It has been an interesting weekend. On Friday evening we attended a screening of our friend Edin Velez's film A Certain Foolish Consistency at the Scanners: New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center. On Saturday night we returned to the festival to see Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm also at Scanners. We've posted reviews on our myspace blog:

blog.myspace.com/tantrapm

On Saturday, we attended the Passion and Power after party and saw quite a few friends, including some with whom we'd lost touch in the past couple of years. We also made some interesting new ones. It was a delightful evening, but it ended on a much darker note.

It was after 2:00 am when we got back to the apartment we use when we're spending the night in New York City. When we arrived, we discovered that a pipe in the bathroom ceiling was leaking. We tried knocked on the door of the apartment upstairs, but the occupants were away. Then we called the super; he wasn't pleased to get a call at that time of night and said he couldn't do anything about it until Monday, so we placed a large bowl under the leak, which was beginning to subside (it had stopped completely by the next morning). It was about 3:15 when we got into bed.

It was very hot in the apartment, so we left the windows open. Just as we were drifting off to sleep, we heard a series of gunshots right below our window. We looked out to see someone apparently fleeing the scene. We called the police, who came quite promptly and in large numbers. We later learned they closed the block. We went downstairs and told one of the officers what we had seen. We got back to bed after 4:00.

The next morning we went out to survey the damage. Bullets had hit three cars, shattering glass in two and going through the windshield and flattening a tire in a third. We surmised that there had been some kind of shoot-out, since it appeared that bullets had flown in two different directions. We don't know if anyone was hit during the exchange.

There's a strange kind of clarity that hits you in extreme moments like these, and that's something worth remembering, since it relates directly to Tantric practice; every experience we have in life is an opportunity to discover something. Still, this isn't the kind of experience we're interested in replicating.

We can only guess that the shooting was gang or drug related; the neighborhood has had its ups and downs, but whatever the case, violence is sad and senseless. At best, innocent, poor people had their property damaged. At worst someone was hurt or killed. One of us could easily have been hit by a stray bullet, as could any number of other people in the neighborhood. As midtown Manhattan becomes more and more of a shopping mall, the less affluent parts of the city seem to be sliding backwards, and the new New York seems to be embodying the worst of both worlds -- the crime and violence of the old days are creeping back into the sanitized version of the City.

Punk Tantra

We usually write and post as a team, but this one is just from Mark. These are some preliminary thoughts on a subject that probably deserves to be explored in more depth. Punk Tantra may seem like an oxymoron to some, but my Tantric sensibility was shaped by my involvement in Punk. Just as we started getting active on myspace, I received a couple of CDs of material my first college band, The Relaxors, recorded in 1978 or '79 in Ann Arbor and learned that our old manager had set up a page for the band. When the package arrived I had already added a few of my favorite groups to our friends list. It was an odd sycnchronicity, and it encouraged me not only to revist my roots but also to dig through my archives. Some of the material I find may show up on the Relaxors page in the near future.

Patti Smith's Bottom Line show in December of 1975 was a life-changing experience for me. I'd seen plenty of rock bands by that time but had never experienced something of such transcendent power. About a month later I ventured into CBGBs, where Television and Talking Heads were on the bill. I knew I had found a home. This was before the crowds there got huge, and before Punk got codified, either as fashion or as a sonic style. Back then the scene was diverse, tolerant and accepting. I had the sense that we were all outsiders seeking freedom from received social norms -- whether musical, social or political. We were seeking intense experience, or as Patti Smith put it:

"I seek pleasure. I seek the nerves under your skin.The narrow archway; the layers; the scroll of ancient letters.
We worship the flaw, the belly, the belly, the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore.
He spared the child and spoiled the rod. I have not sold myself to God."

Anyway, Tantra. It's really the same thing. No need to sell yourself to God when you can find God inside yourself, but I digress. Contrary to popular myth, Tantra's got very little to do with sexual technique, and it's certainly not all new-age sweetness and light. It's about finding the divine through experience, wherever you are, including in the gutter. And those transcendent moments in the dirty dank and sweaty rock 'n' roll clubs in New York, Detroit and Ann Arbor were truly Tantric. The ego dissolved, and I became one with the sound.