Saturday morning, decided to do the laundry and dishes. Set up my tablet to listen to a video short on jazz. It was about Sun Ra, John Coltrane and Anthony Braxton and the times of their music. Then I listened to Kevin Spears (electronic Kilimba), Emmett Chapman (inventor of Chapman Stick), Kevin Keith (Chapmen Stick artist), Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Rollins and Eddie Harris (Jazz saxophonists). Sun Ra's theme was playing in the back of my mind, "Space is the Place, yeah yeah Space is the Place.
Funny how we are so programmed to think Sun Ra was talking about outer space. Why would anybody think dwelling in an environment that is meant to kill you with every force, element and substance? Sun Ra was talking about freeing your mind. Your imagination is the space. The scene in the movie Matrix where Neo says, "this is the construct", then he asked the computer to bring weapons and for as far as the eye can see there were guns of all sorts, even though you could only shoot one or two at a time. This showed our limitations against the limitless imagination.
We live in a chaos world of distractions, yet when one of us gets focused amazing things happen. A Nigerian kid's favorite places are a junkyard and a library. With only the basic education and concepts he turns scrap parts into a windmill to power a pump for his family home, then the village. I saw him in a TED video. Here in the USA we are inundated with so many isms, schools of thought, commercials, media, social guides and misguides and Pavlov response psychology.
Sun Ra said Space is the Place, harnessing our mind power of imagination is something we all know but down play as not important. All the philosophers say how a man thinks so he is. We turn around and say that person is full of himself (ego overload) or in a cult (culture) if he espouses an social ideology be it religious, political or social. Heck we have gods who are outside of us and or inside of us and are other than us. We are separated from god by galaxies and yet are immersed in god like a fish in water. All the knowledge we have about things are true and are also a lie, we work stuff up in our mind standing on a tiny mountain. It's really an iceberg the mass hidden under distracting waves.
The place of space is not the limited physical worlds but worlds within. The ancients talked of meditation, the waking dream, the space between being fully awake and fully asleep. Sleeping on it consist of going to bed with something on your mind perchance your unconscious mind will spit out a solution, an inspiration in the morning into your awakened state.
Speaking of states many of the states (mindsets, dress, physical display) are prescribed by us some are assigned to us. Being a Negro, Black, African-American, a kid from the Bronx, from Philly, from Cleveland, we say pop, you say soda. Each state has it's baggage, it's expectations, it's consequences. I've met shapeshifters who change states to accommodate the people they are with (beware of shapeshifters). They can appear in one state while totally espousing another. On the campus you become aware of all the states we can assume. Some shift, some are consumed, some guileless, true blue, the genuine article (god I love those people!).
We did Black Power, African heritage and now are exploring our "indigenousness". A concerted effort is afoot to disengage us from every culture, history and heritage on the planet. They are driving us into Space. If we are crazy we will end up reaching up into the sky trying to get there. Space is the place but which space. There is a space I hear and see every time I put on some jazz. The instrument meant to go "oomp pa pa" goes "be boop da da pop boomp de bap da da". The family so distracted by being neighborhood immersed produces a kid focused enough to sail through school at the top, first in family to college, gets PhD and or starts a business. How do some break the mind chain to excel yet ridiculed by the rest of us because they are in a different state of mind than us, duh!? Eh Bro, you too good for us now? No, man, I'm just with different people now cause I am a different person now, a different state (Space) now.
How to get the programmed media out of your space is an on going topic. How to get the our people generated negative talk out of your space. How to get the self generated crap out of your space. How to recognize yourself while handling yourself in your own space. How to dwell comfortably in our own space and your own skin. How to make room for yourself to create what you will in your own space.
Space is the Place, that space and that place IS in your head, is your imagination and you own it. What you imagine (I believe in degrees) you become or can create, make, produce and market. We have no need to hear what others think of us or describe us (our on going concern). We are a pretty advanced people spanning from poor and stupid to multi-faceted and multi-talented geniuses depending on how our minds are loaded and our minds are focused. The next step is to recast what opportunity is. Opportunity has been based on the needs of other peoples. We need to look at our own needs again, our own mediums of exchange, conversion of that medium for external exchanges. I'm sliding off topic but the state we are in comes with it's own considerations. We have to be willing change our states to positive collaboration no matter the appearance.
Anyway, Sun Ra was talking about mental space, imagination, states of being. Imagination is powerful, not just a playground for musing thoughts and terrifying fears. Imagination is our mind Space, the Place in the Space of our mind. We fight to get a bunch of us to embrace one ideology or another to take over the world, religious, political, social, history. We think if we do the world would be at peace because we all think the same thing. The answers I don't know but the field of battle has always been the minds of men. Sun Ra said Space is the Place you can create a world that suits you, benefits you and in it you can be.
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