Solar Angels vol. 1

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Photo: Bård Titlestad.

EDITORIAL Photo: Marisol Vaca.

In that same spirit, I don’t want to limit the scope of what this journal will cover. It’s all just an expression of the same principles: Growth, brothe/sisterhood, humanity, life, the universe and beyond... Also, as you can see, I am in no rush to add tons of artists to each issue. I would rather use the space for good in depth conversations, rather than short superficial ones.

In this first issue, I am honored to feature both musical artists, and artists of life (which is something we should all strive to become!) who share some unique insights with us. I want to thank all of these individuals for taking the time to talk to Solar Angels.

Welcome to Solar Angels Magazine, The idea of doing an online magazine goes back to 2002, and ever since the beginning, it was going to be called Solar Angels. But the seeds of this work goes even further back. My career in the world of art and music started in the late 80s when I illustrated a book for children. I spent all the money I got from that job on LP records.

In 1990 I got my first electric guitar and started my first band. As the years progressed I recorded several demos and released a bunch of albums under various names. But I wanted to do more. All my life I have been fascinated by what’s unusual and magical, surely a glow that had carried over from my childhood, where I grew up in a world where nothing was impossible. And the intensity of that experience was strengthened by an intense visual approach to everything that happened around me.As I am now turning 31, I realize that childhood is such a crucial time in our lives, when the gates to perception are wide open. A lot of us choose to go along to get along and close them. But it is not too late to reopen those gates and gaze into the wonderful mysterious world around us and let ourselves be filled up with inspiration and life force flowing out from every corner of this beautiful earth. And this is where Solar Angels comes back into the picture. The word angel comes from the Greek angelos, which means messenger. And one of my goals is to seek out amazing individuals, let them tell their stories and share their insights with all of my readers. Because life is all about sharing. All things, and all knowledge of those things, comes from a common source, but each of us only see a part of the whole. If we listen to each other, we can learn so much more. So in that sense, I think Solar Angels is a fitting name.

Solar Angels is devoted to the creative arts as an expression of humanity’s quest for meaning and reason in this world.

I plan to do Solar Angels on a quarterly basis - which doesn’t negate additional OR fewer issues. Also, we will be setting up have a news bulletin as well as a possible podcast. So, please stay connected and get ready for the Solar Angels experience!

- Bard

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S : THOUGHTS: B A R D T I T L E S TA D : P r o m i s e [ 5 ] MUSIC: GUNILLA SUSSMANN: The Colors of Longing [6] ALLA: I t ’s T i m e ! [ 1 4 ] S L E E P YA R D : Afternoon Suntrap [24] P O E T R Y: M A R I S O L VA C A : White Butterfly [32] LIFE: DA N I E L V I TA L I S : Intimations of a water pr iest [41] H O G N E T I T L E S TA D : D re a m s - a s u p e rc o n s c i o u s m i n d ve r s e [ 4 6 ] REVIEWS: CASS MCCOMBS Dropping The Wr it [31] © 2 0 0 8 B A R D T I T L E S TA D. A L L R I G H T S R E S E RV E D P L E A S E D O N O T R E P RO D U C E W I T H O U T P E R M I S S I O N F RO M T H E P U B L I S H E R .

E d i t o r / L a y o u t : B a r d T i t le s t a d | C o n t a c t : e d i t o r @ s o l a r a n g el s . n e t / W W W . SO L ARANG E L S . N E T b ac k g r ound imag es b y Bard T it le stad. SO LAR ANG EL S LOGO BY BÅRISOL. spa ce photos by nasa/ STScI

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n I f t h e r e i s a g r e at e r w h o l e t o l i f e t h a n w h at w e e x p e r i e n c e w i t h o u r m o s t o b v i o u s s e n s e s - a r e w e o b l i g e d t o a g r e at e r e x t e n t, t o f u l f i l l t h e p r o m i s e s w e ma k e ? O u r p r o m i s e s t o o u r s e lv e s a n d o t h e r s - a r e w e m e a n t t o ma k e t h e m , b e cau s e i n t h e i r f u l f i l m e n t, a r e t h e k e y s t o u n l o c k i n g t h e g at e s t o o u r g r e at e r d e s t i n y ?

D o w e ca r ry w i t h u s a r e s p o n s i b i l i t y, n o t o n ly f o r o u r s e lv e s , b u t a l s o f o r g e n e rat i o n s pa s s e d . Wh at a r e w e , i f n o t a wav e f l ow i n g t h r o u g h t h e s e c r e t s pac e s o f t i m e .

A r e w e - e ac h a n d e v e ryo n e o f u s - a s p e c i f i c p i e c e i n a g r e at e r p u z z l e t h at w e - i n o u r p r e s e n t s tat e - ca n n o t s e e o r f at h o m . A p u z z l e t h at p e r h a p s t h o s e w h o cam e b e f o r e – a n d h av e n ow g o n e o n t o ( t h e ) o t h e r w o r l d ( s ) - ca n s e e a n d u n d e r s ta n d . A n d t h at t h e y d e p e n d o n u s t o s ta n d u p t o t h e c h a l l e n g e g i v e n t o u s , a n d c o m p l e t e o u r m i s s i o n.

I f w e a r e n o t a l o n e , d o e s t h at m e a n a l s o , t h at t h e d e s i c i o n s w e ma k e a r e n o t f o r u s a l o n e . I n o u r l i v e s w e ca r ry t h e h o p e , p r o m i s e a n d f u l f i l m e n t f o r a l l s o u l s t h at a r e a pa r t o f t h i s s p e c i a l wav e a s i t f l ow s o n i t s pat h th rou g h th e de e pe st oc ean s of th e co smo s.

B e t rue. . .

– B a r d Ti t l e s ta d P h oto : R e f le c ti on N e bula N G C 19 9 9 © NASA/ STScI

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G U N I L L A SÜSSMANN The Colors of Longing I

first saw her perform in a haunted 1 2 th C entury convent on the westcoast of N orway. S he smiled at the audience and took a brief applause before sitting down in front of the grand piano.

T hen she was gone . G one was the performer , whose mastery of her instrument and the music of the old masters is rivalled only by few.

S he had become a conduit for an unearthly resonance , a music so beautiful it cut deep into my soul . E arly on she knew she had tapped into something that was almost larger than life – to her , she told

me , a “ holy place ” . last year she released her debut solo C D, Tocka , featuring sonatas of rachmaninov and scriabin. she kindly took time off from her busy schedule to answer some of our questions A N D S H E G I V E S U S S O M E U N I Q U E I N S I G H T S I N TO T H E M I N D A N D WO R K O F A M A S T E R . . .

f SOLAR ANGELS: Gunilla, how are you doing? You have had a very busy year! Please let us know what you’ve been up to ...

GUNILLA: Hi there... I´m very fine, having a pretty calm start of this season, which is a welcome and nice change after being fairly busy

last year. 2007 was a hectic yet very exciting year for me. It was the 100th anniversary of norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, which meant a lot of concerts within this frame, among other places in China. This year also included my first trip to Taiwan, where I for the first time in my life suffered from real insomnia. It´s hard

to pick highlights from the last year, because every event has its own value or meaning.

The spring and summer was filled with concerts and festivals in Norway, Germany, France and the UK, and a huge challenge this year was the intense variety of repertoire.

Photo: Kai Fossgård.

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SOLAR ANGELS: I can’t really describe my feelings when listening to your playing. It is as if my mind becomes a canvas, and with every

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There were almost no concerts with the same program, and in the end this was far more exhausting than the amount of concerts. But also a very satisfying process. I also had the pleasure of making my debuts at 2 of Germany’s most important festivals; in Schwetzingen and Ludwigsburg, which were great experiences for me. Apart from solo-recitals I also played with a dear colleague of mine, Solveig Kringleborn, a phenomenal soprano, and both the concerts and the wonderful surroundings in this southern area of Gernany were incredibly special. Another very precious event this year was the release of Malinconia, a CD with my precious friend, the cellist Tanja Tetzlaff.This recording has been through such a process of fateful and unfortunate events, but still carries the very essence of our collaboration and contains music that we both praise very highly. It was like getting a child a child when it finally arrived, and fortunately it also received excellent reviews worldwide. Finally I have to mention a concert in Wigmore Hall, UK, which was one of the peakexperiences last year. It’s always such a magical pleasure to perform in this hall, with its unique atmosphere and acoustics. And I felt really grateful to return, especially with a really spectacular ensemble of musicians from UK, France and Norway. This too was an anniversary-concert for Grieg, but for me personally it became a celebration of the core of musical communication.

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note, you paint a landscape in my mind. I am in such awe of this mysterious power of music. I was at a concert with the wonderful piano player and composer Laurence Rosenthal. After the concert, he held a brief Q&A session and someone in the audience asked him what he felt or experienced when he performed. And he said: I listen. That

was surprising. But it made so much sense. With masters like him and yourself, it isn’t just about the music, because the experience goes deeper.

The music becomes a bridge between two worlds, or separate realities that come together in the moment of the performance. And I realized that he, as us, were merely receiving the music from that magical place beyond

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the reach of our temporal everyday selves. And that is very similar to what you say in the liner notes to your CD, about music bridging the gap between two poles or worlds.

Can you tell us more about how you experience this process and how it may have transformed you on your life’s path?

GUNILLA: First of all; I couldn´t agree more about what Mr. Rosenthal so simply expressed. To listen when you play is the most essential and important tool to communicate, and yet also the hardest. I believe the ultimate feeling as a musician is when you experience listening to your own playing in real time, not only with your 2 physical ears from the inside of what you’re playing, but with a third ear, from the outside, as if you were released from the actual task of playing. You hear it, not before it’s played or after it’s been played, but AS you play. To experience the unity of notes, harmonies, sound and lines, in a way that enables you to let the music flow naturally instead of consciously trying to construct its shape. Listening – to the extent that the awareness of time and place disappears, and all that is left is the music’s endless and natural possibilities to plant itself in the room there and then. In other words it’s about being so aware and alert that you finally loose awareness. I believe that the ear is the most important tool in the process of conveying music, because no matter how skilled you are, no matter how much you practiced or how well you know a piece, when the time comes and the ear is not totally free and open, the performance can never reach a higher level. I may give two recitals in

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Q&A with

* GUNILLA SÜSSMANN * Wh at a r e yo u r t h r e e f av e m ov i e s a n d w h y ?

I know for certain that I will leave something genious out by picking only 3, and tomorrow I would probably remember 3 others, but: Irreversible for the incredibly stabbing effect of telling such a story backwards, leaving us with so many questions concerning where and why brutality and violence appear in people.

For never giving in to the temptation to “soften” the cruelty or hide the horrible darkness within such a story. I´ve never been so repulsed, and yet so impressed by a movie. The english patient; for it’s breathtaking story, fantastic acting, intense and incredible directing and production, and for its unique way of conveying love, warmth, pain, human relations and universal themes in its own style without turning into a cliché. The life of others; because it shows the “other” side of Germany’s ordeal after second world war. How people on all sides suffer incredibly from the paranoia, surveillance and lack of human warmth within their own rows, and the incredible way of conveying a story of such change in a man’s attitude, simply from watching people who love eachother and want to fight for their art.

Wh at i s t h e g r e at e s t a l b u m o f a l l t i m e ?

Also an impossible question, and something I almost refuse to answer...However; Michelangeli playing Ravel and Rachmaninoff in a recording from 1957, released on EMI. Simply because it’s purest magic from first to last tone. Divine music, divinely performed by one of music-history’s greatest artists. It’s the kind of recording that excludes any other recordings of these works. It gives me goose-bumps just thinking of it.

I s th e re suc h a th i ng as f re e w i l l ?

Idealistically, yes. But I believe we have to distinguish between what we think is free will, and what actually is. Free will in itself, I believe, is quite simple and evident, but to become such a person who can achieve the skills, insight and reflection to use it, I think is a painful and long process. Because in order to make it something more than a superficial reflection of one’s own needs and wishes, I believe one has to have seen so far within and so far out that one clearly “knows” what kind of free will doesn´t exclude any free will of another human being. If one could reach that point, I think free will could be a pure perspiration and natural expression, but unfortunately too often it’s misinterpreted as personal satisfaction and greed, and like this nothing is free.

