The Fine Art and Design Blog of Darren Daz Cox

making love and loving cake
are all part of the plan
it’s the positive flow of energy
that can be chosen by each human

love is not a finite thing
that hate can take away
and hating hate does not equate
to creating love in any way

when sides are drawn
best not to be torn
to love some people less
for they are part of you
and what you choose to do
always affects all the rest

so what is love?
it’s what you do
when you appreciate
each moment on this mortal coil
before you dissipate

but don’t be fooled
by thinking that
some love’s ‘purer’ than the rest
or that romantic love is far above
loving eating a chicken breast

for love is love, like digital
it’s either off or on
the simplest thing in the world
but the reason we were born

so love what you do and all that you meet
and everything that you possibly can.
Don’t feel guilty for pleasures
or desiring treasures
as this world is a funhouse for man

but if your life is a terrible thing
and in bondage your future is locked
remember that you always have the choice
to love yourself if that’s all that you’ve got….

I wrote this today, I started it this morning before work and finished it when I came home, i hope you like it!

My friend Karina asked me where I was with my art these days as I’ve grown and modified my feelings about it.

To me, art isn’t a contest with other artists, it’s an individual endeavor that you can share with others. The second you think that it has a monetary value then you set limitations and will pursue and settle for money as the reward, problem is, if you’re an artist to begin with  then you really won’t be satisfied by just having money be the end result of your work so money is a pointless goal. Most artists just want money so they can do their art in comfort rather than sit on a big pile of it unless they have some gold fetish or something.

You don’t really need the feedback of your peers either as you run the risk of ending up like van Gogh and Gauguin, two great artists that didn’t want to accept the other ones motivations and the point is to make great art not make your fellow artists sing kumbaya around the camp fire.

comments are pointless as people mostly comment for themselves not for you, popularity can be bought with time and money but those friends are fickle and it’s pointless to pursue fame as it doesn’t last.

you might be making art as a way to showcase your skills, build your personal character, to compensate for percieved flaws in other areas or to capitalize on being different to begin with (and thats probably the mechanism the universe has created to encourage creative behavior, as if you were so happy and fullfilled by regular life you’d probably not be so passionate about the arts to begin with). but art is more than some darwinian compensation for not being a hunter or child bearer as we can be all those things and artists too, so if you do art because you need an identity thats cool but if you dont enjoy the creative process, only the results, then you are missing the full experience I feel.

there is also the idea in art that you are making things that will change the world in a butterfly affect, like Pollock making art into something that anyone can do (not that he intended to or cared) but that might have unintended results such as Yoko Ono going from being a popular big fish in a small pond to being considered un-cool and probably a poser in the very feild of art she helped create, which would suck, as no matter what she does now it will always seem like shes cashing on on her fame and money rather than making art for arts sake, even if she is literally making art for arts sake, it doesn’t make it fun if people think you are a fake, and there is a ‘universal mind’ like Jung said, what people are thinking and saying about you and your work really does have a physiological effect.

For example there have been tests done with sensors on peoples skin etc and the ‘are your ears burning’ old-wives tale was proven to have scientific validity, the same way you prove it to yourself everyday by staring at someone at random and they look back, knowing, if only subconciously. that you were looking at them even if you were behind them and their eyes never saw you looking. Scientists have theorised that’s why ex-stars end up being substance abusers and generally erratic because once they fall from popularity there is a physical withdrawl effect. So be careful if you seek fame as you might end up as a one hit wonder, type-cast by a one shot thing you long ago moved on from or just a miserable wreck when the spotlight is off you, not out of ego but from forces that science hasn’t even explained fully yet, but forces we know are true.

so what does that leave? and here’s where I am with art. I do art for one person, or contiguous group, at a time. Consider the new-age/ancient religion concept of ‘there is only one of us here’. We are all the same person, we just think we are separate individuals and thus if you make one person feel special by catering the project to their personal taste the ‘butterfly effect’ on the world is far more positive than just doing art for whomever discovers it first. If that’s too hard to wrap your brain around, just look at the zero point feild from quantum physics and understand that we are ‘entagled’ whether we want to believe it or not but we are literally all at two places at once, the place where you are now and the same exact point in the quantum feild. (this incidentally is a solid answer for how ESP works).

