Metaphysical Pop Songs: Gods of Aquarius

"NunSexMonkRock" (1982) is Nina Hagen's earliest English language album.

 

 



Listening to any song, there will be an instantaneous effect upon one's mood; however, I must admit that there are few 'hit' radio songs that hold my attention these days — a time of media conglomerates, iHeartRadio and 'heavy rotation'.  One surprise in recent years was the inclusion of the lyrics "Welcome to the New Age" in the Imagine Dragons song "Radioactive."  When I'm in my car, I usually prefer to listen to the non-profit classical music radio station.  The worst thing about listening to contemporary pop music on the radio is the commercials, which have become ridiculously incessant.

Back in the 1980s—a remarkably eclectic time for popular music—I commuted from Pasadena to the Hollywood Hills and listened to New Wave music, etc.  People my age probably recognize much of the pop music that I do from past decades but I'm not sure that everyone remembers the innovative recording artist Nina Hagen (born in East Germany 1955) who has shown a joyful preoccupation with metaphysical themes throughout her career. 

Nina's songs played regularly on my local station.  The song from her first English album that caught my attention is "Born in Xixax", which shows Nina's delight with her unusual vocal range.  Her singing is hard to describe yet easy to experience upon listening to her songs on YouTube.  I listened to "NunSexMonkRock" this afternoon and noticed the influence of the 'punk' movement (not my forte) with a postmodern sensibility.  Hearing "Dr. Art" in particular was a little startling.  Nina has always expressed adoration of Jesus while occasionally using her peculiar vocal abilities and sometimes even her facial make-up to satirize superstitious conceptions of the 'demonic.’ 

I discovered a fascinating five minute video clip of Merle Ginsburg interviewing Nina: "1984 Nina Hagen Interview English".  Nina talks about her perspective of God, a transcendental 'voice hearing' incident, and she relates an experience that is an instance of what I have called the 'Michael' Pattern in previous blog articles.  In the video clip, some EVP messages are audible: "NO" at 3:00, 3:10 and 4:36; and "YOU KNOW" at 5:07.

 

Nina Hagen's second English language album is the disco-influenced "Fearless" (1983).  A producer of the album is Giorgio Moroder, one of the many successful recording artists associated with electronic music during the '80s.  The LP includes "New York New York" (not a cover version of the Liza Minnelli song), "Flying Saucers", "The Change", "What It Is" and "Zarah".

 

In "Nina Hagen in Ekstasy" (1985), Nina's third English language album, the song "Gods of Aquarius" presents the full scope of Nina's optimistic and cosmically expectant outlook.  Other songs include "Universal Radio", "Spirit in the Sky" and "The Lord's Prayer".

"Gods of Aquarius" Lyrics

Music: Nina Hagen, Karl Rucker / Lyrics: Nina Hagen 

The Gods of Aquarius are coming with UFOs

They love me and they love you

And what they have to say is true

The good old communication with Holy Spirits of God's creation

Is true but our church denies it

God, when will they realize it

Oh God, we need the big solution

We can't stand atomic pollution

Man, it would be such a shame

If we won't stop the devil's game

Telepathic communication leads to physical transformation

When at the end of night human race is filled with light

Love love never get enough

If you don't love hey, hey, hey too tough

Voices, visions some go in trance

Holy Ghost talks to His fans

I really don't want no more fighting

What I want is automatic writing

Oh my God, the Heavenly Host sends us down His Holy Ghost

The Golden Age of Aquarius the second coming of the glorious

Love, love, never get enough

If you don't love hey, hey, hey too tough . . .

Writing this article and observing some of Nina's interviews for the first time, I am reminded that people have different life experiences and relationships with 'God' based upon their awareness, perceptions and also circumstances involving what might be simply expressed as 'karma'.

Autumn Wedding Jewelry Ensemble

This past autumn, I had the honor of designing a jewelry set for five bridesmaids!

The color theme was reds and golds, with hints of pearl and green. Each of the girls would be wearing a different dress in the same color, and each girl had different jewelry requirements (pierced/non-pierced ears, short/long necklace, etc). 

The necklace shape is also adjustable-- since I created a braided base, it could be gently pinched into a pointed shape, or a flat, or rounded style. If you look closely at the pictures of the bridesmaids, you'll see that each necklace is worn differently!

The bride wore a thick lace veil with a bright, bold wreath of red and gold flowers and leaves on top, and the jewelry was designed to coordinate with her style.

It goes without saying that these five sets were a fair bit of work! Each necklace had a braided base that looks very similar to my braided circlets. Beads and glass leaves of all kinds were woven on in matching patterns, and beads adorned the adjustable golden chain.

