MUSICK

This is a digital reproduction of a quite analog booklet I began distributing in Chicago on May 12, 2007 called MUSICK. Th original consists of sixteen tiny black & white pages with lots of words & few pictures. This version contains some scans of th original & some spruced-up stuff. I've added a few pictures, colors & comments. Th latter you will recognize because it will look like this paragraph: purple & italic.

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Salutations!

I am Andrew Heathwaite, a.k.a. Nodal Nim, & I welcome you to page two of my manifesto, MUSICK! I've got a few ludicrous thoughts to share with you today: some nonsense, twaddle, paradoxes & chaos that I hope you'll find inspiring. In fact, my ultimate goal with this free booklet is th formation of some sort of MUSICKAL COLLECTIVE (i.e. BAND).

Why th funny spelling, music with a k? It's based on th word MAGICK, thus spelt to distinguish it from stage magic - "magicians" pulling rabbits out of hats & playing tricks on people through deceit & sleight of hand. MAGICK is not th same as magic. Phil Hine, in his illuminating booklet Oven-Ready Chaos, tells us:

"Magick is surprisingly simple. What can it offer?

1. A means to disentangle yourself from the attitudes and restrictions you were brought up with and which define the limits of what you may become.
   
2. Ways to examine your life to look for, understand, and modify behaviour, emotional and thought patterns which hinder learning and growth.
   
3. Increase of confidence and personal charisma.
   
4. A widening of your perception of just what is possible, once you set your heart and mind on it.
   
5. To develop personal abilities, skills and perceptions - the more we see the world, the more we appreciate that it is alive.
   
6. To have fun. Magick should be enjoyed.
   
7. To bring about change - in accordance with will."

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MUSICK is an attempt to apply th principles of magick to music.

It is based on th ideas that:

1. You, I, everyone everywhere is a Robot.
   
2. We, as Robots, are programmed by our imprints, our experiences, & th things we decide we "know".
   
3. All that we do, we do through our programming.
   
4. Most of th time, we do not write our programming; it is written for us.
   
5. Metaprogramming is programming yourself - causing conscious changes in your own nervous system. It is th stuff of Shamanism, Magick, & MUSICK.

We, th collective, devote ourselves not to music, but to MUSICK! We challenge all musical programming for th continuous remanifestation of MUSICKAL metaprogramming intended to disorder & free everyone everywhere! We play to free ourselves, but also to free everyone everywhere. One unconscious listening experience (on th street, in a club, anywhere) begins a process of reimprinting / disordering of th mind & its programs through exposure to our highly charged musickal arcana. We play to illuminate!

Think all this is bullshit / metaphysical mumbo-jumbo / twaddle? Good! So do I!

Let's do it anyway!

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REALITY TUNNELS

Each individual's unique & very limited view of th WORLD is a reality tunnel. Peter Carroll, in his book Liber Null, suggests six fundamental reality tunnels that people have tended to adopt. He claims that one develops into th next, & that th whole set is cyclical.

1. Paganism
   
2. Monotheism
   
3. Atheism
   
4. Nihilism (Low Atheism)
   
5. Chaoism
   
6. Superstition (Low Chaoism)

"Try each of them for a week, a month, or a year. This exercise may save one an unnecessary incarnation or two."

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AGNOSTICISM

Some wisdom from Robert Anton Wilson

"My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any more need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where the absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

My attitude is identical to that of Dr. Gribbin and the majority of physicists today, and is known in physics as 'the Copenhagen Interpretation,' because it was formulated in Copenhagen by Dr. Niels Bohr and his co-workers c. 1926-28. The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called 'model agnosticism' and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, 'The map is not the territory.' Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental Philosophy, restated it more vividly as 'The menu is not the meal.'

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, 'My current model' - or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel - 'contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised.' In terms of the history of science and of knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude."

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DISCORDIANISM

is a paradoxical post-modern pseudo-religion devoted to ERIS, th Greek Goddess of Chaos, Discord, & Strife. It mixes humor with truth in remarkable ways.

From Discordianism's holy book, Principia Discordia, here are some illuminating Discordian catmas (opposite of dogmas):

"Convictions cause convicts."

"It is my firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs."

" 'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."

"Nonsense as Salvation: The human race will begin solving its problems of the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously."

"Every Man, Woman & Child is a Discordian Pope."

Here's another good one: "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads."






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Some thoughts on GAMES. . . .

In everything we do, we are playing GAMES.
Everything is a GAME.

If everything is a GAME, everything is absurd.
If everything is a GAME, everything is arbitrary.
If everything is a GAME, ultimately, nothing is true & everything is permitted.

But most of th time, we don't play games of our own creation.
Someone else makes th rules.
We follow them.
Or if we rebel & break them, we do so according to an alternative set of rules which we also did not create.

Our musickal collective will not play by anyone else's rules. We will create our own & keep them constantly in flux, paradoxical, impossible to follow. In so doing, we will avoid dogmatism & taking ourselves too seriously.

We will disorder th rules through chaotic meta-rules.

Th goal of th game is to transcend th game.

Page 00013 in th original booklet consists of one POPE & one MESSIAH card with th message, "Cut these out to claim YOUR BIRtHRigHt." Rather than copy them here, I will link you to th place where I got them myself: poee.co.uk, an excellent Discordian resource.

Page 00014 is th back page of th POEE cards & contains just a bunch of black & th page number.


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Are you utterly confused by all this?

If so, we have more in common than you may think.

So there's th low-down. I'm looking for people. People who live in Chicago, preferably. People who want to play every style of music on every instrument they can find. (Also no styles of music on no instruments.) People who want to play on th streets & begin illuminating th world immediately. People who want to devote themselves to chaos & metaprogramming. This is not about making money or looking cool. It's about MUSICK. It's about being:

agnostic * chaotic * absurd * transcendent * viral

So contact me, Andrew Aaron Heathwaite, at
gtrpkt AT yahoo DOT com * 315-657-6839 * myspace.com/nodalnim