I'm tempted by the Hare Krishnas. All that chanting and dancing. They seem so happy. High even. Are they culty ?Dunno. I don't think I would have to cut my hair. Maybe. A lot of maybes just now. It's because I've just woken up.. I have started chanting in the mornings. Quietly and to myself. There's been a terrible air crash in India and part of my prayer must go out to the families. The world is very tormented right now. And maybe we are in the Kala Juga age. That part of the wheel where everything turns to crap before it came all come round again in beauty and peace and love. Yes it's been a funny old week. Trying to set up this site. Trying to get plays on YouTube. If you're a struggling music artist that's what you have to do but when I chant I find that none of that stuff matters and I think that deep down we all know that even as we go about our day transfixed by the maya - the illusion - of it all. This month I have a film coming out in which I am, technically speaking, the star. I am of course hoping that it will be well received. I'm flying out to the Malta Film festival, now known rather grandly as the Mediterrane Film festival, with a much broader pervue, to attend the friends and family screening but it will already have had its first public screening. So a room full of people will see it before I do which is an odd place to be but that's the business I guess. Last night as I lay on the sofa easing my back pain I listened to The Happening Album from start to finish on a YouTube post so big thanks to the person that posted it as it's not on Spotify. At least not in all it's 1966 pristine glory. I loved it. Crackly vinyl.

John and George would chant along to this album as they sailed around the mediterranean. We often forget that John was as much a spiritual seeker as George. I think where they probably differed was in the bells and whistles of it all. I'll put a link to the YT post. Also here I'm adding a Spotify link to an interesting podcast which outlines some of ISKON's questionable antics over the years. As a brung up catholic I can relate to all the trauma's caused by less than perfect communities. Hell I went to St.Benedict's. So one should go into these things with a deal of caution. For me it's about George who is definitely an entry point for western spiritual seekers and without whom they would be lacking in a very useful sales emblem. But still the core has something. Like every idea. As Ken Wilbur famously said, and I'm paraphrasing, no one is such a genius as to be completely wrong and as such we have to find the good in things whilst keeping our head and sense of grounded-ness.

Back to the record. It's a beautiful record, recorded in the spirit of the times by an enthusiastic record man. They started chanting in the streets in New York and ended up singing their merry way into the studio and onto tape. And you can feel it on the record. Which is just as well as, at this hour, too early on a Saturday morning with a drive and a gig ahead of me, I find it much easier to get out of my way and accept myself with all my failings.