The Messengers // Mike Clelland // LIVE 092216

I'm on a road trip at the moment, so I haven't been able to write the posts I want to write, because I only have my iPad to write these posts on and it drives me bonkers to write a post on this thing, but since I'm staying in room 216 at the moment and I was listening to this podcast numbered 092(216) and David Plate raved on about the number 216 in his talk in my last post, 
CLIMBING THE TREE OF LIFE – DAVID CHARLES PLATE
I thought I should re-post a link to the talk I listened to last night for readers who may be interested - 
https://soundcloud.com/euphomet/29-the-messengers-mike-clelland-live-092216

CLIMBING THE TREE OF LIFE – DAVID CHARLES PLATE

  I think the Mexican Tree of Life looks
kind of like a Ferris Wheel

Climbing the Tree of Life –
David Charles Plate

Great talk by David Charles Plate on FreemanTV.com 
Listen to it by clicking on this link -
/freemantv.com/climbing-the-tree-of-life-david-charles-plate/

Always record ... always record.

If you want to watch the films 'Jaws' and 'The Spy Who Loved Me' synced to the Styx album, 'The Grand Illusion' that David talks about in the podcast, click on the link below -

007 JAWS and STYX
(7-7-1977)

JACK OF HEARTS

If you want to see the 'Knight of Cups' film synced to 'The Doors' albums, which David switched at the Sync Summit, click on the link above.

'Hollywood Babylon' by David Plate

If you would like to purchase artwork by David, such as his work, 'Hollywood Babylon' pictured above, then follow this link to his ETSY store.

Eden: The Unintended Garden

Eden 237 km to go?!

Room 237 from the movie version of 'The Shining'

The main reason I chose to stay for two nights in the town of Eden on my way back from Melbourne on my last road-trip was for some rest and relaxation and to check out the killer whale museum, not for Eden's Biblical botanical beauty that one would hope to find in a town so named.
Road Trip #2

This was my first glimpse of Eden,
as it was night by the time I arrived

But to my surprise there was an "unintended garden" in Eden that was quite stunning.

This garden is probably the most "East of Eden" you could get incidentally.

In this garden of Eden though there is a memorial to men of the town who lost their lives at sea. 

Click to make bigger to be able to read

Notice how the memorial seems to be a place beyond the pines?-)
Mt Thompson: The Place Beyond the Pines?
Which in hindsight hits home, since my father was cremated at Mt. Thompson last Friday.

It certainly is worth a stroll out to the east of Eden to contemplate life and the unintended garden that awaits you there.

But it was the killer whale museum I had come to here to see, not the unintended garden of Eden.

Because I had just seen the Chris Hemsworth movie, 'In The Heart of the Sea' when my ex-wife had sent the divorce papers to me through from her lawyer, so I bought a bottle of 'Devil's Corner' sparkling wine to celebrate the unshackling of the chains, since it was the year 2015 and the number 15 tarot card is "The Devil" card.

When I was drinking the "Devil's Corner" wine I thought to myself that next year (2016) I will have to visit Tasmania, which is exactly what I did, and how I ended up in Eden. 
Ironically Chris Hemsworth owns a house on the same coastline as Eden, only his place is right up near the top of NSW.
I found Chris's movie about whaling enlightening, as shipwrecked is the only way you can end up when chasing the great white whale of your youth;-) 

Notice the life preserver on the wall?-)

Cheers and more about the killer whale museum of Eden in an upcoming post -
The Killers and Whales of the New South Wales Coast

Going With the Flow in Devonport on My Last Day in Tasmania

I found a mirror dory on the wall of the killer whale museum in Eden, as well;-)

UPDATE: September 2023

I came across a paperback version of 'East of Eden' while sorting through donations in an Op shop recently and remembered mentioning the book in this old post.

I never really had any intention of reading the novel before, but as this copy while readable to my standards of what a secondhand book was, the management wouldn't have approved the condition of wear and tear this copy had been through and would have binned it in the cardboard recycling bin, so I rescued the copy from being binned by offering the store a $1 donation for the copy and now it sits in my to read pile of books on top of my bedroom chest of draws.

Nick's Cave, Accidental Initiations, Walking the Skeleton Tree of Eight and the Shock of Recognition?

I caught a one off screening of the Nick Cave movie, 'One More Time With Feeling' on the night of September 8, 2016, and his previous film like this called, '20,000 Days on Earth' the next night at GOMA in another one-off screening.

And in that order those movies are quite emotionally powerful if you have never seen either of them before, because you get to view the earlier made movie in hindsight after watching the latest movie first.

