anyway hello Internet I'm back from my shakuhachi workshop. I learned a lot about shakuhachi. notably I learned that, once again and to my great disappointment, it was not me it was the flute (the teachers also had trouble playing my 1.7 it was not just my poor technique, and I could play a Yuu much better).
the problem with my policy of not using social media on trips is that it makes journaling difficult. I got used to livetooting my adventures. I tried journaling by writing in the off hours but it was too much to write. I considered recording spoken word, but my spoken or video #content never get any interaction no matter how much effort I put into voice training and audio editing. I haven't found a thing that works for me yet, but not using social media improves my trips so much that I am once again considering how could I go could turkey and not have smartphones *at all*, even if that implies an extra 63€ monthly purely to have a DeutschlandTicket in plastic rather than app.
trip was quite eventful. a bu
... Show more...anyway hello Internet I'm back from my shakuhachi workshop. I learned a lot about shakuhachi. notably I learned that, once again and to my great disappointment, it was not me it was the flute (the teachers also had trouble playing my 1.7 it was not just my poor technique, and I could play a Yuu much better).
the problem with my policy of not using social media on trips is that it makes journaling difficult. I got used to livetooting my adventures. I tried journaling by writing in the off hours but it was too much to write. I considered recording spoken word, but my spoken or video #content never get any interaction no matter how much effort I put into voice training and audio editing. I haven't found a thing that works for me yet, but not using social media improves my trips so much that I am once again considering how could I go could turkey and not have smartphones *at all*, even if that implies an extra 63€ monthly purely to have a DeutschlandTicket in plastic rather than app.
trip was quite eventful. a bunch good things happened, a bunch of bad things happened. I try to look at it like a melody, the joy and hype like a danceable climax, the sadness and hurt like distorted dissonances: if it is all a united composition, what does it tell me?
honkyoku is a buddhist music genre and I will say this for the buddhists, they really nailed the thing about clarity and awareness. I don't know if it was the workshop or all the other stuff happening or both but somehow I had this great sense of clarity about a number of things, like the finitude of life, the preciousness of the time I get to be with my daughter and loved ones. or: that I have to figure out a way out of this country, or at the very least this city. or: that going back to academia is within reach, yes moving or getting a new job is a lot of work but what's the sense of complaining about life constantly then just working all day to maintain it rather than change it.
then before the weekend was even over I could feel it, the hypnotic lull of the daily grind hooking up in my mind again like tentacles. the veil of māyā, like one of those illusion traps of Naruto or something. we complain a lot about smartphones and the Internet, and before that it was television, but I think these things just accelerated a trap that was already there. I don't like buddhism generally but it almost makes me want to go on zazen retreats again, specifically to try to regain that sense of clarity; the incredible joys and love, the unspeakable sadness and loneliness, and the clear-headedness, all are memories now, have become things I cannot touch; memories no different than stories about someone else, about a girl found in a shining colm of bamboo.