Wh at a r e d r e am s ? “ I have a dream...” I wonder why this sentence established itself in the first place, because in this context the word is always referring to something positive. I don’t have a very strong relation to dreams, but I guess that dreams are the closest we get to an unfiltered, uncontrolled image of ourselves. Which is also why they are so scary sometimes, and we´re desperate to find an explanation to everything. This

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interests me much more than the dream itself, why are we so eager to find an explanation? Because we´re so afraid of things we can’t comprehend, scared of loosing control. But maybe this is the closest to a free will that our minds get, because they spin around in their own time and space, regardless of what you as a person will gain out of it.

Making bits and pieces of our history come together in a new pattern, and who are we to say what makes more sense....?

Wh y i s art i m p o rtan t ?

Because it’s the shortest distance between two persons. Try change the word religion with art, and the world would look a different place. Because it has the ability to create understanding, respect, unconditional feelings and open new gates between the most different people and cultures. Because without it we’re only animals. Because it prolongs everything. Because it´s the only “invention” that can never cause harm in itself, and if it does it´s always due to systems and circumstances around, not art itself.

Above: Süssmann’s “Tocka” which was nominated for the Les Victoires de la Musique Classique 2006 at the Midem convention in Cannes.

Below is “Aurora Borealis” (NAXOS) a piano concert by the Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt, performed with another Norwegian piano great Håvard Gimse.

Does everyone have a price?

This depends totally on who’s in charge. It depends on whether we regard ourselves as part of a system where price matters, or if we find that term too narrow. I believe as soon as we label ourselves with a price, we say goodbye to a certain freedom or free will, if you want. Of course, in our world today, you can’t escape the fact of relating to this at a certain point. I just think that it should never be measured from a point of personal greed, but from a point of objective judgement of ones contribution to the whole universe. ( I don’t interprete this as a question about some people being more worth than others, as my answer would have been different then.)

I s r e vo lu t i o n a n e c e s sary g o o d / evi l o f e vo lu t i o n ?

As a person who has been born into a time and part of the world, so happily free of such events, I feel it quite unfair to answer anything worthy to such a question. So many people through time, have suffered incredible agony

and unfairness through corrupt and power-abusing systems, and who are we today to mean or say that they were wrong in opposing to this? Through history revolution has been the poor people´s only weapon against tyrannic treatment,and it´s hard to say whether we at all are able to picture how the world would have looked today if the history was free of revolutions. But isolated into a technical “term”, I think I can´t really decide if it´s a good or evil, I think it´s more inevitable. Because human-kind tends to flock together, no matter what circumstances. And as long as we do that, a collective opinion of something is doomed to be pushed towards the surface. Personally I don´t think this is necessarily a good thing always.When such things happen, a lot of nuances and individual thinking is lost, and replaced with the most obvious, easy-to-understand-slogan,and in terms of evolution I´m not sure this always brings the greatest values on to the future.

What is the nicest thing that happened to you today?

That my husband returned safe from a tour.

What is the purpose and destiny of humankind?

This is an incredibly huge question and I feel way too small to give a good answer. I think I´ll avoid the “destiny”-part, because for me it´s bringing too many borders and frames into the universal question on why we´re here. However, I believe that our greatest responsibility is to never stop wondering, never accept a final solution to the wonder of our existence, and be humble to the forces we don´t understand.To strive for knowledge. Further. I think the longing for love, and love in itself is a huge part of our purpose. Because I personally think love is the greatest and most unlimited source of experiences we can have.

Regardless of what it speaks through; music, art, nature, people. It´s one of the few things, no matter how far we get in our technical skills, inventions and science, it´s one of the few things we´ll never ever be able to control and that we´ll constantly be searching and longing for, consciously or unconsciously.

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a row, and note-wise I play the exact same thing. Only that in one of the concerts my ears are “locked”, “fixed” or “blocked” (from exhaustion, indifference, nervousity, stress..), and in the other they’re open and able to “breathe” freely with the music.

The performances are completely different. Not that one could necessarily put a finger on what’s wrong, but the spirit, atmosphere, the lungs of the music are missing. And this is for me the hardest and greatest thing about being a musician. That I always long to find myself in this position on stage, entirely open for the sound, and yet the fear of loosing it and not “getting there today” is always present. It´s a sacred place, and it´s undisscusably so, because without it, without this room between two poles, music stops being music. It´s absolutely dependant on such a silent communication with “the other

Photo: Bente Bjerke.

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pole” to develop this unique energy and power that it may carry.

SOLAR ANGELS: Is performing music simply a craft, or can it also be more like a rediscovery of a hidden sense, as in a sixth or even seventh sense?

GUNILLA: Definately. I would say it´s beyond doubt like a sixth or seventh sense. The performance you hear as part of an audience (given that the artist is good, of course) is idealistically always a sum of his/ her ability to utilize this sense. In the same way that you can describe for someone the taste of a certain fruit, the smell of a perfume, the impression of a sunset, I as a musician should be able to describe for an audience what I hear “out there”.

The craft of playing an instrument is basically a tool, where of course

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some tools give a better result, but all in all this is a far more concrete discipline than using this “third ear”, which is more or less what I mean with a sixth/seventh sense. I believe it’s quite similar to the ancient idea about the “third eye”. Like the third eye is a “thought” and internally visualised image, the third ear is a “thought” and audio-visualised ear, which becomes the translator and messenger between the two poles.

SOLAR ANGELS: Your album is called Tocka, which means longing in Russian. Why do you think this particular emotion has had such a strong influence on artists, composers, musicians and poets through the ages? What is the magic of longing?

GUNILLA: First I have to say that finding the word Tocká wasn’t easy. I

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was very clear on what kind of feeling I wanted to convey, and in Norwegian and lots of other european languages the alternatives for the word longing are not overwhelming. I spesifically wanted to avoid the side of it that had to do with desire, and the closest I could get to something that served the emotion right was the german word Sehnsucht. But releasing a CD with only Russian music, I would have to find the Russian word, However, that seemed to be more difficult than I had thought. The thing is; in the Russian language they have a whole list of words that mean longing. And each one with a different nuance, colour and meaning. I talked to lots of different Russian colleagues, explaining what I meant, and not one of them would come up with a word immideately. They all needed some time to think, to find the exact word for this specific emotion and context.

How fascinating!! To have a language that rich of nuances! I was weakkneed with admiration when they all some weeks later came up with the same word − Tockà.That was the one it had to be.

I believe since the very core of music, and music in general is something so abstract, it’s predestined to cause a need and an urge for its very opposite. And for all spiritual beings; musicians and artists, a huge part of their work will always consist of looking for answers, as well as release and help in this mysterious circle of life and death. Searching for the hidden, searching for something that will never come, searcing for comfort for one’s helpless insuffiency.

I think the longing and searching aspect is inevitably connected with the very essence of art. Most music

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is built around tension and release, some only with tension, some with both. And the tension, representing the longing, will always be stronger than the release, the fulfillment.

It may give satisfaction when the tension is released, but the power that the tension/longing builds up will always carry much more than the release can give back. And thus I think we’re clinging to the longing/ tension, because the expectation of what may come will always be of greater value and contain stronger dreams, hopes and wishes than the satisfaction in itself, and like this it knows no boundaries and never limits the magic on its way.

SOLAR ANGELS: What does discipline mean to you? How do you keep yourself getting better after all this work. How do you keep challenging yourself?

GUNILLA: I consider myself very lucky. Since I was very little I learnt that music was not something one did for fun, it was something to be taken very seriously. As a child I obviously didn’t fully comprehend what that meant, but something I could grasp was the discipline of this seriousness, in terms of practising and devoting myself to the world of music. Later in life I started to comprehend for real how serious music was for me, not only because I was told, but because I could experience this great gift on my own. By then the discipline part of it was already so drilled into my system, that it was and has ever since been a very natural part of my attitude towards how I work. I strongly believe that the path of a musician is an eternal education. As a player, as a listener and as a human

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being. And for me discipline means a tool which enables me to constantly be open for this education. To never fall for the temptation to say that I’ve learned enough, I’ve practised enough. If that day comes, I’m no longer a musician.There are different aspects of discipline. There is the physical one; which is needed to maintain and improve the technical level of ones playing, and there is the mental one, which is more of an attitude, They are closely linked together, one doesn’t exist without the other. But the mental discipline is important for me in terms of what I talked about earlier; being so aware and alert, that one can later give in to it. For me a mixture of the physical and mental discipline has always been a totally necessary tool of preparation and education in order to be more free during a performance. In some periods I may practise less than I did during my time in the music academies, but the approach, my attitude towards my work is unaltered. One learns to be more efficient too, one has to, given that the time frames are often more narrow now than earlier. I also still love learning new repertoire, I love that challenge of starting from scratch on something entirely new, and see where the road leads me.

SOLAR ANGELS: Is there an ultimate goal for you?

GUNILLA: It’s weird to talk about an ultimate goal... For me, as long as I can see a goal, the process of longing somehow looses its purpose. For me the longing is extremely precious, and as long as I’m allowed to keep longing through music for an indefinate time, that’s more than enough for me.

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Photo: Bårisol.

ALLÁ

IT’S TIME!

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e first saw A ll á play at a venue in C hicago called M artyrs where they were playing with O ppenheimer and M os q uitos . T hey were doing soundcheck when we got there . A nd from the first monumental chord struck , I knew this was a band I would want

to hear again and again . N ot only is their music great, but they emit a charisma

reserved for rock stars . B ut there is more to A lla than that. T he strength of group leader J orge L edezma ’ s vision , and his focus on his personal goals makes him a worthy subject for the opening article of S olar A ngels ’ first issue . I

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met at a cafe in C hicago ’ s pilsen area and over coffee and hot chocolate we discussed A lla past present and future , as well as touching upon many other things . A nd I learned a lot from J orge during our conversation , and he inspired me to not lose track of my own visions . S o I hope that all of you will also get the same from reading what he had to say. L ast but not least, A lla ’ s debut album , “ E s tiempo ” is due out in may on crammed disks . A lla will rule the world, and we ’ re glad we were there at the beginning . A lla on the web : www. myspace . com / estiempo

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SOLAR ANGELS: Tell me about

yeah, we’ve always been fascinated

JORGE: I guess it always starts with

your background...

by music, and my dad had a lot of

a love for music, and we loved music.

Beatles and Rolling Stones, so we

He was a musician first. He played

JORGE: I grew up in a middleclass

grew up with a lot of pop. We didn’t

drums first. It’s funny because he had

family. I have two other brothers.

grow up with traditional Mexican

a friend who went to those Christian

I am the middle child. My parents

music. So when we moved to the

youth groups. And he talked my

immigrated here from Mexico in

suburbs we discovered a lot stranger

brother into going with him, but my

the mid. sixties or early seventies.

music. We discovered bands we had

brother would go only because after

They met here. I grew up on the

never heard before, and it kind of

they talked about the Bible, they had

north side of Chicago, but in our

blossomed from there, you know.

a Christian band with drums and

early teens we moved to the suburbs,

everything. So my brother would sit

so we kind of experienced the city

SOLAR ANGELS: So when did

through the Christian stuff and then

life and the suburban life, or, if you

you realize you’d be working so

when they were done they would

will, the urban sort of life and then

closely with your brother, Angel

just jam in the Church. So that’s how

the white suburban sort of life. So

(drummer of Alla)?

my brother started playing drums.

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Photo: Bårisol.

I guess I started making tape loops.

SOLAR ANGELS: So you learned

learn how to do it. But we were doing

I was really into experimental

your musical skills as you went

Defender and we had a love for early

music in high school. I couldn’t

along...

Kraftwerk, krautrock and electronic,

actually play any instruments.

but old school electronic music.

