Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #225

"Million Dollar Bash - Take 2" by Bob Dylan - 08/30/21

"Million Dollar Bash - Take 2" by Bob Dylan

Two of my musical ‘heroes’, Bob Dylan & Kanye West, had some pretty ‘newsworthy’ moments during my two-week hiatus.

Kanye tinkered with his new album Donda with two more listening parties, one more in Atlanta and a last one in Chicago, before releasing the album yesterday.

And Dylan was accused of sexual misconduct from someone from 50 years ago, which so far seems somewhat specious.

Dylan also came up on the Shuffle yesterday, and he’s back here today.

So there appears to be something that needs to be said?

I think it has to do with the standout track from Donda.

“Jail” by Kanye West

Initially, I only heard the JAY-Z version of this song from the first listening party before my hiatus.

As Genius.com writes of it:

“‘Jail’ is the triumphant return of Kanye West and JAY-Z, also known as The Throne. The duo has now made amends, after their once brotherly relationship stood still….’Jail’ also serves as the beginning of Donda’s narrative structure. We find Kanye in the midst of a crisis, spiraling out of control as his marriage falls apart and his public image falls apart once again. JAY-Z recorded his verse at 4:00 PM on July 22, 2021, just four hours before the official DONDA listening party at Mercedes-Benz Superdome.”

It starts with Kanye perhaps telling Kim that she can take anything she wants in the divorce proceedings:

Take what you want
Take everything
Take what you want
Take what you want

Which is something I also did during my own separation.

My (ex?)-wife wanted me to sign some documentation that said I wouldn’t later seek income from her from her more successful TV writing career, and I happily signed it.

As well, I gave her any of our material possessions that she wanted.

But beyond that it’s also Kanye (and me) telling ‘God’ to take whatever ‘He’ wants.

Take away the life he/I planned.

If that’s the ‘real’ plan, let it be so.

Better that I change my number so you can't explain
Violence in the night, violence in the night
Priors, priors, do you have any priors?
Well, that one time
I'll be honest, I'll be honest
We all liars

Here’s where the Kanye song seems to start to intersect with the Dylan news.

“Violence in the night, violence in the night”

Suggestive of physical or sexual violence.

Perhaps the kind that Dylan has been accused of.

While that kind of violence wasn’t part of my separation and divorce, while I was back in Rochester post the Esalen awakening, I did reach out to my (ex)-wife asking if she wanted to come to my sister’s wedding, which she later perceived to be aggressive and said made her uncomfortable.

As Adyashanti says, and many others, and which I’ve quoted before, but will paraphrase now, with every awakening experience there is also shadow material that arises.

I mentioned yesterday that with self and spiritual knowledge or vision sometimes comes career or romantic knowledge or vision.

And part of my awakening at Esalen involved a realization of how to edit my We Bought a Gun project which I will believe will make it better and ultimately more successful, which I also believe may in fact bring about the romantic reconciliation I’ve written about in the past (if to paraphrase Brian Wilson, God wants that).

Some may perceive speaking this ‘truth’ to be a form of egoic ‘violence.’

And yet that’s how I felt.

When I got back to LA that Friday night from Esalen, I shuffled to a song at one of the peaks of my processing the experience right before going to bed specifically asking my spirit guides/dad for advice and got a song that was sung by Francis and the Lights (who also produced this Donda song “Jail”) and this song was also co-written by Kanye and Rostam from Vampire Weekend and others. It was:

“Friends (feat. Bon Iver)” by Francis and the Lights

Could be lookin' at you
From a freeway trailer
If you'd handled what I'd taken
Separate loans, separate codes
No fine line, don't have to be dead right
'Cause dead right can go wrong

I thought of how I had ‘mishandled’ giving her my spiritual insights and how she couldn’t ‘handle’ it.

How we’d ended up with ‘separate’ everything.

There was ‘no fine line’.

