Everything flickers. The twentieth century became a century of flicker. Electricity flickers. It’s called Alternating Current and has a frequency of sixty cycles per second in the U.S. and fifty cycles in Europe. That means that electric light actually pulses sixty times per second. This is not easily noticed with an old fashioned incandescent bulb, because the filament stays hot and bright enough during the brief moments it is not on. But with LED or fluorescent bulbs I sometimes notice a flickering.
Movies, moving pictures, are actually 24 still frames per second. The silent movies from a century ago were recorded with varying rates from 16 to 23 frames per second and we can easily notice the flicker – although some of that was apparently due to conversion at grossly incorrect frame rates in the 1950s for broadcast television. One could say that two types of flickr are being comined in a DVD. There is the flicker from the framerate of the movie, which combines with the digital sampling snapshots of that analog film.
Digital sound is a series of snapshots. Unlike the constant sound from an analog source, like a turntable or a tape player, digital sound consists of 16 bits sampled many thousands of times per second. Douglas Rushkoff’s quotes a German study in his book “Program or be Programmed” that found that people suffering from depression reacted differently to analog sound and digital sound. Digital sound didn’t have the positive effect that analog sound had. (to John Craig, who asked what I think of “Program or be Programmed”: I like the book. It is not brilliant like Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget”, and for me there is nothing new in Rushkoff’s new book, but it is a concise and fairly complete and easily readable collection of thought regardng the nature of the internet. I bought half a dozen of the hardcovers to give away as xmas gifts.)
When I convinced my friend Terry to stop using paraben in his excellent lotions and potions, I told him that I didn’t think paraben in one product was a problem, but that the cumulative effect of paraben in thousands of products would be (lotions, makeup, even dish detergents and thousands of other products). Well, I think the different types of flicker, none of them much older than a hundred years, might be a similar cumulative problem. Flickering light bulbs and flickering movies, TV and computer screens, and the flicker of digital sound, each may only contribute a little bit, but we are surrounded 24/7 by flicker… via our eyes and our ears. What does that amount of flicker do to a highly evolved nervous system? Might it contribute to the anxiety many people feel? Might it, while not affecting our health, disturb our wellbeing?
Then again, this could just be another crazy notion of mine. I am not a scientist.
I don’t see myself not using digital recording or not watching movies or light bulbs, but I can see myself creating flicker-free times, perhaps eating dinner by candlelight or perhaps occasionally listening to my old turntable (for which I found a new needle at this excellent resource).
I prefer the term practice period over retreat. Because to me it does not feel like a retreat at all, in the sense of moving away from an engagement or disappearing into a hole. Instead of retreating from life, it feels like I am fully engaging life.
This was my schedule for four days last week:
06:00 rise, feed cat, drink tea, wash up, start rice cooker
07:00 zazen
07:30 kinhin
07:40 zazen
08:10 kinhin
08:20 zazen
08:50 kinhin
09:00 108 full bows
09:30 breakfast (rice with pickles – ochazuke style)
10:00 reading
11:00 zazen
11:30 kinhin
11:40 zazen
12:10 kinhin
12:20 zazen
12:50 kinhin
13:00 pilates/exercising
13:30 lunch (rice cooked with lentils plus spinach or kale and green tea)
14:30 reading
15:30 play guitar
16:30 walk up and down stairs
17:00 zazen
17:30 kinhin
17:40 zazen
18:10 kinhin
18:20 zazen
18:50 kinhin
19:00 108 full bows
19:30 dinner (rice cooked with lentils plus spinach or kale)
20:30 reading or hand-writing notes or letters
22:00 lights out
On Friday I added an extra hour of zazen by substituting the bowing at 09:00 and the exercising at 13:00 for additional meditation time.
My phones were turned off and computers were shut down. I did use the calendar function of my iPhone to program the above schedule, so that I could have soft audible alerts guiding me through the day. In a temple or zen center time only exists in terms of announcing the beginning and end of periods. Instead of looking at one’s watch, one sits until the head monk strikes the signal. The reason I used calendar alerts instead of alarms is that a calendar alert only chimes once, but an alarm repeats until it is acknowledged and shut off. The iPhone became my head monk and guided me through the days. I think it worked out very well.
At the conclusion of this practice period I decided to do one or two days of practice every month and a four or five day practice period four times a year.
Good Morning. The five winners have been notified and hopefully we can get the CDs shipped out to them this week. For everyone else I will post a song or two from that album here later today or tomorrow.
The untold story of the Santa Fe Internment Camp, a Department of Justice-run facility set up to detain Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals during World War II. Former internees and declassified government documents tell the story of life behind barbed wire in this camp that stayed in operation for several months after the war ended. Video is a 5-minute excerpt of a forthcoming documentary by Neil H. Simon.
It’s about time that this story is told to a larger audience.
From the Dzogchen Center’s weekly words of wisdom:
Life is not a problem to be solved.
It is a mystery to be experienced.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke is fiendishly difficult to translate. Wonder what the original quote is.
And here are the questions you need to answer to win one of five 1999 Holiday Metal Box CDs. This is a very very limited edition that was made for a few friends only. I don’t want this to be uploaded to the web in any form, not to YouTube and not to your personal FaceBook page. I also don’t want to find this on E-Bay. If you can’t promise that the CD will NOT end up on the Internet, either in the form of files or to be sold or auctioned off, then please don’t play this game, don’t answer the questions, or at least mention in your answer-comment that you can’t accept the CD because you cannot NOT upload stuff. I am cool with you ripping the CD for your own personal use, e.g. to listen to the music on your computer, iPod or media player, but I am not OK with giving copies of those files to your friends. Think of this CD package as a piece of art – you wouldn’t photocopy an original drawing or print that was gifted to you, in order to hand the copies to your friends, would you? Well, maybe you would, but in that case please let me know in advance, so I can give the CD to another person. This was never a commercial release and is therefore unlike the other albums we have created and sold.
Hey, I am not trying to be precious or difficult, but not everything ought to be shared with the world, and these are the rules for this giveaway.
Question #1:
Which year did OL and LN perform multiple nights at the Greek Theater in L.A. with Santana?
Question #2:
Which wine was consumed by OL and Jon Gagan on the very last night of recording “The Hours Between Night + Day”, resulting in the track “Temple Dawn”?
Question #3:
On which track from “Nouveau Flamenco” can a squeeky chair be clearly heard?
If you have followed the Diary over the years, you might know all of the asnwers… if not, that might be a good place to look. Good luck. The first five correct answers will receive the metal box from me and I’ll pay for shipping.