But I played in some punk bands,

JORGE: Yeah, I’d end up being, like,

My bands were very high concept,

and I was always playing in these

oh, I want to play guitar now. I didn’t

like, at first we would always talk

weird sort of conceptual bands

start to play guitar until I was 22. As I

about costumes and theatrical stuff

with drum machines and broken

discovered music I was like, I want to

and then the music was always second.

keyboards.

play that kind of music, so I just had to

And then I got into this whole thing

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where I bought a four track before I

Some people argue that you’ve got

SOLAR ANGELS: I think a band I

bought any instruments and started

to put some 7 inches out, or get

have a lot of respect for is Café Tacuba.

to record all my friends, and I was like,

the word out, you know. But I was

And they wanted to mix that Western

let’s make these records, and we tried to

like, no, I’m going to make this big

influence with their own traditional

make these concpepts albums, and

debut. So it is like it’s time for me to

sounds. But they came up with

they were a mess. My friends were

show the world what I found. And

something very interesting I think.

in orchestras so they would bring

of course there’s the time element,

trumpets and stuff. I have some of

and how long it took.

those tapes and they’re pretty funny

!

JORGE: Yeah, but they’re from Mexico so they’re influences are very

to listen to. But we did Defender, and

SOLAR ANGELS:Yeah, you should

different from ours. And I respect

that was again very high concept. It

have called the album ”it’s about

them a lot too, and they make some

was always high concepts.

time...”

very challenging records.

SOLAR ANGELS: Some of that

JORGE: Haha, yeah. But culturally

SOLAR ANGELS: In your bio-

stuff would probably be cool to use

too, I thought there wasn’t enough

graphy you talk about the main

as source material...

interesting Latino music being made.

themes being love and spiritual and

And there is plenty, I guess, but as far as

cultural awakening. Do you think

JORGE: Yeah, I wanted to do it

independent artists go, they tend to fall

the world is ready for that? Seeing

for this record, but definitely want

into a mold where they want to copy

how saturated the world is with hate

to do it for the next one. I have tons

what western bands do but just in

and greed. Do you think music really

of just crazy stuff we did, you know,

Spanish, to which I am like, no, you’re

has the power to change the world?

experimenting with tape loops and

missing the point. So there’s also that

stuff. I was really into stuff like Frank

element that it’s time that some Latin

JORGE: Yeah, definitely. I guess

Zappa and The Residents...

artist steps out of the boundries.

that’s sort of a navie part of me. I

SOLAR ANGELS: “Es Tiempo”, which is Spanish for “It’s time...”

– it’s a great title that can have many meanings, and I guess in our day and age, it truly is time... for new ideas, for passion, for truth, for great and meaningful music, and so on... What specifically are you trying to express with this title?

JORGE: Oh yes, it has so many Photo: Bårisol.

meanings obviously. I always wanted to make sure that the first real musical statement that I made was important.

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mean, I’m not navie but that’s what

and culture still poses a threat to

chord with me was Ron Paul who’s

inspired me to do this record. And I

any totalitarian ideas or big brother

currently running for president.

was inspired by a lot of artists from

systems, so I think it’s important.

Because his message is basically let’s

the sixties who felt the same way;

Again that’s why I spent so much

open ourselves to the possibility of

that music could change people,

time on the record and on the lyrics

dealing with other nations through

and I mean, it changed me! I was

and everything to make sure the

trade, talking and travelling, as

listening to something the other day

message is clear.

opposed to this constant violence

about how, as much as we’ve made

and enmity... And that scares a lot

all this progress, we’re becoming

SOLAR

ANGELS: Absolutely.

of people because they are afraid if

more conservative over all, and music

Someone whose message struck a

you let down your guard that you’ll

Photo: Bårisol.

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open yourself to attack from some enemy somewhere. But I’m thinking that after all these thousands of years with war and destruction, it is time to do what John Lennon said, to give peace a chance. We’re all gonna die one day anyway. Isn’t it worth it to give our children and grandchildren the see if we could actually coexist peacefully?

JORGE: Yeah, it sounds like such a novel idea, doesn’t it. It’s so simple, but it’s absolutely true. And I don’t know what it’s gonna take.There has to be some giant shift.To me it seems as if it needs to get worse before it gets better, but how much worse can we go, you know!

SOLAR ANGELS: So in a sense, It’s like the time that we live in sort of opens up the door to experimentation and

to

stop

worrying

about

conventions and just doing what you feel is right because it’s worth to see what comes out of it...

JORGE: Yeah, obviously this is the day and age of convenience and everything being instant. You go on MySpace – you write your first song,

Photo: Bårisol.

you put it on Myspace, you got a 100.000 hits, but the hardest thing

fulfilling me as a person. I question

people lose track of that. They just

is to carve your own path, that’s the

my intentions all the time as I do this.

kinda go with the machine and they

hardest way to go. But obviously

It’s important. Am I doing this right?

get sucked in.

people are looking for fulfillment

Is this song going in this driection?

in their lives. That’s something I

Is the band going here or are we

SOLAR ANGELS: And I guess

realized making the record. What’s

doing this or are we doing that. But

that’s one thing, if you love what you

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do, and the audience loves what you

about it, but then I’d think, ”you know

do, then the end result is basically

what, it’s gonna happen... it’s gonna

love. And that’s what brings people

happen, this is what I’ve always planned,

together...

I gotta stay focussed on what I’ve got to do.” And sure enough, three weeks

JORGE: Yes, you know, not to

later, something happened.

bring up an old cliche, but I hope that somewhere some kid, you know,

But as far as me going to Sweden,

anybody that hears the record says

that was an eye opening experience.

wow, if this guy can do it, I can do it.You

It began like, I was living off a credit

know, I’m not rich. My parents are

card, I only had a four day stay at

not paying for anything. I’ve worked

SOLAR ANGELS: Synchronicity...

a job for years and years. I have no

a hotel, and then next thing you know I’m in a recording studio,

savings. The only thing I own is my

JORGE: Yeah, it’s fantastic. And

I’m meeting the Cardigans, I’m in

car and my music, you know. So it’s

when I talk to people about that I

Finland touring with Damo Suzuki,

like I hope that somewhere down

can give them so many examples.

jamming with Swedish psychedelic

the line somebody gets inspired and

When I made the decision to go to

legends and meeting amazing people.

says Shit! This guy could do it! It seems

Sweden – because I was in love with

And all this happened just because I

pretty easy!

the string sound of a certain band

opened my mind to the possibility of

who works at a certain studio – I

that happening. I mean I only saw a

SOLAR ANGELS: Writing and

met two Swedish guys at an Empty

hundred feet ahead of me at a time,

creating Es Tiempo has been a long

Bottle show who ended up being my

but I just opened up to it.

and difficult journey, I imagine. It’s

sort of surrogate family in Sweden.

taken you across to the other side

SOLAR ANGELS: You just let go.

of the world, you’ve been working

When I was there it almost seemed

with a bunch of different musicians,

like I found my purpose. Everything

and like Lee Hazlewood, you spent

I was doing, every decision I was

some time working in Sweden. Tell

making was just leading me to even

SOLAR ANGELS: Allá means

me what this musical journey has

better things, you know. And I knew

”over there” and I thought that

done to you as a musician and a

right there that that was the path that

was such a great name, because it´s

person.

I had to take. I mean, I could go on as

something you can´t really define,

far as examples of, you know, saying:

it´s almost like a state of mind...

JORGE: Yeah, I just let go.

JORGE: Oh going to Sweden,

”alright, I’m gonna do this, I just have to

or

it’s

set my mind to it” and immediately I’d

funny. As soon as you decide

see things start appearing.You know

you’re gonna do something, the

sometimes your mind gets clouded,

SOLAR ANGELS: Especially in

whole universe sort of moves

even with us having an opportunity

our world today where everything

everything around so as to make

to have our record out worldwide.

seems to be given a tag so that

it happen...

For a while I was really bummed out

nobody needs to worry about

Europe... you

know

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JORGE: Yeah absolutely!

Photo: Bårisol.

looking outside the box. And I loved

wanted to call the band Allá People

want. I did my part, I made a great

that about you from the start, because

because me, my brother and Lupe

record. I wrote some great songs so

that doesn’t seem to be something

obviously are stuck in between.

the aftermath is whatever happens.

SOLAR ANGELS: Considering

SOLAR ANGELS: At one point

JORGE: No, obviously, when you

the current situation in the record

you considered releasing Es Tiempo

hear the album, you know, it´s a music

industry with declining record sales,

yourself...

album! It’s not like a band record, it’s

is that affecting you at all?

you care about.

not a guitar record... I guess I use the

JORGE: A part of the self release

term psychedelic in the sense of what

JORGE: A little bit but I think

was that I was hoping I could have

I feel my definition is. Just be open

ultimately you have to make a great

complete control over everything,

to whatever influences come in. I’ve

recording, you have to make a great

but depending on what your intent

always loved band names that were

song. I think you start with the music.

is, you know, mine was that this had

just one word. Litterally Allá comes

The industry side, I guess, will happen,

to be a worldwide release. I mean,

from Mexicans in the US referring

but I definitely made sure I made an

that was always my dream. And now

to Mexico as allá, and when you’re

album and then whatever the label

it’s gonna be released in over 30

in Mexico you refer to the US as allá.

decides to do, if they want to do

countries. And I wanted that, and I

So then it just becomes, what the

this as a single, or if they want to do

knew that you have to be honest with

fuck is allá, you know. For a while we

this as a ringtone... do whatever you

yourself. Just like I’m honest with

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myself that I am not an engineer, I

possibilities. Especially as an artist,

we just kind of live life. But I live

couldn’t record this record on my

I am open to almost anything. In

life too. But to think that people just

own and so I hired somebody to do

the studio, if somebody wants to try

sit back and don’t have a perspective

it. And at this point, you just find a

something new, you know, I don’t try

on what they’re doing, or what their

good home and good people to work

to put limits on what we’re trying to

intent in life is... I think changing that

with and your message is spread out.

do creatively. So as a human being or

is more of a change than political or

an artist, I think it’s as simple as not

social change – to really think about

SOLAR ANGELS: The live expe-

trying to put limits on yourself, like,

what you’re doing...

rience of Allá is so different from the

”No I can’t do that, or, no, that’s not who

way you sound on the album. I’ve

I am”.

SOLAR ANGELS: Yeah, inste-ad of

seen you perform quite a few times

just going through life mechanically...

and even though Es Tiempo is a

SOLAR ANGELS: Is there any

great album, it does not capture the

other message for our readers?

JORGE: Yeah, and one of our songs, ”No Duermas Mas”, is lyrically very

raw magic of Allá live... it’s almost JORGE: Dream big. Even early on

much about that.”Don’t sleep anymore”.

I thought I’m gonna win a grammy.

It has a double meaning and it’s sort

JORGE: I though about that

I think these big lofty things all the

of like about people sleepwalking

and it was always my intent that it

time. And don’t limit yourself. I guess

through their lives, and the song starts

would always have to be completely

what worries me about humanity is

with the lyrics ”Wake up, wake up”. It

different from the album. And that’s

that people don’t know what they

has a lullaby feel to it but it also asks

funny because we were making the

want to do. Because if you really think

people; what are you doing? That’s my

record and I thought about Brian

hard, what would you wanna be right

big statement, you know, just wake

Wilson doing Pet Sounds or The

now? Just start with that. Just do it.

up, really think of what you’re doing,

Beatles making Sgt. Pepper because

And as soon as you set your mind to

and make a change. As soon as you

people who were around during the

it, you’ll see things will happen.

make that change and decide, ”alright,

like two different entities.

I’m gonna do this”. Just fucking do this.

making of Es Tiempo would ask me, ”Jorge, how are you gonna do this live”,

I don’t know if you were like

but I wasn’t even thinking about

this but I always thought people

that. I am making a great record,

thought like me. I used to think

SOLAR ANGELS: So you’re really

I am not worried about how it’s

like, I visualize, don’t other people

a believer in synchronicity.

gonna translate live, I’ll worry about

visualize? I constantly visualize my

that when we get there.

life – constantly. Even this interview,

JORGE:

I kinda already knew what I was

time! And as I start reading about

SOLAR ANGELS: What does

gonna talk about. But meeting people

different people and philosophers,

freedom mean to you, artistically and

as I got older and started moving

I fell like, damn, I’m on the same

personally?

on, I began to realize people don’t

wavelength.

Things will start happening.

Yeah, big time, big

visualize. People don’t think about it, JORGE: I guess freedom starts

about who they are. Don’t you think

SOLAR ANGELS: What are you

with just thoughts. The opening of

about what it is you want to do? No,

currently reading?