How for years with her as an Enneagram 1, I believed she too much had to be ‘dead right,’

But going to my disintegration point from 7 to 1, I was now the one who had made being ‘dead right’ ‘go wrong.’

Note: when I explained to the Esalen teacher Russ Hudson (when I thought I was a 4) that I went from 4 to the shadow side of my integration point of point 1, he seemed to do that unconscious body response that I wrote about yesterday which made me think he consciously or not knew that what I was saying wasn’t right.

I didn’t add this yesterday, but after the lecture on 7 where I was crying in epiphanic realization and elation, I went up to Russ and told him I thought I might be a 7. He smiled widely, for the first time, to me at least, and opened his arms wide, and said something like, ‘You know, Steven Spielberg is a 7, it's not so bad.”

We then danced to music with other class members with Russ DJ-ing for a half-hour.

This is a sidebar, but Russ as a 5 has a God-like encyclopedic knowledge of music and picks out songs as if he’s the spirits shuffling. One of the songs had lyrics that said ‘7th heaven’ and another song was a Smiths song that is the quintessential song of 4s: “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” I believe, and all the 4s were into it, and I was like, I like this song OK, but I never LOVED it. And we laughed. And there’s an inner line in the Enneagram that connects the 7 and 5. How I interpret Russ (a former musician)’s “God-like” ability to select music from his memory and my ability to make meaning and joy out of any song on “God’s” Shuffle is that that’s perhaps the difference between a 5 and a 7.

But back to Francis and the Lights…

We could be friends
We could be friends
Put your head on my shoulders

I'm Francis
Still dreamin' of a glory
Of somethin' new
I can't remember what it's like
To never wanna let go
It's all good though

This verse from Francis is interesting to interpret. He seems to be saying he’s ‘dreaming of a glory’ of ‘somethin’ new.’ And that he ‘can’t remember what it’s like to never wanna let go.’ Which is a little confusing but seems to be saying he remembers what it’s like to wanna let go. Which seems to suggest that he wants a new relationship with someone else. And yet saying all that, that way, it also belies how much it seems he really doesn't. Especially that: ‘it’s all good though.’

We could be friends
We could be friends
Just put your head on my shoulders
I will straighten out, for you
Don't wanna know if you made mistakes
I'm still waiting on your sunshine

The next verse seems to answer the above doubt. Francis offers to ‘straighten out’ for the partner. Francis ‘doesn’t wanna know if you made mistakes.’ Perhaps of the dating other people kind. And says that ‘I’m still waiting on your sunshine.’

Sunshine was a keyword in the Enneagram 7 revelation, as Russ taught that the color of 4s was black, which is a color I almost never wear haha. While the color of 7s is sunshine or sunflower yellow, which is my favorite color, LOL.

One way of distinguishing between 4s and 7s, is that 4s wear their sadness growing up as a badge of honor, they’re the goth kids wearing black and listening to sad music, while the 7s are the (sad) clowns who hide their sadness with jokes and try to focus on fun.

Those who know/knew me would probably laugh at how much the latter is true over the former.

Ooh, LA
I guess you gotta chase that ghost
Heard you bought some land in Mexico
And I said, "Way to go, man"
'Cause wherever you may roam
Remember who you know
There's a station playin' rock and roll
So stay tuned in mi amor
Stay tuned in

This verse also really hit home. ‘Ooh LA,’ the place where my (ex?)-wife grew up and we live(d), we were both ‘chasing that ghost.’ Another teaching Russ used for the 7s is that they are what Buddhists call ‘hungry ghosts’ that is, the kind of person in the Bardo that was never satisfied on Earth. An esoteric teaching is that the Bardo is this world, too, and many of us run around (too often) unsatisfied like hungry ghosts.

The next lines: Francis sings ‘cause where you may roam, remember…there’s a station playin’ rock and roll, so stay tuned in mi amor, stay tuned in,’ made me start to cry, as it’s exactly how I feel about music both on the radio and now in the algorithms on Spotify and Apple Music and Pandora and more: Stay tuned in everyone, there’s messages sent to you via Source or God or the Mystery or whatever you want to call it.