These are the earrings and ear cuffs designed for the bridesmaids!

The ear cuffs were beautifully decorative; the bride loves fairytale styles so I had fun going overboard with the sparkly bling!

One of the girls had double piercings and wore two sets of dangles! I'd never really heard of that kind of pairing before, but wouldn't you agree that it is a lovely combination?



The other girls all wore variations of my Enchanted Forest Earrings in gold and red.

I also created a pair of barefoot sandals for the bride! The picture below is with shoes from our outdoor photoshoot, but these "fairy sandals" work well barefoot, too!

This is the entire set of jewelry, representing a couple weeks of work!

I didn't photograph the rings very well, but in this picture you can see the leaf flower ring and the gold-and-red wirewrapped rosette ring on the maid of honor!

This was one of the most unique weddings I've attended, style-wise, and I had a blast designing jewelry for such lovely girls!

I've created many pieces of jewelry for various brides, and I've even designed an entire set of jewelry for a bride, bridal party, and mother-of-the-bride, but this was the first time creating wedding pieces for someone I knew! I am also friends with all of the bridal party, so I had the opportunity to take their personal styles into consideration.

In addition, I also helped out last minute by being the second shooter at the wedding! I wound up taking over three hundred pictures of the ceremony, photoshoot, and reception.

It's not a fairytale wedding with friends until you do a hilarious gag photo, is it?

The park we took photos had at these awesomely weird concrete frogs...

So... I did mention that this was a group of my friends from high school and that everyone involved are fantastic geeks, yes? While the main photographer was off taking sweet pictures of the bride and groom, the bridesmaids and groomsmen posed with my Lord of the Rings weaponry.

Aren't they just too cute?

Best wishes and lots of prayers for the new Mr. and Mrs.! 

Reflections after Six Years Blogging

It is now the beginning of my seventh year blogging about metaphysical and spiritual topics.  The complex circumstances reported in recent months about documented cases of so-called 'paranormal phenomena' include correspondences and variations among mediumship and channeling cases. 

Among many human 'mediums' who have been a topic of blog articles at "Interesting Articles, Links and Other Media," Daniel Dunglas Home (1933-1886) occasionally became entranced for interludes when a transcendental communicator was heard to speak through him.  Home commented about the manifestations of "spiritual causes acting on this world of nature": "I have not and never had the slightest power over them, either to bring them on, or to send them away, or to increase, or to lessen them.  What may be the peculiar laws under which they have become developed in my person, I know no more than others."  Two blog articles about D. D. Home are "Trance Communication and D. D. Home" and "No. 1 Seance from Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr. D. D. Home".

The word 'channeler' is an alternate expression for people who facilitate transcendental communication.  Last year, while writing a series of articles about the JZ Knight/Ramtha case and reviewing a 2014 Ramtha radio interview, I realized that the recording with recurring so-called 'Electronic Voice Phenomena' offers evidence of the phenomenal aspects of the case. 

Throughout many decades, the programming of the commercial news media in relation to paranormal phenomena has reflected a social consciousness of skepticism to avoid potential audience or advertiser displeasure.  In the 2014 interview, Ramtha informed his interviewer that if all journalists were as open-minded as him and wouldn't be censured we would be on to the next level.  Previous blog articles about the philosophically complicated JZ Knight/Ramtha case include "Ramtha: An Introduction to Unlimitedness" and "Ramtha in Los Angeles 2006".  When I attended the Los Angeles lecture, Ramtha's initial commentary included:

I am Ramtha the Enlightened One, servant under God, under the Christ and unto you.  For you be both those divine beings.  So this day in your time I am honored to be a part of this august body and for this short time in your time to impart to your life meaningful change, to make wonder happen, and to evolve you.  [wryly]  An easy task.

 
While writing the recent article "The Brothers Davenport", I noticed a book offering a definition for 'media' and 'medium' befitting the title of this blog (A Sketch of the History of the Davenport Boys, Their Mediumship, Journeyings, and the Manifestations and Tests Given in Their Presence by the Spirits by Luke P. Rand, 1859).

Medium [or its plural, Media or Mediums] is "The means or instrument by which anything is accomplished, conveyed, or carried on"; as "Intelligence is conveyed through the medium of the press";—Webster.

"Everything in creation, from the ant, or minutest infusoria, up to man; or from the smallest leaf or flower, to worlds that roll in space, is mediumistic, in its kind, to the life-force and wisdom of the Infinite Spirit, God!

