Topic: Arts & Literature

When I tore open the envelope and saw the review copies of two CDs from Agnus Dei from Austria, I immediately wanted to love them, as the cover art appealed to my mythical and mystical leanings. One CD was called Lemuria, after the mythological land that was supposed to have existed in the Indian Ocean. It's cover art was like something from a good fantasy comic book, depicting a crystalline city on a craggy mesa rising out of a mirror smooth plain. The other CD was called Merlyn, after Arthur's magical CIA agent, with a cover drawing of a beautiful wilderness waterfall and a giant planet hanging in the sky.

Let the inner light shine in my life once more
Let it burn in my heart as it did before;
Let it be a beacon in a world forlorn,
A world in trouble, a world that is torn.

Before he was even born, Joshua's mother knew that he was destined to be a very special raven. She couldn't explain it, but she knew that there was something different about the egg that lay nestled against the others in the nest that she'd built with her mate, even though this egg was really just like the rest. Then there was the internal voice that had gently told her, “...all of your offspring are precious, and my love enfolds each of them. But I have a special task for one of these youngsters whom you are bringing into the world.”

The mom-to-be kept these feelings and thoughts secret, not even daring to tell her mate, for she knew this to be nonsense. After all, there was nothing special about ravens. They were just ungainly birds that fed on dead meat, damaged crops, and adored maggots and dead fish. Not since the days of Noah, when the mythical El-Shikur had given his life trying to guide the ark to safety, had ravens been held in high esteem.

As I've delved into the world of spirituality, I've learned to look for paradoxes. In my experience, a spiritual truth isn't worth its salt unless it comes packaged in a riddle of contradiction. I've found this to be so much the case that whenever I hear or read about a so-called truth, I immediately look for the paradox, the opposite component that would seem to disprove the validity of the original idea. If it's not there, I remain skeptical about this new "truth."

Take meditation for example. The sages of the east tell us that meditation is an important component of any spiritual practice. Meditation, they say, is an extremely simple process that takes little more than a few minutes of your time. Almost in the same breath, they will add that meditation is a very difficult process that may take years to learn. Voila, we have a paradox!

The 60s On The Big Screen

by Christine Hall

Soon after NBC aired their miniseries The 60s, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick died at the age of 70. Although I would only include one of his movies on a top ten list of 60s films, a more extensive study would include nearly all of his work from that time of his career, for all but one of the movies he made during that period in one way or another captured the spirit of the decade.

As anybody who was there knows, the sixties was not a single issue decade. The many issues that dominated our lives during that time included racial equality, the cold war (including the war in Vietnam which was anything but cold), sexual freedom, free speech and the erosion of personal freedom in American life. If there was any single issue that defined the decade artistically, it was the breaking of new ground, with honesty of expression being the catchword of the day.

Except for a few college stations, there’s absolutely no creativity left in music radio. All playlist decisions are left to big city consultants, who conduct surveys and test songs before live audiences before giving the go ahead for their local client stations to add them to their playlists. According to these consultants, there are no regional differences in musical tastes. According to them, beach music is not more popular in the Carolinas than elsewhere, nor does New Orleans have a fondness for jazz.

This is so unlike the golden age of music radio, when local stations called themselves “hitmakers” and would brag about hit songs “that you heard here first.” Countless rock bands of the sixties, signed to small labels with even smaller promotion budgets, owed their success to Music Directors at local stations who played their first release because “it sounded like a hit.” These days, any local radio employee who dared to make such a move would find a pink slip in his or her next pay envelope

When NBC presented the mini-series The 60s a few years back, it was preceded by several months of hype. According to the ad masters, this was going to be the definitive story of the sixties, as an important a movie for us boomers as Gone With the Wind had been for my grandparents’ generation or From Here To Eternity had been for those who’d reached maturity under the cloud of the second world war.

While the ad campaign, which began airing during the summer re-run season (the show ran in January), was certainly deserving of an Emmy, the movie itself was nothing but typical movie-of-the-week fare that could have aptly been called A Very Brady Sixties. Even though there were many historical nuances that I was surprised to see that the producers got right, there was just as much that was very wrong. The caricatures of hippies and student radicals looked as if they came right off the set of the old Dragnet series and the movie seemed to reflect anti-drug and pro-nuclear family values that were the antithesis of much that the decade represented.

If I were to describe Black Ice and Banana Peels in one sentence, it would be this: It thoroughly explores the kaleidoscope of tricks that the mind plays on us. These are the real mind games, and this book helps us recognize them.

Black Ice & Banana Peels is not only intellectually stimulating, but it also provides practical ways to beat the mind at its own games. You discover early on that Mr. Bender has a knack for understanding and explaining mental processes and states of mind.

It used to be good to be "banned in Boston." Before the 1950s, publishers used to rush their adult themed books to Beantown, hoping to be able to plaster a coveted "banned in Boston" logo on the cover before releasing the book nationwide. By the 1960s, producers of movies and Broadway-bound shows often worked hard to get their work banned, because being "banned in Boston" meant increased box office receipts elsewhere.

To understand Linda McCartney’s importance to the alternative community, it’s first necessary to grasp the role of the Beatles. Even though she came along at the end of the group’s tenure, in many ways she (along with Yoko) was a member of the band. Some, in fact, blamed her for the demise of the band. In any event, she would be destined to live the last 29 years of her life in the shadow of the group’s memory, and in the shadow of her husband Paul - even though she was an accomplished person in her own right.