a tasty toast

Last summer, I served as best man to my luminous friend Eric at his wedding to my luminous friend Steph. Going thru my files (by that I mean random scraps of paper lying around haphazardly - All Hail Discordia & a Befuddling Mungday to you!), I found th notes I used for th best man toast that I made! I spoke more or less what I see written today on these messy pages. It delights me to see that I wrote it all in E-Prime! [Pats nerdy self on back.]

I did insert an improvised story to illustrate my first impression of Eric when I met him, which I cannot reproduce (& probably didn't comply with th constraints of E-Prime). However, I want to share th rest of th toast with you now, for your delight (I hope you sob!) & for posterity, because I cannot guarantee that I will not lose these pages within th next few months, days, or minutes. (I will indicate where th improvised story fits in with three separation marks.)

I propose a tasty toast to th bride & groom, th groom & bride! Stephanie & Eris, Fauss & Fauss, enter today into a new universe of awesomeness & divine whatnot. Hooray for all!

I met Mr. Fauss at college orientation - he exuded a fascinating weirdness - we had to become roomates. It took a semester to get it worked out, but we managed it twice, & it rocked.

¤ ¤ ¤

I met Mrs. Fauss, Miss Formerly Thompson, when Eric brought her with us on a roadtrip. I found her fun, interesting, & easy to talk to. In short, she also rocked.

Little did I know what started brewing in those days.

Stephanie & Eric each champion peace & compassion, intelligence & wisdom, humanism & transcendence of th normal. Brought together, these attributes can only find strength. In their time, they have grown, grow today, & will grow oodles more.

A beautiful bond has formed here - we all see it - like two spiral galaxies meeting in th void & warping into something new & awesome. It has happened already - this ceremony only confirms it. I for one feel a great joy to have witnessed it.

& thus I propose a tasty toast th th groom & bride, th bride & groom - th Erics, th Stephs, th Thompsons, th Fausses! We have seen two become one, a unison. My heart melts - I feel humbled & alive. So let us raise glass & grin. Together we toast! Hooray for all!

Eric & Steph, I love you guys! Since I have now received my Credentials of Ministry from th Universal Life Church (they hang on th wall above my head as I type to you), do keep me in mind when you decide to renew your vows!

fixx om 1 dot finnegans friend

Nodal Nim did play tunes at Fixx Coffee Bar this prior evening. A Greenpeacer named Dan-O did host, played guitar, invited goodtimes. In addition to my frabjous self, I saw some guitarists, a djembist, &, wonderfullest of all, a sitar player. All did doings immeasurably. I did:

.. 25% mor monstr
.. cal it Home
.. 5 songs of fish

This place did I enjoy: persons & friends listened intently as I played; plum oolong tea appealed to my buds.

FNORD

On th trainride home, wondermagickal togetherhappenings did manifest. It began as I sat on my mandolincase whilst waiting for th train & reading from Finnegans Wake, James Joyce's masterwork in dreamlanguage non-linear holistic complexity. I enjoy partaking of said tome by opening to random pages & reading a few sentences, a paragraph or two, maybe, then opening to a new random page et cetera. I have not yet begun a cover-to-cover reading, altho I intend to when time ripens.

So as I sat with book, th wind blew pages, turning them randomly for me. Rather than grip th pages to prevent their turning, I enjoyed having th wind make my anti-decisions. So there I sat at th terminal, reading a book whose pages flapped in th wind, grinning & not seeming to mind.

A fellow (I estimate 32 years of age, thin, redheaded, only somewhat inebriated), when I glanced his way, handed me a Thing. I identified said Thing as a worn playing card, a two of hearts, actually, with an image of Elvis Presley on th front & back. Th fellow's explanation: "Bookmark." I thanked fellow with a grin, stuck th "bookmark" between some pages near th back of th book (sticking up so I could see it in peripheral vision), & continued doing exactly what I had been doing, amused that a confounded fellow found it appropriate to intercede in my peculiar reading practice.

I do wonder what he thought, seeing me do this. (John Cage might understand.)

So we rode th train together, & in th car, since no wind found its way to my book, I flipped th pages myself again, continuing to let th bookmark sit in its place. Th fellow sat not far away. We both got off at th Irving Park stop (Brown Line "L"), & at th bottom of th stairs:

HE: [Evidently amused.] Your bag is unzipped.

I: [Continuing to walk, not surprised or disturbed by th news.] Thanks!

HE: Wait, let me get it.

[I stop & th fellow begins to zip up a pocket on my bookbag.]

