Why Mr Carl McCoy is such an inspiration?

[Blue Angel]

You are really starting to get on my Bristols......

If I could be arsed I'm sure I could work out the cocknoshing angle for this...

[weebleswobble]

You are really starting to get on my Bristols......

If I could be arsed I'm sure I could work out the cocknoshing angle for this...

I'm sure you've been arsed quite a few times

[Echo Barley]

1: Carl McCoy is an inspiration - to me at least - in that he refuses, ( so he says ), to allow outside influences in. He doesn't look outside himself for inspiration or succour. A lot of religions are based on the looking outside ourselves for that guidance or comfort, and as such, the handing over of responsibility to whatever deity you follow ( "the devil made me do it", "forgive me for I have sinned/am damn well going to sin but if I tell You now then it's ok 'cos you could always stop me if U want" ). I met someone a coupla years ago who taught me that true power came from knowing and accepting every part of my soul, even the bits that society/law/religion said should not exist. Not that I enjoyed the journey, but then that wasn't the point. If you remove other people from your life, you're left with only yourself ( when I say other people I include TV, music, art, books ) and that forces you to look inwards, and it's there that you find the things that really drive you. So that person left me, eventually.
I guess McCoy has done that - looked deep and dragged it all out and turned that into the music we hear from him. But I'm not him so I could be wrong.

2:I'm not interested in reading Crowley, or Spare, or Blake or any of the others whose names are just that to me - names. Why would anyone with the knowledge they claim to have want to bother passing it on to others ? Surely that path - the one of enlightenment and personal discovery, ultimately - is one that you can't walk with a guide ? If you're left to find things for yourself with no guidance then you have a greater understanding of what you do find out, right ? Whole books are published on the subject of the Occult and I don't know what, if any, value they have on the path to self-discovery etc, but someone who says "I have my own system" has left those writings far behind.
And someone who knows himself that well is probably not going to be bothered by anything that is said about him on forums like this*








*on second thoughts let's not go to Camelot. Tis a silly place.

[gingerpazuzu]

well I wouldn't say Carl has removed all outside influences ,in interviews he freely admits to reading certain authors,watching films,its not the removing yourself from these things its that can read,watch stuff but its what you takae from these,if its a blind following then thats not good but if you do take things + use them in a way that you add your own ideas to then thats healthy.....I read a huge amount + of diverse subjects,always have done but I also have my own system ir way ,be it in how I live my life,my own magickal workings etc + I've looked inside myself too,but I dont think any one person can truthfully say they live in a total vacum

[squishy]

I hate to be a bore but I beg to differ.

What is this "I", or the "self"? What will remain if you strip all the "outer" layers of this onion? What is inside?

It's a religious issue, I'm afraid, but I don't believe in any core of myself: Squishy is what he's seen, sees, is seeing etc.; all the combinations of whom he's spoken to, heard or else; all the events he's lived through. Remove all that: no Squishy left at all. Squishy is no island - no squid is - but, more than that, Squishy never is in himself, he is this and that and these and those and whatnot.

If Squishy stuck to himself, or, more precisely, to what he thinks he is, he wouldn't change, differ or evolve. Not only would he soon go autistically nuts, but also become an even more insufferable bore than he is right now. So tedious that (if he could indeed live through the sheer horror of such alienation) he wouldn't feel like living with himself at all. A good makeshift definition of hell to me

Living with oneself: a funny and rather disturbing expression, another one of "I'm out of touch with myself today" kind. Who is out of touch with whom exactly?

Blake has come up here, and Blake's Los does talk about creating one's own system in order not to be enslaved by another man's system. But these are the words spoken not by Blake, nor even by Urthona, but by Los - a fallen, fragmentary and unreal being in a fallen world. All sorts of problems crop up in the popular quote: not only this my/yours weirdness, but also the danger of all systems, all the ideologies that aspire to be exhaustive or plainly coherent: trying hard and hopelessly to be watertight, how could they not enslave?

I think McCoy the songwriter is terribly allusive, both very conscious of the intertextuality's inescapability and conscious of many a creative way of living and dealing with it. Of course, I know nothing of the man: idle talk all that . . .

