Introductions, Explanations

Today is day one of the preparatory fast.  Friday night, at dusk (about this time Friday, I realize now) I will be starting the next leg of a journey that I started on 3 years ago.  I will be doing a major ordeal ritual outside, and will be suspended by metal hooks.  This is a private event, and, there will be a lot that I won't be able to formulate into words.  But this is okay, as it really isn't for everyone to know about.

So why, you ask, am I writing a public blog about the experience?  

I am making this process public because eventually this (hopefully) will become a part of my larger art practice.  Well, in that since, it already has, as it has taken me three years to get to the point of being able to even start the testing phase.  The first test in this portion of the project is simple:  Can I do this?  Can I bring such intense pain into my art practice and still create and generate art?  

So maybe I should back up a bit, and over the next few days discuss the background of why, and how, I wound up doing such a strange and crazy thing.  It started a little over three years ago, when my life fell apart (as I saw it), and, as I have managed to rediscover and redevelop myself over years of work, I find myself ready for this next transitional step, one of questioning the total reality of what my friends affectionately call "the meat puppet".  

The second point of address is the title of this blog, Chrysalis Void Mind.  What a pompous title, no?  I think so.  But the idea of transformation is wrapped in the idea of the chrysalis, and the best part of a chrysalis is that it may or may not actually survive the process.  In addition, it is a process that must be undertaken alone.  Unlike a chrysalis, I have had a lot of pointers and helpers on the way of my absolute personal transformation that I'm working on.  I admit this freely, and am grateful for the help I've gotten.  But in the end, the work is internal.  As to Void Mind, well, that has been the goal all along, with each step (and will continue even after this weekend, which in all honesty is a very small step, simply a key point on a larger journey).  No mind, void mind... this is similar, but not the same.  To be void one encompasses everything, and, at the same time, nothing.  It is a paradox, the paradox of a black hole.  This is my internal goal, the one I strive every day to reach.  I flounder from time to time, forgetting things like "void can have no attachments" and such (that is the hardest part, remembering that I cannot afford to keep attachments to people, things, places and so on) but the universe is self correcting, and I find that when I try to make attachments they often go away on their own.  I am terribly blessed by a universe that keeps me on my personal/internal mission.  

So wait, how does all of this blathering apply to art?  Well, I decided that because my music and art is intentionally a practice of obliterating obstacles and trying new things and trying to not make attachments and letting everything go, then my life should be this as well.  I am not to be separate from my art.  My art cannot be outside of me, nor me outside of it.  In addition, there is a concept that we are our truth, and that truth is something that exists beyond "the meat puppet" as it were- that beyond our chemical makeup, telling us to love and lust, be happy, be sad, that all of these are chemicals.  Art primarily comes from these concepts, and we judge our arts often on the merit of what pleases the meat puppet.  So for me, my life, and my art, is to see if it is possible to extend beyond the meat puppet and reach an actual truth.  

So this begins here, and I will slowly work through the history, tell of events, and continue the process of this art online.  Part catharsis, part process, part confession, and possibly fiction.