moby and me: Easter Pilgrimage To Bucovina (part four)

If you missed part one of my Easter Pilgrimage To Bucovina, go here. Part four follows herein.

Last Night

Last night, I tried to get through this recollection, but it didn’t happen. That reminds me…

Last week, you [moby] mentioned that you were going to a seminar where Petr Janata, a cognitive neuroscience professor from UC Davis, was going to be speaking.

moby wrote:

“i’m having a seminar/conversation with neuroscientist petr jenata at the rubin museum in nyc… come down and talk about the brain with us.”

You never mentioned how it went.

I found Petr Jenata’s website. It states there that he uses “music as a model system for studying the neural basis of auditory attention, imagery and memory.”

Some background music: moby, We’re all made of stars.

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Also, I checked out the sxsw spin interview video. Quick impression: another uninspired, interviewer along for the joy ride of kicking it with an unassuming, soft-spoken A list celebrity.

Will you ever find a hardcore interview where the interviewer can actually engage you at your intellectual level?

Again, congrats on the website update. The new homepage is cool.
moby writes:

“Maybe if I lurk in the shadows the bronzed and sculpted beach denizens [of Miami] will be less inclined to throw garbage at me.

Anywhoo (to quote homer simpson), ’last night’ is now up and streaming on my myspace page, and it comes out monday everywhere except north america, tuesday in north america, and may in the uk(don’t ask, I don’t understand record label machinations).”

Oh yeah, since you like cartoons so much, I got a comics link for you, dude. Check out the happy chicken suicide cult.

I’ve been listening to Last Night on your myspace page. Honestly, Last Night doesn’t sound like a tribute to anything beautiful and worthwhile. And I recall you mentioning something about a Freudian slip in an interview. Perhaps, Last Night iz a eulogy to the New York Disco.

Oh yeah, I need videos or something on youtube.com, if you want me to link them up on this blog. If you don’t mind, I could strap some of the songs to some of my pilgrimage videos. But then, I’d need to be able to download the music files. Got ideas?

Anywhoo, there’s no need to get upset at my honest opinion as long as Last Night goes gold or, better still, platinum. Good luck with that. I mean it.

Money is good. A lot of money is better. A lot of money without sweat, blood and tears iz the best. Isn’t that the point that you are really trying to make?

Maybe, you want to know why I came to this opinion. Obviously, Last Night is missing something. It could just be time and a little more refining. I’m guessing you feel the same about it lacking something. You just couldn’t put your finger on it. If you felt differently, you would be speaking as passionately about Last Night as you do politics, animal rights, and trees.

So what’s missing?

A sense of hope, perhaps. It’s time for you, my dude, to get “in synch” with hope and out of synch with despair. It’s been too long in coming for you to emerge from the darkness, the shadows, and despair. Take a walk on the wild side…

Roadside shots from Bucovina with me hanging out the window of a fast moving Citroen

My two cents: take extreme measures; go extreme ways to find a little hardcore hope to share with us all.

Purifications

I was down for a couple of days in some kind of strange mind-soul-body detox where I couldn’t eat, think or talk much. I ran a fever every night for three nights in a row, and everything bad, I presume, got sweated out or otherwise. Actually, I don’t remember much of anything between early Monday morning (4am) and Wednesday noon.

More background music: moby, Lift me up.

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It’s strange being so vulnerable when you are out there on the road. I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone, so I just tried to keep quiet and out of people’s way while the cold fire ran its course through me. I tired. I don’t know if I was successful. I can imagine that being on tour is something like that, but, somehow, I guess it’s a lot worse when you can’t get off the train.

Anyway, it’s been a while since I went down like that. Even today, I’m not back to 100 percent. I still can’t eat much. And whatever I try to eat passes through me fairly quickly. Maybe, there is some detoxing left to do. I’m trying to take it easy.

Voronet

My most favorite of the Moldovan orthodox monasteries is Voronet. It is famous for the blue-dominant religious paintings that decorate the outside of the church. Poets and writers have paid their compliments to the church throughout the ages, but most of the external decorations are faded. I suppose the blue we can see today is nothing like the blue that was observed yesterday.

Voronet Church – side seen from the doorway

There is a powerful silence in the inner sanctuary of the Voronet church. Standing in the inner sanctuary is like standing in the middle of a ring of big transformers. This is part of why Voronet has appeals for me. Being there puts me into a prayerful mood quickly, sensitizes me to eternal movements and bodies, and heightens my perception of God as very real, very near.

