ID Music: Void Contemplation Tactics
North America's Gnarliest mix for when the void is too big to contemplate
Inter-Dimensional Music airs weekly on Marfa Public Radio, LOOKOUT FM Los Angeles, and WQRT Indianapolis. Scroll down for archived shows, setlists, and broadcast times.
We’re finally caught up with 2022 archive updates! Future newsletters will correspond more directly with the current broadcast schedule.
These four April 2022 episodes of Inter-Dimensional Music use language and visuals from the Void Contemplation Tactics video series that I produced at the beginning of the pandemic. The videos were an attempt to translate part of my IRL Basking in Gravity mindfulness installations to a virtual format. The visuals in each installment are composed entirely from heavily manipulated slow-motion video of sections of the White River in East Central Indiana.
The name comes from conversations with my friend Nick Terry, the organizer of the Marfa sangha that was instrumental in my renewed Zen practice. He helped me to understand meditation as a way to take a break from trying to get better, to stop trying to improve myself.
Once when I was going through a rough patch, he texted me “the void is too big!” with a photo of Richard Serra’s Out-of-Round X (1999), a paintstick-on-paper work that some may recognize from Sunn O)))’s 2009 album, Monoliths & Dimensions. He urged me to accept the void feeling in my chest, to examine it, and ultimately to take care of it. Good Zen teaching is usually just a rephrasing of the same centuries-old wisdom, and Nick’s riffing – much like Sunn’s – cut through my delusions with relative ease.
I’m especially grateful to the artists who contributed their music to each session: Lunaria, Nimbudala (TAFKA Inner Travels), itta, PJS, and Mary Lattimore with Joe DeNardo. The first video features “Void Contemplation Tactic,” an original composition for the series created by long-time friend of the show Wife Signs. You can find all five videos, along with a standalone 2021 video from my comrade Karl Erickson, at danielchamberlin.com.
Language in the video series comes from Joko Beck, Seung Sahn, Lewis Richmond, and Fritjof Capra. My dear friend Amy Peddycord of Invoke Studio also provided generous financial and promotional support.
When I took up residence at the Indianapolis Zen Center in 2016 meditation became a core element of Inter-Dimensional Music. The Void Contemplation Tactics videos were a way to foreground that component of the larger project, drawing attention to the dharma talks that I excerpt on most shows. To mark the 12th birthday of ID Music this month, I’m going to continue that process with more focus on the radical aspects of mindfulness practice here in the commentary for each broadcast. You can also look for a new series of VCT videos compiling language from recent episodes.
These four episodes of ID Music feature remixed visuals from the 2020 VCT series, and samples from the same dharma talks. ID Music 20220422 also includes sounds from itta – previously featured in VCT 20200420 – from her new solo work as well as a fresh album with TENGGER. This session begins and ends with live recordings of Humming Amps, a new project from Kevin Doria, Joe DeNardo’s partner in Growing.
These overlapping projects are all informed by my Zen practice, but this is an art experience more than anything else. If you’re interested in meditation, yoga, radical non-binary worldview (e.g. Zen), and radical non-hierarchical philosophy (e.g. anarchism) I hope that these encounters might generate further inquiry into practices and ideas that have been immensely helpful to me.
If you’re here for the dharma talk, I hope the music isn’t too distracting. And if you’re here for the dharma rock, I’ll try to keep the chatter from overflowing. Every once in awhile I’ll post instrumental versions too.
In May I’m reading from Zen Master Dōgen’s “The Practice of Meditation.” This 13th Century text is widely available online, and I’ll post copies along with the notes for each show if you’d like to read along. Now that I’m mostly caught up on updating the archive, I plan to post new shows the week following each broadcast.
Any true Zen text will start off with a warning that answers don’t come from writers, teachers, gurus, sutras, books, or community radio experiments in meditation and psychedelia. I’ll say here that I’m a student, not a priest, lineage holder, or dharma teacher. Inter-Dimensional Music is not zazen: it’s an entry point, a deep listening experience that can be an opportunity to practice stillness, or to do whatever you like with the hour. These are all things that have worked for me, and I’m happy to try and answer questions. But as Dōgen wrote 700-ish years ago, “Don’t follow the advice of others; rather, learn to listen to the voice within yourself.”
