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Auspicious August 2023

This August contains a perfect moon phase oscillation. The month is bookended by Full Moon/Super Moons on the 1st and the 30th with the New Moon right in the middle on the 16th. WoW – literally a Wave of Wonder! I am riding this wave to nowhere.

Living for seven decades has taught me that nothing is as it seems. That we are all, as Anne Lamott says, “petty, narcissistic, secretly insecure and in for ourselves” and at the same time we are all generous, loving, and genuinely caring. It seems to me that we are setup to be narcissists! We come into this deliberate material existence encased in a body that facilitates all of our personal individual experiences in the material world. There is no other human being with us our entire lives, only I and I know my fully lived experience. So I am riding this wave to nowhere buoyed on perpetual forgiveness and faith.

At this moment, I bow my head and open my heart to the lessons of the past ten months. Living has been a most grievous experience of pain, death, illness, mistrust and tremendous love. Being with and allowing it all is my heartfelt intention. And hearing what I hear, and knowing what I know, and remembering soooo much – my mind creates stories of truth and accountability. To be totally honest, I know nothing – intimately.

So – off to The Field I go, to generate and propagate all frequencies as an offering to audio cortices everywhere. All frequencies are welcome and unstoppable. Brains require some sonic massaging, some loosing of the mind grip. On August 1 and August 30, Radio iBoD/dejacusse will broadcast Waves of Gratitude 2021 and 2022, soundscapes from dejacusse and iBoD, and LIVE improvisations! The mid-month New Moon will be a LIVE improvisation from The Field! Broadcasts occur the two hours around the Zenith of each moon phase. For more info and link to the radio stream go here:

https://dejacusse.blog/radio-ibod-dejacusse-web-player/

Live life like a river, pay attention to the depth and health of the waters, the maintenance and care of the riverbanks (so as not to breach or run dry), know the joy of flow, the peace of floating, and the exhilaration of a joyful rage! Allow the direction, the path to unfold before you. But mostly, let it be and appreciate!

Playing The Field

Every month of 2022, at the Full Moon’s Zenith, dejacusse serenaded The World with synth improvs, soundscapes from the vault and Waves of Gratitude via Radio iBoD/dejacusse. Listening to the broadcast recordings of synth improvs, I felt so much heart resonance as all frequencies flowed like the rivers they ARE!! As I listened deeply, I heard and remembered gestures that rendered shapes and movements in the sonic spectra. This is how I attend to and expand my understanding of The Field.

What is this Field that I am so focused on at this time? The Field emanates from the Audiorigami template, and turns that template inside out and sideways. The substance of The Field is “all of the waveforms,” so the entire sonic spectrum of frequencies is available here. Much of 21st Century science is pointing loudly at the vibrational essence of everything!! The sonic spectrum covers 9 octaves and is present wherever there is any kind of atmosphere, including gases. The Field includes all frequencies equally; it is a level ground for play! Audiorigami began with The Fold, and all that folding landed us in The Field. The Field is vast and continually shifting and moving in many directions. The Field is alive, it inhabits space-time, and – its electric!

Control voltages are a primary initiator of waveforms, while the shape of the wave enhances and diminishes harmonics in sound frequency spectra. Musicians work with harmonics all the time, but usually as a secondary consideration to the production of melody and song structure. Out here in The Field, it is the interplay of harmonic frequencies that takes center stage. It is the folding/unfolding/stretching/pulsating of timbre itself that is our focus. At times, melodies and patterns emerge, and then they pull apart and disintegrate. In The Field, all of the waveforms are available for transmission to audio cortices, so this is a place to begin transmission.

I knew synthesizers were for me when I heard musicians talk about how hard they are to keep in tune! Synthesizers are living beings and as such, they are constantly attuning in the moment. Their sound is evoked via responsive relationships which involve a great deal of allowing. The Field, made up of synthesizers, offers up the frequencies, my role is to shepherd frequencies through all audio cortices (and beyond!) by studying and demonstrating the attunement process as it moves through The Field. How this all works depends on the components that make up The Field.