HE: I'm putting these matches in your bag. They're from my restaurant - you should come in sometime. [Drops in matches & finishes th zip.] I used to do this in grade school on purpose to make friends.

I: [With a chuckle.] Thanks again!

He passed me & turned right out of th station - I turned left. Only as he passed did I smell a touch of alcohol on him. (Yes, most people returning from a night out at 11:00 would have had a few beers - just plum oolong for me.) He found my private antics amusing, it would seem, & he found himself intrigued enough to invite me to his restaurant. I wonder what overall impression he got of me, how he explained me to himself. I felt elated by th whole strange thing (altho I didn't understand why), & I laughed & grinned all th way home & on & off until sleep overtook me.

a hitching

A wedding I did attend - th hitching of Eric Fauss to Stephanie Thompson & vice versa! Fun abounded in bounds - from togethertastic lovely fronds of vows & speakings, to a ringing & a counterringing, to dances & cocktails & toasts, to smiling bibbits of most excellent happy. I felt honored & awed to participate (as Best I could). Hooray for all!

I did carpooling with th lovely Scott & Gillian. We encountered fun, adventure & secrets with our sexy GPS robot named Nuvi. Good friendlies at feastings included Jen A, Nathan S, Rachael F. I enjoyed seeing & meeting family & friends from all walks. Togethermagick abounded in ways. Hooray for all!

A goodness & sweetness & triumph & yay.

th K.

I just figured out what th K stands for in magick & musick! Certainly, it must stand for KALLISTI!

Yayk!

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.

00002

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."

00003

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!

00004

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."

00006

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."

00008

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."






00011

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.


00015

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

my ad on craigslist

I am a Chicagoan in seek of fellow ABSURDIST SONGWRITERS interested in:

CO-WRITING AVANT-GARDE POP MONSTROCITIES
thru such techniques as:

. . . randomly generating song elements from dice, playing cards, divination, etc.
. . . setting others' words to music - writing words to others' music (& vice versa).
. . . cutting up lyrics & song elements to recombine them in surprising ways.
. . . intuitive / "automatic" techniques of composition.
. . . constrained poetry (eg. palindromes, writing without the letter "e", etc.).
. . . writing songs/poems using surrealist techniques such as writing two lines & concealing the first, then giving the other person the page & having him/her do the same thing.
. . . converting non-musical phenomena into sound.

CREATING EAR-BENDING EXPERIMENTAL RECORDINGS
thru such techniques as:

. . . collecting sounds to use in unique ways.
. . . cutting up sounds randomly & reassembling them.
. . . separately recording different tracks to go with the same backing track & playing them together.
. . . improvising multi-layered pop songs from the ground up.

PERFORMING LIVE SHOWS
on the street, at open mics, at clubs
which feature (for example):

. . . group improvisation outside of "stylistic" limitations.
. . . live chance recombination of prepared material.
. . . live performance of musical "games".
. . . creating & performing on multiple instruments, including assemblages from "non-musical" paraphernalia, i.e. junk.
. . . mythical storytelling elements.
. . . dramatic (operatic!) elements such as costumes, characters & plots.
. . . performing absurdist rituals that involve the audience & players in unpredictable ways.

::

I'm not talking about a jam band or a free jazz combo. I'm talking about a vehicle of super-musical chaos worship.

I'm ready to try anything, & I'm looking for other people who are, too - People who revel in PARADOX - People who say nothing is true & everything is permitted - People who, in the area of making noise, are simultaneously RIDICULOUSLY SERIOUS & SERIOUSLY RIDICULOUS.

If some of what I've described excites you, then let's get together & see what we can do.

::

Contact: Andrew
315 657 6839
gtrpkt AT yahoo DOT com
http://www.myspace.com/nodalnim

Eris Rox

Goddess (mhftee) is working her chaotic wondermagick in Chicago today! It's been snowing for well over 24 hours, th streets are awful, & for some confusing reason th folks in charge decided that school will be in session all across th city, but (a.) students don't have to go (b.) there are no busses running (c.) students should go to their "neighborhood schools," which means, not necessarily th schools they actually attend.

So I'm at a school with 12 students in it. Th teachers who are here (many didn't come) are babysitting (or just sitting around getting paid for nothing - what a silly waste of money). Oddly, I'm filling in for a secretary (I'm pretty sure this is absolutely not what subs are supposed to do - might not be legal), helping out by taking calls, filling out attendance forms, putting mail in teacher mailboxes, etc. What a weird day.

A teacher commented on how peaceful it is with twelve students - none of th ordinary chaos. Indeed. A brand new dimension of chaos today! How delightful!