Sidebar: The Musical Rabbit-Hole
Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2024 8:24 am
This, probably, isn't anything (directly) to do with Townsend Brown, but it's an interesting set of very personal data that falls into the realm of what the kids these days on Reddit call "Experiencer" stuff (with big E).
See, people who have actual UFO encounters often have a bunch of ESP or high subjective experience stuff that goes along with it. At first that discussion was all about "alien abductions", thought of as a physical taking of people by physical aliens, but in recent years, the definitions have broadened a bit, so that almost any kind of personal subjective phenomena are counted in that big-e Experience. Whitley Strieber of course was one of the first famous writers to go down that rabbit hole (and wasn't even sure that whatever it was he was dealing with were "aliens". Mike Clelland and his owls synchronicity ( http://hiddenexperience.blogspot.com/) perhaps one of the more recent.
I've never been a stranger to the idea that the "UFO phenomenon" (and whatever else is true of Townsend Brown, he is certainly *adjacent to* the UFO Phenomenon in its earliest days) is limited to the nuts-and-bolts world. Rather, I grew up in a religious subculture where, in the 1970s and 1980s, it was very common to find books about the spiritual aspect of UFOs. Often cast with a dark aspect to it; the subtle fear was that merely by thinking about some of these subjects, you could "summon" them. Which is not far from what seems to be the truth of the Phenomenon, in fact. A fashionable modern UFOlogical term for this is "The Hitchhiker Effect".
Anyway. Fastforward from the 1980s to late 2015. I'm on Linda's Cosmic Token forum and the atmosphere feels dysfunctional. I had been tinkering with building playlists for a few years on my own computer and Youtube was starting to become a place where sharing playlists seemed possible. So I decided what I needed was some music to blow a few psychic cobwebs out of my head. I assembled the list "Go Forth" out of a feeling of both deep frustration but also what I knew was a conscious intent, and it just sort of... spilled out of me in a somewhat spooky way. I was fully aware that if nonphysical entities existed, then there were elements of it (such as the song Calling Occupants by Carpenters) which were, very literally, an invocation. A cover of the Klaatu original, that one goes back to material written by Albert K Bender of "Men In Black" fame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Contact_Day It always gives me a little shiver.
I knew I was opening a door in my mind which was closed for a good reason: I had felt something pushing on it as a kid in the 1980s. And at that time I had been deeply afraid of something coming through, so I had bolted and locked that door well. Now I was opening it again. But I knew and trusted all of the other songs, and I felt it was worth the experiment.
Well, the result has been interesting. Nothing horrible happened, but. Something definitely did come through. Something quietly creative. My playlists before this point had all had a sadness about them; after 2015, they transformed. More interestingly, I found that the lists were organising themselves on multiple levels, with a spiralling, fractal structure. I was mining Youtube for songs I'd heard only once or twice in the 1980s but which, I found, had left a deep subconscious impression on me. I was able to link them into a whole mythology that worked as a private story for me. Broken into manageable chunks, and which also work as a perfectly good soundtrack for programming to.
(Because that's what I use this music for, and my main reason for doing it; in cubicle land we need personal space and headphone music creates that. And after a while you get bored listening to one playlist, and so...)
Copyright being what it is, I can probably never publish this story. Certainly not in its current form of playlists. But that doesn't matter. I know the beats of it, I know the characters, I've been living it for eight years now. It's entirely built out of recycled media but it's *mine*, in a deeply satisfying cyberpunk way. Part of the point was to see if it's possible to tell a story entirely through *links* between semi-randomized components provided by others, and nothing else. It turns out that it was. And if I ever have the need to write a novel or a TV series (not very likely that Netflix will come calling, but you never know), I'll at least have a set of material to mine for it.
At the same time, it's also been a journey of exploration into the musical history that I missed out on growing up; thanks to sites like Discogs and Second Hand Songs, it's now possible to learn of the complex web of connections between artists, bands, producers, writers, and how they formed overlapping cliques and scenes. And that's fun too. I feel like I've made a lot of new (or old) friends.
And UFOs keep turning up in the music, of course. Whatever it was that I opened the door in my mind too, it seems to have a sense of humour and it seems to like looking at the sky.