My first analog synthesizer was the Behringer Nuetron. This semi-modular synth sings via two Voltage Controlled Oscillators (VCO) that can manifest five waveforms, individually AND the space between them, as one form morphs into another. Right away the harmonic sculpting possibilities are indeterminable, because this is living energy! The ways that these waveforms interplay happen in the present moment! Oscillators can be set to a frequency (Nuetron VCOs can oscillate from .7hz to 55kHz) which is then passed through filters, Low Frequency Oscillators, envelopes, gates, delays, and voltage contolled amplifiers (VCAs) – all of which alter the harmonics, the pulse/beat, the duration and loudness of frequencies, even the beginning/middle/end of the sonic life of frequencies! All of these sound modulators can be routed into and through the oscillating waveforms as they throw out particular strands of harmonics. These harmonic strands are the substance of soundscapes.

Layers are added with new components! The Moog Subharmonicon and Make Noise O-Coast were the next additions to The Field. The O-Control serves as a sequencer for the Nuetron and a clock connection between the Nuet and Moogie. The Moog brings 6 VCOs to the pallette, two main and four sub oscillators. Each of the Moog VCOs is tunable and the suboscillators are harmonically linked to them. These oscillators can be further defined by packaging the frequencies in Equal Temperament or Just Intonation scalar relationships, in 8 or 13 step lengths over 1, 2 or 5 octaves.

For Monday mornings broadcast, the Cre8audio West Pest has been added to The Field! The current palette has the WP receiving pitch signal from O-Control and sending wave forms to the Neutron pitch in. The O- Control is also sending pitch to the Subharmonicon, so there is a tentative connection among all the components of The Field. It is daunting, but rewarding!! Kind of like our shared living experience!

Please join me from 1-3 am Monday morning Feb 20th for whatever will happen. Here is the link to the web-player, it is only live when I am broadcasting.

https://www.radiomast.io/station/ffa9c47f-f6bd-4eb9-ad61-c2c636ca88ca/pwa/app

Waves of Gratitude 2023

Waves of Gratitude was inspired, in early 2021, by Jim Kellough bringing me tiny speakers that could play individual files of sonic material. He envisioned them scattered about in an area out of doors where people come and go. Then Stephanie Leathers and Courtney Om put out a call for artists to come together for a SITES performance at The Accordion Bar in Durham. Perhaps we could make an installation with the tiny speakers for this event? Yes! Then sonic material began to present itself in my head- people saying “Thank you for …” within a sound container of waves crashing on the shore. Mark Boyd, who makes sound devices, made some little speakers that could loop a soundtrack. All these little speakers are battery powered, so another interesting possible shift in the soundscape was if a sound device runs out of juice the file on the device would sound no more at this time.Cool! We started gathering gratitudes and many folks responded which was thrilling. In the end, we had a forty minute soundtrack that included poetry, sound collages, memories, and song. Here is a video clip of the first idea for the installation with small speakers playing the voiced gratitudes and the large speaker playing the Waves! I liked this set up very much.

The SITES venue had multiple performances happening and audience members walking around, so I realized ahead of time that the small speakers could not be heard. So I used a large speaker and one of Mark’s tiny speaker and colorful lights for the Waves of Gratitude installation for SITES Reset in February 2021.

In 2022, I moved to a streaming Internet broadcast format as a way to offer dejacusse and IBoD soundscapes, sound sculptures and collages to The World. At the Zenith of the Full Moon each month of 2022, I broadcast a streamlined version of WoG 2021 and a 2022 version that started with the question “What does gratitude feel like?” and ended in grief and much confusion. These broadcasts featured soundscapes from my 12 years as a soundscape artist, recordings of iBoD – my band of cohorts- and LIVE synth improvs.

Currently, in the year 2023, I am continuing to enjoy broadcasting in alignment with the cycles of The Moon. So in order to amplify this enjoyment, a New Moon Broadcast has been added to the schedule. The first New Moon Broadcast was one hour and fifty-four minutes of LIVE improvisations from The Field (ft Subharmonicon, West Pest and O-Control), and 2 iPad apps-Ripplemaker and Novation Launchpad.) The plan is to review each New Moon Broadcast recording, find those profoundly resonant moments, and cast them into 2023 Waves of Gratitude.

