tunes: ktisis

Ktisis

Ktisis is a greek word meaning ‘summation of creative work’. This album is a sampler of my work throughout the years, highlighting the aspects of it in which creativity meets with spirituality. It includes excerpts from the album Alien Artifacts, which was previously available only on tape, and the entire suite Return from the Dark Lands, which was previously much heard and admired, but never available.

Two variations of this album exist — depending on whether or not the recipient was in possession of This is Not For Realsies. These track notes relate to the versions which do not contain excerpts from TNFR. The track notes for TNFR can be read at the link referenced in this paragraph.

This album was not offered for sale — only a small number of copies were made and distributed.

Alien Artifacts (1989)

Art is collaboration with God. Creation is a form of prayer. A common experience during creation is a trance-like state in which the ideas come from outside. When you come out of the trance you have little memory of the experience save for a vague recollection of being somewhere else. You are also left with a residue — the creation — which is left behind as an artifact of your encounter.

1. Mystic Journey

2. Ascension

3. Seduction

4. Snow Dance

Return From the Dark Lands (1991)

5. The Dark Land

We seek understanding, away from the dark places; these dark lands we live in. In this world, all lines are straight, all corners square. Things are cut and dried. But this is not real life. This is illusion. It is the world of the enemy. A decision is made to leave these Dark Lands; to seek the ancient places of light.

6. To Another State

After minimal preparations, an all night voyage ensues to Arizona from California. The roadside mini-mart coffee fuels a caffeine enlightenment as my car’s heater warms my feet; chilly air brushes in through the cracked window to keep me awake. Large trucks can be heard as they whiz past the window. I feel cozy like beside a winter fire in a woodsy cabin isolated from techno-civilization, wrapped in grandmother’s quilt. The others remain asleep as I fight off drowziness, but slip into another dimension as I encounter the "2AM Wow!” — that state when we become filled with awe and aware that we are at one with all that is. I awaken parked in a highway rest stop, yet I cannot remember the last few hours, pulling off the road, or how I got there at all. When did I get here? When did I sleep?

7. The Vishnu Schist

Walking to the bottom of the Canyon down the South Kaibob trail is to walk into the distant past. We see fossils of mussels and seaside rocks within the Kaibob Sea upon which ancient starfish, anenomes, and urchins lived. Then we find leaves of an ancient forest fauna that flourished before the Kaibob Sea was filled. Next, we see trilobites that swam in the ocean that existed before the forest that was replaced by the sea. Finally we feel the telltale texture of fossilised algae upon a rock — the oldest form of cellular life we will see that day — and thought to be one of the most ancient forms of life. Yet we are still just beginning our voyage; we have barely pierced the depths of the canyon. For many more hours we walk, but we see no more signs of cellular life. At the very bottom of the canyon we encounter the solemn enormity of the jet-black Vishnu Schist — a rock formation at the bottom thought by some to be two billion years old.

A voice of light can be heard trying to speak to us. We do not listen. We are still in the world we said we were trying to leave. I talk to the others about trivial day-to-day matters, drowning out the voice. We all ignore our gorgeous and awesome surroundings. Even visually, we still see the Dark Lands. The Dark Lands oppress us by controlling our thoughts through our addiction to their conveniences, their simple-to-comprehend orthogonal angles and their apparently logical arguments.

After our long journey we have at last arrived in the places of light. Answers encompass us, easy to see, to pluck from the sky — but do we see? No — our consciousness lurks behind us, lying awake in the darkness of artificial daily lands that smother us with comforting, deceptive warmth. Oblivious to the light, we are blinded by our own chatter.

8. Jacob’s Ladder

Our arrival in the land of light is joyously welcomed; but we do not listen and thus we do not accept that welcome. Our exhausting trek continues the next day as we ascend. We start hours before dawn to beat the imposing heat that would attack our attempt to make it through the Devil’s Switchback. We make it through just in time but still the heat and the steep trail drains us. The walk lasts hours. We arrive at Jacob’s Ladder. We can see the top, the end. We walk, walk, walk more. When we arrive at the ‘top’, we are still at the bottom, for it only appeared to be the top. But now we see the true top, not so far away. Arriving there hours later it is not the top but another apparent end. Again and again this is repeated. Will it never end? Will we always be traversing this trail? I am no longer able to think. The brain shuts down. The critical lack of energy has caused the body to return to survival mode. Consciousness is gone; there is only experience as one foot plods in front of the other and only the feet, the trail, the dust, the brush, the trees, the colors, the sounds overwhelm and yet are savored by the senses which can now see at last what is real, unhampered by the ego, the distractions of consciousness that keep us from truth. The canyon controls this song; its voice dominates as its windy wisdom sweeps through and around us, bringing the enlightenment sought. Once the physical body is beaten senseless through exhaustion, the mind shuts down. The screens are removed and the light is visible. We only hear when there is silence within.

Postscript: When at last the top of Jacob’s Ladder is reached, Heaven is not to be seen anywhere, but only ice-cream stands, Germans with backpacks, and Japanese taking snapshots of one another. I must still walk the several miles back to where we parked the car since we just came up the other trail. Tee-shirts, available only at the bottom, say “The Journey is the Reward.” Likewise, Heaven is not at the top of Jacob’s Ladder which reached into Heaven. Being quiet so we can hear what our Teacher says to us,— and continual ascent and progress is a goal, not a method to a goal. What happens if we ever reach our ultimate, unsurpassable goal? What then? Wouldn’t a static Heaven be boring after the first few thousand “triple chocolate mint mango madness” ice-cream cones? The way does not lead to truth and life — the way is the truth and the life.

Tea Party 13 (1995)

9. Frentica — God’s Light Within

a prediction of the future, now known to be perfectly and precisely accurate — once again.

The Last Twenty Years (1997)

10. I Hear Them Quite Clearly Now

You are one of the few to hear the call. It’s all very clear now, isn’t it? Enlightenment: All is beautifully silly, yet serene. Sing and become at one with the solemn silliness of the universe and to so comprehend the nature of God.

11. The 2AM Wow! (1991)

This music was written during that time late at night described above in the piece “To Another State.”

Tea Party 13 (1995)

12. Beauty / natural state

this is how I am. written very late when tweaky caffeinated and deep distress causing melancholy peace that allows the truth to bubble up lazily like oxygen from a rainforest and then expand and fill like oxygen in a vacuum. all is well. things will work out. there is a plan.