One of the songs on my original list was Vangelis and Jon "Yes" Anderson's "Shine For Me". In my mind, that would be the music for the scene when the couple vacationing in the Bahamas get their UFO encounter. I'd had it in my library for a few years, but nothing else by Yes. The lyrics go:
More will come as you reopen
All your senses changing
It felt like a promise, and it was one. And that seems to be what happened to my subconscious memory during this process.
More than that: there seems to be a kind of cosmic synchronism going on. It's happened so many times now that when unexpectedly I feel the urge to compose, I look at the moon phase. For example...
Well, I felt the urge last week. Assembled a list. Pushed it to Youtube. Looked at the moon phase: 75% gibbous, waxing. "Yeah, that disproves the moon theory", I said to myself. "That is certainly NOT a new or full moon. Status: BUSTED."
But. These lists usually come in matched pairs. I knew this one was incomplete; it ended emotionally unresolved. And sure enough, yesterday, in an unexpected rush, its counterpart surfaced. When they come that fast, it's usually a timing thing. I pushed it to Youtube today.
Looked at the moon phase, and what do you know ( https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/ ) 99.99% full.
It's chillout music, this one. It doesn't have a plot really. Just moods. The songs are perhaps a bit "big", a bit "obvious", and I absolutely don't care. They're all ones I can stand to listen to, can just put them on and tune out and let them embed into my unconscious and *feel happy* as a result, and that's what matters.
"Fly" (43 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... hCJhetzwg7
"High" (41 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 83IL3Uf5fa
The "keystone" of the first one, around which the other songs accreted, was Dubstar's "Stars", and I don't even know how it came into my head. Perhaps I heard it in a store? The second one - and which actually came first, then ran away and hid in my head, so probably is the actual keystone of the pair - is, I think, "Carol of the Bells".
Did I mention that I've never, to my knowledge, ever had an actual UFO experience? All my experience has been second-hand. But that doesn't seem to matter.
It turns out that many, many people who have creative experiences seem to describe something similar. The happy little UFO machine elves in my head that like spinning straw into gold aren't at all unique to me. It's just the way the universal unconscious presents to me.
But why was it Townsend Brown, in very particular, that seemed to kick this off? And why the full moon correlations, I keep wondering? Yet there it is. Big and round and bright.
Happy first full moon of the solar year, everyone.
Regards, Nate
See, people who have actual UFO encounters often have a bunch of ESP or high subjective experience stuff that goes along with it. At first that discussion was all about "alien abductions", thought of as a physical taking of people by physical aliens, but in recent years, the definitions have broadened a bit, so that almost any kind of personal subjective phenomena are counted in that big-e Experience. Whitley Strieber of course was one of the first famous writers to go down that rabbit hole (and wasn't even sure that whatever it was he was dealing with were "aliens". Mike Clelland and his owls synchronicity ( http://hiddenexperience.blogspot.com/) perhaps one of the more recent.
I've never been a stranger to the idea that the "UFO phenomenon" (and whatever else is true of Townsend Brown, he is certainly *adjacent to* the UFO Phenomenon in its earliest days) is limited to the nuts-and-bolts world. Rather, I grew up in a religious subculture where, in the 1970s and 1980s, it was very common to find books about the spiritual aspect of UFOs. Often cast with a dark aspect to it; the subtle fear was that merely by thinking about some of these subjects, you could "summon" them. Which is not far from what seems to be the truth of the Phenomenon, in fact. A fashionable modern UFOlogical term for this is "The Hitchhiker Effect".
Anyway. Fastforward from the 1980s to late 2015. I'm on Linda's Cosmic Token forum and the atmosphere feels dysfunctional. I had been tinkering with building playlists for a few years on my own computer and Youtube was starting to become a place where sharing playlists seemed possible. So I decided what I needed was some music to blow a few psychic cobwebs out of my head. I assembled the list "Go Forth" out of a feeling of both deep frustration but also what I knew was a conscious intent, and it just sort of... spilled out of me in a somewhat spooky way. I was fully aware that if nonphysical entities existed, then there were elements of it (such as the song Calling Occupants by Carpenters) which were, very literally, an invocation. A cover of the Klaatu original, that one goes back to material written by Albert K Bender of "Men In Black" fame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Contact_Day It always gives me a little shiver.