Expect all the fame and ego-stroking and possibly rewards that you art deserves,but from the tiny target audience, not the world in general. Often giving a reward makes the art even more precious for it’s audience and the artist should be gracious and only ask for what is reasonable. If you do a painting for a friend expect the friend to treasure it more than one they might have bought at an art gallery, if they do not like the art then that is the feedback you need to improve, a friend will take the time to give an honest appraisal rather than fake approval.

In the big picture, any art done with the best intentions, such as painting something pretty for your friends room, is perfect art. Sometimes, that art grows and spreads joy to the rest of the world like the spirals in a sunflower!

It’s been theorized that the similarity between the structure of an atom and that of say the Earth and it’s moon is not a coincidence.

just imagine for a minute that there are no coincidences and that you are where you are not by chance or luck, good or bad but because you are where you want to be.

step outside of yourself for a moment and look in, imagine that the material world is like a 3d simulation and you are the person at the keyboard creating the scenareo, pick an online game such as the sims or secondlife or world of warcraft etc and your character is your body and the person at the keyboard is your soul, or higher self etc.

as above so below.

is it a coincidence that while I live in a small town that apparant random fate caused me to live in that one of my favorite sci-fi authors calls it home too? Phillip Jose Farmer, author of the classic Riverworld series, calls Peoria home too. He’s an old man now and I won’t bother him with fan-like behavior, but he’s a legend to me, as the hero in his Riverworld books, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMGFRGS (19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was to him, and his alter-ego, Peter Jairus Frigate.

There are about a dozen authors who’s books I have read over and over since I was a kid, PJ Farmer is one of them others in the same genre include the mighty AC Clarke, RA Heinlein, Issac Azimov, AE Van Vogt and Harry Harrison.

Is it mere coincidence I live where one of my favorite authors lives? bare in mind that Peoria is only a quarter million or so people and not a suburb of a large city but is close to many of them, Chicago, St. Louis and Indianapolis are all just a few hours drive on flat, well maintained highways.

On Sunday at the Expo-gardens flea-market (junk sale) I picked up a copy of PJ Farmers ‘To Your Scattered Bodies Go‘ (for the sweet price of 25 cents). The novel is the first in the Riverworld series, and considered by many to be one the finest sci-fi novels ever written and I feel so happy to be reading it, well, I did find it while in the company of a charming young lady who we have code-named Mary Poppins, but that’s another story.

as above so below.

When I started reading it, and I must have read it at least a dozen times before over the years, I became so thankful for my ‘horrible’ memory. I was so happy that just about the only thing I remembered about the book was the hero, the reincarnated real life hero, Sir Richard Burton, and the fact that I loved the book.

I had even forgotton that one of my favorite Victorian painters, Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton PRA (3 December1830–25 January1896) had painted the adventurers portrait and it is easy to see why Farmer chose Burton to be his protagonist as Burtons visage is a catalyst to vicarious adventure.

If Burton was an early 80’s punk rock band, he’d be the Misfits, not only did he have talent, guts and showmanship, he looked cool, shocked polite society and was totally unique.

Ok my point in this ramble is that there are many many seers and mystics that claim we, as immortal souls, conciously chose to forget our past lives and/or the fact of our immortality so that we can do what what we do here, as mortals, without a safety net or baggage depending on how you choose to see it.

so, as above, so below. My soul chose to make me think I’m just a mortal being, a product of biological processes and presumably I have a task but maybe that task is just to enjoy and appreciate and give back by creating my own art and fiction?

By not having an eidetic memory I was at the disadvantage of those who do remember all that they have seen as was Burton who failed his Arabic translators test, perhaps because of a brain fart, surely not from lack of immersion in the cutlure. Perfect memory is pretty handy if you take tests only having to read the material once! but how unsatisfying it must be to remember a great novel!

My ‘bad memory’ seems quite selective, as I remember most of the science and history I’ve read as well as the essoteric teachings of spiritual and religious ‘experts’, allowing me to ramble as I do here. So would it be fair to say that I have subconciously chosen to forget my favorite novels after a certain amount of time so that i can enjoy the pleasures of them again?

