Ken Wilber: Welcome

Many months ago I spent an evening in a bookshop, browsing through books and drinking coffee (vanilla latte - my favourite). I spent a while browsing through a book called 'One Taste' which is in the form of a diary. It comprises daily reflections on a wide range of subjects. It was an excellent book to dip into. It sort of reminded me of 'A Year with Swollen Appendices' by Brian Eno which is an absorbing read across a dizzying array of subjects.

TED Talks

TEDTalks (audio, video)

I was led to 'TED' by David Gurteen who wrote about it in one of his recent newsletters (well worth subscribing to - it is free!) TED stands for 'Technology, Entertainment, Design'. It is an annual event which hosts talks, music etc. But it is much more than that description implies. If I said that speakers over the years have included Tony Robbins, Malcolm Gladwell, Bono, Peter Gabriel, Richard Dawkins, Dan Gilbert, Nicholas Negroponte, Dan Dennett, and Al Gore - would that give some idea of the sheer range and depth of presentations? TED sells out at least a year ahead, and is to an invited audience anyway. So, why should I be talking about this? Well, the link above takes you to a page where you can download videos of over 70 of these speakers. More are added each week - using an RSS feed, they can be downloaded as video podcasts. I've watched a handful of them and am incredibly inspired by what I have seen.

Now it's so easy to use music legally in podcasts

Back in June 2005 I wrote about using music legally in podcasts. That page has become one of the most visited pages on this site, so I thought an update was long overdue.

At the time I wrote that first post, it was difficult and probably near impossible to use music in podcasts without breaking the law. Many early podcasters were playing copyrighted music without permission. One of these early podcasters (who may lay claim to having invented podcasting) Adam Curry, received a 'cease and desist' letter and promptly stopped playing music other than that which he had permission to play.

For many podcasters at that time, the only way to do this was by searching for music from independent artists who had no recording contract and were able to give permission for their music to be used. Artists like Hollow Horse, Chance, Three Blind Mice and Brother Love became widely used.

Alternatives were inevitably going to be needed.

Then along came the podsafe music network. It wasn't the first (labels like Magnatunes were already making mp3 files available) - but they did provide a real leap forward. Established by Adam Curry, the Podsafe Music Network has grown massively since it was set up last year. Alongside a podcaster delivery system, it provides an easy way to find music that can be played legally on a podcast. And there is some excellent music on the network - including some big artists who have put a few tracks on there like James Brown (RIP) and Tom Waits.

Innovations like this have led to an increasing explosion in podcasting. There are heaps of new podcasters appearing daily on the internet, and the medium is being used by an increasingly diverse range of people for an incredibly wide ranging set of uses. In the coming weeks I am going to run a series of posts where I write about the podcasts which I regularly listen to (such delights as Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, Lynn Parsons, Dark Compass, PodcastPaul, the Zencast, Shrink Rap Radio, Ultima Thule, Echoes, Typecast, Steve Pavlina).

M Scott Peck - the ideas or the life

I spent a lazy evening recently browsing through my local branch of 'Borders' bookshop. I came across a copy of a new biography about M Scott Peck. Written by Arthur Jones, it is a detailed description of Scott Peck's life.

Regular readers will recall that I wrote about Peck's death a while back, and was particularly unimpressed by obituaries which were around at the time. There was an undue focus on the way in which his life had failed to live up to the promise of 'The Road Less Travelled' and his other books. Now I don't think that an obituary is the place to tackle that kind of thing.

Doubtless, there is the fact that he left his wife of 40 years a few years before he died, remarried again. And he was reported to be estranged from his children.

It just feels to me that those who criticise are failing to understand the key message in Peck's writing. He wasn't putting himself up as a role model or guru. He was just offering advice on how to live a life. I found the advice incredibly useful at the stage I was at in my life when I first read it. For that I am grateful.

As for the biography, I'm as fascinated as anyone to read about the lives of others - that is how we learn. But we shouldn't be disappointed when we find a flawed and deeply human person rather than someone who is perfect.

Link to Earlier post

Paris Transatlantic magazine

'Paris Transatlantic' is an online magazine. I originally found it and posted a link to it a couple of years ago, on an earlier weblog.

