Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Welcome, one and all to the annual St. Patrick's Day edition of Insomnia!

Every year I enjoy using this forum to present us - one and all - with a greeting of sorts on this, the yearly Wearing of the Green.

On with it:

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!


THIS IS YOUR DRINK:



THIS IS YOUR DRINK'S COCKTAIL:



THIS IS YOUR DRINKING BUDDY:



THIS IS HIS DATE:



THIS IS YOUR DATE:



THIS IS YOUR OTHER DATE:



THIS IS THE OPENING BAND:



THIS IS THE HEADLINER:



THIS IS YOUR EVENT PLANNER:



THIS IS YOUR WINGMAN:



THIS IS MY MESSAGE TO YOU:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!


Love, Joe Nolan

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!





Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Deep and Crisp and Even

Hey all and all and then some,

Really feeling the spirit today. Was recently, nearly
reduced to tears of joy hearing "Feliz Navidad" at the
bean aisle in Kroger.

Check out this performance of the song, live in Denmark in 1973.
Hippest caroling ever!



Regardless of your religio/mystico/philosophical relationship to the world without and within, this season really does put people in mind of others. Within such sudden selflessness there lies that great, untapped potential for Total Revolution: psychic, spiritual, personal, interpersonal, galactic...

This tree will grow.
I saw it in a dream.



Here is the text for the poem I recited in an audio post in the last entry in this luminescent journal:

"Origami Gunship"

There is a truer
truth to be
known beneath the smoldering
sky of starving
leaves as winter takes
over the South.

(A Yankee front
sweeping down from Connecticut.
An icy grimace
in Union Blue).

There is a knowing to be known
between myself
and the girl with the black
hat
and the red
bag
and the white
teeth.
She smiles like a friendly
Nazi and she laughs
when I reach
past her
for the hot sauce.

There is a light
to bright
this grey window
with the frost
in the corners
and the dead
hornet:
legs up;
tobacco-colored wings more
delicate than Chinese
paper;
memento mori;
origami gunship;
an abdomen
swollen with
frozen poison.
A glinting light breaks
across the tip
of the stinger.
The sun roars to life
for the first time
in weeks.



One of my most enjoyable projects was being asked to edit an issue of Number: An Independent Journal of the Arts. I've been writing reviews, reports and interviews for the publication for years and this opportunity allowed me to make an issue that focused more exclusively on the Nashville art scene (The journal covers Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee and is a publication of University of Memphis).

I recently turned in new piece that features an interview with TSU curator Jodi Hays Gresham. Browsing through the Number site last night I noticed that the back issues have been updated. You can now download a .pdf version of all the recent issues.

Click here to download the Joe Nolan edited Number:62

And here is a special Holiday treat. In a recent post I offered this track for download and had so much response from the folks who heard it that I've decided to make it an open link so people don't have to keep emailing me here and on Facebook to get it. This is a demo for my new song "Phantom Punch". Inspired by the second boxing match between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston, my pal Jean Paul Lilliston and I had some audio problems so I recorded these vocals on a cell phone in Nashville to a speaker phone in Chicago. Most people who've heard this insist that I have to use these vocals as they turned out surprisingly good. See what you think...


Phantom Punch

Enjoy the goodies. Travel safely and be grateful and thanks to all of you who've read this electric rag and listened to my noises this year.



___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!





Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Origami Gunship

Seasons Greetings...and a new poem...

Mobile post sent by MightyJoeNolan using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

___________________________________________________________

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!





Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Invitation and Farewell

Amigos y amigas,

Bienvenido a la Nada.



"I had a friend who believed in UFO's"






This grey morning I
walk between the cracks.
Back
to the seen of the crime:
the true, original vision.

This grey morning I
steer into the current,
escaping the tangled embrace of morning
traffic and autumn
trees and sallow
light in the mist
like a kiss speaking
invitation and
farewell.

This grey morning I
sit in warm cafes drinking
in something more than
inspiration.

A poster on a board,
at the back,
near the busted fountain says that
"Air is an element".
But I am dreaming Russian
dolls.

