have released a demo for. All the rest is being kept tightly under wraps :) But don’t worry, this is the only song over 5 minutes ;)

Any questions or comments let me know.

Much love,

- Ryan

I see thin people
Starving to their graves
I see you & I blind
To the path this paves
But Donald couldn’t trump the poor without something averse
So I guess it could be worse

I see drugged people
Beg for my change
Then turn to the next guy
& mumble the same
These days I say no & don’t part with my hard earned
So i guess maybe I’ve learned

I see fat people
Eating more than they need
I see homeless & retired
& not much in between
& these obsessive observations are something short of a curse
So I guess it could be worse

Can You Hear The Distant Beaches?

‘It’s been two years… Since I said I was leaving here, now It feels like I’ll never go.’

Those are the first few lyrics from the first verse of the demo I just uploaded after cutting a rough mix at home.

It’s funny how when you want to leave a place, there can be so many things that tie you to it.

I am planning an Australian & then European tour & have been for the past two years.

Some days it really gets to me that I haven’t left yet.

The song is called ‘distant beaches’.

Here is the MP3 - It would mean a lot to me if you shared the song with your friends if you enjoy it.

Here are the chords ‘n’ lyrics – I would love to hear your cover version or anything you want to say about this song or the subject matter.

Love,

- Stanmore

Imagine faces on the inside... You can do it!

When I magine what social media would look like, it’s like this:

Imagine a big sphere of faces all looking inwards at each other.

When someone posts something, they float awkwardly towards the middle, put on an air of self confidence  (most likely) & make their announcement.

Everyone can see them doing this but sometimes no-one floats forward to respond.

Sometimes someone more popular floats forward to say something & the less popular updated gets cutoff…

Of course the difference is that in social media, that poor lonely person can’t see everyone staring at them while they float awkwardly in the middle of the sphere & the faces in the sphere don’t have to look them in the eye while make their even more awkward retreat & float back to their spot.

When I wrote this I mainly had networks like Facebook & Twitter in mind & only the users. It gets infinitely more complicated when you start to consider the admins & ads & stuff. Then if you think about sites like YouTube, which in a way is social media, it would be a different scene altogether, what with trolls & flamers. It would be pretty funny though.

Anyways, that’s my thought of the day, hope you have some nice ones.

Drop me a comment if you feel like floating awkwardly out to meet me in the middle of the sphere.

Don't be like this guy

So about three months ago I moved in with my girlfriend. We live in a share house in Newtown with three others. “Who cares?” I hear you thinking or possibly saying out loud as you munch loudly on your delicious honey glazed cashews. Well, that is a good question but not one I care to answer. But I digress… I wanted to share this with you all because I think some of what I’ve learnt may enrich your lives & possibly even help you if you’re ever in a similar situation.

A lot of us have trouble making decisions. “Should I, or shouldn’t I?”, “Scotch or Beer?”, “Burger or wrap?”. In my case it was “Move in with GF or not?”. In relationships, I am always reminded of some advice a wise friend once told me, he said “At 6 months, evaluate. At 1 year, move in together. At 2 years, you’ve been living together for a year, it’s time to shit or get off the pot.” Ie. if you can stand living together for a year, you’re ready for marriage & conversely if you have had a rough time during that year, it’s probably time to move on & stop wasting each others time.

While I may not agree with the timeline 100% I do find it hard to fault the logic of the whole thing. If you’re going to do something, do it with all your heart or not at all. Sarah & I had been together for ~1.5 years when we moved in. It’s been about 3 months & it’s going great so far. While I don’t intend on getting married anytime too soon, I do enjoy living with this woman.

I’m trying to make a couple of points here. For the sake of brevity, let me spell them out:

1) If you’re umming & aahing about whether or not to move in with someone you have been seeing for > 1 year. Either take the plunge or pull the plug (sorry for mixed metaphor). Take your left foot off the platform and join your right on the train with your lovely partner. It will either be a nice trip together or you can get off at the next station & say goodbye. If instead you decide that this trip is not for you because it’s not that kinda relationship or myriad possible other reasons, join your left foot on the platform & wave goodbye. Atleast you can stop wasting each others time. (disclaimer: I know there are those of us who are in a mutually casual relationship & that’s a whole other barrel of cheesels. Btw if this is you, you sicken me… Kidding)

2) If you’re going to do ANYTHING in life. Do it with all your heart. Both feet on the train. I’m a musician, it’s what I do & I give it all I got. If I was an accountant, I would want to be giving that all I got too. I think you get my point.

