RIP Bill Mollison (1928- 2016)

“Each such cycle is a unique event; diet, choice, selection, season, weather, digestion, decomposition and regeneration differ each time it happens. Thus, it is the number of such cycles, great and small, that decide the potential for diversity. We should feel ourselves privileged to be part of such eternal renewal. Just by living we have achieved immortality - as grass, grasshoppers, gulls, geese and other people. We are of the diversity we experience in every real sense...

...If, as physical scientists assure us, we all contain a few molecules of Einstein, and if the atomic particles of our physical body reach to the outermost bounds of the universe, then we are all de facto components of all things. There is nowhere left for us to go if we are already everywhere, and this is, in truth, all we will ever have or need. If we love ourselves at all, we should respect all things equally, and not claim any superiority over what are, in effect, our other parts. Is the hand superior to the eye? The bishop to the goose? The son to the mother?” 

Bill Mollison

North Utsire

Free: Fire & Water Live in Sweden (1970)

I was really hoping to post up the full Free album Fire & Water. Its ideal for a Sunday morning when you're ambling around the morning after the night before, scratching your nuts, rearranging crap on the coffee table pretending to get organised. Well, you know Youtube. Seems like that was too tall an order to breach precious copyright rules, so instead I got a copy of Free performing live at Radiohuset, Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. On the surface of it, the performance is less polished and somewhat more stoned than the studio version, but it really works. There are a couple of tracks on the playlist which are not on the album either (The Stealer, Riding On A Pony, Woman), plus a bit of preamble. I love both versions. But then Youtube go pull the Radiohuset version too. Don't you just love the free world. 

Track List & Timings:

00:00 The Stealer

04:13 Fire And Water
08:39 Riding On A Pony
13:50 Heavy Load
20:08 Woman
25:00 I Love You So
31:00 Be My Fraind
37:15 Mr Big
44:24 All Right Now

North Utsire

Spiritual Community Guide on Chakras

More leaves from The Spiritual Community Guide. When I first saw these images, I was a young man interested in any esoteric system on offer. Having been brought up on martial arts and the oriental system of energy work, it has always seemed a bit strange though to focus in on arbitrary spinal energy centres such as the chakras. Even during meditation, the notion of pooling or focussing on energy points rather then breathing apparatus, and the Dan Tien has has always been odd to me. If they corresponded to precise anatomical or phenomenological aggregations I would appreciate them more. The chakras have always seemed so very fictional therefore to me.And yet some people swear by them and their value in energy work. Whilst I don't doubt they're being straight up about their experience, I'll keep doing what feels right to me. Maybe one day I'll be doing a yoga asana, and go "Ohh I get it now" but somehow after all this time I doubt it. I don't even teach Reiki using chakras, and it never formed part of the original Usui Do system. Chakras were only introduced to Reiki by Hawayo Takata and Phyllis Furomoto, to make Reiki more comprehensible to westerners.

North Utsire

Anna Karenina Film Review

I recently watched the 2012 film adaptation of Tolstoy's classic Anna Karenina. Directed by Joe Wright, it netted $69m at the box office. Might be a bit late, but here's my film review:

It wasn't a bad film. The period costume stood out (excellent), but I couldn't believe they'd reduced the mighty Tolstoy to such a sugarplum treatment; more like Moulin Rouge. And the very irritating musical paraphrasing of Rimsky Korsakov and Tchaikovsky grated. And Kiera Knightly looked more like ET than a love interest of two influential men. Even Jude Law was a bit beige. In fact, it was a rubbish film.

Spoiler alert:

SHE COMMITS SUICIDE

North Utsire

Limmy Live!

Last week I went to see a Scottish comic called Limmy playing at the Lowry in Manchester. It was the day of the worst thunder & lightening storm I had seen in about 30 years. The centre of Manchester was alight with the tempest whilst people marauded about like something from The Living Dead. Market street had turned into a torrent, carrying away debris and fast food wrappers, whipping them away like it was a white water rapid. When we got to the Merolink the guard wouldn't let us get tickets saying "lightening strike". "Bloody Jeremy Corbyn, which union this time?"  I said. Unlike the raindrops, it took a moment to sink in. After a mad rush we got to the Lowry just in time and forgot we were soaked through as Limmy took over. The Armadillo sketch (above) had me in stitches. Top top funny guy.

Media City

North Utsire