The First Church of David Bowie, Phonomancer

This isn't perfect, but hopefully it will get better with time and thought. Imagine you are watching a movie on your tablet. Pa, the masculine aspect of the Godhead, is the information of which the movie is composed, the all-the-sand-grains-on-all-the-beaches-in-the-world number of 1's and 0's, and all the abstruse patterns and operations that organize and control the qualities and position of every pixel on the screen. Ma, the feminine aspect of the Godhead, is the story conveyed in the images and sounds constituted from Pa. She's also the psychology of the characters, the situational tension, the subtext of the dialogue, all the aesthetic decisions involved in creating the movie's costuming, set dressing, lighting, editing, etc., etc., etc. Kid A, the Self, is the node on the Divine Network where Pa and Ma combine to create an experience of meaning and aesthetic emotion. Yeah, it needs some work. But I do love labeling the Self "Kid A"! Why? ...

The visions that come to me in ceremony are essentially dreams that I experience while wide awake. Like dreams, they evanesce quickly--if you don't record them immediately upon returning to "normal" consciousness (using that term advisedly, obvs), the details become blurry, or maybe you'll forget the experience altogether. That's where shooting video of ceremonies comes in handy. In between every song I work with, I pause to explain to the camera what just happened, how I'm feeling about it, and what's coming up next. That way I have a detailed record of events. The next day--or five days later--I can review the footage to refresh my memory about something, and sometimes even discover that I'd talked about an experience I didn't remember until that moment. The problem is this results in a lot of material. Imagine if you could wake up to write down a complete narrative for every dream you had in the course of an evening. Not only would you be...