[gingerpazuzu]

I hate to be a bore but I beg to differ.

What is this "I", or the "self"? What will remain if you strip all the "outer" layers of this onion? What is inside?

It's a religious issue, I'm afraid, but I don't believe in any core of myself: Squishy is what he's seen, sees, is seeing etc.; all the combinations of whom he's spoken to, heard or else; all the events he's lived through. Remove all that: no Squishy left at all. Squishy is no island - no squid is - but, more than that, Squishy never is in himself, he is this and that and these and those and whatnot.

If Squishy stuck to himself, or, more precisely, to what he thinks he is, he wouldn't change, differ or evolve. Not only would he soon go autistically nuts, but also become an even more insufferable bore than he is right now. So tedious that (if he could indeed live through the sheer horror of such alienation) he wouldn't feel like living with himself at all. A good makeshift definition of hell to me

Living with oneself: a funny and rather disturbing expression, another one of "I'm out of touch with myself today" kind. Who is out of touch with whom exactly?

Blake has come up here, and Blake's Los does talk about creating one's own system in order not to be enslaved by another man's system. But these are the words spoken not by Blake, nor even by Urthona, but by Los - a fallen, fragmentary and unreal being in a fallen world. All sorts of problems crop up in the popular quote: not only this my/yours weirdness, but also the danger of all systems, all the ideologies that aspire to be exhaustive or plainly coherent: trying hard and hopelessly to be watertight, how could they not enslave?

I think McCoy the songwriter is terribly allusive, both very conscious of the intertextuality's inescapability and conscious of many a creative way of living and dealing with it. Of course, I know nothing of the man: idle talk all that . . .

I agree with you Squishy..thats what I meant ...the saying "no person can be an island"....if you cut yourself off from everything + everyone,thats the easy way out.I think life is about learning new things from others + appyling that in a way that works for you rather than just blindly following,excepting.A huge part of whats's me are the people I know + have known,I 'd hate to live in isolation + you're right we would never evolve if we didn't interact with others.

[gingerpazuzu]

back again,after all that I never did say why I find Carl McCoy such an inspiration that's getting sidetracked for you....Its because he is an exceptionally talented musician,lyricist + artist....nothing more or less...a human being like us all....everyone has a talent anyway,so in effect we are all talented......

[Echo Barley]

!: He doesn't listen to other music when he's creating his own. So he says. He also says that MS was created in as much isolation as he could manage - a deliberate attempt to remove outside influences, no ?

2: Not quite what I meant. I don't think that, when you are trying to find out about "self", that reading other's thoughts and beliefs helps necessarily. That has to come before you go looking. Once you're ready to look, then leave the influence and other opinions out; I think you have to, to discover what you truly think about something. Obviously, if we were all isolated from day 1, we wouldn't learn to speak, or relate to each other, or make sense of much at all. To keep that level of isolation up....well...I don't fancy becoming a hermit. Few people do, we're sociable creatures.

"What is this "I", or the "self"? What will remain if you strip all the "outer" layers of this onion? What is inside?"

The soul, perhaps. You're right, it is a religious issue in that you have to believe in the soul. Each person's path is unique anyway. Some people's shamanic/dream journeys may have the purpose of divination or healing, others, this whole "self discovery" issue. I don't agree that we are entirely made up of the influence of other people, I think that our "core" is something uniquely us, that no-one else ever has an influence on.

"If Squishy stuck to himself, or, more precisely, to what he thinks he is, he wouldn't change, differ or evolve."

I have read tha argument that Carl McCoy has, indeed, not evolved......at least musically and artistically......

Since much of religion and spirituality only has a reality directly relating to the individual and is not based on hard fact, slavishly following others' belief system is a recipe for mass disaster, as history has shown. That's why I say, outside influences should periodically be removed from one's life, for a short while, to allow time to form your own beliefs.Don't base your own belief systems on others'. Form your own having taken theirs into account and, ultimately, discarded them. Art works much the same way. I spent several years absorbing the work of the people I worked with, not doing any of my own work, and then I went away from them to do my own work with the result that it was a lot clearer, a lot better None of it looked like theirs, yet....I guess what I'm trying to say is that I eschewed direct influence. ; maybe rather call it enhancement/i]
I don't know. I get the feeling I'm not making myself very clear.....