Is that why I’m here in this body today unaware of any past life or soul or the such but enjoying every second of the bountiful pleasures of life because I already know what a perfect day is but chose to forget so I could have another one?

This house, the crappiest looking one in our neighborhood in West Peoria, is the one the universe compelled me to leave three point two five years ago. It was quite a journey in terms of physical space (to Detroit then to the NYC area) but even more vast in terms of spiritual and emotional travels. I sit here amazed at how happy I am now with little more than a newer car than I had before, compared to how unsatisfied I was before I left.

The good thing about a house that is in the process of being rebuilt from the inside out, is all those potential finished spaces and the temporary messes along the way such as piles of charcoal dust on the fiberboard floor…

Like some fragment of a dream or half remembered memory, the remains of a mural I did before I left is still visible in a corner of the stairwell leading to the basement (the green paint on the white wall)…

and while we don’t have many of the interior walls finished yet this allows for precipitous thumb-tacking of inspirational artwork!

I haven’t slept so well in a long long time…

Imagine this, you count out a dozen pennies and carefully put them in a glass jar ensuring that the only thing in the jar are the pennies, then you seal the jar and ensure that it is tamper proof, perhaps putting your signature on the seal. The next day you look in the jar and see a dime in the jar with the pennies, the seal is still intact and you ensure yourself that you are not hallucinating or dreaming.

What would be your reaction? Would you think that you had made a mistake somehow, perhaps a psychological memory block or some kind of brainwashing occured or your eyes and brain are faulty or even that a super forger had broken the seal added a dime and then resealed the jar? At what point would you accept that the ‘impossible’ had happened? and would you even want to find out why it happened?

By the way, there is a rational scientific explanation for the dime appearing in the jar, and it’s not a trick like someone had rigged the jar beforehand with a dime stuck into a dime thickness depression in the underside of the lid, painted over it to make it appear invisible, then the paint dissolved over night and gravity made the dime land shiny side up on the pennies etc, no, and it wasn’t sleight of hand, brainwashing/hypnotism or anything that a contemporary TV detective might conclude.

Perhaps you would circumvent the issue of how it happened by attributing the mystery to ‘divine intervention’ and leave it at that. Would you give up on finding out the how and why because you have a convenient mechanism to cope with things that don’t make sense?

What separates us from the beasts my friends, is our ability to imagine the ‘impossible’ and find value in something as un-necessary as truth. To accept that you are incabable of understanding the how and why is a choice and we are defined by our choices, you might say that our choices, our free will, are what causes reality to be what it appears to be to each of us.

There is an answer to the dime in the jar of pennies and while the answer is theorhetical, it is based on hard science with repeatable results. The answer extrapolates from what we can prove right now on a quantum level,  and once you understand the science of what happens to reality on the smallest observable level you will know that reality is a far different concept than the Newtonian world you were taught that you live in.

The reason why the dime appeared in the jar, the reason that has scientific proof behind it, is that someone consciously changed reality to have a dime appear in the jar. Someone believed it was possible and with conscious intent, manifested a dime inside the jar.

If you are incredulous at that explanation then you are in the same boat as Albert Einstien, he just couldn’t accept the fact that reality wasn’t ’solid’ and ‘fixed’ or even impersonal. The truth is that reality is a very personal thing.

Here’s a short video from the hit movie What The Bleep that explains, in high school level terms, the basic scientific principles of how reality is affected by intent.

If you’ve studied the bare basics of quantum physics (or more) you will know, scientifically, that ‘reality’ is not an unchangeable rigid structure that confines us with the parameters of random boon or doom.

Consciousness, what you actually think, your attitude, has been scientifically proven to affect reality, you can see this for yourself if you grow two identicle seeds into plants, giving each similar amounts of water, light and fertilizer but conciously picking one to ’spend time with’ and ignoring the other, the plant you favor will most likely grow bigger than the other.

 It’s not wishful daydreaming or some sappy affirmation of  positive thinking it’s a provable fact that your intent affects the outcome of your actions. A positive attitude keeps a person healthier than a negative one, anger and fear have been shown to affect your very DNA, not allowing as much access for nutrients etc.