(No, the point is not – Nobody wants to be an accountant. Although that may be somewhat true [sorry accountant friends, you can back-hand me with your overflowing wallets when next we meet])

If you’d like to see Sarah’s view on things you can check out her blog: http://musiciansgirl.wordpress.com (which needs some serious lovin’) or follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/itsmefrarah

Hope you enjoy the shit out of your day.

- Ryan

^ Note the whiteboard ^

When I used to work in Newtown & catch the train out from Parramatta to work each day, on the way through the back streets of Newtown, I noticed out the front of one particularly dirty looking town-house a ratty looking whiteboard with an interesting quotation on it. “Cool quote” I thought. The next day a different quote was on it & I was hooked. Each day I would go out of my way to pass by that house. I never met or saw it’s inhabitants but it was so refreshing to absorb a piece of wisdom/humour each day.

The point I am trying to get across to you guys is about the profound & far reaching effects our words, actions, thoughts & (initially) feelings have on the world around us. You may just be one person but no matter how little difference you feel you do or can make, EVERYTHING you do, say, think & feel DOES MAKES A DIFFERENCE.

Pay someone at work a quick compliment about how they look, *BOOM*, you may very well have boosted their mood exponentially. OR, Bitch at them about something minor because you are frustrated about something else & you just might irritate them enough that they end up bitching at someone else… & so on.

Laugh at that nerdy ‘loser’ kid at school when everyone else is & it just might be the last straw. He goes home & puts his head in the oven. OR, Tell him something that you genuinely admire about him (like his work ethic) & he just might pull through that tough day.

I’m sure you can think of a time when someone has made some minor act of kindness which has turned your day around completely… You can do it too.

I’ll try to be succinct here: As I have been planning to do for awhile now, I have a white-board that I take with me whenever I busk. Each day/night, before I start playing I put up a quote which I connect with & which others will hopefully  connect with too. More importantly, I put up something positive. For example:

• “The mind is everything, what you think, you become” – Buddha
• “Move, & the way will open” – Zen saying

To conclude… Whether we choose to or not, we are all displaying a ‘whiteboard’ which sends a message to the rest of the world whenever we are in contact with others or putting something out there for others to experience. The good news is that we get to choose what is written on it. Next time you are displaying your whiteboard, write something good on it.

Got something to add? Drop me a comment!

I originally had these quotes in the middle of this post but it seemed that they distracted from the main point so I pasted them down here instead… Some quotes I love:

• “Imagination is more important than knowledge” – Albert Einstein
• “The Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work” – Vince Lombardi
• “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?“ - Kahlil Gibran

The average passer-by, especially on weekends, tends to connect with humour  + wisdom rather than just wisdom, such as:

• “Girls are like pianos. When they’re not upright, they’re grand“ - Benny Hill
• “When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness” – Emo Phillips
• “The drinking class has a working problem” – Unknown
• “If you don’t drink, then all of your stories suck and end with, “And then I got home”  - Jim Jefferies

Longer quotes seem to prove too daunting for most but there are some great ones

It looks like these two have not yet absorbed the message of this blog.

“If I promote other bands, my band won’t be noticed”

It’s not something I hear musicians say a lot but it is certainly often implied. This post is here to kick that way of thinking right in the ball-gina. Musicians, bands: I implore you, help support each other! Stop thinking about your own music as the only music deserving of praise & attention. There is lot’s of cool bands out there, lots of cool artists & many of them work just as hard as you do on your art.

Here’s the rub, if you post a link on your twitter/facebook account about a cool ‘unkown’ band you saw last night with a short message along on the lines of “Saw these guys at the goat-faced-heffer hotel the other night & they rocked. Check them out!” you have just done a very good thing for your local musical community.

The word community is really the key; Music is not a competition, music is a COMMUNITY. & that in-a-nutshell is the essence of this post. I hear musicians bitch & whine all the time “The music scene here is terrible, no-one comes out to see bands” I wonder when the last time they went out to see a local band who they weren’t already friends with. I think as a rule if you’re a musician you should go out at least once-a-week & see a local band. If you’re not doing that then think next time you are going to complain about the local music scene being shit. It’s just a cop-out. What are YOU doing to make it better? Do you hang around to watch the other bands that play after you on a mixed bill? (& not just because you think they have a decent fan-base & might be able to provide a sweet support spot).