Bah !! All the above has just been said while I was spending half an hour putting this post together ! I hate you all.

[Poison Ivy]

Carl appear to me lately as 'the door', more like 'portal'...it is new idea and I did not develop it yet, not even can explain it, but that idea simply appear and as that thread is alive again...what do you think?

...not even I know what I mean that time I am too deep

P.S. Echo Barley - I think I understand what you meant....it is very interesting approach , thank U 4 sharing!

[squishy]

I agree with you Squishy

Which Squishy? Squishy's the other. Or another. The other another. The another's other. Or the other of another's other?



A nice lollipop for everyone involved:



I wonder if you realize how difficult it is to google an image of a lollipop even relatively disconnected from the ubiquitous world of porn; Gawd . . .

[Echo Barley]

door to what ?

[Bau]

1: Carl McCoy is an inspiration - to me at least - in that he refuses, ( so he says ), to allow outside influences in. He doesn't look outside himself for inspiration or succour. A lot of religions are based on the looking outside ourselves for that guidance or comfort, and as such, the handing over of responsibility to whatever deity you follow ( "the devil made me do it", "forgive me for I have sinned/am damn well going to sin but if I tell You now then it's ok 'cos you could always stop me if U want" ). I met someone a coupla years ago who taught me that true power came from knowing and accepting every part of my soul, even the bits that society/law/religion said should not exist. Not that I enjoyed the journey, but then that wasn't the point. If you remove other people from your life, you're left with only yourself ( when I say other people I include TV, music, art, books ) and that forces you to look inwards, and it's there that you find the things that really drive you. So that person left me, eventually.
I guess McCoy has done that - looked deep and dragged it all out and turned that into the music we hear from him. But I'm not him so I could be wrong.

2:I'm not interested in reading Crowley, or Spare, or Blake or any of the others whose names are just that to me - names. Why would anyone with the knowledge they claim to have want to bother passing it on to others ? Surely that path - the one of enlightenment and personal discovery, ultimately - is one that you can't walk with a guide ? If you're left to find things for yourself with no guidance then you have a greater understanding of what you do find out, right ? Whole books are published on the subject of the Occult and I don't know what, if any, value they have on the path to self-discovery etc, but someone who says "I have my own system" has left those writings far behind.
And someone who knows himself that well is probably not going to be bothered by anything that is said about him on forums like this*








*on second thoughts let's not go to Camelot. Tis a silly place.

to be free of influence , or human contrains of thought , is to have been raised feral. *snort*

"the devil made me do it" mentality is a fact, our thought and behaviour is very much ruled by the subconcious and the subliminal. We don't like to admit that, we like to feel safe and secure like we are in control, which is impossible.

shutting yourself from the outside world is life on a hamster wheel.

The only way to be free from a system is to take from as many sources as possible then abandon them. Its sort of like that with learning guitar, you learn all this theory and study and stuff and in the end it all just comes down to realising its 'this tone sounds good next to this one at this speed' *shrug* kinda like physics. It all just comes down to what is bumping into what and how fast.

I like having a guide, (especialy motorcycle service manuals) guides are good, someone who has already been down your path and can point out the potholes. You just have to be careful that its not a case of the blind leading the blind. What you read as a guide could very well be written whist in a pit.

true power comes not from accepting parts of your soul , thats surrender, but doing battle with it mabee , the hammer to the anvil as it were, grace under pressure.
the hamster wheel thing doesn't work here either because to have power one must have influence.

one point I agree with you on certainly. People need to stop following others around with their nose up someone elses butt, reading every damn thing they have read etc. just because that person read them, everyone needs to walk their own path.
A possible example of this is earlier in this thread those assuming Carl was following crowley even to the point of doing his rituals, well Carl took the wind out of their sails a bit didn't he with that quote you cited.


