Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #150

Guest Post by Jay Michaelson + "Sunny's Time" by Caribou - 06/01/21

Today we have a guest post from one of my favorite new friends/mentors. We connected when he reviewed my Haggadahs for The Forward, but we really connected when he looked deeper into my work and found that I had written a manic/awakened humor book Spiritual Instagram, and he realized we were both a similar kind of weird.

That is, Jewish Ivy Leaguers, who confounded almost everyone they knew with their non-dual thinking and inclusion of other spiritualities into their Judaism.

If you’re stumbling along this path like me, check out his book Enlightenment by Trial and Error, if you’re interested in non-duality from the Jewish perspective, check out his book Everything is God, and if you’re interested in spirituality & queerness check out God vs. Gay. I call Jay a discerning mystic because he’s come back from the all is one to also suss things out for everyone. He’s a 7 on the Enneagram, which might be the most lively people to talk to, as you will tell in his writing to come.

Here’s a brief bio from his website!

Jay Michaelson works at the intersection of politics and spirituality.  He is a columnist for The Daily Beast and a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR.  And he is a teacher and editor at Ten Percent Happier, a leading meditation platform, as well as the author of six books on contemplative practice. He was a professional LGBT activist for ten years.

Jay holds a Ph.D. in religion from Hebrew University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination, and is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Newest articles are here.  Recent video and audio are here.  Information about bringing Jay to your community is right here. And you can follow Jay on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as well.

And now the guest post!

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"Sofi Needs A Ladder - Pig&Dan Remix" by deadmau5

I told Dave I didn’t want to do the Shuffle Synchronicities thing the orthodox way, i.e., actually shuffling my Spotify “liked songs.”  The reason is that my “liked songs” have almost nothing to do with songs I like: a lot of them are kids songs (I have a three year old daughter), and a lot are random tracks that I hear on playlists.  So the odds of anything particularly resonant are slight.

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to defy the cosmic algorithm.  Who am I to refuse the chance wisdom of John Cage and Abraham Abulafia?  What am I, against the Shechinah, the goddess, the dances of Shiva and Kali, et cetera?  

That’s how we got to the 2010 deadmau5 track “Sofi Needs a Ladder.”  Not even the original (which, Wikipedia informs me, hit #68 on the British pop charts) but the progressive house remix by Pig&Dan from 2015.  

But in fact, I’m here for it.

I’m here for the minimal lyrics: in the remix it’s just “Drop you like a needle on the record, scratch my itch / Watch you walk in circles, hit the beat / Drop you like a needle on the record, flip my switch / Go around in circles, hit the beat” over and over and over again.  It’s perfect.  It feels like fucking for the first time after a pandemic, or dancing at Opulent Temple on Burning Man a decade ago, brain rising on MDMA, green laser lights overhead in the dusty wind.

Which, you know, I’m ready for.  Pandemic is pretty much over for privileged New Yorkers, of which I am one.  My first big gay dance party is Saturday night (it’s called MEAT, appropriately).  My first sex party was two weeks ago.  I went to the Korean spa yesterday.

So, listen to the first 45 seconds, the long fade-in that all dance tracks have (better to mix them with).  It starts with the beats – boom, tap-tap-boom – then fades in the minimal and repetitive melodic textures, the echoes, the vocal at a minute in.  Some hi-hat, I’m home again.  Home outside of home, I mean.

Also, being somewhat old (50! As of a month ago!) deadmau5 is exactly as au courant as I really want my dance music to me.  No big-ass EDM swells (all of which remind me of the Andy Samberg parody), just propulsive 4/4, shake your ass raver music.  I feel like I’m getting a Molly contact high right now.  (Again this is the Pig&Dan remix, which is much flowier and less aggro-masc than the original version.)  