More background music: Enya, Angels

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Hearsay about the eternal does not seem to be enough; hearsay is unconvincing and does not feed our spirit enough for it to rise up higher and higher. The eterenal must be drunk first-hand like drinking waters from a river by getting down on all fours and putting your mouth on the river like animals do. We must pursue it like the cat pursues an evasive and agile mouse because it does not seem to come easily to the idle of spirit.

And so I return to the mouse hole, waiting to catch something that is alive… something that will reawaken me to a life that is bigger and more complete than everyday concerns and material ambitions.

But what is special about Voronet is not the architecture. Nor the art. Like many other Moldovan monasteries, the architecture is based on the footprint of the original Putna built by Stephen III of Moldavia. And the art is not much different from other Moldovan monasteries. It’s mostly Byzantine.

Southwest View of Voronet

The only painting that seems unusual is on one of the doors to the altar room. It is a representation of a dark haired, dark-skinned Archangel Michael. The style seems to pre-date the Byzantine and Classical Realism (Italian). But even this painting doesn’t make the mouse hole… a worthy hunting ground for that supposedly mythical mouse.

The west wall (or rear) of the Voronet church.

In fact, it’s all about the mouse.

Contemplations

But what would you say if you caught the mouse (not just thrilled as it went scampering by) and, suddenly, you discovered that, instead, it is you that has been caught by a lion?

This is the dilemma.

The eternal responds almost too quickly to sincere, heart-felt invitations. And it responds with imperatives, difficult obligations, duties, and responsibilities.

Some cry out to God for an answer (think of the gospel-like loops in moby’s songs), but those who cry out are somehow unready and unprepared to hear an answer that does not serve them in the manner in which they understand to be delightful, liberating, and empowering.

I am no different.

What does it mean to be a Christian?

I am not one, though I would like to be one- sometimes. Am I qualified, then, to attempt to define it? Perhaps, not.

Still, if I am just a little honest with myself, I have to imagine that the Christian gospel as not being something comfortable and easy as simply taking the moral high ground and condemning others for their errors and sins.

Christ criticized those persons during his ministry. He called them hypocrites.

Instead, I understand that Christianity is a social gospel that encourages the Christian to share in the hardships of others – knowing the troubles of others as deeply as we know our own. And, further more, being strong enough to share with them at the same time, Christ’s message of hope, beauty, and reconciliation.

And I recognize too that without a great passion for God, there can not be a great passion to care for others. You have to believe in God is as real as the person you passed on the street. And then, you have to desire God as much as the middle-age business man desires the twenty-year old total hottie that smiled at him at the coffee shop.

And there is a need for other things too: humility and trust – to name a few. Can you [moby] make some tracks with loops about these things – humility and trust? It would help me meditate on them across the everyday of the days and nights of my material endeavors and ambitions.

Henri Nouwen, a Dutchman and a popular author of books on spirituality, once wrote:

“The person of hope lives in the moment with the knowledge and trust that all of life is in good hands.”

More background music: Dr. Who Theme Song from the 1980s.

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Hope

On Monday, I return to a life in the world, I will face again the wide opportunities of self-compromise, deceit, conceit and hustle as well as try my best to dodge the deceptions and misrepresentations of those who would like to exploit me and my work for their own profit.

As C. S. Lewis once described the defeat of man in different words, the anticipation of such things is like having heart worms.

This guy looks like he has heart worms too. He’s driving a horse-driven wagon.

But I would like to face Monday differently. I would like to face tomorrow with hope instead of despair.

Or better still, I would like to face the tomorrow’s opportunities with warm optimism about me, my life and the world being in good hands… as opposed to approaching everything with a cold, calculating callousness to win and succeed by the lonely merit and force of my demonstrated competence to out think others on the fly.

I would like that very much.

Amen.

Stan Faryna
March 30th, 2008
Bucharest, Romania

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FEED UPON other posts about moby by Stan Faryna:

>> Austin, Democrats and Degenerates
>> Concidence and Melancholy
>> Bucharest and Chestie
>> New moby album coming out, Last Night

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About Stan Faryna

He is the founder and co-founder of several technology, design and communication companies in the United States and Europe including Faryna & Associates, Inc., Halo Interactive, and others.

His political, scholarly, social and technical opinions have appeared in The Chicago Defender, Jurnalul National, The Washington Times, Sagar, Saptamana Financiara, Social Justice Review, and other publications.

Mr. Faryna is editor-in-chief of Black and Right (Praeger Press, 1996), a landmark collection of socio-political essays by important American thinkers including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Copyright

Copyright 1996 to 2008 by Stan Faryna.

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