If you are interested in new music, contemporary, electronica and jazz it is well worth a visit. It would appeal to anyone who wants to explore sounds and names that they are unlikely to have heard of before. The editing of the magazine is handled by a team of people including Nate Dorward (who also edits an excellent poetry magazine) and Dan Warburton who has written for Wire magazine for a few years now. Dan Warburton has also produced music for the online stasisfield music label, which I love.

The magazine comes out monthly and is worth a surf when you have a few minutes to spare.

(From the 'things i found' archive)

Friday Playlist 3

It's been a while since I did one of these - a list of the albums I am listening to at the moment. (Earlier ones are here and here).

The music which is forming the soundtrack for my life at the moment is:

1. Nine Horses - Money for all

I bought the original album 'Snow Borne Sorrow' a while back when it came out. This new release is a mixture of new tracks (3 of them) and remixes of tracks from the album. David Sylvian works well in the mix with Steve Jansen and Burnt Friedman. It's a CD which slowly burns into your memory banks and demands replays.

2. Tom Waits - Orphans

This had such amazing reviews, that I couldn't wait to get hold of a copy. I got it for Christmas, and have been dipping into it ever since. Three hours of Tom Waits, meandering all over his various muscial styles, voices and topics. The third CD is probably the weirdest (saying something where Waits is concerned!) as it mixes stories, poems and soundtrack outtakes. The whole CD set is a mammoth thing which surprisingly hangs together.

3. Ketil Bjornstad /David Darling - Epigraphs

This is a stunning album of improvisations between piano and cello. It shifts from modern ambient, cool jazz to echoes of Bach and Mozart. Great music for thinking and creating.

4. Joanna Newsom - Ys

It's an epic album, full of stories and threads of ideas. The orchestration by Van Dyke Parks is amazing and the whole thing is a labryinth which reveals new secrets on each listen.

5. Joanna Newsom - The Milk Eyed Mender

Well, the new album took me into the first one. This is a much starker arrangement. Her voice is somewhere between Bjork, Kate Bush and Tori Amos. But it has its own unique territory too! I love the lyrics, and I love the arrangements for each song.

6. Badly Drawn Boy - About a Boy

I know he has a new album out - and no, I haven't heard it yet. But I saw the film of which this is the soundtrack again recently, and was drawn back to this album. Damon Gough carves out his own furrow. But above all else, he writes great melodies. I absolutely love the song 'Silent Sigh', used at a particularly painful moment in the film.

7. Fennesz - Endless Summer

I came to Fennesz's work through a collaboration he did with David Sylvian. He is a guitarist and laptop improviser from Austria. This album is truly beautiful - it rises gently out of a backround of noise and captures you like a stunning sunrise on a crisp morning.

8. John Cale - Black Acetate

An eclectic mix of styles, some killer riffs and a giant bag of seething energy. And the production is stunning. I'm not particularly precious about production values - but this one just reaches out of the speakers and grabs you by the throat.

9. Paul Weller - Stanley Road

I'm not sure how I missed this when it first came out. Last year I bought the anniversary edition and have listened to it so many times since. What a classic album!

10. Sigur Ros - Takk

I know I have chosen this album before on this blog, but it really does tease out new things on each listen. Earlier this week I spent an evening listening really carefully to it through headphones and there is so much going on in the mix that I hadn't heard before.

He's Mark Rushton, He makes music and art

I have been following the work of Mark Rushton for a couple of years now. He used to run a website called 'Hooray for Vouvray' and then migrated all of his activities to his own domain. As well as creating ambient and drone music, he is also a painter. He produces a new podcast every month or so with samples of the music he is working on. Well worth a listen.

One thing I particularly like about the site, is watching someone who is clearly following their passion.

10,000 readers

Earlier today this weblog received its 10,000th visitor. That is cause for a small celebration - OK, only for a minute. This happens at a time when things have been incredibly quiet here. Well, that will change soon. I am in the middle of plans to overhaul this site. At the moment it is a mixture of posts on music, poetry, self-development, technology and many other issues. Plus a few photos. I'm going to develop the site as a series of channels - using blogger's label feature, so that visitors can choose their channel and explore from there.