There’s a lovely kind of self-transcendence and immanent embodiment that I love in these kinds of moments.  It’s the union of the upper and lower triangles of the Star of David (I’m a rabbi, hello), of atman and brahman, of the horizontal and vertical aspects of the Cross, as well as of ‘self’ and ‘other’ as they’re conventionally experienced.  At their best, I feel at once paganically embodied and monotheistically spiritualized.  There’s an organic orgiastic quality to good house music that somehow coexists with its disembodied, digital, trance-like nature.  I’m both the horned god and tat tvam asi at the same time.

Dave and I met because of this spiritual transvestism.  We’re both in and out of the world, employed at day jobs, writing books, striving for stuff, and drawn to something more inward and upward at the same time.  As such, we’re tantric practitioners, which means not sex fiends, but people seeking liberation within the worldly rather than beyond it.  Or maybe we just can’t commit to one side or the other.  Either way, it leads to some nice moments along the way, maybe even better in flashback.

Drop you like a needle on the record, scratch my itch 

Watch you walk in circles, hit the beat 

Drop you like a needle on the record, flip my switch 

Go around in circles, hit the beat

Okay, okay, so maybe there’s a little EDM build here after all, building up that tension, ready for release, now that the death is over (in this place, anyway), ready to finally cum all over the dancefloor of the manifest world, yesod in malchut, fucking like a Brood X cicada, shaking back and forth for however many years I’ve got left until the shaking is done.  It’s a worthwhile ride before the fadeout.

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LOL! Jay!! This guest post is all-time, man!!!

I feel like we all just had post-pandemic Kabbalistic sex/brain/soul-union with you?!

I’ve never heard this song before, but it’s making the white walls and fluorescent lights in my little day job’s office pulse with high vibes!

The spirit lives everywhere! Even in the bowels of Beverly Hills ;)

You also wrote to me today to praise but lament the fact that we didn’t synchronize yesterday on the day of the super queer Velvet Underground song written by our mutual hero Lou Reed.

You sent over a passage from one of your books mentioning Lou with the preface, “Nowadays I'd make more jokes,” but here it is because I love it anyway:

“I had a dream early on in retreat in which I saw the retreat leader, Rabbi David Cooper, arrayed like some guru with flowers and devotees. I tried to communicate with him, but felt myself pulled away, that reality stripped away and replaced with a white liminal space. A spirit guide appeared who else, for me, but Lou Reed. Lou said, “You think that’s reality? I’ll show you reality.” And I flew through the white space to a primeval scene of cavemen, naked cavemen, fighting some sort of crea- ture. The biggest cavemen were like offensive linemen, guarding against the beast. The nimbler ones were in back, throwing spears. Lou asked  me where I fit in. And I realized that I, along with one other  effeminate, wimpy, gay cavefag, was running for cover. We took refuge in a delicate place of women and aesthetes, pathetic excuses for  men.

After I woke up, it felt as though this pain, of not being masculine enough, of being gay, of having felt excluded and unloved—this pain was “reality.” Under the confident speaking voice I honed in school, behind the knowledge I used to somehow earn the love of others, there remained, at my foundation, this pain.”

Which resonated with my song from today!

“Sunny’s Time” by Caribou

Caribou’s only lyrics in this song are:

It all found me since I've been gone
I'll be back when this is all done
But don't you worry, that's not your style
It makes me happy when I see your smile

It made me think that guys like you, and let’s be honest, whatever I am, it’s not a big offensive lineman caveman guarding against any beasts.

How we’ve all “been gone” since ‘dying’ back then.

But we’re “back” now that all that fighting for survival is “all done.”

Not really but really ;)

And it’s all starting to “find us,” the world, catching up.

It wasn’t “our style” to do big ego-protection species-maintaining battles for survival.

We’re now here to be believers in the post-fear “no worry” world, where “it makes (us) happy” to" “see (everyone) smile.”

The sons/sonnys/all-gendered-children of that time in the more sunny time.

Or something like that.

Much love, my friend.

Okay, that’s the one hundred and fiftieth Shuffle Synchronicities.