New age explorations and modern science have made things such as "The Law of Attraction" popular topics for discussion as unlocking the potential of our minds, for spiritual and material gain has long been the pursuit of man. The success of such movies based on the L of A such as The Secret and What the Bleep show that this idea has caught on and has some substance.
This idea has lead to many success stories of people changing reality by their "will", rags to riches etc. Rarely does a mega success story attribute itself to pure random luck, however the opposite end of the sociological spectrum tends to deny that it was their will to be unsuccessful, as choosing to fail is a hard thing for people to accept as we often see reality as a Darwinian system of win or lose and equate values such as ‘good’ and  ‘bad’ to our cirumstances.

However, the idea that you can ‘pray for riches’ is not the whole truth and even if you get those riches you don’t necessarily acheive the results you’d expect from the Darwinian system of win/lose = good/bad. Just look at the world of entertainment and you can see that ‘winning’ is often ‘bad’. Why do so many people who acheive the Darwinian ideal of success end up worse off than they were before? If kurt Cobain hadn’t have ’sold out’ would he still be alive? What about Sid vicious, Jimi, Janice, Jim, Elvis, Marilyn etc etc, hell, most of my favorites died before they even had a chance to settle down and perpetuate the species, that’s hardly Darwinian ’success’.

From what I’ve learned it seems that our souls (we can all agree that we are more than just biological machines) have a certain template to work within while they are encased in flesh. You have free will to work within the parameters of the pre-arranged template but you and I don’t have ‘dictator’ or ’serial killer’ in that template (hopefully), honestly, can you see any possibility where you conciously would choose to harm the innocent? Wouldn’t you kill yourself before killing a bus load of children regardless of the circumstances?

There’s no free will in some situations. You might argue that you reserve the right to have the option of killing a bus load of kids to perhaps prevent something worse happening like preventing 2 busloads of kids dying, but you would never do it, maybe a special forces guy or a cop or someone who could see the ‘big picture’ and make the ‘best’ decision, but it just isn’t within the parameters of your free will, am I right?

Presuming that we are all given different limits with which to exercise our free will within, different strengths and weaknesses that determined our potential. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know what those parameters actually are?

Amazingly such a tool already exists and has existed for thousands of years.
Denying the improbable odds of astrology as having some kernel of truth is willful ignorance, after all it has been around for just about the entire written history of mankind (and in the megaliths of pre-historical society too) and while we don’t believe the world is flat anymore, we still find some validity in the position of the planets at certain times affecting things.

Perhaps it is a subconscious imprint from the moon affecting the tides, gravity and the such, but deep down most of us know that there is more to it than just that but we are afraid of the spookiness of ‘occultism’ and of being perceived of as a gullible ’sucker’.

Well, as with the ‘impossible dime’, maybe the truth is just beyond our current level of understanding but the facts remain. look at David Wilcock as an example of an ‘impossible dime’. He claims to be the reincarnation of Edgar Cayce, the most documented psychic in modern history and has the psychic credentials to prove that his gifts, at least, are similar. But look further, a photograph of the young Edgar Cayce looks exactly like the young David Wilcock, ok so maybe that’s coincidence, after all some people look like others, but then take a look at the astrological charts of both men who were born some 90 odd years apart, they are as close a match as can be. Same planets in just about the same places, David Wilcocks birthday just happens to be the exact day that matches the position of the planets of the birthday of the guy who he not only looks like but also shares a very rare gift with. That can’t be coincidence.

So what does it all mean? That reality is not what it seems and you can make a different reality by focusing on it. The power of prayer has been known for millenia and focused group consciousness is just now being accepted as a real provable phenomenon. If you want a better world then manifest it, imagine it, work for it, regardless of what the nay-sayers say as your intent matters but don’t expect to be selfish with your power as it doesn’t work like that. Fame, fortune, power, they might be obtainable but they aren’t there as a reward, they are there to teach you along the way.

This past year has been a great learning process for me, I’ve found what makes me tick and seen that reality is a manifestation of my intent. I will be offline for a while as I am moving, yet again. I will continue to paint and share my work online sporadically, but I intend to concentrate on my paper zines. (zeroxed home made DIY art magazines I send out for free to whomever wants art and weirdness in their snail mail box).  If you’d like to be on the mailing list (not email list) drop me a line daz@99daz.com

Namasté

and this looks like a great and important movie, The Shift