Lift up those around you, not because you expect something in return, but just for the sake of being genuinely helpful. Don’t post up a link of another band expecting to get a link back from the other band. Don’t help the old lady cross the street in the hopes that she might give you a fiver. Do it because you would like it if someone did the same for you if it was your band, if it was your grand-ma.

I could go on about ways in which you can help create a musical community but that is not the point here. All those things will come once you change your mentality. If you help get another band onto Bobs iPod, Bob isn’t going to delete your album off his iPod. If you help influence Sally to tell her friends about how awesome another singer-songwriter is, it doesn’t mean she will forget about you. If anything, it will strengthen their foundation as your fan.

I’m not the only one with this crazy idea of a musical community. There are others. But we need to spread the word. We are the resistance & we are fighting a mighty empire of selfish ignorance. We must join forces. Or we could all just use our social media profiles to spout repetitive news about ourselves which people will quickly choose to ignore. The choice is ours. I believe Music is a community but if we don’t come together, it will continue to be a fight.

This post is a nice pre-cursor to an online community I wil be launching soon which revolves around covering a song of someone around you & having your own song covered in return. I’m excited about it! Keep an eye out for it right here. Codename CMICY (pronounced smicky)

Let me know your own thoughts on all this. I enjoy a good discussion.

- Ryan

Mmmm, another idealistic portrayal of meditation. It's like how I think of smoking... The idea is quite appealing, but in practise it's a whole other story. PS. I quit smoking years ago

To bring you back to the present, it’s around 0500 on day 1 of my 10 day vipassana meditation course. my fellow students & I have been given some rudimentary instructions regarding the practise the night before in the hall just before the noble silence kicked in. Basically we were told to sit silently & breath through our noses. Not to control the breath & not the try to imagine any visions or images. We were also told not to verbalize anything, even something seemingly innocent like just saying these instructions to yourself. Just to focus on the sensation of the breath from the area above the upper lip to the area just inside the nostrils. We weren’t told much more than this. For me these instructions presented a challenge from the word go for multiple reasons as I will now detail (Disclaimer: Prepare for some bitching & moaning) -

1. Any meditation I had done prior to this course had focused on visualizations & verbalisations, we were now instructed strictly not to visualise or verbalize.
2. I find it almost impossible to sit still for any length of time longer than five seconds.
3. Additionally to the issue above ( I believe it is a seperate issue)  I have a (mild) scoliosis (curvature of the spine) so when I try to sit straight I always feel lopsided. Try to close my eyes & sit straight & it’s worse, after an hour with closed eyes, an inch to one side feels like 10.
4. We were to not control our breath. I practise Yoga, plus I have been to some vocal coaching lessons & I have always been instructed to control deep breathing into my diaphragm. As surprising as it may seem, focusing on my breath while simultaneously releasing conscious control of it was difficult & frustrating.
5. From time to time I get hay-fever… My entire 10 days at Blackheath I had terrible hay-fever without so much as a zyrtec to ease my suffering. Imagine this: You have terrible hay-fever, watering eyes, running nose, constant sneezing & you are supposed to sit still (& here’s the best part) focus on the one area of your body which is the focal point of your condition: the nose. It was like fate had played a sick joke on me.
6. Last but certainly not least, audio clips of Goenka chanting are played at certain times during meditation & I found it very distracting. It doesn’t go through the entire meditation sessions but in the mornings there is an extended chanting medley towards the end which from memory goes for about half an hour.

An artists impression of what I felt like most of the time when trying to meditate.

If you missed my first 2 installments, it may be a good idea to start at the start: Here they are Pt1 & Pt2

by  around 0600 most of the students had arrived in the hall & a strange, strange sound began to emanate gutturally from what sounded like someone’s bowels. As it turned out, it was a recording, it was Goenka & it was what they would have us believe was “chanting” it sounded like an off-key elephant/swamp-beast/whale/Indian-Barry-White attempting to do recount some strange kind of Romanian folk ballad.