I have to say that I've never been a real big Nick Cave fan, as far as his music goes, but I've always liked his movies.

A sick bag of mine from
'The Spirit of Tasmania'
and Nick Cave's book

It wasn't until I had picked up his book, 'The Sick Bag Song' in Armidale, because of the sick bag theme in my life at the time, that I became a bit more of a Nick Cave fan -
The Sick Bag Song

Before I saw Nick's movie '20,000 Days on Earth', I had attended a book talk that afternoon with Barry Jones about his book, 'The Shock of Recognition', a book I had bought earlier this year and still haven't finished. 

Barry Jones at the Brisbane Writers Festival
September 9th, 2016

"'How much time do I have left? 
A hundred days? 
A thousand? 
If I knew I was going to die next week but could be taken to see The Marriage of Figaro tonight, would I go?
Absolutely.'
In a long and generously lived life, Barry Jones has been on an endless quest to share the extraordinary and the beautiful, to encourage the pursuit of an abundant life of reading and listening."

Barry Jones is the owner of the largest private autograph collection in Australia, which is ironic, because the only reason that tipped the scales of me buying Barry's book was because the bookshop I bought it from was selling autographed copies of the book.

I also thought it was ironic that Barry Jones was a Canberra politician at one stage, who has maintained a long-standing public profile as an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, as I once designed a t-shirt with the above slogan on it, and I'll be making that trip again next week.

I thought it was rather apt that Barry Jones was talking about  
the allegory of Plato's Cave and I had seen and was going to see Nick's Cave projected onto the cinema screen in front of me.

My personal shock of recognition came the night before when I saw Nick's new movie 'One More Time With Feeling', because they pulled out a painting Nick's late son Arthur had painted of one of his favourite subjects, a windmill.

The last photo that Arthur took ... a windmill

This kind of freaked me out as I had only bought Nick's book because of my trip to Tasmania and the sick bag I had from going there, and if I had not of read that book, I doubt if I would have made the effort to see those movies of Nick's at the cinema this month.
The thing that really struck me with Arthur's windmills was that windmills were the things that drew my attention as I traveled across Tasmania, as I wrote about in this post -
The Windmills of My Mind
I was so moved by both of Nick Cave's films, not by sympathy, although I was sympathetic to his present life situation, it was from "the shock of recognition" of my own life events that I had no hesitation in buying his 'Skeleton Tree' album the next day on iTunes.

I thought it was rather Radio8Ballish that 'Skeleton Tree' had only 8 tracks on the album, so you could technically play your own version of my friend Andras Jones's game with it, but on iTunes you could only get the eighth track,'Skeleton Tree' by purchasing the album, not by getting the iTunes download.
Which made me think of Andras more, since he had written a book about walking a tree.

The Radio8Ball Show: Season Zero-Episode Three with Sandman & David Ury
I had posted the above post the day I saw Nick's new movie, September 8th, 2016.
It's weird how personal life journeys seem to tangle like red strings of fate getting tangled into each other, but I had no real interest in Nick Cave until a string of personal coincidences drew me into his art ... and life.
Now I have another album ... minus the song 'Skeleton Tree', to play as I embark on my third road-trip of the year ... so stay iTuned;-)

Stop the Clocks? Signs?

This is just a picture of the watch,
not the time it had stopped at

I've heard a lot about clocks stopping when someone dies, usually the clocks stop at the time of the person's death, which gives it that jaw dropping element to the event.

The clocks are working again
in this photo, not stopped.

This is something I had never experienced before, until last week when my father passed away in his sleep in a nursing home from complications of pneumonia and Alzheimer's.

My most prized watch that I won in a national movie magazine (Filmink magazine) competition which was promoting the Mel Gibson movie 'Signs', stopped the day my father died, but nowhere near the time of his death.

My watch had stopped at ten minutes to six, but I don't know if it was ten minutes to six the morning he passed, or ten minutes to six the night before he passed, as the last time I knew my watch was working was on the Monday I went for a walk with my brother along the banks of the Brisbane River, because my car was parked in a two hour parking zone and I had to keep my eye on my watch to make sure I got back to my car before a parking inspector did.

So, I knew my watch was working Monday afternoon -
Signs From the Spirits?

This river walk was the same walk I had done by myself a week earlier before when I went to see Mel Gibson's new movie 'Blood Father', which I wrote about here -
You Can Never Walk Along the Same River Twice

The walk I did along the river last Monday
  with my brother

And I ran into the bush turkey again
digging in the dirt this time;-)

But I didn't realize it had stopped until I was visiting my mother the next day after getting the dreaded call at 3.30am that morning.