Each month I will post the dates and times for the upcoming broadcasts on the page linked below. The New Moon will be all improvisation and the Full Moon will be Waves of Gratitude in all of its manifestations plus pre-recorded sound works by dejacusse and iBoD aaaand some LIVE improvisation. Here is the link to the blog page.

https://dejacusse.blog/radio-ibod-dejacusse-web-player/

Waking Life, Waves of Gratitude!

Richard Linklater’s animated film Waking Life relieved me of a heavy life-long burden. Up to the time of seeing Waking Life, I was attempting to fit my living experience into and around Aristotlean dramatic arcs and The Game of Life linear narratives, which were presented to me as the “norm”. People around me spoke of and STROVE for “normal lives” in “The Real World”. Human beings seemed to feel passionately about their life circumstances and relations. They believed in and lived out a story of life through these dramatic arcs and linear narratives. My family was more into easiness and getting along with each other, so the drama was subtler, filtered by a kind of controlled kindness. Yet, I was curious about the “Real World” and for much of my life I was guided by beautiful, loving, trusted adults and peers who would point things out to me in that exploration. I often noticed inconsistencies between what I was taught, and what was actually happening, still I wanted to find a way into the drama of life.

So I studied the forms and tried to fit my experience into them. This focus in itself allowed me to participate but I did not feel fully present in these experiences. My awareness was divided and expansive. Perhaps I was overly present, who knows? l have vivid memories of both waking and dreaming life from childhood to Now! When I tried to live the normal linear life, I got distracted by all the rockets of desire and all the curious patterns of Samsara. As a child, a part of me was always standing outside and watching with an appreciative wonder or an apprehensive stillness as events unfolded, then later on, as a young adult sitting in a theatre, watching. Then directing the action of the dramas so beautifully sculpted by Williams, Miller, Albee. In graduate school, all of literature became reflections of the drama of human’s deeply identifying with their experiences. AND, I was introduced to metaworlds. Knowing of metaworlds brought my personal living experience into clearer focus. I have been pursuing that focus ever since.

Then I saw Waking Life, and realized that the form of my life is like a patchwork quilt of deeply intimate moments, of creative activities with many wonderful, specific people as we float through time. These magnificent occurences are bright and colorful moments that arise out of the oscillations between stillness and sound, between love and fear, between lies and truths, between righteous anger and personal responsibility, between ideas of who I am and the wonders of the Universe. So many moments that touched deeply, conveying love and care in spite of the undercurrents of fear and insecurities. I learned so much from you all, so very much.

Waves of Gratitude is my soundling tribute to all of these bright and colorful moments! If you remember even one moment we shared as I described above, I hope you will listen as The Wave grows, and when you are so moved you will lend your voice to Waves of Gratitude.

Remember when we were poets, playwrights, watercolorists, actors, singers, curators, and co-creators?!?

Remember when we studied, wondered and laughed, played games, talked late into the night, got lost in the woods, wrote poems and created performances!

Together!?

Remember…?

I do!

I love us and I am grateful for it all!

National Water Dance – NOT Cancelled

With all of the rescheduling of public events local, national and global, there is one event that will go on next month. National Water Dance 2020 will happen as scheduled on April 18th 2020 at 4 pm EST. This biannual movement choir in honor and healing of water will take place across the country all at the same time and streaming across the web. This announcement came from NWD last week:

WE ARE STILL DANCING! Wherever you are on April 18 at 4:00PM EST, alone or self-quarantining or with a small group in an open space, we will begin with the shared gesture and end with the shared gesture and your personal movement will fill in the middle.

We are fortunate to be living in the digital age – as we are asked to observe *“physical distancing,” we are able to close that distance by linking together through social media.

This challenge is forcing us to re-evaluate what we are doing and how we are doing it. Let’s find that deeper meaning in our dance, whether in a group or alone. We can dance wherever we are and livestream it on Instagram and Facebook. 

More than ever the world needs our hope and energy. Let’s move forward together and flood the social media networks with our dances on April 18th.

My crew at the idiosyncratic Beats of Dejacusse (iBoD) had big plans to create a watery like container at PS 137 with live plants and flowers by Lee Moore Crawford, and space for movers and viewers. Now we have constrained as we must, so will feature Jody Cassell as Durham’s National Water Dancer streaming live from her home. Jody will move to a recording of Carnatic Water Music, which will be released by iBoD on Bandcamp in April a week before the event. We will keep you posted as to how to link to the performance and pre-order the digital EP.