One thing about the chanting is that it is all in the Pali language of which I now know a few words (you learn some as you do the course) but at the time I knew nothing.  I don’t know if you have ever listened to music in a language you are unfamiliar, but if you haven, one thing you may have noticed is that you tend to involuntarily add your own words to fit the sounds of the unknown words. Now there is various chants that Goenka likes to do but one of the ones most often repeated ones has a phrase in which I swear he says “She’s a DJ Geeza DJ” Over & over like some sort of UK Dub-step-happy hardcore-house sample (no I don’t know much about dance music)

So I sat there trying to be still with Emcee Goenka rocking the mic, sneezing every few minutes & seeing how long I could go without having to blow my nose, trying to focus on my breathing but not control it & not visualize anything. As anyone who has ever had a runny nose can attest, it’s one of the most excruciatingly itchy feelings when you have a runny nose & you don’t blow it. My nose is getting itchy just writing this. With that being said, sometimes I would let my nose drip like a tap. Pretty gross I know, but it was just an extra challenge to me. I had a tissue, but this was about adhitthana(Pali word: [adhi.t.thaana]:Determination; resolution) It’s really funny how you’re mind wanders when you try to focus on something as simple as your breath. So many chaotic disconnected thoughts shouting at you persistently. That’s something I will go into in more detail in the next instalment. For now,  after what seemed an eternity, it was 06300… Time for breakfast.

As I mentioned in Pt1 of this series of Vipassana meditation themed blogs, day 1 was one of the hardest days of the course & quite possibly one of the hardest of my life. We were not told, nor was it hinted that after three days of this, we would be given additional instructions & the practise would gradually begin to evolve. This made the first few days all the more trying (atleast for me) because I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel apart from finishing the damn course. As far as we knew, the whole 10 days would just be “breath, don’t control your breath, don’t visualise your breath, don’t think about anything except for the sensation of the breath. If the breath is deep, let it be deep. If the breath is mild, let it be mild.” The reasons for not telling us that the practise would change are not evil however, they actually dovetail with the Buddhist belief of learning, which is that you only learn 1 thing at a time. I actually think it makes a lot of sense (though at the time it was torturous) imagine learning about a complicated topic, let’s say music (should be easy for me to use as an analogy as I am something of a musician) if I were to teach you music 101, I would probably start with something simple like the notes on the treble clef EGBDF & a memory aid used to remember it “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit” as I remember it. Although as that link to Wikipedia has informed me, some of the more colourful variations include “Every Girl Bangs Drunk Friends”, “Elephant Goes Boating Drowns Fast” & the racially allusive “Every Good Black Dog Farts”. I am meandering from the point here which is that I would not try to explain to you that later on along the line, if all goes well with your training I will be teaching you about things like relative diminished chords & their relative dominants. It would probably go over your head. In the same fashion, you are only taught the very first portion of the lesson to begin with, once you master that, you are shown the next bit & so on.

I’m going to leave things here for now, there really is a lot of thoughts & experiences I want to get across, like the time on the last day when this Asian guy up the front of the hall burped quite loudly during meditation (as he did from time to time during the duration of the course) & on this occasion myself & James & myself could not contain our laughter & we started to do that stifled snicker laugh you do when you’re trying really hard not to laugh at something. We lost our battle with the giggles & soon others joined in, even the girls joined in. It didn’t take The Sitting Man long to pipe up with a very stern “continue quietly!” & the laughter was quickly subdued. I can tell you that we were on the pinnacle of the whole hall erupting, I was actually willing it, but it never happened.

Buddha's evil brother Ahddub! Instead of peace & an end to suffering, he just wants to kick you in the balls (or vagina) & steal your wallet.

Tune in next time for Pt4 (possibly the final) of my series of blogs covering my experience at a 10 day Vipassana meditation course at Blackheath. Next time I intend to tell you more about the practise & the theory behind it. I’ll also go into some of the darker side of my experience at the course.

Thanks for reading, I hope you find my blog of some value. You can subscribe with the link on the right if you wish to be updated when I publish new blogs. Drop me a comment below if you have any questions or thoughts. I’d be happy to discuss it further. Don’t forget to click the thumbs up & share this blog with your friends if you enjoy it.

Until next time…

Ommmm. Oh wait, I'm not allowed to say Om in Vipassana. Damn.

