London

My husband gifted me with a trip to London for my birthday this year. Given our financial status, that was quite outrageous of him, and I certainly acknowledge that, his commitment to fulfill an old dream of mine and his willingness to compensate me for a depressing, blank birthday I had last year.

We stayed for three nights with a Polish friend of his living there, and we managed to cover a lot of the world's coolest city's attractions. I even joined local Couchsurfers on an Europride evening at a typical English pub in Euston. We saw lots of things, I managed to take pictures despite his impatience, we saw Celtic, Egyptian and Greek treasures at the awesome British Museum, and I got a kick out of the whole experience.

It was especially hard for him to join me on that, and certainly not because of lack of funds. He's the typical Spaniard, so he's anglophobic down to his last cell. His remarks and constant comparisons with Spain and his harsh criticism of problems that only existed in his mind deterred us from a truly romantic experience, but of course I'm quite used to that. So I just practiced my vibrational hygiene and enjoyed the ride: double-deck buses, wonderful Asian food, riverside walks, great live music, cosmopolitanism and being present in flesh and bones at the sceneries of so many incredible feats, from groundbreaking T-Mobile TV ads to the most interesting history of Modern Age and the 20th century. It's like I'm more part of it now.

Here are the photos of our adventure:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Awen1980/London09#

We spent there the International Day against Homophobia (Sunday, May 17th) together, so I didn't join any public acts, such as the Besada in Plaza Mayor here in Madrid, but today I've been watching this video and listening to this song the whole day. How funny and inspiring:



Now tonight I'm having a potluck with Couchsurfers again, and this time it's a 1001 Nights theme night. Everybody's bringing a dish with a tale to tell, a la Scheherazade, and I'm bringing my stories of London to tell over a Ploughman's Lunch recipe I'm going to prepare right now.

Manpulating Time

Dr. Overtone has taught me to experience the Beat from walking. Each foot landing on the ground is a beat, and on the average human walking we learn to count like Baroque masters did: tempo 92. Because we use two feet, have a symmetrical body, and the ego functions on duality, the most immediate way to accentuate the beats is Duple Meter. In most of the Western world kids are lucky enough to study Music at school, and Doc says they all learn at the band that left foot is one, right foot is two. Doo-day, doo-day, doo-day and so begins the magic of Time Manipulation, embellished with variations of sound and gaps of silence.

Duple meter is natural. It's the music that moves wild crowds, and that uniformises men in uniforms as they drill in perfect synchronization, the beat that makes men and women who have nothing in common feel a sense of belonging to an abstract and unrealistic creation such as a "country". One foot and then the other creates Order. Doo-day is the template for national anthems, for rebellious chanting, for bulding up rage, lust and other basic functions of mind and movement.

But then Doc taught me something else. Add another weak beat before counting Doo again. Left, right, left, and Doo when right hits the floor. Doo-da-dee, doo-da-dee, doo-da-dee. Now one transcends the reality of the body, has reached for a level of understanding that isn't contained in the bicameral mind. One has been unfolded beyond one's own nature in a sense, so if duple meter is natural, triple is supernatural.

If two is order, three is subversive. Triple meter is the gateway to Spirit, the root of medieval religious music, of spaces created to stir love where love needed to be tamed. In three come the Gods of Faerie, and triune is the shining God hidden within the heavy, cold and unfriendly stone walls built ten centuries ago.

The Time element is definetely associated with the Three all over the world. The Norns, the Hours, the three parts of a well-told story. The Holy Trinity; The Twins and The Mother; the Oak King, the Holly King and Mother Earth. The Welsh Triads; Iron Age/Middle Ages/Modern Age; before, breakthrough and after. It takes three to manipulate Time. For a long time, we've known the secret--that the secret is in Time.

I'll have to get back to you on 5/4 and 7/4. I've begun trying them out just today, and loved the intoxication they produced.

Image: Zoomorphic Triskele, by Owen C. R. Pierce.

Creative Plenitude

I've been incredibly creative lately, which probably explains why my blog has just broken a personal record for partial inactivity period. My blog's long been a device to help me zig-zag my way around creative blocks, and sometimes blast through them. But no blocks lately, whatsoever. Not even money.

1st, I've remained a kitchen maven these past few months, and there's the brand new cookbook project I've released to the world yesterday, a blogspot blog with recipes from my Couchsurfing group, "Madrid: Cooking". I'm really proud of that, and eagerly hoping the rest of the gang will help me keep it permanently growing. Here it is.

Then, German and Music have been keeping me really busy. I'm still with the Deutsche Welle online course, and the headway is shining. Musicwise, my piano lessons with Hector are my favourite time of the week, and we're about to begin working with the full diatonic scale. The method Hector's applying is based on improvisation, so first we've played with the Pentatonic scales, then one Hexatonic, and now I've got five notes in the Dorian mode--with both hands on the keys! I'm sure this Thursday or the next, I'll be receiving either the full scale or another chord to mess around with. Also, I've signed up for the public Language and Music schools. Now let's see if I'm lucky enough to have my name picked on the public lottery that decides who gets a seat!

And now there's the brand new world that is Dreamwidth.org, which I'm not only exploring, but helping to build from ground zero. I've already created two communities there, one for the Art of Allowing and the other for Songwriting, and I'm sure that will be the next "original" for my blog--I'll definetely keep blogspot up for ppl who want to comment but don't want to join any network website to post comments, Yahoo 360º will be the place where the blog is non-discontinued, and Tribe is down again at the time of this writing. Dreamwidth is vibrant, new and full of really interesting people and a feeling of eagerness in the air. My dreamwidth address is awen.dreamwidth.org, but alas I cannot issue invites.

Hail the bonfires of May Day!