So that person told you all that crap then left you? Sorry to hear about that.

[Echo Barley]

I didn't see it as crap. It helped me to understand what I'd already gone through. Why do you think it was crap ?

"The only way to be free from a system is to take from as many sources as possible then abandon them. Its sort of like that with learning guitar, you learn all this theory and study and stuff and in the end it all just comes down to realising its 'this tone sounds good next to this one at this speed' *shrug* kinda like physics. It all just comes down to what is bumping into what and how fast"

I did just say that.

"true power comes not from accepting parts of your soul , thats surrender, but doing battle with it mabee , the hammer to the anvil as it were, grace under pressure.
the hamster wheel thing doesn't work here either because to have power one must have influence"

I kind of agree. But not with "surrender", necessarily. Why not just accept them ? because, as I said, you've been taught they're bad. Which is as may be, according to the laws of a moral society. Accepting them doesn't mean giving up control to them. Neither did I say they should not be battled with, cowed down....but at least aknowledged. Too many people deny parts of their soul, refuse to admit even to themselves that they have a "dark" side. What are they afraid of ?

[Bau]

!: He doesn't listen to other music when he's creating his own. So he says. He also says that MS was created in as much isolation as he could manage - a deliberate attempt to remove outside influences, no ?

2: Not quite what I meant. I don't think that, when you are trying to find out about "self", that reading other's thoughts and beliefs helps necessarily. That has to come before you go looking. Once you're ready to look, then leave the influence and other opinions out; I think you have to, to discover what you truly think about something. Obviously, if we were all isolated from day 1, we wouldn't learn to speak, or relate to each other, or make sense of much at all. To keep that level of isolation up....well...I don't fancy becoming a hermit. Few people do, we're sociable creatures.

"What is this "I", or the "self"? What will remain if you strip all the "outer" layers of this onion? What is inside?"

The soul, perhaps. You're right, it is a religious issue in that you have to believe in the soul. Each person's path is unique anyway. Some people's shamanic/dream journeys may have the purpose of divination or healing, others, this whole "self discovery" issue. I don't agree that we are entirely made up of the influence of other people, I think that our "core" is something uniquely us, that no-one else ever has an influence on.

"If Squishy stuck to himself, or, more precisely, to what he thinks he is, he wouldn't change, differ or evolve."

I have read tha argument that Carl McCoy has, indeed, not evolved......at least musically and artistically......

Since much of religion and spirituality only has a reality directly relating to the individual and is not based on hard fact, slavishly following others' belief system is a recipe for mass disaster, as history has shown. That's why I say, outside influences should periodically be removed from one's life, for a short while, to allow time to form your own beliefs.Don't base your own belief systems on others'. Form your own having taken theirs into account and, ultimately, discarded them. Art works much the same way. I spent several years absorbing the work of the people I worked with, not doing any of my own work, and then I went away from them to do my own work with the result that it was a lot clearer, a lot better None of it looked like theirs, yet....I guess what I'm trying to say is that I eschewed direct influence. ; maybe rather call it enhancement/i]
I don't know. I get the feeling I'm not making myself very clear.....


Bah !! All the above has just been said while I was spending half an hour putting this post together ! I hate you all.

don't cry sweety.

it seems what you were trying to say in a nutshell can be simply put as , 'take everything with a grain of salt' and think for yourself, make up your own mind. Follow your own path. Am I right in this. With this I do agree very much.

what you say about the isolation, I know about this , this has been my struggle with human interaction and comunication, I am much better but still horribly inept and looking on from the edge of the forrest still. But that is what I am I don't know that its something you can obtain by isolating yourself.
I think I understand what you mean by that more along the lines of working on things on your own in peace without outside distractions?
But your right if you have not been raised 100% feral then your brain has been 'wired' by human influence from day one. I am a bit of a mix. I had to have some human influence or I would have died or not be able to speak at all etc.

Carl not evolved musicaly? who the hell could say that aside from the deaf and blind?