So there I am, asleep in my tiny bed in the dorm room, my dreams bouncing around through space, colliding with the 7 other unfortunate souls I was sharing the room with. I was probably dreaming optimistically about doing these ones (pic to the left) when all of a sudden…

*DING*

“Hmmm, that must be the bell, I think I’ll go back to sleep… ZZzzzzzz.”

*DING*

“That was a lot louder this time. I guess it’s 4am, great.”

*DING*

… & on it went, this dude walks around the whole centre colliding a rubber mallet with a large, resonant, hunk of steel also known as a bell every morning at 0400, then does another round at 0415. *DING* I decided to wait till I heard my fellow companions arising from their slumber. By about 0445 most of them were up so I decided not to be the last one & got up. In the days to come, some of us would sometimes sleep through the morning meditation & arise just in time for breakfast. Mr Bell Man (As he shall sometimes be known in this blog) eventually cottoned on to this & would actually come into our room with a torch & remind us that it was time for morning meditation. “Oh, I’m sorry, I must have slept through the morning bell.” I would mumble fallaciously. (Those with limited vocabularys & dirty minds, here is the definition of falacious.)

Allow me to deviate for a moment for those who have not read my first instalment, it’s probably a good place to start if you are interested in Vipassana. If you want to take it from the horses mouth, here is the low-down of the meditation course in question on their site.

To return to the time-line… One time, towards the last day when some (most) of us were thoroughly over the whole thing, Mr Bell Man actually entered the room armed with some sort of miniature bell which he vigorously shook with a machine-gun like pace. He then flashed the lights on & off a few times. I was almost tempted to stay in my bed to see if he would come in with a bell which you would logically suspect to be larger, Carillon like & possibly shoulder mounted to make short work of the last of the stragglers. It was humorous thoughts like these that became my companion as I slugged my way through 10 days of Vipassana meditation. Oh yes, alone with my thoughts I made up names for quite a few of my fellow meditators to keep myself entertained. The Asian who always wore Crocs became “Crocs”. This one dude who looked like the old guy from The A-Team was known simply as “A-Team”. Then I was sometimes a bit more creative, the guy in my dorm who snored the loudest, (to the annoyance & occasional amusement of my dorm-mates) was known as “DJ SnoreSak”.

Then there was the guy in my dorm who I did not make up a name for, because I already knew his name was James. He decided to ignore the noble silence & would always make some kind of gesture when you passed him.  I thought this may have been a gesture reserved for me alone as I arrived at Blackheath train station with him & we chatted on the walk to the centre. I later found out that he was doing this to anyone who made the mistake of glancing at him. It was quite awkward, he knew you weren’t supposed to say anything, I could have said something, but I was doing the course & I had decided to abide by the rules wherever possible so as to give the technique a fair go so it’s not like I could say “Dude, stop fucking staring at me.” Because that’s exactly what he would do, even if you consciously averted your gaze, you knew the prick was just waiting for you to slip up & glance over, & he would be waiting to give you a well timed nod hello. It was like he attended the course just to flout the rules! I took to death-staring him, but he would just smile with a blissful air of bovine ignorance. Eventually I submitted to his friendly will & occasionally offered a brief, begrudged nod to sate his need for human contact. When the course was over, he ended up being one of the guys I had beers with on the morning of our release. During our discussions, I was made aware that he consciously decided to speak (& kill bugs, as he confessed) because he believed that if he didn’t that there was no way he would have made it through the 10 days.

Now is probably a good time to tell that during the entire course, James managed to get me to speak a total of 3 words on 2 seperate occasions.

The 1st was after the 2nd & 3rd members of our dorm chucked in the towel. This was on the 3rd day, we had already lost 1 the day before & now 2 more were leaving. The 2 pikers were discussing how they “couldn’t take it anymore” & were going to see what time the next train left. I felt their pain as by the 3rd day I was mentally & physically exhausted (I know it’s just sitting there but you get some wicked tension in your shoulders among other places… At-least I did) but my determination was actually renewed when they left because it made me realise that I wasn’t the only one having a c**t of a time. Anyhow, James took it upon himself to give me a little pep talk to me after they left (he explained at the end of the course that I looked like I was struggling… I was) something along the lines of “We came here to do something & we’re not gonna give up until it’s finished” to which I replied “Mmmm” accompanied with what I would call a firm nod.

