ContentedLife

One of my favourite places in the whole world: Durdle Door, on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.

Well actually, the Door itself I can take or leave, although I quite liked being able to catch sunset through it thanks to the fact that I was there on a very spring-like day in January. You can’t get this angle later in the year.

But I love what surrounds the Door, and the walk to it and past it from Lulworth Cove (I never head towards the Cove…)

I even enjoy the drive to get there, at least the last 20 minutes of it when I come off the main roads and snake up a single-track road to the viewpoint overlooking Tyneham and Kimmeridge, where I stop for 5 minutes to enjoy the view and watch the clouds doing a dance that I have never seen them do anywhere else, as the sea breeze rising over the Purbecks pushes them away. All the way down here the sky could have been grey and overcast and drizzly and unpromising, but here is where the clouds are turned back, they shall not pass, and the sun shines on the Lulworth ranges. Then I continue along the range road to Lulworth, and realise that once again I don’t have enough change for the car park…

Climbing the hill above the main car park, heading away from the Cove, provides a measure of whether I’m less fit or more fit than on my previous visit (this time, less fit. Oops.). Detour to visit the hidden hill, with its portal to another dimension, to stand atop it and face the full fetch of the Atlantic wind. The perfect diffraction patterns of the bay to the east of the Door, flashing with a million reflected suns. The sound of the sea just to the west of here, in one particular spot where it sends waves of almost orgasmic energy through my body. The cliffs and rock formations along the beach, so striking it’s enough to spark an interest in geology in someone whose idea of hell, once upon a time, was to be dragged around a museum looking at dusty display cases full of rocks. “They’re just rocks”, I thought, but of course now they hold the secrets of the Earth’s past, and the history of life itself. Rocks are beginning to come to life for me, and this place is the catalyst.

Butter Rock marks the farthest west you can walk along the beach. From certain angles it reminds me of an Easter Island statue, except that it faces the beach rather than out to sea as they do. It seems to be the quiet guardian of this, the quieter end of the beach. Tourists at the Door end can be raucous and rowdy, but the guardian keeps this space for those of a more meditative persuasion. Few come here, and those that do talk in hushed tones or keep a contemplative silence. Even dogs are calmer here.

This is the only place to which I return regularly, and know I will continue to do so. Normally I like to explore new places, rather than revisiting old ones. But this place is special. It’s where I plug in to the grid, recharge with energy from all the four elements: earth beneath my feet and in magnificent display, water as the sound of the sea, air as the breeze that almost knocks me over as I stand atop the hidden hill, soaking up its power, refining my balance, and fire from the sun that has shone on me on every visit so far.

This is my power place.

How about you? Where do you keep returning to, not due to lack of ideas for alternatives, but because you love it so much, because it works for you?

This was part of a much larger post which got killed by a bug in Wordpress… “Are you sure you want to edit this post?” it asked. Yes, quoth I. And it was gone. 2 hours of scribbles, vanished, and even going back in the browser doesn’t recover it.

Related wishlist item: Anyone know of a little program that can sit on the desktop, probably always on top (so SMALL) and on all desks, which will show the current contents of the (Unix) copy-paste buffer, and provide a button to clear it? Even better if it can save a few of them too, even just 2 or 3. I like the Unix system. Left click and drag to select. Left click and right click to select by marking start and end points. Middle click to paste. It’s simple, it’s fast, it avoids faffing with menus. But there’s always a slight frisson of doubt which sets in as time passes between cut and paste. Currently the only way to find out is to paste somewhere. I’d like to just be able to look at the corner of the screen, see a tiny rendering of the contents, and know.

As I looked at the sacred tea with its deep red colour, almost glowing with power, it occurred to me, probably not for the first time, that this would have made a lot more sense as the “wine” of the Last Supper, than actual wine.

I was brought up as a Christian. But never fully satisfied with over-literal interpretations of some of the stuff that went on in both the Old and New Testaments. When I finally got the chance to try psychedelics, it soon occurred to me that most of the old stories about Moses made a lot more sense viewed with the possibility that he, and maybe most of the Israelites too, had spent a lot of time tripping. I’ve seen a few “burning bushes” myself after a hefty dose of mushrooms.

I didn’t for a moment think I was the first to come up with this idea, although when similar musings by a certain Israeli researcher were publicised far and wide recently, I began to wonder. It’s such an obvious idea, did this guy actually say anything new or noteworthy?