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JORGE: Oh, I’m just reading

home filthy. People look at the band,

usually stays on a superficial level.

a book about the sunset strip,

and go; this will happen! But I worry

I mean, I remember the moment

haha! But I’ve looked into some

about my car payments, what am I

I decided I was gonna make this

philosophies and even stuff as

gonna do, my kids and stuff like that.

record and what it was gonna be like.

mainstream as The Secret or What

But knowing that there’s an intent

I was driving down North Avenue,

the Bleep do we know...

in my life keeps me sane. If I knew

and as soon as I made that decision,

I had to just work every fucking

my life and everything just moved

SOLAR ANGELS: That’s a good

day and go home and watch TV...

and I let go. I realized, I just got to

movie, by the way, What the Bleep...

and that’s like 95 % of the people of

let this happen.

the world, and that ratio is probably JORGE: It’s a good movie, and

getting bigger.They don’t think. And

SOLAR ANGELS: So if we say it’s

watching it just reaffirms what I

that’s what’s great about what you’re

time indeed, then it’s time to wake

already believe. You know, I’m not

doing because we normally don’t

up...

like some rich millionaire. I work at

talk about that - about how records

a supermarket, I wash dishes, I come

are made, about how things start. It

JORGE: Yeah, for everybody...

Q & A with * JORGE LEDEZMA * 1 . W hat are your three fave movies and why ?

La Bamba - Ritchie Valens the first true Latin rocker plus he wrote his own songs he was only 17 when he died.

Pee Wees Big Adventure - Tim Burtons finest ... brings the avant guarde to the big screen for the first time.

El Topo - 60s mysticism meets the Spaghetti Western

Can daydreaming be considered visualization? If so I’m in constant state of dreaming but staying firm footed with reality.

Dreams allow one to step into consciousness which allows for all possibilities. If you aware you dream if not you’re dead.

2 . W hat is the greatest album of all time ?

There are no greatest but here are just a few ...

Marvin Gaye - Whats Going On Can - Tago Mago Terry Riley - In C The Residents - Commercial Album Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

6 . D oes everyone have a price ?

No

5 . W hy is art important ?

Art is what defines our culture and society. It inspires.

7 . I s revolution a necessary good / evil of evolution ?

Revolution is a necessary good but a violent one isn’t.

8 . W hat is the nicest thing that happened to you today ?

Had an engaging conversation with a friend over Indian food.

3 . I s there such a thing as free will ?

Yes, do most people act on it? No. Why? That’s a whole other topic.

9 . W hat is the purpose and destiny of humankind ?

To die out like the dinosaurs ...

4 . W hat are dreams ?

To me? Dreams can be deliberate forms of imagination.

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leepyard. . . let yourself sail away on dream I N D U C I N G S O N I C WAV E S as they transport you into a world of endless summer and the innocence of childhood. T he most powerful music has that special q uality that lets you close your eyes and drift

off to magical places . A N D F O R S L E E P YA R D, I T ’ S A L L A B O U T L I F e ’ S L I T T L E D E -

TA I L S A N D H OW T H E Y C A N B E T R A N S F E R R E D O N T O the group ’ s musical c A N VA S . T his is the soundtrack to memories past and tomorrow ’ s dreams .

I n between working on the group ’ s new album , future lines , oliver kersbergen took time to answer our q uestions . . .

SOLAR ANGELS: Can you give us a brief introduction to Sleepyard, its history, mission and members...

OLIVER: I was playing guitar in a hardcore punk rock band called “Detached” with my brother on bass.

We were never the most orthodox punk rockers (as the other two bandmembers were) and we tried to put as many strange influences in the music as possible. Still it was somewhat limited in terms of musical creativity, so i had to do something on my own. I recorded a demo in 1994 called “Velvet sky”

under the name, Sleepyard. Here was my dream influenced pop music and i felt much more at home doing this material. So then my brother

also joined Sleepyard and “Detached” disbanded. We started to record many songs and learn the craft of constructing new sounds. The studio became a playground and a place for great experimentation. We released our first EP “Intersounds” in 1999 and it did get very good reviews. There was nothing like it released at the time. So then we started a permanent live band and started playing free form versions of our songs. It was always meant to be a separate experience from our records.

We released a our first long player in 2001, “Big monday”. This was a

AFTERNOON

jig-saw puzzle presentation of all our sound dreams. We have also released “The runner” (a compilation on Trust me records) 2003. The release party for that record was a exhibition of photos for each song. It was a nice way of showing the visual aspect of Sleepyard. Our second long player is a mellow affair in sound and mood.

Much of that record benefits from having been recorded at home.

So you have time to think about the textures in the sound much more than if the studio meter is running.

Future, of course, is always ahead of us, and in the songs I have heard Our mission has always been to from the album, there are familiar create unique records, like those that things, but stripped of their would spellbind me. To be creative familiar forms and structures they and playful. For the new album we blend beautifully with the whole, have brought along new member alowing the mind a smooth passage Tom-Erik Løe. into a world where time and space ceases to be (as we know it).

SOLAR ANGELS: You are cur-rently working on an album OLIVER: I usually have multiple you’ve decided to call Future meanings in our album titles. Like Lines, can you tell me a little bit our previous album, ”Easy tensions”, about the concept behind it? It is which could mean almost anything, a very suggestive title, especially from falling in love to a war plane when you hear the music. The report. ”Future lines” means just as

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many things as well. The concept is to make an impressionistic pop record. I very much like to take different musical sounds out of their element and through the looking glass. I like to start with memories, ideas or visions. With Future Lines i am looking towards the future.

Central themes are technology and nature. Still rooted in memories, though, as the song ”Hot radio” is about holidays and talk radio.

SOLAR ANGELS: That makes sense. The music is very very dreamy, just as when reviewing past experiences through the lens of one’s memories. A sunset, or a chance meeting... all these things take on a much deeper resonance when seen in retrospect. A gentle sense of separation and longing helps to strengthen this feeling. In the end then, I guess growing older and the passing of time is good for art?

OLIVER: Growing older is definitely a one meaning of the title. ”Easy tensions” was centered around cold war and hot summers of childhood

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that seemed to last forever, the last track is a lament called ”Goodbye Hercules”, which is a nice way to end the album. Memories and past experiences are very useful for the musical canvas. One memory is watching the funeral of the General secretary of the Soviet Union Konstantin Chernenko in March of 1985 as a child. The pompous circumstances had a real musical impact on me.

SOLAR ANGELS: It is interesting that you mention the Cold War. I was born in the seventies and grew up with it. But nowadays, when looking at the world, it seems as if most people have forgotten, or at least put this time behind them. There were those summits between Reagan and Gorbachev. That was such a special time.You came out of the sixties and the seventies, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the war in Afghanistan and all this fear and suspicion between people. And then there was this new hope. I don’t see any of that today.

Maybe we don’t see it because it’s increasingly difficult to get anything sensible out of mainstream news nowadays. Maybe the masters of the world are too rich, too powerful.

Like the saying goes, «power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely». I guess As long as there’s money to be made from oil and war, there will be no real work done to change the world...

OLIVER: It is very important that those of us who grew up during The Cold War don’t forget what we experienced and what we witnessed.

I recently watched ”When the wind blows” and I could feel many of those feelings from back then come back to me. A werid feeling, really.

It’s such a moving film. It’s naivite is quite humoristic, but it is a wonderful description of the helplessness that

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many of us felt. As a child I would have nightmares about the atomic bomb that would destroy us all. I still remember some of those dreams; a source of inspiration for sure.

Like you I thought those summits were very good, especially Geneva and Reykjavik. There was a lot of optimism in the air.You could almost feel it. I also remember Ronald Reagan’s speech about ”The Evil Empire”, which made a very strong impression on me. Right now I am reading a book called 1983, where the author is challenging the notion that 1962 and the Cuban missile crisis was he most dramatic period during the Cold War. The invasion of Grenada, the arms race in Western Europe, Afghanistan and last but not least the shooting down of a Korean passanger plane. I would later write a song called ”Grenada”. Probably my only ”political” song. It’s an instrumental, but it’s about the attack on Grenada.

I was also quite taken with the Iran/ Contras scandal. I was very much keeping an eye on that trial.

A lot of these images would flash across the TV screen when I was a little boy. The summits really lightened the atmosphere in the world. The optimism they generated had an immense impact on me, and it was a strange feeling seeing the Berlin wall come down. So I have to say that after looking back, what’s happened in the world since the end of the Cold War has been a great disappointment. It hasn’t exactly become a more peaceful world. Like as you say, the world almost made more sense back then. Greed and war rules our world with new enemies popping up all the time.

SOLAR ANGELS: Its interesting that childhood is such a central force in your universe. It´s the same for

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me! And when I listen with that in mind, it comes through so clearly, the power of seeing the world through the eyes of a child, unbiased and honest. Apart from the Cold War, what are some of the things from your childhood that still resonate within you and give you inspiration as an artist?

OLIVER: Cartoons, of course.

They do stretch our imaginations

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far at that age. Our animated video for “Sea of love” is an homage to the Czech cartoons from the seventies. We hope to do another soon for the new album. One of my favorite cartoon characters was “The Sandman”. The melancholic theme song was beautiful. The music in those childhood shows was influential. These are sounds and melodies that make you feel safe. So i like to integrate this into our music.

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We were the first video generation and it definitely had an effect on our musical ideas. We always loved soundtracks of films and i used to teach myself themes from movies on a toy piano. We were given many toy instruments as children. Some were slightly exotic too. I remember one string instrument which generated an incredible sound. I started to record music and noises at quite an early age.

It was nice to push the red recording

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button. Sometimes just beats played on an oven, i used to love the clang it made. Sometimes some melodies might appear. I also was very much into classical music.

OLIVER: I think it`s very important to keep in touch with childhood feelings. It`s the beginning of our emotional spectrums and so it is always important to connect with that.

I loved playing in old bunkers from the German occupation of our country. It was very exiting to walk into those dark, watery caves, as you almost expected to find something from the war. Now most of these bunkers are destroyed.

SOLAR ANGELS: You told me that one of the motivations behind Sleepyard is to explore the evolution of music and how it evolves with the advent of new media. I’d love to hear more about your journey and what unexpected turns and twists it has taken.Technology obviously opens up a whole new array of possibilities for the artist. Still, though, music is music.

To me it is still the intent and purpose of a song that gives it its quality.

SOLAR ANGELS: Do we really have to leave that childhood feeling behind? You always hear, you gotta grow up, or you gotta keep your feet on the ground! I personally believe that what we experience during childhood is a sustainable state of mind. If you can get that through all the filters our society puts up along the way to adulthood, you can still experience that old magic.

OLIVER: I like writing songs as much as exploring sonic possibilities and we try our best in creating full aural experience in our records.

We like to juxtapose elements from music history and play with it.

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Our roots as performers are jazz and bossa nova. That is what me and my brother learned when we started to play guitar as kids. So the focus on melody and song writing has always been important as well as improvisation and experimentation in sound. Technology can of course be a distraction for a musician or a producer. Hopefully we have steered clear from the confusion.

I became interested in exploring the evolution of recorded music after hearing some very old recordings from 1915 by the Fisk Jubilee Singers.They were a group of African American singers who mostly sang spirituals and did incredible harmonies. Their recording of ”Swing low, sweet chariot” was an amazing discovery. I felt that there was so much passion and hope in that performance of this song about slavery. If there ever was a timeless

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recording, this was it. The pure soul of man came through.

So I slowly became interested in the evolution of recorded music.

I became very interested in the Library of Congress and its vast collections of recordings. At the same time I got the opportunity to compose music that was to be set to an old tape from 1982, where the Grandmother of a relative of mine from Illinois speaks about her young life in America’s depression during the 30s. It was very touching to hear the stories about life on the farm and those primitive times when they drove horse and buggy.

So i dug out my old records from the 30s for inspiration.

I began to think of American Gothic by Grant Wood. I wanted to capture the mood of those times in an ambient sound. So i used long drones of sound with bits of suspended melodies recorded on piano, melodica,, xylophone and organ. All to fit a particular part of the story she was telling. It was very exciting to colorize the narration with sounds and melodies. We also recorded the hymn ”I’ll fly away” for the project.

