Two things today.
Quaker meeting & Podcast.
Guess which one had lot of loud music, swearing, and laughing, and which one put me in that weird place between being asleep and awake?
Answer: Both.
One of them was totally in my head though, while the other was recorded for posterity. You’ll have to check the postcast blog to hear the recorded one (and that’ll happen over next week, I think).
Quaker meeting is odd, for someone like me who grew up in a (for Canada) bible belt. The question I heard when meeting kids I didn’t know wasn’t “Do you go to church?” but instead “Which church do you go to?” I’d tell people I didn’t go to a church, and they’d look like I’d just kicked a puppy, and then say “But, but, you’re going to Hell then…” and just kinda wander away from me.
Quaker meeting is different. There’s silence. Just… silence. Left with your own thoughts. Think about the last time you were somewhere that left you thinking “Wow, it’s like, freaky-quiet here.” I hear/feel that up at my mom’s place from time to time. Her place is just over the tip of the first layer of mountains in the Fraser Valley, and since there’s not a lot of dirtbikes or chainsaws running, it can get silent out there. Like, “Oh, maybe I’ve gone deaf” silent. It was usually nice. Left you to your thoughts. Sometimes, it was a little freaky, ’cause you’d be left with nothing but your thoughts.
Quaker meeting is like that, a little. You’re aware of the other dozen or so people in the room, but don’t know anything about them, except that they’re also enveloped in this silence. The folks in Chilliwack would probably have equated it with meditation, which would instantly mean satanic cult stuff. Amazing that I wasn’t eager to jump on the first bus to Who Would Jesus Judge Camp, huh?
This silence is just whatever it is. Sometimes people have things to say about things. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it’s about whatever’s happening in the world, or what’s happening to a particular individual, or just some philosophical point that happened to move the person to speak. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes sad, corny is fine, too. Sometimes, like today, it’s just silence.
The idea is that there is “That of god in everyone.” There’s something very Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy about that for me. The whole “Answer to life, the universe, and everything” was being determined by this supercomputer, which had a massively distributed program running on every human on the planet. The computer was called Earth. There’s part of me that likes the idea that the people who make me insane are just portions of “the answer” I just haven’t figured out how to interface with, yet.
Maybe it’s that my deep focus in the temporal lobe won’t let me.
Ooh, fifteen minutes into the first Bourne movie. Fun!
Did a double-feature podcast with Johnny Vancouver and Duncan again today. It’s fun. I dig the music, and enjoy the chatting, but it feels a little too hectic sometimes. We end up talking over each other in our panic/joy about whatever we’re talking about, and I have moments of “Is any of this going to make sense at all? Is this going to be coherent at all when someone who wasn’t here listens to it?”
I often have that feeling I used to get when I would walk into a music store, and completely forget every song by every band I’d heard in the last six months. I arrive at John’s place and start getting ready to put together my stuff and think “there was something else I was going to play today, something better than this.” There was talk today of doing the next show via Voice Over IP (Internet Phone). I figure that’s the only way we could make the show nerdier: to be wearing headsets while we do it, and not actually be in the same room.
Ever noticed how the guy from the movie F/X looks like the tall guy from Who’s Line Is It Anyway? Just me? Maybe just me.