The water that wets the air is -
in turn - grim with earth and
everything's born
from fire.

In grey mornings I
stopped worrying about
tears years ago.
Now, it's the not crying that is worrisome.

Sadness suckles salt.




Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Undiscovered Country

God Bless us every one.



I have recently discovered a trove of treasure, a vein really, one full of heroines in the rain, firing arrows into the stars.

Moving images move at the speed of light. We sit hushed in darkened theaters while Scientists madly scratch their heads in search of Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.

In Contempt, Godard builds a universe on a piece of ass and James Toback counts to 7 and back again using every one of his Fingers. Blake saw the Universe in a Grain of Sand when he woke from a vision of a movie camera's glass lens.

We reproduce the moving of our movements so that they may move again. Not to infantilize - to live forever in a repeating loop - but to prove the existence of parallel worlds. To show ourselves to ourselves the way some mystics see human beings as the eyes of God staring back at the blind, mad, demiurge. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, and we are the eyes of God, then surely we replicate HIS replication and the fall continues unabated.

Apples are complimented by both butter and popcorn.

Lets open the vein and see what - exactly - may pour out.







The Power of Words

- Edgar Allen Poe

OINOS. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality!

AGATHOS. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

OINOS. But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once be happy in being cognizant of all.

AGATHOS. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.

OINOS. But does not The Most High know all?

AGATHOS. That (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the one thing unknown even to Him.

OINOS. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known?

AGATHOS. Look down into the abysmal distances!–attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus–and thus–and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?–the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

OINOS. I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

AGATHOS. There are no dreams in Aidenn–but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know, which is for ever unquenchable within it–since to quench it, would be to extinguish the soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart's- ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple–tinted suns.

OINOS. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!–speak to me in the earth's familiar tones. I understand not what you hinted to me, just now, of the modes or of the method of what, during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

AGATHOS. I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

OINOS. Explain.

AGATHOS. In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.

OINOS. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme.

AGATHOS. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

OINOS. I can comprehend you thus far–that certain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae.

AGATHOS. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation–and of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.

OINOS. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens–are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?

AGATHOS. Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, gave vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth's air, which thenceforward, and for ever, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculation–so that it became easy to determine in what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb, and impress (for ever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless–and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis–who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation–these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress–that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

OINOS. And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

AGATHOS. Because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding–one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded–there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air–and the ether through the air–to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing that exists within the universe;–and the being of infinite understanding–the being whom we have imagined–might trace the remote undulations of the impulse- trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of an matter–upward and onward for ever in their modifications of old forms–or, in other words, in their creation of new–until he found them reflected–unimpressive at last–back from the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such a thing do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded him–should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspection–he could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfection–this faculty of referring at all epochs, all effects to all causes–is of course the prerogative of the Deity alone–but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the Angelic intelligences.

OINOS. But you speak merely of impulses upon the air.

AGATHOS. In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth; but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether- which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation.

OINOS. Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

AGATHOS. It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought–and the source of all thought is-

OINOS. God.

AGATHOS. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair Earth which lately perished–of impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

OINOS. You did.

AGATHOS. And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?

OINOS. But why, Agathos, do you weep–and why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star–which is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream–but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart.

AGATHOS. They are!–they are! This wild star–it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved–I spoke it–with a few passionate sentences- into birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts.

THE END









Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

Love and Might

Love and Might


She walked through the kitchen on bare feet in the middle of the night searching for the knife in the dark. She touched the blade of the chef's knife and slid it back down into the block. She touched the blade of the bread knife and pulled it all the way out.

The open refrigerator illuminated the dark kitchen, its blue light bouncing off of the hard, shiny, concrete floor. In many parts of the world, the blinding blur of all of this electric would take on the glow of a metaphysical revelation: a miracle.

A sun inside of an ice cold box.



She pulled out the rest of the chocolate cake and cut a thin slice before bisecting that same slice into two pieces of sugary architecture that she could pick up with her fingers. She touched the side of the decanter and then poured the still-warm-enough coffee into the mug. The entire nation of Ethiopia rose and roared from the ceramic bowl. Hailie Sallassie prayed to his great, great grandfather - old Solomon himself - while the coffee wafted from the bowl in waves of wisdom and bitterness alike.



