What Condition My Condition Is In

I was going to put a movie here, but embedding has been disabled, so you'll have to click here to see what I'm talking about.

Consciousness baffles me, what comes in, what doesn't, what goes out into the cosmos and what comes back. I keep waiting to receive a bill with my name written on it, currency I'm talking about, except all the currency I ever wrote my name on was paper notes in $1 and $2 denominations.

They say that all bloggers need to find their own voice. They are the seminarians(?) that led the Geist Blogging and Podcasting seminar in Vancouver this summer. That was the best $100 I ever spent. Go to this seminar, even if you only plan to read blogs, it's fantastic value. I'm going to save my family and friends the torture of anticipating my next career move: domesticity and a career in writing. I have a note to myself about it on my computer desk top, and when I do that I become a professional musician, record a CD, travel the world, become a teacher in Costa Rica and then move to Hungary. The will cannot be contained, your will, my will, a will.

My voice may be this: connecting the stuff on the perimeters of our experience to find the middle. There's some expression about the "excluded middle", I'm sure I'm quoting it out of context, but perhaps one of you could send the reference to the "comments". Here's what I'm talking about: back in my Edmonton days, when I was filling out the "chemistry teacher" portion of my resume, I picked up "The Eternal Golden Braid" from my dearly beloved Edmonton Public Library system. If I ever strike big in the literary world I will be thanking the EPL and CBC, right after the six of you, family and friends, that read this blog or have read this blog. Read this book. It's not easy, like "Moby Dick" isn't easy. It's dense and it jumps around. Not that "Moby Dick" jumps around, that's not the point I'm making. I'm talking about density. Recursion is what the book is about. Recursion occurs in language, it occurs in mathematics and it's occurring throughout my blog. Among many things, Douglas Hofstadter talks about pictures that are only background, the dark areas, the perimeter that describes the object, or better, implies the image that ought to be the focus of the picture. That will be my voice, describing the boundary that contains whatever is within. You decide.

What do "The Big Lebowski" and the proposed content of my blog this week (Where Evil Grows) have in common? Kenny Rogers. Check out the beginning of this Poppy Family clip: that's Kenny, as in Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, before "Lucille", before "The Gambler" or "Islands in the Stream" or the chicken franchising, back when Kenny was an ersatz psychedelic, flower child. Savor that for a moment.

When you look carefully enough, there is one degree of separation between every thought that comes to your mind, which, to me, implies that we're receiving much more data than we consciously take in with our six senses. Or is it five senses?

So, "The Big Lebowski"". The bulk of the groovy segments of this Coen Brothers' piece are buttressed by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition rendering "I Just Dropped In". Kenny Rogers, psychedelic, sporting a Mitch Miller beard, striped pants and a white turtleneck. Did Kenny cop that look from Glen Campbell or David Clayton Thomas?

Here's my new working theory for life: everything is connected to everything else, but the closer you get to making the connection between things, the more connection you uncover. I'm going to stay out on the perimeter, sending pointillistic messages from the edge. If you stand back far enough, you'll see whatever you are supposed to see. No talk of the "Evil Empire" this week, go to nagyok.com for that. Read this post, go watch "The Big Lebowski" (Jeff Bridges is brilliant and John Goodman is John Goodman) and then got listen to "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks. Then go back and watch "Where Evil Grows" and ponder how Terry got derailed and where the Family is during that TV spot.

I am heading back to the cosmos to ponder what happens next (click on this link, please!).

Ken

Next: Obsessions with mortality and the blues jam!