The transcripts of transcendental communicators explain that at the end of the Earth sojourn, human consciousness makes a transition to an ascended realm of existence.  One of the books offering transcripts of audible Direct Voice communication tape-recorded in the presence of medium Leslie Flint (1911-1994) is There Is Life After Death: Tape Recordings from the Other World (1978) by Douglas and Eira Conacher.  Here are two brief excerpts from one of the transcribed discourses about life on 'the other side':

Here nothing is hidden.  Everything is shown gradually, in its evolution.  If you want to tune-in to someone for whom you have admiration, you can see that person and by the mere process of thought, enter into a condition of their life and their personality.  You see events as they actually happened in the form of picturisation in ether, almost as if you were watching a moving picture screen — a cinema screen.

Although we are separate individuals, we must remember that we are all part of each other, and we are all dependent on each other.  We all contribute to each other's happiness or unhappiness, and that is why it behooves us all to give out love — to give out all that is good from within ourselves.  In this way, the whole scheme of life could be changed.

The most recent blog article about Leslie Flint is "Leslie Flint in Los Angeles".  Another series of blog articles concerns trance medium/channeler Mark Probert (1907-1969), including "Mark Probert and The Inner Circle" and "Yada Speaks".  Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the last lecture by the transcendental communicator known as 'Yada' speaking through Probert:

Man labors under the impression that he does things on his own.  But almost no one can do things on their own.  There is that condition called 'the great mind' — the great cosmic consciousness — the highest center of awareness which the low self, the conscious self, the ego-conscious self is not aware of.

Sometimes, this great mind is called THE CHRIST — the light of the Christ. 

Once when the entranced Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) was asked "Should the Christ Consciousness be described as the awareness within each soul, imprinted in pattern on the mind and waiting to be awakened by the will, of the soul's oneness with God?," the transcendental communicator answered: "Correct.  That's the idea exactly!"  Blog articles about Edgar Cayce include "Case Profile: Edgar Cayce" and "Esoteric Aspects of Edgar Cayce's Life".

During the last six years, some of the data considered in articles at this blog includes:

There are photographs of materialized people from the ascended realm of human existence.  (1, 2, 3)

There have been audio-visual transmissions that show life in realms beyond the physical plane.  (1, 2)

There are videos (now available on You Tube) that offer proof of clairvoyance and clairaudience.  (1, 2)

There are videos and audio recordings that offer proof of channeling.  (1, 2, 3, 4)

There are 'channeled' musical compositions, songs and artwork in the precise style of famous artists and composers.  (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

There are hundreds of audio recordings of Direct Voice communication that may be heard without charge on the Internet.  (1, 2)

One photo shows ectoplasm emanating from the neck of medium Leslie Flint to form the 'voicebox' for the Direct Voice phenomena.  (1)

What today is called EVP can be heard on all unedited broadcasts and recordings.  How carefully are you listening?  (1, 2, 3)

There is a photograph of a 'Bigfoot.'  (1) 

One representative of an unknown native American hominid tribe was groomed for exhibition and became a worldwide sensation during the Victorian Age.  (1, 2)


There are case study books about reincarnation.  (1, 2, 3)

 

 

There are letters from aboard a flying saucer.  (1)

Here are ten previous blog posts that I recommend for newcomer blog readers or novice researchers of so-called 'paranormal' or 'unexplained phenomena' (in order of publication) —

 

"The Brain and Psychic Phenomena"  January 8, 2010
 

"Some Observations Concerning My Spritualism Series of Articles"  November 13, 2011

 

"Some Observations about My Olcott/Blavatsky Series of Articles"  March 11, 2012

 

"Instrumental Transcommunication"  March 25, 2012

 

"Spiritual Healing"  December 30, 2012


"Flying Saucers and 'The Nine Pattern'"  July 28, 2013


"An Introduction to Healer John of God"  November 3, 2013

 

 'Gef': A Modern Sphinx as an Esoteric Lesson about Oneness"  April 10, 2014

 
 

"Metaphorical Correlations Among 'Paranormal' Cases"  December 21, 2014

 
 

"'We' and the Mediums of Oneness"  March 8, 2015

McAndrews on negative nominal rates

Jamie McAndrews of the New York Fed has a thoughtful and clear speech on negative nominal rates and the benefits of currency. (Some previous posts on the subject here  here and here.)

A few high points:

1. Needed: anonymous electronic transactions.

Many (not all) negative interest rate proposals call for the elimination of currency. Currency is dying anyway due to the great advantages of electronic transactions. I bemoaned the loss of privacy and political freedom when the NSA, the IRS, and pretty soon Twitter and the Chinese Department of Hacking have a record of everything you've ever bought or sold. Jamie brings up another important point:

The anonymity afforded by currency transactions prevents a buyer from suffering from any actions taken after the transactions that could exploit the knowledge gained by the seller of the buyer’s identity. For example, identity theft, or theft of credit or debit card information, is avoided through the use of currency. This is an economic benefit that is distinct from valuing privacy from a civil liberties point of view. If currency cannot be used in transactions, buyers are at a disadvantage, and many otherwise beneficial transactions (not related to buyers seeking to engage in tax evasion or otherwise illicit activity) would not take place.

