This Tuesday Night...

[daniel]

Here we go again!
Welcome to the beginning of our 7th incredible season of Tuesday evening
performances at the Gershwin Hotel.
It’s time for…
Neke Carson presents
In association with Michael Wiener
“Live” from the Living Room of
The Gershwin Hotel
7 East 27th St. (between Madison and Fifth Ave.)
Come join us for our first show .
Tuesday October 10th 8pm
when author and spiritual guru
Daniel Pinchbeck
will give a talk on consciousness evolution, shamanism, apocalyptic visions,
and the end of the Mayan Calendar in the year 2012.
Followed by music featuring
Haale (vocals and guitar)
Adam Caine (guitar)
and Matt Kilmer (percussion)
With readings by Daniel Pinchbeck
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.
$10 Addmission
Don’t miss this show.
Here is a little about our guest…
Daniel Pinchbeck, (born 1966), is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A
Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism. In Breaking
Open the Head, Pinchbeck explored shamanism via ceremonies with tribal
groups such as the Bwiti of Gabon and the Secoya in the EcuadoreanAmazon. He also participated in the Burning Man festival in Nevada, and looked at use
of psychedelic substances in a desacralized modern context. Through his
direct experiences and research, he became convinced that the shamanic and
mystical view of reality had validity, and that the modern world had
forfeited an understanding of intuitive and supersensible aspects of being
in its pursuit of rational materialism.
This realization led to his second book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,
which examines indigenous prophecy through personal and philosophical
approaches, and offers the hypothesis that humanity is experiencing an
accelerated process of global consciousness transformation, leading to a new
realization of time and space and, possibly, a harmonic planetary
civilization within the next six years. In "2012," he also describes his
direct reception of prophetic material: the voice of the Mesoamerican god
form or archetype, Quetzalcoatl, began speaking to him during a 2004 trip to
the Amazon in Brazil. At the time, he was participating in a ceremony of the
Santo Daime, a Brazilian religion that uses the psychedelic brew ayahuasca
as its sacrament.
Pinchbeck's feature articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine,
Esquire, Wired, The Village Voice, and numerous other publications. A
founding editor of Open City, a literary journal, he is currently launching
a new magazine and Internet forum, offering a new paradigm for a planetary
culture. A magazine created by him, Evolver is scheduled for launch in
December 2006.

[Agent Smith]

hey daniel, looks to be a good time.

i do have a question for you, i realize you might not have written the ad copy, so i'm wondering if the term "author and spiritual guru" is one you feel comfortable with these days?

no implied criticism here, just checkin' in with where you're at these days.

have a great time on tuesday.

[Thom]

Have to admit, the 'spiritual guru' bit made me pause.

[sidecross]

I am sure daniel had no part in the promotion of “Spiritual Guru”.

This is what happens when you are published and become a commodity of the ‘New Age’ or what ever it is called these days.

It is a blessing that most of us are anonymous and can make are way in the world without being a named celebrity.

McKenna too commented on this very issue; complaining that once you have become labeled, it is hard to move from that labeled box.

[forteanajones]

It's true that Daniel resisted and objected to the term for a long time, but he may be warming to it now. In a recent blog entry or something, he wrote about having read a definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru#Etymologies) he had never heard before ("he who disperses shadows"). I was unable to dig up his exact wording, just now.

[daniel]

i didn't write the ad copy... i do not feel like a guru.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

it's ok to feel like one, just refuse to be one.

i think people come to these books for information, not answers. although answers, of course, might be in them. for me it was the notion that there actually was a psychedelic community of some sort.

[ToR]

McKenna too commented on this very issue; complaining that once you have become labeled, it is hard to move from that labeled box.

Indeed, I was just listening to a lecture last night where mckenna mentioned this -

"I hate this whole "guru" trip. The white guy on the stage dispensing his wisdom to the gathered masses. The last thing I want is a cult of Terence Mckenna. Don't think for a second that I ultimately know anything more than you do in your own experience."

I certainly don't see Daniel as a "guru", he's just someone on a journey, who has (to my delight) been afforded a platform to express his ideas.

[Agent Smith]

well, how was it?

[Citizen R-Kane]

well, how was it?

I thought the show was fantastic and i felt this new format of presenting or talking about these ideas combined with music is much more engaging than the usual talks. The poetic, meter driven side of Daniel's writings are emphasized--and one can appreciate the rythmic texture of the text which i usually am not as aware of when im reading the book, and complements Haale's haunting mystic vocals (she reminds me of a cross between Nina Simone's soulful wail combined with Bjork's mystic quirkiness but def on a class of her own) and her band's free form avante-garde world-music stylings (Adam Caine and Matt Kilmer) added another layer to the already eclectic alchemical mixture. Haale and Daniel alternated between the vocals while Adam and Matt skillfully, and quite fluidly i might add, set the tone to accompany the various moods and tones that arose during both sets. At one point Haale sung a verse from Rumi in the original Persian (?) which was quite amazing to hear because i was able to react to it on a purely emotional sonic level since i did not know the literal translation of the verse.

For me this collaboration is a much more aesthetically sophisticated departure from some of the usual experimentations of shamanic pontification and music which usually copies the format of Terence Mc Kenna's Alien Dreamtime presentation with Spacetime Continuum, using techno, or some other computer generated music to accompany vocals. I know Mark Pesce followed that format to a tee for his talk last year at Mind States. Daniel, Haale and her band's contribution is a welcome relief from the predictable and tingy sound of electronica beats and new age cliches, bringing it back to a more traditional but yet still highly experimental sound. I was blessed to see the genesis of this collaboration between Haale and Daniel @ Burning Man at Entheon Village and was glad to see a sequel germinate in the concrete jungle of cynicism. We need more of these type of collabos especially here in the Rotten Apple. Thank you!


Inbetween sets, Daniel opened it up with a brief overview of 2012 and quickly opened up a dialogue with the audience. I'm not going to go through the Q&A session, since most of the questions that where asked, have been repeated on this board countless of times, even before 2012 came out. (eg; what makes this time more apocalyptic than other times?, How does tantra/polyamory play in the future of gender relationships? What is Timothy Leary's fingernail size? Who was David Icke's mother? You are the next Terence Mckenna ..blah blah ...etc.. etc.., sometimes i wonder if some of these people really believed a huge shift was coming, would they even still ask half of these questions??)