This became a CD called ”Grandma: God, dogs and pies” and was sold at the ”Color it pink” exhibition in Springfield, Illinois. It featured pictures of Grandma with her words of wisdom, belief in God and also a recipe for the Norwegian kringle.

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* OLIVER KERSBERGEN * f r o m S L E E P YA R D What are your three fave movies and why?

F lash Gordon (1980) for being my childhood f avor ite. It transpor ts t h e car toon to life in motion picture in a g reat way. Especially Danilo D o n a t i `s costume design is incredible. He also did costume design on many o f Fellini`s movies. Barry Lyndon (1975) for its sheer beauty. Shot w i t h s uper-f ast lens from Nasa to capture the minimal lighting u sed to g ive t h e f i l m a look of 18th centur y paintings. A br illiant mediation of a young m a n `s r ise and f all from wealth and power without passing judgement.

T he Ladykillers (1955) This is an excellent classic post war Ealing c o m edy wit lots of black humor. Never f ails to amuse me. Screenwr iter William Rose claimed to have dreamt the entire movie. It has Alec Guiness, Peter Seller s and Herber t Lom in g reat perfor mances.

What is the greatest album of all time ?

P et sounds - The B each boys (1966) or M usic from the penguin cafe orchestra - T he Penguin cafe orchestra (1978).

Is there such a thing as free will ?

Ye s . I believe freedom can coexist with deter minism of our u niver se.

What are dreams ?

R e f l ections of our mindset. The interaction between the conscious and unconscious.

Why is art important?

It feeds the soul and play with our senses.

D oes everyone have a price?

No, we have no human cur rency.

Is revolution a necessary good /evil of evolution ?

SOLAR ANGELS: How do you feel that music has evolved over the past 70 years, then? What do you think the main difference would be between Sleepyard today and in 1937 - when you wouldn’t have had such a rich catalog of music to draw from (Since a lot of the stuff you have been influenced by wouldn’t even have been created yet)?

N o. Revolution are temporar y breaks, evolution flows through good and evil.

What is the nicest thing that happened to you today?

I woke up and took a look at the sun.

W hat is the purpose and destin y of human kind?

We are par t of the evolution of our planet.

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SOLAR ANGELS: You also said your Dad used to own a record store.

There used to be a time when that must have been fantastic! I can’t say record stores have the same appeal now as they used to. In our town of Stavanger, we used to have Fossen and Platon. Especially Platon was a great place if you were into alternative, metal and harder forms of rock music. Now, I can’t even go into a record store in Norway.

OLIVER: Yes, my dad owned Fossen. That was before Platon was in business. It was indeed fantastic to walk around in the record shop as a kid looking through the racks and stacks of good vinyl records. A little universe. I suppose that I was not exactly in tune with the music of those times in the late 80s, but it was great opportunity to discover

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lots of interesting music that made sense to me. A record like ”The Idiot” by Iggy Pop was incredible and mesmerizing. Nowadays I prefer second hand shops for finding good records. It really feels busy and unhealthy in most record shops these days. There are DVD’s, video games and all these campaigns for CD’s you MUST have before you croak.

Gimme back those old times when you could take a deep breath before you decided to buy an album.

[For our readers, both Sleepyard and I come from the rather small town of Stavanger on the westcoast of Norway – a town with a population the size of a donut, compared to New York, Paris or Chicago. But you could actually discover some pretty esoteric music there back then. Record stores were like temples or churches, and now most of them are just like any other fast food chain. — ed.]

SOLAR ANGELS: On Future Lines you have been working with the legendary Mike Garson. Can you tell us more about how this collaboration came about, and the dynamics of your work together.

It is as if his piano parts and your wonderful ambient music was born to coexist.

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OLIVER: Mike is a very strong musical force not only his virtuoso playing but also his artistic soul. He’s in love with music.

Erik Satie and Claude Debussey was more or less the pioneers of ambient music. So i wanted to go back to the source. I contacted Mike about playing on a song to try to capture that feeling in our music. He was very much in tune with the idea, so he gave it a shot and it became a great collaboration. As he has such skills and great knowledge of music, it is very nice to pitch ideas. Usually i send him a backing track with a few ideas for the mood i want in the song. Then he plays on the track and return it and we work on it from there.

SOLAR ANGELS: When can we expect Future Lines to be released?

OLIVER: It will be released this year.

SOLAR ANGELS: Any closing words for our readers?

OLIVER: Breathe in, breathe out, Smile, Keep warm, Peace out to you all...

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ALBUM REVIEWS CASS McCOMBS “Dropping the Writ” CD, Domino, 2007 Tracklist: Lionkiller, Pregnant Pause, That’s That, Petrified Forest, Morning Shadows, Deseret, Crick in my neck, Full moon or infinity,Windfall, Wheel of fortune, Healing

McCombs writes wonderful lyrics. They are beautiful to the eye and meaningful to the mind, though they are bound to mean different things to different people.

Some of them seem to deal with spiritual issues, while others seem ripe with social commentary exploring themes of alienation and separation. Pure poetry!

www.cassmccombs.com myspace.com/cassmccombs I discovered McCombs by “accident”. My wife and I had travelled from Chicago to Bloomington, Indiana, to see Jose Gonzalez play at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, an old historic building in the town centre. We had been getting into Gonzalez’ music for a while, but I had never heard about Cass McCombs - who was the opening act. And while I love Gonzalez’ new album “In Our Nature”, “Dropping the Writ” has hardly left my CD player since getting in the car the following morning heading back to Chicago. During the concert, McCombs pulled us into his musical wonderland. Many of his songs are repetetive, but he uses repetition as a means to an end - in his music, it becomes an artform and it never gets boring.

The melodies are so beautiful and flowing, it’s like riding on waves into some strange sunset.

“Dropping the Writ” opens with “Lionkiller”, in my opinion, one of the strongest tracks on the album.

The world is lost Even the birds are tired But I can fly with you As long as you can inspire -Windfall It’s majestic beat stomps and grinds over McComb’s haunting vocals, lamenting, perhaps, a world where destiny has been abandonded to shallow idols, and class requirements dictate one’s life path. But what do I know?! The bass arrangements on this song is pure genius at work! Subtle, sparse but oh so powerful. You feel it in your gut. and it adds the perfect foundation for this multilayered masterpiece! The other tracks that really stand out to me are “Deseret”, “Crick in my Neck” - a beautiful song - one of those songs I could wish I wrote myself - the wonderful “Fullmoon or infinity” which lends a nod to The Master, Ennio Morricone, and “Windfall” with it’s surprising and breathtaking harmonies, and the spiritual Wheel of Fotrune.

A lot of people seem to be taken by McCombs voice. I can safely say that he is currently one of my favourite singers, perfectly unpolished and exceptionally clear and expressive.

The voice completes the music.

Because that is what “Dropping the Writ” is to me - a complete work.

No detail is a stranger, every oddity fits perfectly into what has become one of my all time favourite albums. McCombs’ songwriting is very mature and it gives me a strong feeling of authenticity in a shallow musical landscape where bands struggle and stumble in their attempt to capture the magic of the old masters. Cass McCombs borrows from that collective magic hat of inspiration, but his magic is his own - It is simply quite timeless, quite perfect.

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a r i s o l Vaca i s a p o e t, ly r i c i s t a n d v i s ua l a r t i s t f r o m c h i cag o , i l . t h r o u g h h e r g e n t l e s t y l e , s h e e x p r e s s e s a s p e c i a l c l o s e n e s s t o t h e h i d d e n b e au t y o f nat u r e . S o l a r A n g e l s i s p r o u d t o p r e s e n t

s e l e c t i o n s o f h e r w o r k o n t h e s e pag e s . A ra r e v o i c e o f p e ac e a n d r e f l e c t i o n , We h o p e t h e s e w o r d s a n d i mag e s w i l l s o o t h e a n d i n s p i r e yo u r s o u l a s yo u ta k e a t r i p i n t o t h e w o r l d o f t h i s w o n d e r f u l a r t i s t.

S h e ca n b e c o n tac t e d t h r o u g h :

w w w. m y s p a c e . c o m / m a r i s o l i n a

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“The p urp o se of h umank i nd i s to some how, with the inte llige nce we we re myste ri ou sly g ive n, unite, become one, wake up from this way of life, unde r stand that we are all he re togethe r, and rid the world of evi l . O ur de sti ny i s to e xplore the space beyond this world.”

- Marisol Vaca

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Little things Th e s e l i t t l e t h i n g s r e m i n d m e E v e ry day A n d day b y day m y h e a r t Forgets H ow t h e s e l i t t l e t h i n g s M ade it si ng A n d da n c e o n t o p o f P rom i se s Th e s w e e t e s t p r o m i s e s Th at s h o u l d h av e n e v e r ma d e t h e i r Way I n t o u l t ra s o n i c wav e s Wh i c h p i e r c e d r i g h t t h r o u g h M y v e ry s o u l Duri ng th e ti m e i n my l i f e Wh e n I ag a i n b e g a n To b e l i e v e In little things * * *

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S t ra n g e h ow t i m e

D ead,

pa s s e s . . .

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N o t h i n g ca n b e s a i d . . .

E s p e c i a l ly w h e n a f ac e am o n g s t ra n g e r s

S ta r e at t h e da r k n e s s i n yo u r h e a d .

b e c o m e s f am i l i a r

Yo u s i t a n d ta l k

M e mori e s f lood

day a f t e r day, t o t h at

yo u r m i n d i n a n i n s ta n t.

s o m e o n e , w h o i s f a r away. . .

L i k e a d r e am

S m o k e yo u r c i g a r e t t e

Pa s s i n g b y i n s na p s h o t s .

D r i n k yo u r c o f f e e

S t ra n g e h ow w e a r e

A s k m e ag a i n f o r s o m e c h a n g e .

de sti ne d to run i nto

Day a f t e r day. . .

t h e pa s t at u n e x p e c t e d mome nts.

Wh y s h o u l d i t b e

A n d yo u a r e l e f t

with

a l l t h e s am e . . .

a puzzle d fe e ling

Wh e n yo u h av e , a nam e .

Wa n d e r i n g w o n d e r i n g

Yo u ’r e s t i l l n o t

n o t k n ow i n g . . .

D ead.

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Pa s s ag e t o t h e r e d l i n e M o r n i n g , n o o n & n i g h t. . .

We wa l k t h r o u g h t u n n e l s a n d w e s o m e t i m e s d o n ’t k n ow w h y I pa s s yo u, I l e av e t rac e s o f m e , w h i l e w e s h a r e t h e s am e s e at s F am i l i a r f ac e s t i e d w i t h t i m e F am i l i a r p l ac e s i n o u r r i d e s C olor s g ui de our routi ne l ive s Th e y ma k e t h e s t o p s a s t h e y pa s s b y . . .

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Wo r d s Wh y Th e s e w o r d s t h at o n ly e c h o i n M y h ead I D o n ’t u n d e r s ta n d t h e s e l o n e ly Wo r d s Th e y h av e s e e m e d t o b e c o m e o n ly Mine G h o s t s t h at h au n t m y Si le nt hour s Tra n s lu s c e n t m e m o r i e s Th at I h av e f i na l ly l e t D r i f t away I nto th e m e rc i le s s sea O f a t i m e u n k n ow n t o E v e ryo n e But Me ...

“ M y dreams se em to be an exte n si on of wh o I am . I t ’s whe re my imag ination has no limits and wh e re, as an arti st, I can find inspiration. If I didn’t dream I woul dn’t be an artist.”

– Marisol Vaca

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Painting by Marisol Vaca.

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W hite Butterfly N o w yo u ca n f ly Wh i t e b u t t e r f ly f r o m a n o t h e r t i m e Yo u ca n n ow b e m y g u i d e A m o n g u n k n ow n l a n d s Ac ro s s de se rte d sand s Th r o u g h o u t m y l i f e . . .

Wh e r e a r e yo u n ow Wh i t e b u t t e r f ly Wh e r e h av e yo u g o n e Wi n g e d s p i r i t Wh e r e a r e a l l t h e s o u n d s Th at yo u m a d e e c h o i n t h e w o r l d A w o r l d t h at yo u d o n ’t b e long to anymore. . .