Even the creation myth seems to be a coded reference to the evolution of mankind through the discovery of psychedelic plants (the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge), which catapulted us from instinctual apes to self-aware humans. But was it really that discovery that got us kicked out of Eden? It could be argued that those cultures which still use psychedelics regularly are still living in Eden (particularly the shamanic tribes of the Amazonian rainforest), while it’s our Western so-called civilised cultures, where Abel’s nomadic life was slain by Cain’s settled monoculture farming practices and land “ownership”, that have led rather rapidly to our fundamental disconnection from the Earth to the point where we are bringing about its destruction, we know we are doing it, and yet we still carry on doing it…

Well, enough on the Old Testament. What about the New Testament?

I think we can safely surmise that John was probably on something pretty potent when he had his Revelation. That whole book should be in the Erowid Experience Vaults.

What’s interesting me though is the idea that Jesus was a shaman. He certainly fulfills most of the criteria of shamanism that we recognise today; indeed, had he been alive in Britain in the middle ages, he would certainly have been burned as a witch by whatever power-hungry dominant religion would have existed instead of Christianity.

But did he, as with most shamans, use psychedelics as part of his medicinal repertoire?

If Jesus had lived in the rainforest, might he have said something like this…?

“I am the [Ayahuasca] Vine; you are the [Chakruna] branches [leaves?]. Put us together, and a fruitful time ensues! But the leaves on their own do nothing.”

I’m off to re-read the Gospel of John as if it’s not merely a collection of wise philosophy, but perhaps a recipe book too…

You may have read my generally glowing review of the M-Audio Xponent. I’ve been meaning to update you all with some important news on that front. After I wrote the review, my Xponent developed a fault. I’d had it less than a month, and it had had only fairly light use, maybe 8-10 hours total.

One of the audio channels started cutting out (on both Main and Booth out). Started as just a bit of distortion, then it was really quiet and badly distorted, then it cut out completely. The headphone channel wasn’t affected.

I surmised that this was a bad electrical connection. To test this theory, I did what any self-respecting techie would do: gave it a whack (well, a gentle tap on the side, and then lifting the right-hand side of the unit by about an inch and letting it drop). That did the trick: the sound cut back in, diagnosis confirmed.

Obviously I was mortified that the unit should have such a trivial manufacturing fault (it wasn’t the only one either… I’d already started to uncover some much more subtle and minor problems, like one of the pots being centred at controller value 66 rather than 64). So it was sent back to DV. A month later, repairs were still not done and there was no ETA, so after some argument and quoting of the Sale of Goods Act, DV graciously agreed to a refund.

All of that prompted a reassessment of what I was aiming for with DJing, and whether computer-based mixing would really work for me even if I got a fully working Xponent. Was I happy to be staring at a monitor to mix? No, I do that all day for my day job. Could I imagine taking a laptop and console out to a club every time I play out? No, I’d just worry about it getting nicked, broken, and the hassle of setting it up. Was I content with the quality? Sort of, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t ever going to be as good as a pro quality mixer. If I’m serious about DJing, I might as well do it on the equipment that is already there in every club the length and breadth of the land.

So I decided to invest in Pioneer CDJ1000s and a new mixer after all. That has definitely turned out to be the right choice for me. I’m having a lot more fun now than I was doing it on the computer, and getting professional-quality results that I don’t think I’d have got from the Xponent. All at much higher cost, of course, so it comes down to considering it as an investment rather than an expense. I’m glad I tried out the computer mixing option first, and did it with a console that (manufacturing defects aside), can seriously claim to be the best or one of the best out there. That left me in no doubt that I needed to pursue a different approach, rather than just a different console.

Updated: 2007/07/27 - New section on LEDs. Update on mixxx SVN.

In case any of you who have read my review of the M-Audio Xponent are thinking of getting one and wondering “but will it work under Linux?”, the short answer is a resounding Yes!… except for the LEDs, so far. More on that later.

I use Debian unstable with a hand-rolled kernel. YMMV, of course, but the chances are that if you’re using any modern distro you’ll be fine. In fact you may not even have to manually insert the kernel modules if you have a working udev setup, you might just be able to plug’n'play.

Full details below the cut, as they say…

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Update: After you’ve read this article, before you rush out and buy one of these, you should read this update (don’t worry, I’ll link to it at the bottom of the page too.

It’s rare for me to suffer from “gear lust” but the M-Audio Xponent set my pulse racing when I discovered it on the web. I’ve now had it for a few days so here’s my review. I won’t be reviewing the Torq software: I haven’t used it, as I only have Linux at the moment.
There’s a separate article about my experience getting the Xponent working with Linux and mixxx.

Review follows:

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