Gurteen Knowledge Seeds

This is brilliant! I attended a Workshop a couple of years ago, run by David Gurteen. I also subscribe to his monthly e-newsletter. Follow the link and you will find a page with a button on it. Click the button, and a small window opens where ideas will be posted at an interval which you can choose. The ideas range from quotes, to suggestions, or book references. Try it.

It's a great way to get inspiration moving. But do be warned - if you are easily distracted like I am, you will need to time its use very carefully.

This is the first of a series of posts taken from a parallel weblog which I ran for a while called "Things I found". It was a place I used to keep links to interesting things on the internet. Now that blogger has labels I can do this within the main blog!

because the light faded when it should have stayed bright

When at school, nowhere else but the space that was given
And those tighter moments, when the neurosis of the time
Made no more sense than the 70s were supposed to…


Three lines, two times, and once we had become
The glide of a hawk, the times when we captured
All the dreams that had been spinning around outside


And put them in a small leather bag, pressed in tight
So that we could save them for later
Hang on until it all felt right


Dreams are alive in my head now
Good and bad, sad and mad
Wanting to be regrets, urgent needs to do things now


And so I jump out of the plane, ask rather than waiting
Sing rather than whisper, let go rather than clutch
And think that it is all too much, too particular…

Here comes autumn

The importance of scarcity

I have an idea for an article which I am going to write. The title is "Being overwhelmed with musical choice - the importance of scarcity" and it will be about the dilemma created by the digital age. Thanks to the internet and digital files, there is more choice than we have ever experienced. This seems like an incredible opportunity. All that music, all those podcasts to listen to, all those audio books, all those text files.

But the down-side of all this is that we reach saturation point where it is no longer possible to take in everything that we collect. Look at the total time-span of all the material loaded onto the mp3 player and ask yourself whether you really do have the time to listen to everything that is on it.

The result of all this is that music and literature become disposable. I remember back in the 70s and 80s buying a vinyl record every so often and making a real commitment to listen to it and absorb it, get to know it. Now there are so many new albums being released every week. This democracy is great, but it does mean that only the truly and incredibly special gets through to my ears.

The resulting feeling reminds me of the feeling I used to get as a teenager late on a Saturday after I had been listening to the radio for a whole day and was just beyond saturation point, jaded and in desperate need of silence.

Standing Stones in Corsica

Here are a couple of pictures taken in Corsica back in July. We visited a site full of standing stones, which was beautiful and filled with a deep presence. It was unusual to see these stones somewhere so hot, rather than in deepest Wales with wind and rain.

Space Age Accommodation

I'm away at a two-day conference at the University of Hertfordshire. This is the first time I have spent the night in a university hall of residence room since I was a student 25 years ago!

Things have changed. The campus itself is comprised of a cluster of spectacular statements and feats of architecture. The accommodation itself was in a building shaped like a third of a giant ring doughnut with rooms on four floors looking in to a central courtyard.

This university used to be called Hatfield Polytechnic - a poly with a real history. It also hosted a great venue for music in the 70s and 80s.

Two exhausting days later I find myself home again, easing myself through a day, picking up the actions that came out of the event and clearing the eternal backlog of email.

imagining possibilities

you see, when I was young and writing for all I could find
I read somewhere that it was wrong to use too many words
that end in –ing, so avoided it, wanting to get it right


how stupid though, how the rules that we get are really all
there to be ignored, to be recreated. When word writing
is like sound making, a kingdom where you can become your own king


and king can sing like the ings that are all waiting to be worshipped
or the swings that I sat on and went as high as I could
kicking my feet to the clouds, and feeling the rush of my stomach


whatever direction you take – no, wait – it’s me I’m writing about
take the you away, drift into the inner world of my mind
imaginations that are special, filled with quiet secrets


surely the inner signals that we fill the landscape with, are no
more than the rich resonance of colours and sounds, the
one meaning that fits with a spectacle of memories


now – the kingfisher, the colour blue, the word ‘just’
little ticks that litter these constructions, and the breath
the inward and outward signs of life, of purpose.