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INTIMATIONS*OF A * WAT E R *

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ater is a mystery.Yet it calls to us, and if we are willing to listen, we may discover that there is so much more to this world than we first imagined. My first exposure to Dr. Masuru Emoto’s work with water, where he would subject water to different vibrations - both positive and negative - in the form of music, intent, thoughts and

prayer - both positive and negative - opened my eyes to the possibility within our very DNA we can change this world into a better place and unveil the magic that seems to be hidden all around us. Enter Daniel Vitalis, a modern day alchemist and water researcher. In the vein of raw food icon, David Wolfe, Daniel Vitalis is a part of a new wave of pioneers in natural magic and radiant living whose hands on approach and their relentless search for the truth illuminates the path for all of us. Here is our conversation:

SOLAR ANGELS: When and how did you start on this journey of discovery?

DANIEL VITALIS: Like most of us, my life has been and is a continuous journey of discovery.

I remember being about sixteen

when I first began to visit a natural spring, which was very close to where I was living. I would go everyday and fill jugs. I was moved then by the deep emotional experience of daily gathering my own water, it felt so primal, like a genetic memory.

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SOLAR ANGELS: So you began drinking spring water that you personally collected at springs. Was it a challenge in the beginning?

And what led you to the point where you realized there was no turning back?

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DANIEL VITALIS: When I made the commitment to begin drinking spring water, the initial challenge was of course locating springs. I truly believe that the universe conspires to support our intentions, and my intention around this has been unwavering. I began by asking around, at health food stores, and to people on the street...

Eventually I found a spring within an hour from where I live. Next was crafting a plan for how I would store the water once I collected it.

Over time the quality of the bottles, and the method I use to store it has improved, and I have gained quite a bit of mastery with regard to keeping it cold and fresh. In the beginning, before I understood the thermal and hydrogen bonding properties of water this was more of a challenge. My current strategy is the out-growth of more than 2 years of this practice.

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After a couple of weeks on this kind of fully matured and highly charged water, even the thought of drinking lifeless flat bottled water or pressurized and disorganized filtered water became a serious turnoff.

SOLAR ANGELS: How has your relationship with water changed the way you see and interact with the world?

DANIEL VITALIS: Psychologically, we as humans have an inborn program connecting water and the subconscious, as well as the emotions.

Getting in right relationship with physical water has connected me to these other realms of myself in a much deeper way. I have come to see our deep neglect of water as a symptom of our deep neglect for our emotional and subconscious selves. We have become a people obsessed with fire and combustion, at the expense of a

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balanced relationship with water, and cooling. The outgrowth of this is apparent everywhere we look, from the combustion engine to global warming. I have come to see myself and those who have joined me in this as ambassadors of water, and of the “solution” (another name for water) to the problems of we have created here.

SOLAR ANGELS: How do you suggest people who want to try to find their own spring water proceed, especially in areas like Chicago and bigger urban areas with little wild nature?

DANIEL VITALIS: Most quality springs are born from deep within the Earth, and as such are often primarily fossil water (water that has been in the aquifer from before industry even began) or from aquifers that have been recharged

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by highly filtered water (filtered as surface water works its way through soil, roots, sands, silts, clay, and finally through the bedrock itself), and so is often of very high quality even so close to the cities. I have found many outstanding springs within one to two hours from several major cites.

DANIEL VITALIS: This is an interesting question... If such a thing exists, the intent would seem to be an ectropy that leads to greater and greater levels of order and complexity.

By this I mean the constant physical/ spir itual/intellectual/emotional evolution of organisms as well as the crystallization of matter...

Someone in the city might create a strategy of traveling out once a month to a spring to collect their water. It is a great opportunity to spend some time in nature interacting with the life cycle. Also this is usually more economical than buying bottled water. Of course the first step is locating a spring, and this begins with asking questions.

Praising the so-called “second law of thermodynamics” or entropy (all systems tend towards disorder and decay) we have become the agents of destruction, and by this perhaps are warring against what you have called the “original intent”.

SOLAR ANGELS: We’ve all heard the expression “Creator’s original intent”. I like this phrase. It reminds me to look for pure unpolluted aspects of my own being, which too often gets lost in the mad materialistic onslaught of the modern world. I ask myself: what is “the creator’s original intent”. Then preparing for this interview, I was reading Dr. Masaru Emoto’s book The Healing Powers of Water where there is a beautiful photo of a water crystal formed from water brought out from an aquifer at the bottom of a mountain. As soon as I saw it, I felt a warm sensation in my body, as if I had seen a glimpse of something that was a part of the original stuff from which everything is made, the DNA of the cosmos. Like an ancient sun suspended in primordial space.

What do you think this experience is trying to tell me? Do you think there is such a thing as original intent behind the world we live in?

Have we lost our way, and can we rediscover it by learning about these magical aspects of nature, water and the earth itself?

The almost religious experience that many people have when they reconnect with water, and this is the power of what Dr. Emoto has shared with the world, is the reconnection with the original matrix of creation.

All water is connected, though in some places this concentration is dense, and in others more rarefied.

Your body is a dense concentration of water, like a small lake or sea.

Even now as I right this, water is perfusing through my skin, my lungs, evaporating off of my eyeballs... It connects with the water molecules in the atmosphere, the air we breath. It finds its way into rivers and streams, ponds and oceans, the bodies of others, into space itself. Advanced quantum theories and lofty spiritual conceptualizations are not required to show the interconnectedness of all Beings – simply look around. We are all literally embedded in this great matrix of water... together!

What suicidal tendency would lead us to defile the very thing of what we are made? We literally are raised in a culture that fills toilets with the last of our fresh water so that we can shit in it! Consider this a moment!The power of an

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image like the perfected water crystal is a reawakening to our true nature, clean and pure, interconnected with all life, with all beings. Together we comprise this blue world, we are as one organism, one great living ocean.

SOLAR ANGELS: Can you say something about the significance of spinning water, and what this process entails?

DANIEL VITALIS: The Vortex, or spin that you are referring to is the fullest expression of water’s natural movement. It can be found if the eddy, or whirlpool, the vortical folding over of the oceans waves as the curl into themselves, and invisibly it is the inner movement of rivers and all flowing water. The suctional cooling physical properties of the vortex are natural water’s primary method for cooling, and structuring itself. This is also a method for conserving and storing mechanical energy. As water is moved or pushed it curls back in on itself, turning mechanical energy back into inner rotational spin. This method of conservation ensures the molecules of water remain charged and lively.

The late hydrologist and water wizard Viktor Shcauberger unravelled the mystery of the vortex, and his work is essential reading for those interested in the subject. Experience shows that by creating a vortex (I link two bottles together by their mouths, like an hour glass, and allow the water to vortex as it spill from one bottle to the next) you can keep your water fresher, more lively and more hydrating!

SOLAR ANGELS: I look at it, and I am utterly mystified. It is unlike any other substance on the planet. It is not tangible in the same sense as a

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rock or a tree. It seems unified, yet it is not solid. It changes and can exist in different forms. Everything has it, yet it seems so alien. What is water really?

DANIELVITALIS: Water is unique amongst substances. Namely that it is a liquid. This is utterly rare on our planet, as here at the temperatures of life there are no other inorganic liquids (liquids not made by waterbased lifeforms) save one – and that other is a metal – mercury. No other substance but mercury and water can occupy the liquid state of matter! We could say that no other substances have “figured out” how to stay so fluid, so mutable... Water also has a greater thermal retentive property than any other substance. this means that it retains its own temperature and resists changes in temperature better than any other substance (I use this to my advantage when keeping my spring water cold). Water has its greatest thermal retentive property at the human body temperature! We are literally a water based technology! Water has several other so called “anomalous” properties that differentiate it from all other matter. Among them are that it expands as it cools, and that chemically it should be a solid like the other oxides it is chemically related to. What is it?

Daniel Vitalis explaining the process of the vortex, or spinning water. Below: Collecting spring water. All images courtesy of Len Foley/www.thebestdayever.com. Used with kind permission.

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SOLAR ANGELS: One of my earliest significant memories of water was while looking at the waves of the ocean, I kept thiking that it had some kind of consciousness, that it was aware of itself. I can’t explain why I thought this. It is therefore interesting now to find that water does possess some kind of memory.

Some research indicates that water is able to receive, retain and transmit vibrations - information - impressed upon it. Would you go as far as to

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say that has some kind of conscious element to it? And if yes, in what way have you experienced the working of these attributes in your work with water?

DANIEL VITALIS: We are water. Do we have some kind of “consciousness”? Is it possible that the substance that all conscious lifeforms are made of is conscious? Could it be that we were literally “hypnotized” by our cultural conditioning to see the conscious liquid crystal of life as a mere chemical?

SOLAR ANGELS: You highly recommend spring water. How about water from mountain rivers. When I lived in Norway this would always be a wonderful experience to just lay down on the rocks face next to moss and stone and drink water straight out of the river. This water would mostly come from lakes higher up in the mountains. In Norway I would think that most people have access to this kind of water, which at least compared to US municipal water should be quite pristine.

DANIEL VITALIS: Water begins to change structurally when it reaches the surface. Here the temperatures, pressures and light levels are different, and this influences its liquid crystal

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structure. I feel that cold mountain spring water is the most optimal for us, though mountain streams are sourced from the springs and are often also very high quality. Spring water is my primary strategy today, mainly because I trust the pristine quality of water from deep within the Earth. There are places where water in the mountains and forest streams is still fit to drink, though much care should be taken. Best to follow it to its source. I trust a day shall come when once again all water ways will be clean enough to drink from, and until then I will seek out the springs!

SOLAR ANGELS: You are also into herbalism, alchemy and raw food nutrition. Can you tell us something about your work in these areas as well?

Water has informed the evolution of my herbal and nutritional practices as well, and has in a sense, been my teacher. We are, after all, dissolving whatever we eat, or whatever herbs we take, into our body water. My nutritional/medicinal strategy is to work from “the water up”, as opposed to the “ground up”... As I mature in my practice I seem to move more and more towards liquid nutrition, and spring water has become the lynch

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pin of my entire program. I call my practice “ElixirCraft”, or the art of crafting elixirs. These are medical and nutritious drinks that are born of the fusion of the highest quality herbs and foods, with the freshest most organized and structured spring waters... My entire strategy is founded on the principles of alchemy, and fundamental to this is the concept of the Four Elements. Spring water being the Water Element, and herbs and foods being the Earth Element.

It is the marriage of the two, or the “alchemical wedding” of earth and water that gives rise to the Elixir.

SOLAR ANGELS: Any closing words for our readers?

DANIEL VITALIS: Become an emissary of water. Begin to honor it within your body and without.

Seek it in nature, observe it in its cycles... As liquid, as steam, as ice...

Develop a relationship with it, and seek to understand. Remember its sacredness, and reawaken the ancient memories that it has stored within you. It is the calm coolness of water that is necessary to balance the aggravated fire of our overheating world. Become a priest or priestess of water, and an agent of healing here on our wonderful water filled planet.

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Daniel V italis is available for consultations in person or by phone and can be reached at milliongoldcoinpoint @ gmail . com .

H is rawfood catering company, A mbrosia M ysti q ue , can be found at www. ambrosiam y sti q ue . com F or more on his E li x ir C raft or Water studies see his youtube vieos http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=daniel+vitalis&search=Search

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reams – mystical expe rie nce s to some, the brain dige sting our dai ly e x pe rie nce s to othe r s. But we all have them. Yet few people take th e ti me and unde rgo the training it take s to really explore and t ry to unde r stand this complex world within the world. In dreams we can do al l th e th i ng s that se em impo ssible to us in waking reality. But we also say; it ’s al l a dream , it ’s j ust fantasy... but is it? What are dreams? Hogne Title stad has spe nt h i s e nti re l i f e w re stling with this que stion. This article writte n for Solar Ange l s g ive s u s an i nc re di ble insight into his trave ls and discove rie s in the dream world, l i f ti ng th e ve i l f rom an othe rwise ve ry myste rious subject. Unleash your pote ntial !

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In dreams we experience extraordinary things that often have great meaning to our lives.

Dreams are private, and what we experience we are free to interpret in our own way. Because of this, our views on what dreams are often become tied tightly with our cultural bias. People frequently see religious figures in their dreams that reinforce their current beliefs.