She slid back the door. The light, white curtains blew in, taking the shape of the night air. She tugged her short robe together at her chest and sat on the sleek white chair overlooking the avenue and the intersection at the boulevard down the block. The streets were quiet, the occasional car whispering to itself as it slid by seven floors down.

She broke the first, small piece of the moist, dark cake and dipped it into the coffee making sure to get as much of the bitter, black liquid into the cake before it became too full and broke of into the cup in soggy defeat. She held the cup near her mouth as she sucked the chocolate in.



Some scientists say that chocolate stimulates a woman's brain in a way that replicates the experience of falling in love. White people first had the privilege of tasting chocolate after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. The Europeans in their desperation for love enslaved the Mesoamericans on cocoa plantations so that women a world away could pour the dark liquid into their powdered faces. The brown people in South America had been given the gift of the cocoa bean by Quetzalcoatl, the great, feathered deity who had been banished from heaven for sharing the Food of the Gods with mortal men. It seems the people themselves were also banished from Heaven within the boundaries of their own land, and that the Gods -everywhere- favor might over love.

She left the second piece of cake on the saucer, on the steel table next to the sleek chair and held the mug in her hands, warming her pink palms as the chocolate mellowed her expression into a somnambulant gaze focused on some distant desire. She rushed back into her own eyes when she heard the crash.

She could make out one of the cars - on the far side of the boulevard - and could see some kind of steam or smoke rising from the place where the sound came from. The white plume rose above the shop at the corner of the boulevard and then above date tree glowing green beneath the grey moon before she heard the first voices - desperate, scared and angry - disrupting her perfect love with noise and metal and the sound of an ambulance just now wailing in the distance.

At the very first, mushrooms had been served...They ate no more food; they only drank chocolate during the night. And they ate the mushrooms with honey. When the mushrooms took effect on them, then they danced, then they wept. But some, while still in command of their senses, entered and sat there by the house on their seats; they did no more, but only sat there nodding.









Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Find the archives to my Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my You Tube channel: Imagicon

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!

Please consider supporting this site by making a PayPal donation and check out our friends using the links on the right.

Love,
Joe Nolan

The Last Days of Pompeii

Hola, Amigos!

If you have been enjoying these little stories I am writing here, encourage me with a comment :)

If you hate these, I'll understand. Just tell me to stop.



THE OL'SARGE



In all his days, he'd never seen nothin' like this.

The Sarge wiped his brow with a hard, dirty, tan forearm - the grime running like fast, gray tears down either side of his face. The smoke bombs draped the whole scene in Tibetan prayer flags.

Drifting Yellow.

Rising Red.

"So, this is the bardo...?"





*
Chikkhai bardo (Tibetan): is the fourth bardo of the moment of death. According to tradition, this bardo is held to commence when the outer and inner signs presage that the onset of death is nigh, and continues through the dissolution or transmutation of the Mahabhuta until the external and internal breath has completed.
*

2) HISTORICAL USAGE OF DATURA

Press Play


2a) TIMELINE

1676
a group of soldiers go insane in jamestown upon ingestion of cooked Datura plants.

1968
Datura over-the-counter remedies for athsmatic difficulties are banned after people begin using them recreationally.

2b) General Overview of Historical Usage

Datura has been used for a very long time. Originally, it seems it was used as a shamanistic tool, one that could help a shaman gain entrance to "other worlds of existance." It also contains several chemicals that are helpful to the body in certain conditions. Atropine, a chemical derived from plants in the Solanaceae, is used in hospitals and generally a trusted drug. As such, one can imagine that it is fairly safe when used within the suggested dosages.

It would seem that people discovered its medicinal properties through shamans, or "Medicine Men." Often shamanism is used to cure illness, and certainly Datura would be a very good cure for some diseases.