I’m so glad you could be here today, and as always I am also super stoked if you’ve subscribed for free, subscribed for money, shared this with a bud, downloaded the show, streamed the archive, or discovered a different perspective from which to contemplate the void. This newsletter has been an unexpectedly successful experiment. Your correspondence and connection is one of the main reasons I’ve decided to expand the project.
Thank you.
blessing up and blessing down,
DC
20220401 PROGRAM NOTES
North America's Gnarliest Mix for realizing there's nothing to get
For this week's session, we'll feel the vibrations of crystalline structures embedded in the walls of the cave, spiritually charged techno mantras, and hypnotic sludge for digging beneath the thin crust of civilization to bear witness to the blood of the Earth.
Joko Beck returns with a reminder that there's nothing to get.
artist – work
ATOP - Diving Infinitely (edit)
Guenter Schlienz - my faith, it burns
ogurusu norihide - 07:39
GiGi FM - 22 Tear Drops
Beenie Man - 100 Dollar Bag
Smurphy - Montegod Riddim
New Mexican Stargazers - Level 2
Kurokuma - Ololiuqui
Ondness - Sem Aura
x.y.r. - thirumalai kovil steps
Focus on the Breath - Ritual
ATOP - Diving Infinitely (edit)
Dharma: Joko Beck - Ordinary Mind
20220415 PROGRAM NOTES
North America's Gnarliest Mix for restating the traditional three marks of existence
Our session this week begins with hypnotic jazz that invokes the movement of Jamaica's Rio Grande, and unfolds into Bugandan techno that unleashes the full force of ancient tradition, before building to a crescendo with fresh “compulsive post noise power sludge” from ID Music faves Sunrot.
Lewis Richmond restates the foundations of Buddhism as “everything is connected, nothing lasts, and you are not alone.”
artist - work
Wife Signs - Void Contemplation Tactic
Chelsea Carmichael - Bone And Soil
Nihiloxica - Diggi Dagga
Kheth Astron - Rotating Your Time Away
Ondness - Pele De Sombra
Nadja - Funkspiel Part Three
Sunrot - 21%
Fossilization - Exalted In The Altar of Insignificance
RINUWAT - Suro
Wife Signs - Void Contemplation Tactic
Dharma: Lewis Richmond in Tricycle Magazine
20220422 PROGRAM NOTES
North America's Gnarliest Mix for a state of consciousness where every form of fragmentation has ceased
For this week's session, we get things off to a difficult start with the latest transmission from Planet earth's 1st and only Death Sludge band. From there, we'll make our way through mind-blowing dub, a peyote-laced Bitches Brew from the artist formerly known as Blackjack Pleasant, and Buddhist drone metal, among other vibrations.
Language throughout the broadcast from The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, as read by your host, and excerpted from the Void Contemplation Tactics meditation video series.
artist - work
Deep Listening Band - Non-Stop Flight (edit)
Primitive Man - Cage Intimacy
Professor - Mind Blowing Dub
Mtume Umoja Ensemble - Sifa (The Prayer)
Sonny Simmons & Moksha Samnyasin - We Are Entering The Place of That
Dhyana - Dogen
Blacks' Myths - Mammy's Revenge
Deep Listening Band - Non-Stop Flight (edit)
Dharma: Fritjof Capra - The Tao of Physics
20220429 PROGRAM NOTES
North America's Gnarliest Mix for understanding that the real idea is no idea
For this week's practice, we consider Zen Master Seung Sahn's explanation of the disconnect between signifier and signified with a soundtrack of jazz, world, and experimental musics that "elicit visions of fulfilling serenity and troubled oracles at once."
Language throughout the broadcast from The Compass of Zen, as read by your host, and excerpted from the Void Contemplation Tactics meditation video series.
artist - work
HUMMING AMPS SING - Live in Kelowna, BC (edit)
Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin - I
Sandy Bull - Easy Does It
Ras P (feat. Jah Rej) - Coronation Pt. 2
Bob Marley - Jump Nyabinghi (Dennis Thompson Mix)
Sabla + Đ.K. - Nubes Shepherd
TENGGER - Maunam
itta - Empty Is Not Empty
HUMMING AMPS TRIO - Live in Portland, OR (edit)
Dharma: Zen Master Seung Sahn
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