It would be safe to assume that many of the religions we have were influenced by dreaming – I would insist that it is so. The subject of dreams is in the middle of a boiling ocean of feelings and confusion, so scientists have tried time and time again to quantify and push dreams into models, cut corners and shape the description of them until

explaining what they are seems plain and simple. In many ways, thoughts about dreams in public journals are either very subjective and uncritical, or oppositely simplistic and narrow minded. Even scholars, or people who project a deep sense of understanding on the subject, seem to be either unable to digest the complexity, or are seduced into accepting every possibility as truth; shared dreams,astral travel and access to life after death. One has to tread the fine line between giving proofs on the one side, and admitting that some things can not be proven on the other. The fact is that many times the sceptic is too afraid of the fantastic, and the spiritualist is too naive. My goal is to not sound too sure and scientific, while at the

same time being rational and not jumping to conclusions.

Dreams remain firmly in the realm of metaphysics – a large library could be filled full of encyclopedias on dream symbolism, techniques for visiting the dead, how dreaming is a messed up collage of memories, or the most popular view; that dreams simply perform the function of organizing memory, acting as a defragmentation device for the brain. But none of the theories must be taken as factual, though they do contain important insights. Most of all, they show how confused we are – we currently do not quite know what dreams are. As of now, all we can do is to make an educated guess and hope that we

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inspire each other to uncover more of what is happening, and how it is possible.

I can’t say exactly what dreams are. I am no expert on the subject, in layman’s terms. I do however have extensive experience – I am a lucid dreamer – I’ve been lucid dreaming since childhood – and I am a thinker. I write in my dream journal for long periods of time, and I try to keep account of patterns and hints of what might be the nature of dreams. I think I am making progress, but I would never say that I’ve come to a point where I can put it all in perspective and make sense of it all – dreams are very complex and they are not easily understood.

Dreams seem to have a set of repeating patterns, things that often happen when other things happen first. Some things are not easy to do in dreams, other things happen naturally within the framework of the dream. The dream world is not consistent like our Earth-world is consistent in time and space, but it does have its own consistencies nonetheless, unless meddled with and manipulated by the conscious dreamer. Dreams are so complex in their composition – if indeed they are composed. Elements interact with each other as if they were chemically reacting. Pour muddy water into clean water, and it dissolves, turning the water into a tint of translucent brown.

Stand next to a window which is reflecting sunlight from the sky, and you can feel the reflected heat of the sun, radiating on the skin of your face. See a woman walking by, her dress waving while her legs and hips move, smoke dispersing in

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the air behind her while she clearly enjoys puffing on her cigarette.The complexity of dreams environments are usually avoided by scientists. It is often taken for granted by people who focus on dream symbolism, as if it would be unimportant or secondary. I think the complexity of dreams and the patterns that appear to us are important pieces of information, because it tells us something about what the world without, and the world within have in common. When observing and taking note of how dream environments live and move, it is easier to understand something about the universe of dreams.

Surely the dream space is a universe in itself, with its own physical-like reality that should not be cast aside as a phony illusion.

In this article I wish to share with you my own view of what dreams are, my experience with them and most importantly, the questions that have come to me from observing and thinking about them. It is important for me that you realize; I am no scientist. If I make you feel as if you are reading a scientific document, please keep in mind that I made this point. Neither am I a scholar on this subject, but I’d like to think of myself as an informed and experienced individual. If you require scientific material, I would point you to the Lucidity Institute and Stephen LaBerge, where you will find many articles and links for further reading. LaBerge is in my opinion one of the few researchers who have a really fresh perspective on dreaming and the conscious mind, which is why I mention him (he managed to prove the existence of lucid dreaming, something which was not descibed by science until 48

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1980). I do think it is important to have an ongoing discussion without the rules of scientific discourse, as it frees the participants from having to prove everything they say. I am writing my own view on this subject as a way of inspiring you think a bit about dreams in a different perspective.

During the course of this article, I will be mentioning lucid dreaming a lot. Lucid dreaming is when you are experiencing a dream, fully conscious of the fact that your physical body is resting and asleep. While walking around a dreamscape, you know, and can sometimes feel, that your body is laying on your bed. You are also very conscious of the fact that you could wake up at any time, and you can use techniques to avoid this to a certain degree.

Being in a lucid dream is very useful when you want to study dreams, as you can plan what you want to test, or do, before you fall asleep. Once you enter the dream and realize you are dreaming, you will recall your plans and carry them out.You might want to study leaves, to see if the dream has managed to reproduce them down to the exact detail.You might want to study people - or see how far you can go in manipulating the dream world. As a lucid dreamer, many of the stories and examples I give in this article are taken out of my own experiences. Much of the information I am passing on to you have been obtained through repeated experiments in my dreams.

Hopefully you will find this article interesting, and if you have any comments, I’d be pleased to hear them.

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D Arising with Magic from the Living Earth. Painting by Bard Titlestad.

Falling into dreams REM (Rapid Eye Movement) has become a word commonly used by people when they are talking about dreams. In my opinion it has become a word that people unwittingly use to show that they know something about the subject.

But really, REM does little aside from showing an observer that a sleeping person is experiencing something – eyes aren’t affected by sleep paralysis the way the rest of the body is, so when the dreamer looks around in his or her dream, the eyes in their sleeping body is moving aswell. Many researchers talk about the REM stage, and how we emerge from deep sleep and then enter a dream cycle. My own experiences as a teenager with self induced fainting, showed me that dreams also happen outside the REM stage. A person who has fainted will sometimes remember experiencing very vivid dreams –

in a state where he or she has been physically unconscious without having been in any form of REM. In conclusion, the rapid eye movement stage is just an effect of

path, then cling on to your intent for as long as you can resonate with the memory of whatever you decided you were going to do. Not to dive deeply into the subject of free will,

“I think dreaming and thinking are very much the same; the experience of being conscious.” something that is going on inside a person most of the time. It shows something that resurfaces visibly, even in sleep; the experience of being.

I think dreaming and thinking are very much the same; the experience of being conscious.

I must emphasize that I do not think of dreams as things that only pass in the night. Think of dreams the same way as you think of thoughts.

Neither are designed by you - they come to you, flowing. You receive and move your focus, only with the amount of control that you can intend in the moment.You follow a 49

but every individual is an observer more than an active, intelligent person. Your person is accessible to you, but you can always feel the separateness between you and what you observe in yourself. The things we see, feel and think come to us – the so called thought-train.

They come to us as experiences of different kinds, dreams or thoughts.

We are not actively and intelligently creating these things. Our sense of life, of being awake, is really just the sense of being – a pure sense of force in a direction, and the sensation of receiving. That feeling continues, awake or asleep.

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An individual is at the core only an observing point in the now, looking around at what activity is most attractive there and then. If any free will should exist at all, it would be in relation to the short changes in focus that can happen from one now to the next.

When our mind is active, we have access to our memories. But sometimes, our mind becomes silent – and our access to memory is cut off. This is what happens to us when we fall asleep.

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Only a few times have I been able to see the whole transition from being awake to being in a dream.

The experience is always different in appearance, but at the same time, always alike in nature. Seemingly, the brain is trying to make sense of the fact that you are travelling, as it were, from your comfortable bed into a different setting, without moving a muscle. At the moment when this is happening, your body has stealthily been paralyzed, and you need to jerk yourself out of it to wake up. Often you get the

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sensation of hovering into the new setting, through curtains or veils, as if you were floating out of your body. Perhaps one of the dots you see when you have your eyes closed suddenly grows larger, and you enter through it, as though it was a gateway. You may come around the corner of a dark wall, observing the dream coming into view. The brain makes the transition from idle darkness to a lit setting logical. You find yourself awake, and whatever is happening around you seem coherent within

“Often you get the sensation of hovering into the new setting, through curtains or veils, as if you were floating out of your body ...”

“The Dream” by Aubrey Beardsley, 1895-96.

A person can often not recall what he or she has been dreaming. But something a lot more frequent, is forgetting the moment you fall asleep.

When you lay in bed trying to relax and drift away, you are letting go of control – literally letting go of consciousness. As your hold on your mind diminshes, images start coming to you in flashes. These flashes are called hypnogogic imagery, and they are a cue that you are soon going to fall asleep.

They are different from dreams in that you are not immersed in them.

You watch them from a distance, as if you were looking through a window, or at a canvas. Often the images are black and white, but they are, in my experience, always without sound. After this phase, you mostly loose track of yourself and get sucked into the night, only to reawaken the next day – or, to suddenly wake up in a dream.

The exact moment when you penetrate the membrane between the waking world and the dream world, so to speak, is usually lost to you. It is a truly peculiar transition, but it is possible to be aware of it and observe exactly what is happening.

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the context of your life. You are also fed memories which give you a sense of continuity, so that the change from being in bed to being wherever you are now seems less spontaneous. It is at this point where you are absorbed by the storyline of the dream; you end up with what many in dream circles would call an ND (Normal Dream).

A lucid dreamer who goes directly from the waking state into a lucid dream, needs to know how to balance the level of control they have over their mind. When inducing a lucid dream from a waking state, you have to be able to relax your focus to the point where you remain relatively indifferent to your senses. If you stay focused and alert, you will not be able to fall asleep until you get so tired that your focus wears out by itself. If you want to fall asleep with a conscious mind, you need to hold on to a small spark of consciousness so that you don’t drift away completely.

It is a technique that can be mastered with practise. The lucid dreamer has to be able to become a silent observer long enough, so that he or she can pass through the transition phase and enter the dream consciously, without being deceived by the illusion of being wide awake.

Falling asleep is a curious sensation of loosing awareness. Many times during the process, you will experience time loss – perhaps you just passed out for a moment. You can easily vanish and disappear without even noticing it. The small variations in consciousness that occur before you fall asleep again show you an example of the

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separateness between your self, as an observer, and everything around you. Also, you can experience a weird feeling of movement.

Each time the flash of an image appears to you, you don’t seem to remember exactly how the image formed, as if it emerged while your link with your senses were broken.

I might playfully speculate that when consciousness stops focusing outwards, it starts focusing inwards instead, as if by magnetic attraction.

The poles are shifted and gravity pulls you in. It is both funny and ironic that many people feel the sensation of falling at that point.

The physical dream world and the self One of the first things that really got me thinking about the physics in the dream world, was a lucid dream I had as a teenager. In the dream, I was walking along a road, close to where I lived with my parents. I found myself looking at the water that was splashing against some rocks in a bay, by the side of the road. I came to think; “If this is all in my head, how is it that my brain can simulate the physics of water hitting the rocks, the reflections on the waves shining in the sun, light shimmering and glowing?” At the same time, a car was driving by. In it, a woman was smoking a cigarette.

I noticed how the fumes from the exhaust pipe was dissolving in the air behind the car, how foggy the inside of the car was because of the cigarette smoke and how the car turned while I watched it drive away. How could it be that it was my brain that was creating all of that.

It couldn’t possibly be a simulation that my brain had designed and 51

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prepared before I fell asleep. If my brain did anything, it was on my command. Surely it couldn’t go off, autonomously generating content – while at the same time being unaware of it all. I am my brain, how can I do things that I am unaware of? This dream meant a lot to me, even though nothing of great importance happened in the dream itself.

I started programming computers at the age of 6. I had a computer called C64 – one of the first great personal computers. By the time I had this dream, I had already seen my share of 3D graphics applications, and with my simple insight into programming, I tried to approximate how many variables, polygons and algorithms would go into creating a simple everyday scene that you would find in any typical dream setting. The scope of it blew my mind. Of course, I don’t really believe that a dream consists of the kind of stuff that a computer visual is generated from – that was not the point. What I was trying to do was to make sense of the notion that it was all happening in my brain and being generated to an effect I could only compare to a virtual reality environment. I couldn’t accept that I was struggling with calculating angles in math class, while my brain was simulating aspects of the world that top scientists have problems with putting into abstract models.

How could it be that my brain was so smart and I wasn’t? Isn’t that a paradox?

My question was very simple: if I am my brain, how is it that I am totally incapable of wielding the precision and power with which I am, subconsciously,

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recreating the world. And for what?

