It is a good thing that men are not that attached to language, but rather art and experience. Language has always been feeble to describe what matters in tribal life...and we know that beaudacity, that unique form of beauty that men have been creating for almost 100,000 years is beyond the reach of language. I dare you...try to describe the beauty of a perfect 1948 Chrysler Woody. Language is also ineffective at describing the beauty of sharing with our bros’..... whether that is on the trout stream, on top of the mountain, the touchdown pass, the installation of a new motor in our car, the hunting trip, or the Wholey Grail of Music that we are searching for.

Which forces me to confront the ultimate paradox of my work as Guildmeister, which is to use words when I know how feeble words are. Yet, I have confidence in our revolution. The Internet is "GET OUT OF JAIL FREE" from the monopoly of control that mass media has had which is always a downward pressure....and it has been a festering oozing canker sore on our spirit because we are much more...more complex, more vital, more filled with longing, passion, desire and creativity than can be portrayed on television, radio, magazines or on billboards. We are not the 2D glam boys of the media, we are much more.

There is a common pattern, an archetype, in the way men pursue beauty; beaudacity is the pursuit, the manifestation of masculine beauty both in the material and dematerial world. Climbing mountains is the same as soldering circuits...it is the beaudacity imperative....we are burning for the beauty that only exists on the top of mountains....or on the edge of the audio arts...and that is the dance I will do with you now. I know by making the pattern more apparent, you will be more confident in your divine "non-normality". Why would any man want to be Normal, if he doesn’t have to be?

So light up a cigar, take out your flint knife and let’s whittle a stick and let me repeat what you already know...a spiritual mature man is a rebel.

Which means we must rebel against the hippity hop hype that asserts there is a direct relationship between the intensity of our ecstasy and the amount of money we spend on gizmos, or the quantity of gizmos we own....a philosophy that makes me upchuck the fried grub worms I had for lunch. This notion is anathema to the meta-gizmo way: the path wherein our spirit in the gizmo is how the key gets its power to open the door that says BEYOND THE BEYOND.

Because young men’s imagination are not yet strapped down we are free to expand our imagination beyond "normal". I didn’t ask why (by the time I was six) I became fascinated by Eskimo’s, American Indians...why fishing and hunting had so captured my imagination....in spite of the fact that I lived in Brooklyn....what could be cooler than going out into the open sea in a kayak and harpooning a whale, or shooting a Buffalo with your bow and arrow? Young men are too courageous to question the validity of their dreams!

Young boys don’t ask "Why?"....they only want to know "How soon?".

When I take my godson Lucas to a toy store he does what male DNA wants him to do...He wants it all, and who can blame him? If one truck is fun, then one hundred trucks is one hundred times more fun. If one Beanie Baby is fun than owning them all is all the more fun...and so male DNA wants to accumulate as many prizes as possible when it has a chance, because who knows.....we may wake up some morning only to discover that all of the animals may be gone...or there may be a draught...or famine...Hoarding makes sense to the hunter/gather DNA.

We are tribal, so it is obvious that he who has the most stuff must be the wisest and most powerful...and that is as true for scalps as it is for cars...MORE IS MORE POWERFUL....and if you doubt that just check your ancient history about all of the rituals our bro’s produced to affirm this wisdom of plenitude.

This ancient hunter-gatherer wisdom naturally got translated into modern culture and then into modern consumer culture....how does that saying go?.."HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS". This is my favorite gizmological obscenity, because no philosophy is more opposite the notion of the meta-gizmo, which is also an ancient idea.

Yet we, the spiritually ascended, know that owning, is not being or experiencing. Owning one, or many, custom made ocean racing yacht does not make you an ocean racer. Owning a custom made hunting rifle, or a collection of them, does not make you a hunter. Owning every trout fishing fly ever tied does not make you a trout fisherman. Owning a Stradivarius violin doesn’t not make you a master violinist. And obviously owning all of the great audio equipment does not mean that your capacity to experience musical ecstasy in your home has been expanded.

Every man is a lover of tools..from electric drills to motorcycles...to fast cars to electric trains. The paradox is that we must keep the toy loving boy alive in us, but we must transform our primal toy hunger to a higher level of creative energy and that is what the ancient meta-gizmo wisdom is all about.

Because I am discussing the conjunction of our spirits with technology with tools of the modern age, this may be difficult to grasp. In spite of the ancient roots of the meta-gizmo concept, let me give a simple modern example, with the baseball movie starring Robert Redford, who had, as his co-star his magic baseball bat, which was carved from a tree trunk that was hit by lightening and was endowed with magic powers that were connected to him and liberated his ability to hit home runs. The crisis in the movie is when his bat breaks and he has to hit a home run with a new bat...can he transfer his magic to this new bat? Isn’t this the story of Excalibur...the sword in the stone, which will only be released when tugged by the knight with a true heart?