I only assume it stopped at ten minutes to six that morning, but it could have stopped at ten minutes to six the following evening.

The time of ten minutes to six had no significance to me, but the fact my favourite watch had stopped the day he passed I found spooky. 

I wanted to wear that watch to his funeral on that Friday, so I took it to the jewelers to get a new battery for it and also decided the band was getting a bit on the tatty side, so asked the jeweler if he had similar wristbands.
There was a black snakeskin looking wristband, and I had visions of how a snake sheds its skin and thought this seemed rather apt, so I had him fit that so I could wear it the next day.

When I got the docket and looked at the job number it was eerily close to being rather meaningful as my father's old cab number was 424 and he was 86 years old when he died, so if that number had of started with a 4 instead of a 5 that would have been spooky and I realized I had paid for the repairs at 4:13pm, which I thought was pretty close to 4:24pm, which was a number that came to mind from an old post I wrote about when buying a watch for work once at this same shopping centre when dad was well and truly alive at the time -
424?

The time 4:13pm didn't mean anything to me apart from how close it was to the time 4:24pm, although he did pass on the 13th, so maybe that is a bit of a sign.
And the last three digits of the jeweller's phone number being 988 was close to 888, but no cigar, 888 reminding me of the number-plate on the peddle car my Nan had bought me and my brothers, which I wrote about in this post -
F8?
My watch stopping the day my father died while freaky was still within the realm of possibility of a coincidence, but what really got my attention was the night before his funeral I had set my alarm clock, so I would get up early and make sure everything was done before heading off to the funeral, but the alarm clock which has been working fine for the past year ran flat and stopped at 11:45pm that night, so I had to change the battery in that clock, as well.

My CD rack with over 200 CDs to play

I've been working my way through playing my CDs from bottom to top of my CD rack and at the moment in order (no order) of how I'd thrown them in when I moved house last year. 
When my clocks stopped it was a CD by the band UFO called  
'The Monkey Puzzle'.

I was thinking about the Oasis CD 'Stop the Clocks' (which was released on November 20th, my mother's birthday) and wondered where that was in my CD rack, but it was on the top shelf, so I'm going to break my rule about only playing these CDs in the order they are in from bottom to top of the rack and play 'Stop the Clocks' later today.

The Oasis CD 'Stop the Clocks'

I did think it was interesting that UFO's 'The Monkey Puzzle' was the next CD in the order it was in the CD rack after my clocks had stopped, as it's a CD I would rarely play if given the choice of other CDs to play.

The Monkey Puzzle (UFO album) 
All songs composed by Vinnie Moore and Phil Mogg except as noted.
1."Hard Being Me" (Pete Way, Moore, Mogg) - 3:35
2."Heavenly Body" - 3:52
3."Some Other Guy" - 4:38
4."Who's Fooling Who?" (Way, Moore, Mogg) - 3:57
5."Black and Blue" (Paul Raymond, Mogg) - 5:29
6."Drink Too Much" - 4:40
7."World Cruise" - 3:29
8."Down by the River" - 3:18
9."Good Bye You" - 4:40
10."Rolling Man" - 4:24
11."Kingston Town" (Raymond, Mogg) - 4:08

Track 8 is the song 'Down by the River'  
It was a blinding light
A sheer tornado of pain
I had a whiskey fury
Pounding like the devils rain

Down by the river
It's alright
I've been turning stones
Down by the river
It's alright
Someone's been catching a rabbit
About midnight

Up on a mountain side
I was touching heaven
I was a servant boy
But I was just a killer

Down by the river
I've been turning stones
Down by the river
It's alright
Someone's been catching a rabbit
About midnight

We don't take no prisoners here
Down by the river

Ain't no mystery here
Mystery in this world of mine
Hold on baby
Hold on to this night 

 And the one after it is a song called, 'Good Bye You' and ironically enough there is a song called 'Drink Too Much' on the same album, something dad would usually tell me each Christmas, a day that I drink beer all day long.
He wasn't a drinker and would lecture me every Christmas about my brain damaging habit.
Watching his mind crumble under the ravages of Alzheimer's disease this past year, I thought what difference would it make to my brain whether I drank, or not, with me having half your genes dad?

No more clock stopping, please.
Cheers ... and see you again soon.

Kangaroo Point, Sunny Brisbane, Australia

I'm not a Mormon, but after my walk along the river Monday and while heading back to my car parked across the road from the church, the gold horn blower caught my eye and I snapped a picture of it, as I realized he was facing the rising sun.
I didn't know it at the time, but my father would not be seeing the rising sun (in a physical body anyway) the next morning.