Anonymity has value in many transactions. Anonymity equals finality.

It's not hard to have anonymous electronic transactions. Stored value cards could work well as electronic cash. If regulators allowed it, it would be simple enough to set up a money market fund that allows anonymous investing. Regulators don't allow it.

2. Hysterisis of institutions and the lesson of the 70s


There are fixed costs in setting up many institutions that adapt to negative nominal rates. For example, the option to hold currency:

.. Often, the costs of holding currency securely, by having a safety deposit box or a vault, are fixed costs. Once one has a vault, or has rented a safety deposit box, the costs of storing additional currency in it, up to its capacity, is nil. This suggests that there is a dynamic element to the economics of avoiding negative interest rates: the longer the negative rates are expected to persist, and the lower they are, the more favorable are the returns to investing in a vault. Once the vault investment has been made, maintaining negative rates would likely become more difficult.

An even more far-reaching change that many have suggested would be the creation of a new institution to handle and store currency on behalf of others; this could dramatically reduce the costs of holding currency...

Jamie adds to the clever ways to synthesize zero rate investments, and a cost I hadn't thought of

For example, suppose that one holds a credit card under existing U.S. rules: one can withdraw funds from an account that is earning a negative rate, and pay one’s debt to the credit card company in advance of when it is due, earning a zero return during the prepayment period....

... if one were to receive a check from the U.S. government for a tax refund, one could simply put it in a safe place and earn zero interest on it during the time the check remained undeposited...

...leaving the check undeposited, much like the hoarding of currency, is a negative outcome for society. ... This may impose unexpected costs on the check writer, triggering unplanned overdrafts and associated charges...

...having talented individuals looking for these opportunities is a dead-weight loss to society. We would rather have them use their talents for more socially productive purposes.

We went through this once before. In the 1970s, pricing and financial institutions were set up with small positive interest rates in mind. It took a period of prolonged inflation to induce people to spend all the fixed costs to adapt to high interest rates, including widespread indexation, money market funds, interest-paying checking accounts, and so forth. In turn, the easing of these "frictions," quickly removed the hoped-for benefits of inflation. For example, prices and wages were sticky when there was less inflation. Turn on inflation, and once people put the effort in to index contracts, price and wage stickiness fade, and inflation has much less output and employment effect.

So, the same sorts of legal and financial investments that allowed an economy to adapt to high nominal interest rates can also allow it to adapt to negative interest rates -- at large cost, in time and effort, in rewriting contracts, and in foregoing many advantages of currency. But are we sure the benefits will not disappear at the same time?

3. Financial institutions and negative rates

The health of banks and many other financial institutions depends on earning a spread between what the institutions earn on their assets and what they pay on their liabilities. Negative rates can squeeze bank profits.

and a lot of non-banks too. There is a plausible channel here that negative nominal rates hurt a large swath of financial institutions -- at least until they rewrite all their contracts and persuade all their clients to accept negative rates. This is a channel by which lowering rates could hurt economic activity.

By the way, I learned that those negative rates aren't so negative,

..the central banks that have negative policy rates offer zero rates on many of their deposits from banks, imposing negative rates on the “marginal” deposits. In this way, commercial banks can, in general, charge their retail depositors deposit rates of zero and earn zero at the central bank on at least a large portion of their reserve holdings.

4. Speaking of cause and effect signs...

..people could infer [from a negative interest rate] that the central bank itself has low expectations for inflation and is lowering nominal rates into negative territory as a way to “ratify” the low expected inflation environment. Such an inference would complicate the central bank’s effort to achieve its objective because it could encourage and entrench the public’s expectations for deflation. That could complicate the potential exit from the negative rate regime

Maybe with abundant excess reserves, the Fisher equation is stable -- and that lowering nominal rates will cause inflation to decline. Jamie isn't quite ready to burn at the heretic's stake on this issue, but you can see him edging closer to the fire.

Drawing II

It's strange to think that I took Drawing II a full year ago now. Stranger even that I never photographed my work to share on this blog! As of right now, this class is among the top three classes that I've taken at college. The semester was full of experimentation and just pure fun.

I got to draw, for school, for over six hours each week. And, unlike my Drawing I class, I got to choose a lot of the subject matter and style for the projects!