Mark your calendars for Durham’s National Water Dance April 18th at 4 pm.

The Dance of Ego and Consciousness

I love how life, when allowed, unfolds in diverse and beautiful ways. The Culture of the Human Organism (COTHO), which we all create together, was/is formed by the interplay of humans doing and humans being. We, individually, have the ability to DO busy worker bees and to BE still, vast awake beings. Doing and Being are the yin/yang of living. They exist on a continuum, like a cross-fader mixing two signals, and we move the fader around by focusing our conscious awareness.

The DO is about identity, achievement, leadership, playing with others. The DO is fitting into and identifying with the material realm/the world/COTHO. The DOer seizes the day and makes a life, The DOer gets things done, gets rewarded, and so gets more things done, often achieves some level of what we call “greatness” or, at the very least, strives for greatness. DOers think, plan, coordinate. They are busy doing and making the world. Egoic mind, beliefs, values, thoughts, stories and meaning are parts of this realm.

This realm manifests COTHO! The Organism is rich, and in constant motion. It seems to be expanding just as the Universe seems to be expanding. The Organism is The World. Ever since we were kicked out of the Garden, COTHO has been making The World in an image of the Garden. And with so many individual shattered segments DOing The World right now, the primary direction seems to be “more”, “further”, “faster”.

The BE is about shedding worldly identities, expanding consciousness and being fully in the present moment. All there is is NOW! (la- la lalala) BEing is still, alert and attentive. BEing exists in a state of timelessness. BEing finds the world mostly humorous, and a little sad. BEing allows everything that is enfolded in the present moment to be!

Newborn babies have a tremendous. capacity for BEing. Adults recognize this energy in babies. This is why we love them so much, love being with them- they are awash in being, thinking no thoughts. Babies are pure presence. Alas, too soon, babies become ensnared in human doing. My highest wish for every child is that they protect, develop and cherish their BEing, and not let conciousness become obliterated by the push to identify and the exaggerated need to belong.

I have struggled with this all my life. Since I was very young, I felt slightly out of touch with 3D reality or The World. “Just wait till you get out in the real world!” said many adults I encountered. I was never sure what “real world” they were referring to. So I tried to find this “real world”. I looked for it in my parents, teachers and other signifigant adults, in school and church, in communities, close friends, colleagues, in educational degrees and lesbian feminist identities. I looked (and found) what felt the most real to me in intimate relationships: lovers, dear friends and co-creators – those people with whom you stay up all night, dancing around the fear of/desire to completely open and merge with another. I really felt I found the real world there, but it turns out, there is more! With each decade, great swaths of many Worlds revealed themselves to me and the journey has been heartfelt and mostly joyful – even when suffering, I give myself over to it and enjoy the whole experience immensely.

Luckily, many people have cared for, connected and collaborated with me over these years. I love all of those beautiful people, and I have not always made it easy for them. The sense of myself was small and huge at the same time, always bouncing between these extremes. I had faith in consciousness even as I distrusted it. I let my egoic identity make me small and mean at times. This still happens, but the voice of consciousness is clearer, and ego can be lovingly attenuated to allow that still, clear voice to come through. Today, as I sit in this beautiful present moment, I give thanks to all who were right there with me in all those wonderful Nows of the past.

As Holly Near sings -“The past has brought me brilliantly to here!”

Some Thoughts on Grief (on Paul’s 52nd Birthday)

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Today February 25th, is my brother Paul’s 52nd birthday. While he did not live to see and celebrate it, he has people who are still here remembering him. His laughter, his sense of irony, his insecurity, his wit, his breadth of knowledge, his creativity, his emotional turmoil, his love, his righteousness and doubt all are imprinted on this moment. Contemporary quantum physics points consistently toward the truth that each individual conciousness has an impact on the world. If energetic matter can neither be created or destroyed, then this impact goes on forever. Even as I know this, I also know that when a beloved being leaves their physical form, a great deep grief rises up and takes hold in the world.

