I saw Anubis in my carpet this morning.  It happens to me all the time.  I'll be looking at some random texture or pattern and see images, particularly faces.  Others have told me that the same happens to them. 

    I guessing that it has to do with our brain's need to impose order and interpretation onto reality.  Our brain is always trying to make sense out of things, and will force interpretation when it can't.  And so we see Anubis in the carpet or Jesus in the clouds, or some such things.

    This tendency for our brain to impose meaning is a real flaw in human nature since there is no necessary commonality to the order that our brain likes to impose.  What we experience is constantly being interpreted by our brains through a filter of past experiences, emotions, prejudices and ideologies.  I often talk to someone, or watch two people talking, and realize that they are so far atuned from each other that they're talking about two different things and don't even know it.  Sometimes I feel that it is a miracle that communication works as well as it does, as people are more likely to misunderstand each other than understand.

    So, is this another arguement for relativistic nihilism?  No I don't think so.  Rather, I think that this points the way to greater understanding.  The misuderstndings that plague communication arise from the filters through which  we experience everything, -the emotional and conceptual baggage that we always carry around.  The trick, then, is to strip away that baggage to reduce the impact of the filters.  Is that possible, or is there no absolute truth or experience to find?  Perhaps all truth is relative, mediated by finlters and interpretations.  I don't think so. I think the goal of meditation and contemplation is to strip away the filters so that a more pure form of experience is available.  I like to call it Immaculate Perception.  As Lao Tsu says ``Knowledge is to add information while wisdom is to subtract it.``

    Just as one can realize that the face in the carpet is a product of your immagination, so can we come to see how many of our perceptions are a function of our baggage.  By understanding the trick and the true perspective, you come closer to seeing things as they really are.  (While it may not be possible to see an absolute truth, that doesn't mean you can't have degrees of truth leading up to it.)

    I`m just finishing up reading a great novel which illustrates this point superbly.  "Horns" by Joe Hill, tells the story of a young man accused of his girlfriend`s murder.  One morning he wakes up to find that he`s grown horns that force the people he meets to tell him the truth.  Through a series of interactions and stories told from different perspectives, we slowly find out the real story behind the murder.  We see the events through the presumptions of different characters, and realize that no events are explained simply.  It is a very dark, gothic novel, much in the style of Neil Gaiman.  Recommended. 

    With everyone having their own interpretations and investments in seeing things different ways, it`s a miracle that we understand each other at all. 

    Time for mid year music reviews.

    1. Gorillaz - Plastic Beach:  Although there are tracks on this album that fall outside of my musical tastes, I have to admit that this is one of the best albums I heard in years.  Albarn has created a work of well executed musical gymnastics, covering a wide variety of styles and tempos.  It's smooth, well produced and fun to listen to. 

    2.  LCD Sound System - This Is Happening:  On first listen this sounds very 80's, but that can be said of a lot of the newer music coming out right now.  Catchy melodies and interesting production grew on me very quickly.

    3. Gaslight Anthem - American Slang:  Good, solid rock and roll cross between Bruce Springstein and Green Day.  (OK, I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who want to shoot me for that one!) 

    4.  Band of Horses - Infinite Arms:  There's lots of new Psych-Folk bands out these days. Many are trying to follow in the footsteps of The Fleet Foxes, which I still regard as one of the best albums of the decade.  Many of these new folky bands are just bland, with droning, uninteresting melodies.  Not true of Band of Horses.  Infinite Arms is a collection of well perfomed melodies, each of which is unique and memorable.  It is colourful and stands out from its often grey contemporaries. 

    5. Peter Wolf - Midnight Souvenirs:  Peter Wolf is a veteran who has performed with everyone from the Velvet Underground to Kid Rock, but is probably most well know for his work with the J. Geils Band.  This new album is old school rock, but still stands up well against any contemporaries like the Black Keys.

    6.  Black Keys - Brothers:  Ya, more of the same.  When I first heard this album, I wasn't that impressed, judging it to be a bit too old school blues rock for my tastes.  Not that I don't like that style; it's just that it's been done.  But listening to it again recently, loud, I came to appreciate the excellent level of production and performance intensity.  The songs are interesting enough to seperate them from their influences.

    7. Jackson Browne - Love Is Strange (with David Lindley):  Nothing really new here and there's been a lot of live albums from Jackson Browne in the past few years.  But this one is a gem, with amazing performances, both instrumental and vocal.  Browne has been writing classic songs for the past 30 years and this set is a great collection of some of the best. 

    8.  Paul Weller - Wake Up The Nation:  Wellar has been experimenting with musical sounds for over 30 years, from the early punk of the The Jam to The Style Council and through a spectacular solo career of Pop and Folk music.  Wake Up The Nation is the Modfoather's "Sgt. Pepper's", delving into more experimentation and diversity in one album that he's ever attempted in the past.  The result is a bit eclectic and sometimes a bit strained.  At the same time it is really refreshing to see someone of Wellar's experience trying so hard to break new ground and take chances. 

That's it for now.  Looking forward to any comments you may have.

        Since I was a kid, my preference for books, movies and TV shows has always been in the Science Fiction genre.  Reviews may make up a significant portion of this Blog.  If the reviews don't interest you, just skip ahead to the other stuff.  But I think that reviews of SciFi material is a great jumping off point to other topics.  It's part and parcel of the appeal.
     In a recent review of Avatar, Ken Wilber did a concise job of summing up that appeal.  Avatar has often been compared to Dances With Wolves.  But, as Wilber points out, there is a very important difference.  When watching Dances With Wolves the viewer has historical perspective and so knows that however noble the natives may seem in the movie, in the end they are crushed by western civilization.  Most normal fiction contains this historical perspective that limits possibilities.  In Avatar, we don't know what the Na'vi will do next.  Their future is one of endless possibilities. 
     That's true of most SciFi stories.  Take for example a book by John Sclazi with I've just finished.  Scalzi is the writer of one of the original and most well known blogs, "Whatever".  (Yes, the phrase evidently originated from this blog.)  In recent years he's turned into a formidable SciFi writer.  "Old Man's War" is a good example of open-ended, unpredictable possibilities.  In this story, which takes place in the near future, Earth is colonizing the stars, but is in competition with other species for the few habitable planets available.  Hence the need for an army.  Scalzi presents an army recruited from 70 year olds who volunteer in exchange for being transplanted into new bodies.  Everyone wins.  The army has experienced humans instead of young punks; the seniors don't have anything to lose and everything to gain.  The characters and ideas in this book are reminiscent of Heinlein.  The science is realistic, with the alien species being exactly as bizarre as Stephen Hawking recently said they'd have to be.  This was a refreshing, exciting and enlightening read, and I'm looking forward to the sequels. 
     Only in SciFi can authors explore such limits of human ability and unusual questions of morality.