Man, whatsup w/ this square?

This is one of the trippiest squares I've seen on a webpage.

What if your gut feeling tells you to ignore your gut feeling?

This is a paradox I stumble on over & over. The answer is to think & feel nothing. There is a graphic I did that reflects the paradox --- I decided to use it for the album cover of "S_in_the_S_is" since it is the state of mind I find myself trying to reach while creating the album. It hasn't been released yet.

Black & white are opposites, and one repeatedly gets encapsulated within the other in the illustration. Like when you try to sort through the question posted in the title, you keep going back & forth between opposites...ignoring the gut feeling IS going with the gut feeling. One entity IS its opposite.

This brings me closer to explaining the meaning of "S_in_the_S_is." S is my initial, so it represents me. The S is in something, and the S is that something at the same time. I am in it, and I am it. I am what I am in.

Also, two S's form an infinity symbol if you flip one of them & place it directly on top of the other...this represents the infinite nature of the paradox described.

Another branch of this concept/illustration is this:

Say white & black represent yin & yang, yin being a passive act & yang being an aggressive act. Say for instance you carry out an aggressive act (yang). But your decision to carry out that act was made via a passive (yin) process...So what you did was yang, but it was encapsulated within yin. So your act was both yin & yang at the same time.

So in the illustration, you see white & black circles interacting. They're encapsulated within a black ellipse, then a white ellipse, then a black one again, and the rest takes place in your imagination once the core concept is illustrated.

-----on thinking & feeling nothing-----

This is the state in which you have the most potential to think & feel. In this empty state, you have the most potential to be filled. You are more likely to eat when your stomach is totally empty than when it is half full --- so when it is totally empty, it has more potential to be filled than when it is half full.

Creativity is the artful balance between thinking & feeling. Thinking & feeling nothing creates the greatest potential for creative success. Starting at zero always creates the most potential. Think of throwing a punch. The punch is less powerful if you start it with your arm stretched halfway out than if your arm is not stretched at all.

Also, the zero point is what allows you to transverse between different moods & mindsets, which is what I had to do to achieve the range & bracket of styles explored on "S_in_the_S_is." To enter a brand new [creative] mindset completely, you must get rid of pre-existing mindsets & start at zero.

Any artist of any kind will tell you that the greatest artistic moments "just happen." Especially timing between improvising musicians. When you try to calculate [thinking] moments like that, they don't work. Same with abstract paintings or anything else. A perfect example of this musical timing is at 5:48 in the following video when Miles Davis plays a trill and the drummer plays a roll at the same time. If you listen for other moments like that, it is obvious that they are not merely coincidence.

TIMING AT 5:48

What's up with the 2 goats trapped on the ledge of a bridge...?

What were those 2 goats doing on the 6-inch ledge over night? Didn't even have a place to "rest their tired legs by tucking them under their bodies for a few seconds." There's no bathroom up there but the one on the right looks like it has a diaper on.

Here's the article: goat article

Cosmic Link between Stephen Hawking/Keith Jarrett/Miles Davis...?

An article in Yahoo news started off saying that according to Stephen Hawking,

"God no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the Universe due to a series of developments in physics..."

Hawking said:

"...Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist..."

This reminds me of a Keith Jarrett interview about Miles Davis. Jarrett mentioned that he & Miles had the following conversation:

Miles: How do you do that?

Keith: What?

Miles: Play from nothing.

Also, in perhaps the same interview, Jarrett spoke about the musical process. He said something along the lines of it being like creating a universe or reserving your own little universe.

Anyway, maybe there's a connection there and maybe there's not but it's fun to flirt with the idea that it might imply Keith Jarrett has some special link to the cosmos. We all do, but maybe Jarrett's is more fixed somehow. If Miles is right, Jarrett is a master at creating from nothing, and if Hawking is right, the universe created itself from nothing. Both Hawking & Miles have pretty sturdy platforms to speak from.

I also thought of an audio interview I dug up --- I think it was Lenny White but it might have been Mtume or Badal Roy. Whoever it was said that the "creative force"...."flowed cleaner through Miles Davis." He spoke about this "creative force" in ways that implied that he may have thought it was some sort of cosmic or divine entity or phenomenon.

I can't find those Jarrett interviews at the moment - can't remember exactly where they are because I haven't seen them in a few years, but I'm 99% sure those references are from either the Electric Miles: A Different Kind of Blue documentary, The Miles Davis Story documentary, or the Keith Jarrett - Art of Improvisation documentary. Each of these links have Jarrett talking about Miles but not the parts I'm referencing...

Alright, I'm only sort of half serious about all this but it's just something that came to mind.

MILES ELECTRIC: A DIFFERENT KIND OF BLUE


THE MILES DAVIS STORY


KEITH JARRETT - ART OF IMPROVISATION