One of my life’s intentions is to be light, loving joy in the world. Much of the time this is easy for me as I am buoyed by the spirit that brought me here and always guides me. My life is simple with manageable stress and I have gifts to share and a cadre of friends to share them with. Then when an event outside my well-cultivated illusion of control happens, I resist , I wail and holler, saying to myself, “I don’t want to feel this way, I don’t want to feel this way, I don’t want to feel this way.” This is where I was for periods during the last year and a half as I allowed the reality of Paul’s death to bring waves of sadness, anger and anxiety to the forefront of my lived experience.

I know that resistance is a root cause of disease, so a less familiar path needed to be taken. Not numbing myself till it goes away, not holding it in, not crying in the bathroom and then putting on a good face in front of others- instead I did things that felt more vulnerable to me. I asked for help, shared my feelings in the moment and kept an eye out for any sense of victimhood and blaming of myself or others. I used all the tools in my pack – EFT, meditation, deep breathing, supportive nutrition and hydration, exercise – to stay grounded and present.

I am sad that Paul did not let me know what was truly going on in his life. Angry that he left out a huge piece of the puzzle of what happened between himself and his wife, his children and his wife’s family, and our family. Why did he have to work so hard to save face, put on a front, be so unaware of what he was doing and how it was impacting his life? I study pictures from his childhood looking for signs of angst, unhappiness, fear. He just looks happy, loving and excited by life.

He was the youngest child. As the oldest, it is hard to imagine what it is like to have, not only parents, but multiple older siblings telling you what is right and what is wrong from all our unique perspectives. All I can do is accept what has happened and honor him, his life, and his choices. From a place of unconditional love, there is no shame about the path he chose. He is a role model of surrender. He let himself go, he got himself out of a difficult situation the best way he knew how. There was a fearlessness in his giving over to his path. When I think of him with love and respect, I can only say, “well done, my brother!” I see you in your next life succeeding with love and assurance. I see you bobbing over the crest of a wave, laughing with joy.  The lessons you taught while you were here have not yet been fully realized. I feel heartened to know that the real gift of your life is yet to be received.

So while I have entertained grief in my home for a time I am clear that this is just a visit. And, as in past visits, it will come to a natural end. My home is filled with joy, love, and creative energy. While anxiety, fear, sadness and grief do build up in the nooks and crannies at times, a good cry, a loving talk, a breathing meditation, a smoke or tea of kind herbs, EFT, a belly laugh can cleanse those energies from my home. I feel a tremendous responsibility to give loving attention to this work – the work of cultivating creative joy in the world.

I do keep a picture of grief around, just as a friendly reminder of a pain that comes and goes and comes again, but for now- its time in my presence is up!

Lamentation (for Paul)

Our youngest brother, Paul, died on November 8, 2014 from the effects of excessive consumption of wine. There is so much more to his story than we will ever know. I keep trying to fill in the blanks, but all I can find are my own projections and the limitations I place on love.

I sense that Paul died of a broken heart and a broken spirit. He was a kind man who could not seem to deal with conflict. He had many skills as a teacher, artist, friend and lover of life, but could not manifest his skills in the world. He seemed to need the approval of others to a debilitating degree. When we give our power and sense of worth to other people, we wither away – and he did just that.

Our parents raised us to be kind and gentle, and not to make too much of ourselves. It was very important that we get along with others at all cost…at all cost! While these guidelines are admirable, one must always be discerning whether a guideline is serving you in particular situations. In this world where “success” often relies on a certain amount of bullying behavior (especially for men), sticking to these guidelines can be our downfall rather than our salvation.

In the end, Paul may have been killed by his own defensiveness. Every “tough love” moment from his wife, brother, and friend was met with “Don’t tell me what to do! You are not my Dad! You are crazy! I am out of here!” He determinedly walked his path carried by the anger and pain that he could not abide and did not know how to heal. I want to honor the path he chose, but I am not quite there yet.

While I use many tools to work through and release my emotions, a primary one is creating sound paintings. I spent many hours in my studio with Paul’s ashes at my feet working out the sadness that was in my heart. This short piece was the result. I appreciate that I had the opportunity to share this with my family at Paul’s remembering last Sunday. Special thanks to Luke Christie for hooking me up with the amplification necessary to share this painting. And thanks to all who honor me and Paul by listening.