(I've shared artwork from my Drawing I and 2D Design classes in the past, and will continue to post class work on my blog-- you can easily access those posts here).

Below are just a few of the more finished pieces that I made in the class!

The funny thing about this piece is that it isn't a drawing at all-- it's a painting! I was so excited that my projects no longer had to be charcoal still life drawings.

My professor was an older guy who spoke very, very quietly but was always chock full of helpful advice and artists to study. 

He also had a great sense of just-go-for-it which I appreciated a lot. It's the style of learning that I was accustomed to from homeschooling and teaching myself art. If you don't think something is impossible, you won't be scared away from trying to succeed at it!

This project was supposed to challenge us in handling color. I painted these flowers in india ink without an underdrawing. Then, I reversed the way I would normally handle color-- and colored in the background with watercolors!

Um... so we also had to draw a skull and glue it on a photocopy of an earlier piece of art. Cue flowers with random skull on it. However, I did have fun with doing reversed colors on the skull.

I was really proud of this one. :)

(Even though when I displayed it for a Portfolio Workshop this semester, two different professors dismissed it as "kitchy" and "too cute" and "ridiculous with all those cartoony trees." The professors in the design department can be so much more opinionated and caustic than those in the art department.)

This is a large colored pencil drawing inspired by photos I took of Pike's Peak. It's a gift for my parents; I took the photographs on a family vacation a few years ago.

Every time I see this piece, I don't think about our Colorado vacation-- I think about Genghis Khan!

We were allowed to listen to our headphones during class. Whenever I am brainstorming or sketching, I like to listen to chill instrumental music. When it comes down to the hard work of doing repetitive details like 2,000 tiny trees, though, I become intellectually bored.

This is why audiobooks and podcasts are so great. I listened to the entire Hardcore History podcast about Genghis Khan while making this piece!

I know I've mentioned it once before on my blog, but my new habit of listening to audiobooks has done wonders for my listening comprehension. I'm slightly hard of hearing (that, or I have a difficult time processing audio), and over the past two years I've gotten much better at being able to focus on things I'm listening to. 

This is a two-and-a-half hour study of our little student lounge done in ballpoint pens.

Have mercy on the terribly squished perspective on the chairs. There is no excuse. It's just... there. Drawing from life is hard, my friends.

GUYS I DREW THIS WITH SILVER!

I'm not kidding. This is not done with pencil at all.

I prepped a piece of matboard with rough white wall paint. Then, I bought a small piece of pure silver and inserted it into the body of a ballpoint pen.

The silver scratched the rough painted surface, leaving very light and fine marks behind. After two months, the silver drawing had oxidized to the dark color you see here.

The process is called silverpoint, and it's just one of the many unique techniques that my professor showed us! Artists like Michelangelo used to use silverpoint for sketches, because it was cheaper than pencil lead and less messy than charcoal.

I literally drew Bag End in silver!

This is one of my new favorite techniques, and I'm excited for the chance to do some more illustrations in this style.

It's ridiculously hard to draw babies, especially your very, very little sister whose face looked different in every picture you took. The drawing of "Rose" on the right is much better. 

I still have mixed feelings about this piece, but I was grateful for the chance to work with pencil again. I hadn't had the time to work on a large pencil piece since I had made the From the Dragon Hoard drawing in my junior year of highschool. This drawing is nowhere near that quality, simply because I didn't put twenty-plus hours into it!

Hogwarts! In crazy colors!

Ink line drawings and wild watercolors are my new favorite techniques. I took this class a year ago; since then, this style has been my go-to.

The entire thing was drawn with a real quill pen that my professor made himself!

This is a sample piece from the Day of Drawing Wrinkles in Cloth.

The Disney artist Kent Melton had an exhibit at our university for two weeks. We spent two class periods sitting on the floor of the exhibition room with our sketchbooks. I filled my sketchbook with freehand copies of Kent Melton's beautiful animation sketches.

My roommate snagged this picture of me sitting on the dorm floor drawing. She has so much patience to deal with my crazy art student antics!

I forgot to take a picture of this picture when it was finished. I had completed all of the projects for Drawing II early, and spent the last week of class drawing my friend and her fiance. The final drawing had their name and wedding date calligraphied on it.

______

Now, I just need to write up a post about my amazing Metals I class, and then I'll be done with updates about my freshman art classes. The ironic thing is that I am writing this just a couple weeks before I complete my sophmore year of college. 

When I am caught up in projects that take hours and hours of my time, I easily get lost in the small emotions that come with pouring so much energy into the pieces. A year after making these drawings, I have a much better perspective. This is both the blessing and the curse of being an artist; I am always looking for ways to improve, but I am also my own worst critic!