I will turn around for you
I will straighten up for your girl
Just put your hand on my shoulder
We could be friends, for you
We could be friends, for you
I will make this promise to you
After all these promises
I'm looking at you now
Still looking for you, still waiting for you
I told you, I'm sorry... I was waiting on a different story
Still waiting on your sunshine
What I tell you
Still waiting on your sunshine

And this last verse of “I will turn around for you,” which made me think of my eating habits at Esalen, how focusing on the self-preservation instinct learnings I’ve been studying in the year-long course (and which were also a part of the Esalen workshop), I found myself sensing when I was hungry and when I wasn’t and only eating when I was and then noticed that as the week at Esalen went on, I found myself eating less and less of the really delicious food, not because I didn’t want to, but because I was sustained by the spiritual and social sustenance.

I’m happy to report that I’m down 16 pounds from July 14th and yet still eating mostly whatever I want, including my favorite tacos the night I got off the plane on Saturday back in LA.

Part of the realization of what to edit in We Bought a Gun also came from friendships with people at Esalen and Russ’s teachings about the 8.

I had always feared the 8 energy which is a protector, strong, dominating, challenging type. The sin of the 8 is vengeance, sort of like the end of Tarantino movies, but what Russ pointed out is that you can’t just have the virtue of 8s, innocence, without the ability to protect. I realized that my character in We Bought a Gun and me myself had been running around unable to protect myself even if I would likely ultimately not to choose to harm anyone.

It took meeting a woman at Esalen who carried a sword and two ‘alpha’ men in my workshop, who recommended that I take jiujitsu to learn that there is value in self-defense even if you choose to always stop short of taking life or using weapons.

I’m happy to report that I took my first jiujitsu class today here in LA.

It was very challenging! But a bit fun and funny too.

The highlight was probably when I learned the choke move of jiujitsu. And when I was practicing it, I accidentally didn’t stop choking my partner (the seeming number 2 there) even after he kept tapping my arm (I didn’t learn or remember the tap out rule).

LOL!

Fortunately, he also found it slightly amusing and pointed out that even a child equipped with that move could choke him out.

Which I didn’t take too much offense to ;)

“I will make this promise to you, after all these promises” suggest that words are just words and I have to walk a long walk still.

But I’m “still looking for her, still waiting for her,” even when I rush things with text messages inviting her to a family wedding she’s not ready to attend and post pushy social media posts for others to see and perhaps even all of this writing on this Substack, which I haven’t yet ceased: “I told her, I'm sorry”

And I will: “Still wait on your sunshine.”

Back to Kanye’s “Jail”:

I'll be honest, we all liars
I'll be honest, we all liars
I'm pulled over and I got priors
Guess we goin' down, guess who's goin' to jail?

I think what Kanye is saying is that we all make mistakes, big and small, we all have ‘priors.’

And yes some of them can be extreme mistakes, like perhaps Dylan’s, if it turns out to be true, which it appears it isn’t going to, but that ultimately the higher spiritual teachings are that we’re forgiven and that we should do our best to forgive others here on Earth too.

I was reminded of this New Yorker article about a French writer whose biological father molested him. He believed his mother knew about this, and when he confronted her she said that he assaulted her too. In my view, The New Yorker profiler seemed to paint her response to the villainy of her husband as negligent when she later got into New Age spirituality and offered the advice of something like ‘everything has its purpose.’ The profiler seemed to prefer only the writer’s response which was to write autobiographical novels about the situation. But I guess I ask why is one better or worse than the other? Why can’t we have both? Art and spirituality?

And I think that’s what Kanye is saying too.