The 2nd was after he had thrown a scrunched up paper towel over the shower door whilst I was showering. I wasn’t sure it was him that did it, in-fact I wasn’t sure it was thrown at all because it had missed me & when I spotted it on the floor, I thought maybe it was just always there. Anyways, it wouldn’t have bothered me either way, but I guess some intense pang of guilt had seized James an hour or so later because he confronted me with an apology “I hope you’re not offended by me throwing the paper towel” to which I replied “Na Man” with a head shake. I guess I didn’t do too bad but on both occasions my speech was an involuntary reaction which I put down to years of social conditioning ie. Replying when spoken to.

The evening discourse. Always a feeling of relief & what some may consider propaganda.

Getting back to the story… I arrived at the meditation hall on the 1st morning at about 0430… There was a surreal vibe to it. The hall was very dark & silent except for the sound of the sound of my fellow mediators fidgeting, breathing, sneezing, coughing, etc. The picture above is the only image I could find of the inside of the hall. I took the photo on my iPhone on the evening of the last day during the final discourse when I managed to get my phone back (I’ll probably talk about that more later.) The picture above shows the hall much brighter than early morning as it is in the evening.

If you look closely at the image above, you can see to the right of it a carpet running towards the front of the room where the screen is. The segregation of male & female is ever present with the girls on the right & the boys on the left. We even enter through different doors on opposite sides. All instruction regarding the practise is given by the portly fellow you see projected on the wall above: S. N. Goenka A thick Indian accent & an adept sense of humour accompany his sometimes poorly filmed, informative & sometime long-winded discourses each evening. Instructions are also given in the form of audio recordings at the beginning of each session to refresh your focus & at the end of each session a recording is played to let you know it’s time to take a break.

The funny thing about the discourses is that they are so poorly filmed to an often comical degree, don’t get me wrong, they get the point across, you don’t need Scorsese to direct a simple instructional video of a dude sitting & talking, but I feel they could have used just a little bit of polish. Goenka would regularly pick his nose (lol, but not the Cameraman’s fault) the camera from time to time would zoom in really fast & then be off centre, then it would be roughly re-centred. These adjustments would all happen at seemingly random & unpredictable times.  Without warning the camera would suddenly zoom out again to reveal Goenka’s old lady sitting beside him. The point I’m trying to get across is that the poor filming actually made the discourses more entertaining, I would kinda be hanging out for a sudden zoom in/out or angle adjustment just to see how exceptionally haphazard it could get. Yes, I was a bit bored.

Sitting at the front of the room, one on each side corresponding to the sex were the assistant teachers. Scary beings who i believe posses magical powers. They would rarely speak other than to say “take a five minute break if you like & then return to the hall to continue”. The female one was of no significance to me so I won’t bother talking about her. The male one I gave the name The Sitting Man as sitting seemed to be his main occupation. My fellow students found this most amusing when I told them after the 10 days.

I’ll leave you with one more mildly amusing occurrence before I wrap things up for this post. This time it takes place in the lunch room. Lunch was always an exciting time for me because I didn’t know what I would be served, it was different everyday. Of course, when I say exciting, I’m speaking in terms relative to meditation. Most days (not everyday) we would get dessert. On one such day, one of the food servers must have carelessly put the custard for the dessert on the salad table. This went noticed only by a select few people. The result was 95% of us (I was one of the fools) spooning custard on our salads thinking it was some kind of exotic dressing. Although I will add that it didn’t taste too bad, it must have been amusing for those who made the connection because they couldn’t enlighten anyone of the situation due to the imposed noble silence. A thought occurs: This was in the guys kitchen… Like the whole centre, the kitchens are segregated into male & female sides. In this case a building with the staff only kitchen dividing the two food halls. I could not see what was going on in the female food hall but if us guys, who are infinitely more intelligent & capable than women, are spooning custard on our salads, I hate to think of the absolute chaos that must have been breaking out on the female side. You poor, poor creatures.

Until next time, I’ve been Stanmore Phoenix & you’ve been reading my blog.

A girl meditating in an entirely inferior fashion to how a man would

As always, I invite you to drop me a comment because I am terribly lonely… I wonder if any women will be foolish enough to take my mock-misogynistic comments above seriously, I hope they/you do, I might get a flame war going on my blog comments, that would be cool. Espesh because I am the mod… But seriously, everyone knows I love the ladies. Respect girls.

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