[Bau]

I kind of agree. But not with "surrender", necessarily. Why not just accept them ? because, as I said, you've been taught they're bad. Which is as may be, according to the laws of a moral society. Accepting them doesn't mean giving up control to them. Neither did I say they should not be battled with, cowed down....but at least aknowledged. Too many people deny parts of their soul, refuse to admit even to themselves that they have a "dark" side. What are they afraid of ?

I'm sorry but somethings ARE bad. Some parts of some people are VERY BAD. Acceptance is to close to complacency for my blood. I think the proper term would be 'acknowledge' as your say, not acceptence.

For many facing the truth can be painful, no one like to adimt that they suck. And painful because then it imposed the responsibility of doing something about it and that is work. Easier for many not to face things and would rather pretend they don't exist.

[squishy]

I don't agree that we are entirely made up of the influence of other people

Did I really say that? Oh bugger, I'm so sorry . . . Of course we're not entirely made up of the influence of other people: we're entirely made up of all kinds of influences, the interactions between them, our reactions to them and the interactions between our reactions and further influences, ad infinitum. People as much as animals (what part od Squishy are Squishy's cats? The parrot upstairs? The park squirrels?), events (if Squishy's largely made of water, I hope it's both sea-water and that rain that's been falling for over a week: it smells good), the things we hear (the snorring and the purring at the moment), we touch (Squishy's beloved furry Totoro blanket) or, of course, eat (mmmmm, good to know I am sushi, too: makes me slightly less lustful for another sushi today)

[Echo Barley]

"I'm sorry but somethings ARE bad. Some parts of some people are VERY BAD. Acceptance is to close to complacency for my blood. I think the proper term would be 'acknowledge' as your say, not acceptence.

For many facing the truth can be painful, no one like to adimt that they suck. And painful because then it imposed the responsibility of doing something about it and that is work. Easier for many not to face things and would rather pretend they don't exist."

1: yes they are bad, hence my comment "within a moral society". Anything which inflicts suffering on others, is bad. I took that as read and didn't go into it. Perhaps I should have said "kinks". I.e., enjoying it up the bum, or homosexuality, or BDSM, or even drink and drugs, depending on how you've been brought up.

2: that's right. But then, that's where the soul's strength comes from, facing those things and doing something about it ? Hence, what my friend told me not being "crap".

But you're right, in a nutshell, more or less

Squishy. You're splitting hairs. "other people" obviously includes their actions. Action being the product of thought, thought being the essence of people, right ?

[Last Exit]

Carl appear to me lately as 'the door', more like 'portal'...it is new idea and I did not develop it yet, not even can explain it, but that idea simply appear and as that thread is alive again...what do you think?

Thats very much how I see The Nephs, and indeed all art, music, literature....its there to make you think about your own response to it, not for the deification of its author. In fact, at the risk of getting all deconsructionist here, I'd go so far as to say an author is really only half the story, the meaning emerges in the inter-reaction of text & reader, and its always different (best example I can give is the novel "On the road", which changed my life aged about 12, and seems like the self obsessed ramblings of a boring speed freak nowadays). Carl's work has certainly led me into all sorts of stuff I might not have found otherwise, but I think maybe he puts it best himself in the howl "You cannot follow me", the unspoken subtext saying, "but you can get there yourself by your own ways & means".

[squishy]

Squishy. You're splitting hairs. "other people" obviously includes their actions. Action being the product of thought, thought being the essence of people, right ?

Oh, but of course I am not entirely serious - or rather, if I am, then playfully so. But I really don't know about those "thoughts" and "products" . . . Seems revoltingly Cartesian to me. And even if I believed in any essences - I honestly don't - I'd never seek to essentially distinguish people from animals (or anything else alive), or to narrow the domain of "thought" to humans, even less to see "thought" as the definitive human thing.

Prefer any gobbledygook to the nasty brutish conceited two-faced bore that Descartes seems to have been on rainy days like these.

[Echo Barley]

lavender smells nice being the essence/product of a nice little plant that someone thought to squishy over a vial and then sell as perfume.......

Pint, anyone ?*




*how ironic it is that monks invented booze