www.friendsoflive.com
Almost my whole life I've been searching for peace and truth outside myself. In books, in paintings, in other people. Now I've found peace and truth in places I never expected to find them. Indeed, like enjoying a sunset. What has made a big difference is that I've moved with my family from the big city to the countryside. Now I live in the middle of nature. The trees and animals around me give me the feeling that I've returned to earth. And then my fatherhood was added as well. The birth of our child was such an overwhelming experience for me that I can now easily put things into perspective, even those I used to get tensed up with.
I have chosen, with a spiritual practice, to deepen my understanding of my relationship to everything that is arising, and not just to go with the flow. And that is the essence of the music of Live, really, this sort of dissatisfaction with the way things are, with the limitation that just “going with the flow” represents.
What I've been feeling about reincarnation lately is that life itself is evidence of no beginning and no end. If it's really over when it's over, then what are we doing here? I remember as a very young child hearing about the Big Bang and thinking it was bullshit. How could anything come from nothing?
The Western idea of spirituality has always been that you have to be absolutely disassociated from the vital areas of life—give all your material possessions away, find the guru, and live happily ever after in a monastery. Or maybe do yoga once a week to feel better bodily. That's our notion of "spirituality" and it's pretty fucked. It's really just not the case. Our lives are fully integrated. We're incarnated in these physical bodies, and spirituality is essentially about allowing the forces of the divine to descend fully into the body, rather than us ascending out of the body with the intention to go somewhere else. So every moment is an opportunity to confront and transcend our limitations. Being onstage is an intensification of that, with all this incredible energy being created by the band and the audience flying around like bullets from an AK-47. There's so much energy that you have to conduct it somehow. And that in turn benefits the music.
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