The notion that our weapons are endowed with magic power can be found at the foundation of civilization. The most ancient weapons were decorated to resemble various animal spirits, thereby taking on their power. History clearly indicates that men spent a great deal of time creating their hunting weapons and to insure that they were filled with the right spirit. The movie Winchester ‘73 staring James Stewart is a modern form of this ancient weapon spirit myth. Any book you read about Samurai sword creation will clearly state the goal of the sword making process is to endow the sword with the spirit of the sword maker....so the spirit of sword and the Samurai can coalesce. It is the spirit in the sword that makes it an effective weapon.

It also amazes me how the modern mind can discount the notion of the thing endowed with spirit, yet what is a work of art? Do you go to museum to look at pigment, stone, dry clay, carved wood, and glazed porcelain, or to experience the spirit that is endowed within those materials?

When you look at Michaelangelo’s David, isn’t the stone alive?

Which now permits me to jive on the meta-gizmo which is a point of view about life that is completely opposite than HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS, because the truth is HE WHO HAS RELEASED HIS SPIRIT AND TRANSFORMED IT INTO A WORK ART THROUGH HIS TOYS WINS...the toy can be hand made or cost 69 cents.

If you love hunting you need a weapon from a spear to a rifle. You can only use one at a time, and you probably only need one for all of your hunting...but the important thing is for your weapon and you to coalesce, to become one, so that when it is time to use it, it carries your spirit to the animal so you may take its life in a righteous way. If you are a bow hunter it takes months or years of practice and tuning for this merging to occur.

If you a car racer, you work and practice for years so that this process can occur between you, your car and the race course...this is all about living beneath the mind level....this all about practicing your basketball shot for thousands of hours so you can sink a basket on the run without ever having to think...or throw your spear on the run, or turn the wheel with instinct.

If you are a musicians you will practice for years with your instrument so that you can liberate your spirit through it...you need your instrument to express your spirit.

The Normal Mind is not involved in this process because this is the meta-gizmo process which is not available to the normal mind. The normal mind can not paint a painting, create a sculpture or hit a running rabbit with an arrow..or catch a football while diving...or dissolve and become music. The normal mind is the modern mind that can only see things as things, because for the normal mind is the consumer’s mind.

And the fires in our loins are burning for a small group of meta-gizmo because we can sense with our deep ancient knowledge what is cool; we are too smart to buy into the hippity hop hype of all of those things that are supposed to have soul, but can’t because there is none below the surface to touch. Men can tell the difference. We can smell the truth. We can feel it, and no amount of advertising and media blitzkrieg can fool us. No celebrity spokesman or super model can convince us there is spirit where there is none. This explains why big corporations must spend millions of dollars to convince us that there is spirit in their products...because there is none.

Apple Computer seems to be good a creating meta-gizmos. Harley-Davidson, has genius at creating meta-gizmos. But 99.% of the world corporation are not able to create meta-gizmos, because how do you endow a thing with the spirit of the creator when the creator is really fifty MBAs committees who have never experienced any form of ecstasy? Of all the American car companies Chrysler is doing the best job. Why? They are imitating the Italian sports car masters of the 1960s.

The explosions of the custom...car, motorcycle, gun, fishing rod, business is all about men needing the liberation that comes with using a work art, a gizmo endowed with spirit; as a tool for exploring their passion.

Can you now understand my reticence to ever recommend that you buy one or another gizmo? Who knows, better than you, what your heart needs? How can anyone know your way on the path? Where you start is not where you will be in one year from now, and that is the way, the way is. We are all evolving.

When I look at the map of all the paths I traveled I often say..."Wholey Cow, why did I have to travel in so many circles to find the way?" And the truth is that I am still searching and am constantly amazed at what I am finding.

And you will soon discover my exploration of cars, motorcycles, and other miraculous meta-gizmological worlds.

My relationship to music, like yours, is still evolving; it continues to ascend because my audio system keeps bringing me to higher dimension of music hyperspace. And the cycle of meta-gizmological evolution continues, and there are no simple answers to what satisfies my Wholey being...and the same is true for you.

Be true to yourself. Tolerate the anxiety of not knowing, of failure along the way, of botched experiments; beware of dark forces, and have faith in your shining. Be all of you.

You are a work of art. You are music. Respect and celebrate that truth. It is your Wholiness.