For bedtime stories? Often the stories are forgotten anyway, unless I am quick to write them down on paper. Ofcourse the answer is that I am not my brain – I am observing my brain, just like I am observing the world. In fact, I am observing my brain all the time, my perspective of the world just happens to get filtered in. I am not controlling my own heart rate, digesting my food or activating my immune system when my body is sick. I am not generating these worlds and the things that are found in them. My brain might do that, but I am only the observer.

know everything about it, at least to a very high level. Again, my poor self would know nothing of this understanding besides recognizing that the tree looked real. Dualism at its best.

In many lucid dreams following the one I described above, I performed many experiments. I would place myself in the middle of a neighbourhood and look down the street. I’d sway my head from side to side while focusing on the same point in front of me and watch as the perspective moved in three dimensions, just as it does in real life. I would find a nail tree, then stop and examine it. Many people have told me that if you dream about something, you are probably just combining images of things you had seen while being awake. In other words, a dream is a kind of collage of memorized images.To test this, I walked around the tree, feeling the nails with my hands. I would go down on my knees and look up along the stem of the tree, seeing the branches climbing upwards. This was no image, it was a three dimensional tree. It even smelled and felt like a tree. Either this would be a real tree in some kind of metaphysical universe, or my brain would have had to absorb the whole concept of a tree in such a detail that it would

The self and dreams are separate.

The self is an observer, and without memory, the self would be absolutely nothing. Memory is to the self as the spacial dimension is to time. Without space, there is no time. But time and space without substance is equally meaningless.

Empty space could have an eternity of time, and it would still be empty.

Memory and the self would be equally empty without substance.

Thankfully substance is abundant.

We receive it in a constant flow wherever our consciousness might be. It is truly remarkable.

Often I would get so enthusiastic during my experiments that I would run to the nearest dream character and say; “It is so real! It is amazing!

Everything is so real I almost can’t imagine waking up! How do you wake up when you are awake?”, and he or she would respond; “Yeah, it really is amazing!”, with an equal feeling of enthusiasm.

The dream world isn’t perfectly alike the waking world. I have studied leaves and found that once you really looked closely, they were in fact simple facsimiles of the real thing. In a dream I had not too long ago, I was examining some leaves on a bush, and I noticed they had no veins. The dream character who was with me at the time was as unimpressed as I was.

I even remember her cracking a joke at me about it. But still, many things in dreams are much more 52

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complex than in waking life. You can experience things there that are hard to comprehend when awake – like being in two places at the same time, or walking through material objects. Just because some elements in dreams are like abstracted copies of the real world versions of them, doesn’t mean that the dream itself is just a fake clone.

In addition to the experience of a real material world, I am very amazed by the living beings that occupy my dreams.Their bodies are so perfectly formed, their movements so life like.

If dreams would be anything like an animation based on memories, I must have been alive for hundreds of years.

Dream characters Dreams are populated by a lot of people. Almost every dream has people in it – either walking past you as part of a setting, or interacting with you. Just as with the material objects in the dream world, the people are believable enough that you accept them as real persons. They have names, humor, show emotions and have intent and purpose. Again the feeling of being separate comes into play. Even though for a moment, we would accept that dreams are entirely confined to the boundries of the skull, you feel separate from these people. You do not know what they are thinking, and they can easily surprise you with a joke, or a word of wisdom. Many times I have had long discussions with dream characters of various sorts, and often, I have experienced powerful emotions towards them. It seems odd to me that the brain has room for not only one individual, with all the complexity he or she could

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The most interesting people are not always the people who are interacting with you in the foreground, but the people who are anonymously walking by in the background. The reason why I find them interesting is because they are outside the storyline of the dream, and when you are lucid, breaking out of that storyline to talk to one of these anonymous people brings up some curious situations. If you have a crowd of people, you can be sure that every single one in that crowd will respond to you in one way or another. In other words, the crowd is not an object that behaves as a unit, it is a real group of units, each one fulfilling their own role. I have seen this many times in cities that I have dreamt of, where a market would hold a number of people doing different things. It always astounds me when being lucid in a dream, that whatever you come up with to throw the dream off course, ends up with the dream changing the storyline in order to adapt to the new situation. Even if you walk up to an anonymous, old woman on

“The Dance of Life” by Edward Munch, 1899-1900.

have, but even further, a whole society of people walking about as if they were living out their lives. If the brain would have the capacity to emulate people as effortlessly as it seems here, why would it leave only one of the personalities in charge when awake. Wouldn’t the resources of a whole group be better at coming up with solutions? Again, I am coming back to the problem of the self versus the dream world.

It seems such a waste that the brain, with the host of resources it appears to possess, would only expose a mere fraction of its capabilities in the waking state.

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Dreams are inhabited by different types of people, all fulfilling different roles while presenting new layers of perplexity to the dreamer. the corner of a street, you can ask her how she is doing, and she will have something to reply. Of course, there is a difference between the characters you meet in dreams. Most of them only interact with you on a certain level. Once you start acting strangely, they distance themselves from you, try to avoid you or act wierd back at you. If you challenge their existence and tell them that they are fictional, they might right out freeze – their eyes turning glassy.

Characters that easily freak out, are those I call dream characters – they only interact with you to a certain point. Past that point, they seem to become dysfunctional. But there are other kinds of people in dreams that don’t do that. I basically categorize the people in three different groups: dream characters, shared dreamers and conscious dream entities. Don’t take this the wrong way, it does not mean that there are only three types of people. It only helps me describe something to you about the distinctive differences I have observed in people who I’ve met in dreams.

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Dream characters only seem to be capable of casual conversation, and they are never aware of being in a dream. Put in another way, they cease to exhibit intelligent thought at the point where you try to push them beyond their role in the dream. Somehow, they are only meant to be convincing enough for you to get on with the story in the dream. Dream characters are usually never the people who are interacting with you the most. Seemingly, people who are supposed to be close to you in dreams are of a different sort. Those people seem more real, more complex and autonomous.

Dream characters on the other hand seem to be rather dumb outside of what they are supposed to do in the dream. Often they become highly open to suggestion if you are in a position to suggest anything. Call them weak minded or crude – they are the ones that are the most plentiful in dreams and the most fun to play around with if you are lucid.

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Shared dreamers are probably not real people sharing dreams with you. The reason I call them as such, is because they, when referred to as dream characters, are quick to underline that they are real people.

If you confront them with the fact that you are dreaming, and that they are part of your dream, they are quick to point out that you are part of their dream too – they are keen on giving their names and telephone numbers (which obviously turns out to be useless information in the waking world) along with a request that you try to contact them. In fact they seem very intent on proving their own existence to you. I have had many friendships in dreams with such people. It is often a very sad moment when I wake up knowing I will quite possibly never see them again, unless I am able to summon them in a lucid dream some other time.

Conscious dream entities are weird characters.They seem to be different than all the other characters in a dream. I used to call them shamans because they usually seem to understand how to manipulate the dream environment quite well – much better than I ever knew how.

They also seem to be able to talk to you about the nature of dreams, and they will suggest things you can try when lucid dreaming. Often when I cause a lot of trouble in a dream, some character confronts me and wakes me up, or “arrests” me in one way or another, often by throwing me into a nightmare.

The most shocking aspect to these characters is that they project a powerful feeling of intent. They mean business, and they are clearly separate from your directly

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accessible mind – they truly seem completely separated from you, at the same time as they feel very integrated with the dream world.

A shared dreamer, as a comparison, seems to feel as alien to the dream world as yourself – a visitor with no deep prior knowledge of the place. The conscious dream entities seem to be masters of the dreams, feeling at home there, being from the place. I can’t tell you how many times they have literally thrown me out of dreams when I’ve behaved in a way that strongly manipulated the dream environment (for example, when telling every person on a sidewalk that they were silly fantasy figures that my brain had created).

They might show up and whirl you about so that you wake up with a feeling of having done something you were not supposed to.

Questioning dream reality and a conclusion It would seem that, next to the functions of controlling my heart rate and my digestion system, my brain also have got some higher level functions which are just as autonomous and concealed. If indeed the brain do produce the dreams we experience, which I am still not quite convinced about, the separateness that I feel between my self and this brain at large, is unintelligible to me. My digestion system or variable heart rate are both controlled as mechanisms, but a dream, if designed, shows signs of intelligence at work. All the humor, culture, arcitechture and the rest seems intelligently put together. If it is not me who builds the dream world, then my brain must host more intelligent entities than one. Already, we know that those suffering from schizophrenia 54

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exhibits multiple personalities, but the dream world seems designed by something much more powerful than a human persona.

At the same time, what kind of evolutionary advantage would a brain get from locking down such an awesome ability? Why keep the conscious self from being able to use this computing power for survival? Being able to simulate the real world would seem to be an immense benefit for any animal.

It makes absolutely no sense to me that we should be barred from cognitively being able to access this world generator with all its might.

Perhaps our dreams aren’t confined to our brainmass. Perhaps we need to look a bit closer at them and start to compare them closer to the waking world. Even though dreams show many signs of being reactive to our thoughts, they show more signs of being alike in nature to the rest of the world around us.

Perhaps we should look at dreams in the context of the multiverse.

Playfully, we could imagine visiting one parallel world each night, with different variations on the one we know. The laws of nature would be different, and our influence over it would perhaps vary. I am not quite ready to believe that our dreams play out in real, physical places that exist without our presence, but I am inclined to think that physics are more elementary to existence than we presently understand.

Perhaps physics not only transcends the sphere we know as Earth, but also three dimensional space.

Perhaps the mind doesn’t so much produce dreams as it taps into some kind of universal, fractal physics. It would be conceivable to me that

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the fractal spiral that spans the multiverse from the micro to the macro scale would be present in everything. Would it be possible that the brain is only resonating with this fractal shape, and that worlds result from it when the interaction is interpreted?

Hopefully you will have gotten some new thoughts from reading this. I do not expect that you have gotten answers to what dreams are, but you might have gotten some inspirational impulses. The

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best way for you to find out about dreams for yourself is to practise lucid dreaming techniques. You can find info about them from all over the internet, in forums or on personal homepages. One forum which I found to be of much help to me when I wanted to find out more about how other people experienced lucid dreams were Pasquale’s web site: http://www. ld4all.com. There you will find a vibrant community of people from all the walks of life and from all ages.

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I hope to write more on this subject soon.This is the first time I’ve written something as in depth about it and I do feel the need to go even further, and deeper. Dreaming is something we all do, and it occupies a great deal of our time. Still, our society barely pays any attention to it, and I think that is a huge mistake. Much of our potential to grow as human beings is reflected in the broadness of what we dream, so if people would talk more about them and share their stories, I think it would benefit everyone.

Never Be The Same Again Ene rgy can’t disappear, they say Only change its shape And move on along its way Maybe we shall lo se our se lve s And slip out of sight Like dreams in f light And dissolve in the sky As morning breaks We are but drifting clouds Are we fre e upon the tide s Eve ry wave must return to the sea Of sorrowful time Without eve r missing a beat In si le nce We Dream... * * * Text by Bard Titlestad/Future Whirl. All rights reserved.

From the album, Future Whirl (Gompa Records, 2002)

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G O M PA R E C O R D S P R E S E N T S :

Songs of Dream and Awakening

“Norway’s [Future Whirl] writes music that is beautifully spiritual and dangerously primitive at the same time, led by his demanding, dramatic vocals. I didn’t just listen to the music, I was pulled under by it. This is amazing work.” - Jennifer Layton, Indie-Music.com “Neither overly light or dark, Future Whirl sits comfortably in the middle questioning life and spirituality. Future Whirl will definately send you for a loop, but this can be a good thing for those who are looking for something different, something mellow, and just a step outside those familiar walls...” - Laura B. / Sublevel203 “Future Whirl takes one on an exquisite transcendental journey across deserts, waters, clouds, and ultimately leaves one free-floating with his base senses shattered to ponder the endless possibilities of the universe...” - Ray van Horn jr. / Legends Magazine “An empathic testament, conjuring up an artist’s vision of passion which dwells between reality and illusion” - The Sentimentalist, NY

AV A I L A B L E F R O M :

W W W. C D B A B Y. C O M / C D / F U T U R E W H I R L or iTUNES A L S O C H E C K O U T W W W. MY S PA C E . C O M / F U T U R E W H I R L