Brad and Jim put together some of their favorite cuts for the the Knight's Wake Roadtrip playlist. Find it here at: Knight's Wake Roadtrip
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Friday, January 8, 2021
Knight's Wake video for New Magic Pill is here!
Enjoy the soothing visuals and sound of Knight's Wake at: NEW MAGIC PILL VIDEO
Monday, January 4, 2021
Knight's Wake's Christmiss Blues now on Spotify!
Knight's Wake Christmiss Blues is now available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, Apple Music, and more. Start your streaming! And be sure to follow us.
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
New Name Blues
I came to find out someone out there also is using a name similar to my record label, Gem Cutter Records. Somebody is using Gem Cutter Studios. Arg. Why are names so difficult. Been going down a rabbit hole trying to come up with something descriptive and unique. Most are already taken. So today thought of Going Wrong Records, Wrong Song, Wrong Planet, Lost Light, Lost Ghost, Slip Scream, Hip Stream, Slip Dream, Third Planet, Wrong Wolf, Strange Knight, Great Ghost, Strange Ghost, Strange Note, Strange Fate, Strange Gate, Sinistar, Terracell, Maddening, Golden Light, Silver Wolf, Golden Key, Skelevision, Nevoremore, Minotaur, and more! Where does it end? Will probably settle on Strange Gold Records.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Bubblegum playlist for the Pandemic Age
Today I've been on a Bubblegum music kick Bubblegum music is basically really catchy simple pop music. This kind of music reached a big peak in the early 70s or so with bands like The Archies and The Ohio Express. Most of the bands were really studio creations or 'boy' bands. You know you love these songs, admit it. And if you have never heard them, give them a couple of listens and you'll never be able to get them out of your head.
1. Paul Revere and The Raiders - Kicks
2. Ohio Express - Yummy Yummy
3. Ohio Express - Sweeter Than Sugar
4. The Archies - Bang-shang-a-lang
5. Music Explosion - Little Bit O' Soul
6. Every Mother's Son - Come On Down To My Boat
7. Tommy Roe - Jam Up and Jelly Tight
8. Paul Revere and The Raiders - Little Girl in the 4th Row
9. Tommy Roe - Sweat Pea
10. Tommy Roe - Stir It Up and Serve It
11. Tommy James and The Shondells - I Think We're Alone Now
12. Andy Kim - Baby I Love You
13. Andy Kim - Walkin' My La De Da
Knight's Wake releases Christmiss Blues
Hello All,
Knight's Wake are James Miles and Brad Serka, Today we are happy to announce this EP of indie-folk goodness called Christmiss Blues. Get it now! For download at bandcamp: Christmiss Blues
Sunday, July 12, 2020
New Album Out Now! Strange Gold
This is my first solo album in 16 years. Mostly about life, days going past, love, and inevitable transformations. Enjoy for free at: https://jamesmileshq.bandcamp.com/album/strange-gold
Friday, February 16, 2018
Playlist for the Anxiety Age
Playlist - 2/16/18
1) David Bowie - Absolute Beginners
2) Gheorge Zamfir - Theme From Picnic At Hanging Rock
3) Brad Serka / Lunar Sparrows - In The Know
4) Lana Del Rey - Cruel World
5) David Bowie - Word On A Wing
6) Broadcast - Future Crayon (full album)
7) Brian Eno - Sky Saw
8) The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights (entire album)
9) Nina Simone - Mr. Bojangles
10) Allen Toussaint - Victims of The Darkness
1) David Bowie - Absolute Beginners
2) Gheorge Zamfir - Theme From Picnic At Hanging Rock
3) Brad Serka / Lunar Sparrows - In The Know
4) Lana Del Rey - Cruel World
5) David Bowie - Word On A Wing
6) Broadcast - Future Crayon (full album)
7) Brian Eno - Sky Saw
8) The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights (entire album)
9) Nina Simone - Mr. Bojangles
10) Allen Toussaint - Victims of The Darkness
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Ursula K. Le Guin, R.I.P.
A great science fiction writer has died, Ursula K. Le Guin. Though I am not very familiar with her writings, I found this introduction to her book The Left Hand of Darkness to be excellent.
Le Guin Introduction
Le Guin Introduction
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
The Predicament of Humans
An excerpt from Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.
Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the
"harmony" that characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has
made man into an anomaly, the freak of the universe. He is part of
nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet
he transcends nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is
homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Cast
into this world at an accidental place and time, he is forced out of it
accidentally and against his will. Being aware of himself, he realizes
his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He is never
free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his
mind, even if he would want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as
long as he is alive-and his body makes him want to be alive.
Man's life cannot be lived by repeating the pattern of his
species; he must live. Man is the only animal who does not feel at
home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal
for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and
from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman
state of harmony with nature, and he does not know where he will
arrive if he goes forward. Man's existential contradiction results in a
state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes
him from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with
nature. This does not mean, of course, that the animal necessarily
lives a peaceful and happy life, but that it has its specific ecological
niche to which its physical and mental qualities have been adapted
by the process of evolution. Man's e)l.istential, and hence
unavoidable disequilibrium can be relatively stable when he has
found, with the support of his culture, a more or less adequate way
of coping with his existential problems. But this relative stability
does not imply that the dichotomy has disappeared; it is merely
dormant and becomes manifest as soon as the conditions for this
relative stability change.
Indeed, in the process of man's self-creation this relative
stability is upset again and again. Man, in his history, changes his
environment, and in this process he changes himself. His knowledge
increases, but so does his awareness of his ignorance; he experiences
himself as an individual, and not only as a member of his tribe, and
with this his sense of separateness and isolation grows. He creates
larger and more efficient social units, led by powerful leaders-and
he becomes frightened and submissive. He attains a certain amount
of freedom-and becomes afraid of this very freedom. His capacity
for material production grows, but in the process
he becomes greedy and egotistical, a slave of the things he has created.
Every new state of disequilibrium forces man to seek for new
equilibrium. Indeed, what has often been considered man's innate
drive for progress is his attempt to find a new and if possible better
equilibrium.
The new forms of equilibrium by no means constitute a straight
line of human improvement. Frequently in history new achievements have led to regressive developments. Many times, when forced to find a new solution, man runs into a blind alley from which he has to extricate himself; and it is indeed remarkable that
thus far in history he has been able to do so.
Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the
"harmony" that characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has
made man into an anomaly, the freak of the universe. He is part of
nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet
he transcends nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is
homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Cast
into this world at an accidental place and time, he is forced out of it
accidentally and against his will. Being aware of himself, he realizes
his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He is never
free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his
mind, even if he would want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as
long as he is alive-and his body makes him want to be alive.
Man's life cannot be lived by repeating the pattern of his
species; he must live. Man is the only animal who does not feel at
home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal
for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and
from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman
state of harmony with nature, and he does not know where he will
arrive if he goes forward. Man's existential contradiction results in a
state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes
him from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with
nature. This does not mean, of course, that the animal necessarily
lives a peaceful and happy life, but that it has its specific ecological
niche to which its physical and mental qualities have been adapted
by the process of evolution. Man's e)l.istential, and hence
unavoidable disequilibrium can be relatively stable when he has
found, with the support of his culture, a more or less adequate way
of coping with his existential problems. But this relative stability
does not imply that the dichotomy has disappeared; it is merely
dormant and becomes manifest as soon as the conditions for this
relative stability change.
Indeed, in the process of man's self-creation this relative
stability is upset again and again. Man, in his history, changes his
environment, and in this process he changes himself. His knowledge
increases, but so does his awareness of his ignorance; he experiences
himself as an individual, and not only as a member of his tribe, and
with this his sense of separateness and isolation grows. He creates
larger and more efficient social units, led by powerful leaders-and
he becomes frightened and submissive. He attains a certain amount
of freedom-and becomes afraid of this very freedom. His capacity
for material production grows, but in the process
he becomes greedy and egotistical, a slave of the things he has created.
Every new state of disequilibrium forces man to seek for new
equilibrium. Indeed, what has often been considered man's innate
drive for progress is his attempt to find a new and if possible better
equilibrium.
The new forms of equilibrium by no means constitute a straight
line of human improvement. Frequently in history new achievements have led to regressive developments. Many times, when forced to find a new solution, man runs into a blind alley from which he has to extricate himself; and it is indeed remarkable that
thus far in history he has been able to do so.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Existential Comics
The funnest find in a long time. Existential Comics. These are so much better than reading a tome of philosophical writing.