Guess who's goin' to jail tonight?
Guess who's goin' to jail tonight?
Guess who's goin' to jail tonight?
God gon' post my bail tonight

Without the molestation, the writer wouldn’t have written the books that have perhaps helped thousands of people. And isn’t that what his mother is saying is the higher spiritual teaching. For whatever reason, ‘evil’ exists on Earth, and its purpose is unknown to us beyond it being part of the tapestry of this life.

Skipping to JAY-Z’s verse:

God in my cell, that's my celly
Made in the image of God, that's a selfie
Pray five times a day, so many felonies
Who gon' post my bail? Lord, help me
Hol' up, Donda, I'm with your baby when I touch back road
Told him, "Stop all of that red cap, we goin' home"
Not me with all of these sins, castin' stones
This might be the return of The Throne (Throne)
Hova and Yeezus, like Moses and Jesus
You are not in control of my thesis
You already know what I think 'bout think pieces
Before you ask, he already told you who he think he is
Don't try to jail my thoughts and think pre-cents
I can't be controlled with programs and presets
Reset
On my cell, in my cell tonight
Don't have to see you to touch you
This is what braille look like, it's on sight
If they take me to jail, call my girl, tell her send my mail
We know what Hell look like
Still, it's a hell of a life, yikes

The key line being perhaps: “Not me with all of these sins, castin’ stones”.

It’s a basic spiritual teaching and yet as Jay later raps we all forget “We know what Hell looks like, Still, it’s a hell of a life, yikes.”

Meaning something like, we all think we know what Hell is like, with a capital H, but we forget that hell is a part of all of our lives and perhaps some of all of our behaviors contribute to someone else’s h/Hell.

So back to Bob Dylan?

I think so.

I was pretty absorbed in the two weeks with my family, not really keeping up with cultural things, but my mom relayed the news about the misbehavior lawsuit.

And for a few minutes perhaps even an hour or two, it really shook me.

There might be no other ‘hero’ in contemporary American culture who I personally have lionized more than Bob Dylan.

I called a friend and we talked about it. She pointed out something like maybe there are no heroes, just people.

And I think of today’s song:

"Million Dollar Bash - Take 2" by Bob Dylan

Well, that big dumb blonde with her wheel in the gorge
And Turtle, that friend of hers, with his checks all forged
And his cheeks in a chunk, and his cheese in the cash
They’re all gonna be there at that million dollar bash

Ooh, baby, ooh-ee
Ooh, baby, ooh-ee
It’s that million dollar bash

It’s a song about golddiggers and hustlers, scummy type people. And from some interpretations, Dylan could be superiorly gazing down on them.

But then he sings:

We’re all gonna meet at that million dollar bash

We’re all going to the million dollar bash of life he seems to be saying.

It’s beautiful and coarse.

It’s good and evil.

It’s the artist/person and the ego and their personal misbehavior and even perhaps their unforgivable crimes against others.

But it’s also the artist/person and the Divine Spirit that provides his/her/their art/purpose that saves others and might even ultimately redeem them themself.

And I think that’s what Kanye was doing with:

“Jail pt 2”

Which was loathed by most of the mainstream media.

Especially because it ‘cut’ JAY-Z’s verse and featured Marilyn Manson and DaBaby instead who have made recent mistakes in behavior or statements or worse.

To me at least, after a day of listening, the greatest themes beyond spirituality and divorce in Donda is forgiveness. The idea that judgment is actually or should be forgiveness.

And Kanye takes that to logical extremes with songs about prison reform:

But also by indicting and freeing all of us for all of our crimes small and large.

So it’s more than a ‘cis-male’ ‘reactionary’ response to ‘cancel culture.’

Or a ‘progressive’ ‘human’ response to ‘prison culture.’

It’s a both/and more.

Or at least that’s how I see it today.

From my limited perspective.

Just like Kanye’s.

And Dylan’s.

And yours.

And everyone else’s.

Besides perhaps ‘God’s.’

Okay, that’s the two hundred and twenty-fifth Shuffle Synchronicities.