A blunt rewording of Seneca and Stoicism, leaning on the fatalism.
niktemadur
But now if I want to feel the spiritual and connectedness, I much prefer something like Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (I see your username and salute!), or John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Stuff that challenges as it illuminates.
Musically, I've always been an enthusiastic searcher and have yet to stop delving, decades later.
One album that was tagged as New Age in the 80s that I still listen to every day - I use it for stretching before meditation - is Brian Eno's Music For Airports.
In the 80s, Ambient and New Age were clumped together uneasily but we didn't know better, until Techno came along and Ambient instantly found its' proper, logical home.
For a taste of some of the sound of groups like Wyndham Hill or Mannheim Steamroller - every element of rock n roll completely absent, a bit of medieval vibe wafting throughout - I now prefer a band like Pentangle.
There's one song I'd like to recommend to you at this moment - I can't get it out of my mind right now as I write - I discovered it about a year ago thanks to fantastic UK music monthly Uncut Magazine, it is closer in spirit to Brian Eno and it may have shot all the way to my #1 favorite piece of music ever. Listen to it in a quiet place, or with headphones. Often. This piece has a way of unfurling differently every time you hear it.
"Live on, survive, for the Earth gives forth wonders. It may swallow your heart, but the wonders keep on coming. You stand before them bareheaded, shriven. What is expected of you is attention."
Salman Rushdie, from The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
A more recent one, meditation-related, short and simple and I have no idea who said it, I just happened to catch it a couple of years ago on a website-that-shall-not-be-named:
"I am not my thoughts."
Here's one out of my many "what was I thinking?" moments, this one from the eighties: A friend had this album that I taped and often listened to for at least a few months.
Andreas Vollenweider... "New Age" music with a harp at the front and center.
did the wave function even collapse or are we just one of the possible outcomes inside of it?
If you are asking the question, wouldn't you be observing it, therefore the wave function most certainly did collapse?
I'm hearing the echo of Descartes in there. I think, therefore I am.
EDIT: "I ask, therefore I have observed, therefore the Universe is".
And here's the other thing I try to visualize:
Matter - both dark and "normal" - falling like water into these gravitational canyons that we see as giant strings, while the empty spaces in between expand and accelerate. The dynamics of this thing are mind-breaking.
This is so much in the spirit of Monty Python, I've never seen it before and it's glorious.
I'm picturing the interviewer played by Eric Idle and the interviewee by Graham Chapman.
You forgot the wildcard:
Beans
too expensive
If true, it sounds like other penny-pinching Lucas stories I've read through the years and decades. Skimping on 2-3 million for a film that cost 32 million to make, and was all but guaranteed to make over 300 million at the box office anyway.
Then probably patted himself on the back for being so astute.
But do you know where the action could have taken place for the same type of texture, but with so much better impact?
Lucas supposedly intended to visit Chewie's home planet of Kashyyk for the '77 film, but didn't have the budget so he rewrote it out of the script, and didn't get there until '05 with Revenge Of The Sith... unless you count the Holiday Special, which one shouldn't.
So imagine that instead of the Death Star V.2 being built in orbit around that Endor forest moon, it's on the Wookie homeworld, with Chewie stepping forward as a combat leader among his people, Han fighting side by side with a Wookie platoon.
Now imagine a 1983 Kenner/Mattel toy line of Wookie warriors, with their crossbows and lances and booby traps for stormtroopers and such. Considering the cuteness overload we got instead, what a missed opportunity.
Thanks, I Hate It
Oh lord... I LOVE Another Green World like few other albums in this world. Up there with Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock, in my book.