I knew I was opening a door in my mind which was closed for a good reason: I had felt something pushing on it as a kid in the 1980s. And at that time I had been deeply afraid of something coming through, so I had bolted and locked that door well. Now I was opening it again. But I knew and trusted all of the other songs, and I felt it was worth the experiment.
Well, the result has been interesting. Nothing horrible happened, but. Something definitely did come through. Something quietly creative. My playlists before this point had all had a sadness about them; after 2015, they transformed. More interestingly, I found that the lists were organising themselves on multiple levels, with a spiralling, fractal structure. I was mining Youtube for songs I'd heard only once or twice in the 1980s but which, I found, had left a deep subconscious impression on me. I was able to link them into a whole mythology that worked as a private story for me. Broken into manageable chunks, and which also work as a perfectly good soundtrack for programming to.
(Because that's what I use this music for, and my main reason for doing it; in cubicle land we need personal space and headphone music creates that. And after a while you get bored listening to one playlist, and so...)
Copyright being what it is, I can probably never publish this story. Certainly not in its current form of playlists. But that doesn't matter. I know the beats of it, I know the characters, I've been living it for eight years now. It's entirely built out of recycled media but it's *mine*, in a deeply satisfying cyberpunk way. Part of the point was to see if it's possible to tell a story entirely through *links* between semi-randomized components provided by others, and nothing else. It turns out that it was. And if I ever have the need to write a novel or a TV series (not very likely that Netflix will come calling, but you never know), I'll at least have a set of material to mine for it.
At the same time, it's also been a journey of exploration into the musical history that I missed out on growing up; thanks to sites like Discogs and Second Hand Songs, it's now possible to learn of the complex web of connections between artists, bands, producers, writers, and how they formed overlapping cliques and scenes. And that's fun too. I feel like I've made a lot of new (or old) friends.
And UFOs keep turning up in the music, of course. Whatever it was that I opened the door in my mind too, it seems to have a sense of humour and it seems to like looking at the sky.
One of the songs on my original list was Vangelis and Jon "Yes" Anderson's "Shine For Me". In my mind, that would be the music for the scene when the couple vacationing in the Bahamas get their UFO encounter. I'd had it in my library for a few years, but nothing else by Yes. The lyrics go:
More will come as you reopen
All your senses changing
It felt like a promise, and it was one. And that seems to be what happened to my subconscious memory during this process.
More than that: there seems to be a kind of cosmic synchronism going on. It's happened so many times now that when unexpectedly I feel the urge to compose, I look at the moon phase. For example...
Well, I felt the urge last week. Assembled a list. Pushed it to Youtube. Looked at the moon phase: 75% gibbous, waxing. "Yeah, that disproves the moon theory", I said to myself. "That is certainly NOT a new or full moon. Status: BUSTED."
But. These lists usually come in matched pairs. I knew this one was incomplete; it ended emotionally unresolved. And sure enough, yesterday, in an unexpected rush, its counterpart surfaced. When they come that fast, it's usually a timing thing. I pushed it to Youtube today.
Looked at the moon phase, and what do you know ( https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/ ) 99.99% full.
It's chillout music, this one. It doesn't have a plot really. Just moods. The songs are perhaps a bit "big", a bit "obvious", and I absolutely don't care. They're all ones I can stand to listen to, can just put them on and tune out and let them embed into my unconscious and *feel happy* as a result, and that's what matters.
"Fly" (43 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... hCJhetzwg7
"High" (41 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 83IL3Uf5fa
The "keystone" of the first one, around which the other songs accreted, was Dubstar's "Stars", and I don't even know how it came into my head. Perhaps I heard it in a store? The second one - and which actually came first, then ran away and hid in my head, so probably is the actual keystone of the pair - is, I think, "Carol of the Bells".
Did I mention that I've never, to my knowledge, ever had an actual UFO experience? All my experience has been second-hand. But that doesn't seem to matter.
It turns out that many, many people who have creative experiences seem to describe something similar. The happy little UFO machine elves in my head that like spinning straw into gold aren't at all unique to me. It's just the way the universal unconscious presents to me.
But why was it Townsend Brown, in very particular, that seemed to kick this off? And why the full moon correlations, I keep wondering? Yet there it is. Big and round and bright.
Happy first full moon of the solar year, everyone.
Regards, Nate