6 a2) Tea

My experience with tea is also inconclusive. The first time I made a tea with boiling water, and seeds in a coffee filter. I used about 45 seeds, that were not quite mature (still rather small and somewhat yellow). The tea was very bright yellow and was not particularly pleasant tasting, with a mild spicy taste (like jalapeno) to it. The effects came on in about half an hour, with a mild stupor. Basically it was difficult to walk (I felt almost drunk) and thought was somewhat impaired. This didn't last very long at all, probably about 3 hours.

Note: This stuporous effect could have come from the blocking of anticholinergenic receptors. Drugs that produce acetylcholine have long been called "smart drugs" (Nootropics) for the way they make a user feel intelligent (and they actually perform better intellectually) and stimulated. Some have even been dubbed healthy coffee substitutes.

Perhaps atropine is a "dumb drug?"

My second experience was with more seeds, perhaps 60, but this time I ran the tea through the seeds 5 times. I added a very big (proportionally) amount of Grenadine and I also put a bag of Celestial Seasoning's 'Red Zinger' into the mix. The taste was mainly sugary, and the taste of the Datura was almost non-existant. The effects lasted about as long. The second dose was taken 2 days after the first, so it is important to note that they may have had a combined effect. After the second dose, I went to sleep, and had incredibly vivid dreams.

I remember being in a room talking to friends of mine. It seemed proper to speak out loud (I was aware that I was speaking out loud as well as in the dream), and was overall a very pleasant experience (the dream). This is probably delerium, along with interference in the brain stem.


My third experience was just the same as the first, and dreaming was no different than "normal."

This effect may also impair driving. Wearing sunglasses is usually a good idea when driving, provided they arent too dark, and with dilated pupils, it almost becomes a must.

Delerium/Delerium in Sleep

This is not well documented, so all I can do is hypothesize.



When one dreams, most of the images, sounds, et cetera, one hears, originate from the brain stem. Atropine interferes directly with much of the activity in the brain stem, ranging from motor impairment and tachycardia to the basal ganglionic blockage.

"One guy, who dealt drugs and wasn't particularly centered and/or able to connect with anyone else in the group decided to take off. Another guy and I understood that it was dangerous for anybody to become separated so we pursued him down to a busy boulevard where after a couple of blocks we became freaked and ceased trying to talk him into returning with us. We went back to the house. He went on his way, went to his house, got a suitcase full of drugs, walked to a strange neighborhood and into some old people's house. Whereupon, he began to behave as if he was in his own house. What occurred next I'm sure is obvious."



The baby cried out over the intercom and she climbed down off of the step ladder, jumping to the floor with the last step.

A young woman - given early to marriage and children - she had been up in the dark getting the older ones off to school.



"Just me and the baby, now." She thought the thought just before the house began to shake.

In the last days of Pompeii, there was a festival in the street. Thousands of people crowded the storefronts - smiles full of lamb, wine, cheese, and herbs - listening to the music, and dreaming of an Africa guarded by tree cats with sharp eyes and wide wings - a fresco of human movement, undulating in the sun like an iridescent snake. The girls dropped their dresses in the public fountain and the graffiti punned the walls it was written on until the writings - and then the walls - were covered in the light, gray ash.

The artillery continued in the distance. He could hear the squawk of the radio getting closer. "These birds only sing bad news."

"Sargent! We've broken through! We've been ordered to push to the border!"

The Sargent stared at the huge, smooth, silver disc, half-buried in the mud and trees, burning blue flames, so hot the surface distorted its reflection of the battleground like a not-so-fun-house mirror.

"We're way passed that, son." The Sargent emptied his rifle into the black ground.

CRACK

CRACK

CRACK



THE END




Hey! What are you doing? Take a second and find me on my Facebook. Send me a friend request on the site!

Check out my videos, the archives of The Sleepless Film Festival, and more at my new You Tube channel: Joe Nolan's Imagicon

Listen my new CD - Blue Turns Black!



Love,
Joe Nolan

Use this player to listen to my new CD. Purchase a song or two at your favorite digital outlet and help us stay awake here at Insomnia!

Check out my profile at Reverb Nation to see my updated press and bio.

Listen to my earlier releases, and enjoy free downloads here!