Existential Comics
Existential Comics
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
The Second Coming
By Yeats. The Second Coming.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Friday, December 1, 2017
Emptiness - the Eastern View
Our Western minds have a difficult time grasping the Eastern idea of emptiness. If something is empty, it's useless and non existent, right? Eastern thought sees emptiness as a part of a unity. Emptiness is a component of the whole. Instead of me explaining, here is a bit of Alan Watts explaining the concept from the Taoist perspective:
Thirty spokes unite at the wheel’s hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut out doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
This space is not “just nothing” as we commonly use that expression, for I cannot get away from the sense that space and my awareness of the universe are the same, and call to mind the words of the Chan (Zen) Patriarch Hui-neng, writing eleven centuries after Lao-tzu:
The capacity of mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this.
Thus the yin-yang principle is that the somethings and the nothings, the ons and the offs, the solids and the spaces, as well as the wakings and the sleepings and the alternations of existing and not existing, are mutually necessary.
Yang and yin are in some ways parallel to the (later) Buddhist view of form and emptiness, of which the Heart Sutra says, “That which is form is just that which is emptiness and that which is emptiness is just that which is form.”
The yin-yang principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity.”
Thirty spokes unite at the wheel’s hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut out doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
This space is not “just nothing” as we commonly use that expression, for I cannot get away from the sense that space and my awareness of the universe are the same, and call to mind the words of the Chan (Zen) Patriarch Hui-neng, writing eleven centuries after Lao-tzu:
The capacity of mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The emptiness of human nature is also like this.
Thus the yin-yang principle is that the somethings and the nothings, the ons and the offs, the solids and the spaces, as well as the wakings and the sleepings and the alternations of existing and not existing, are mutually necessary.
Yang and yin are in some ways parallel to the (later) Buddhist view of form and emptiness, of which the Heart Sutra says, “That which is form is just that which is emptiness and that which is emptiness is just that which is form.”
The yin-yang principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity.”
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Song of Childhood
By Peter Handke
When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.
When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.
When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.
When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?
When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.
When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.
It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.
When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.
When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.
When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.
When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Watching The Wheels
And so it goes. Though there are weekly developments of "what?" kind of news, at the same time it's really nothing surprising at all. Another massacre, what? Oh, yeah ok another massacre. We're at the brink of nuclear war, what? Oh yeah ok, sure, brink of nuclear war. Aliens could descend and abduct thousands before TV cameras and I think I'd be surprised for perhaps an hour or two. Life is weird and yet at the same time it just goes on.
A couple of links. An article about how the Age of Reason morphed into the present Age of Anything Goes Squishy Thinking:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
Also, a compare and contrast article explaining The Greek Ideal v. American Ideal:
http://www.wescecil.com/blog/
A couple of links. An article about how the Age of Reason morphed into the present Age of Anything Goes Squishy Thinking:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
Also, a compare and contrast article explaining The Greek Ideal v. American Ideal:
http://www.wescecil.com/blog/
Thursday, August 10, 2017
The Hollow Men
I've been fairly fascinated by this poem lately. There is a bit of debate over what the poem is about. I think it is clearly about people trapped in an in-between place, a world that they are powerless to move through or transcend. Some say Eliot wrote it about Europe after World War I - and the consequent state of being amongst the population. Some other writers think it is about his feelings while his wife was having an affair. Doesn't matter - it's brilliant in every way.
The Hollow Men - T.S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The Hollow Men - T.S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Thursday, June 8, 2017
The Gemini Bells release The Black Castle Disaster
The Gemini Bells release a gem of pop music mining 60's psychedelia, indie, and baroque pop. Download here: https://thegeminibells.bandcamp.com/releases
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Just a little Slowdive Band Practice
If only my band sounded like this at practice. Actually this is soundboard from a performance, but I imagine practice sounded about the same. Incredible!
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An excerpt from Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the ...
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Knight's Wake Christmiss Blues is now available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, Apple Music, and more. Start your streami... -
This is my first solo album in 16 years. Mostly about life, days going past, love, and inevitable transformations. Enjoy for free at: ht...