RockOm

By Trevor Harden, Trevor@RockOm.net

Since forming in 1985 as a band of middle school students, the rock quartet known as Live has grown to become one of the most popular and enduring alternative rock acts of the past two decades. They gained massive mainstream success with their sophomore breakthrough album Throwing Copper in 1994 and have since gone on to sell more than 20 million CDs worldwide.

Live frontman Eddie Kowalczyk is currently on an acoustic tour called Open Wings, Broken Strings with Leigh Nash of Sixpence None The Richer and Art Alexakis of Everclear. He is also working on a rocking new solo album to be released in spring of 2010 (details and mailing list at eddieklive.com).

Eddie sat down with RockOm's Trevor Harden to discuss his spiritual journey, rediscovering the Bible, the power of performing acoustically and more...

Trevor: Since Live's first album, Mental Jewelry, you've always allowed depth and spiritual truth into your lyrics. That album came out when you guys were very young so was there a catalyst that started you down that spiritual path? Can you speak about where that longing for something deeper came from?

Ed: Sure. I was baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic but never really got into it much beyond the routine of occasional church going and the formalities of the religion, never really digging that deeply into it as a child. Then as a teenager, I had a natural tendency to dig a little deeper than what was handed to me as a kid, in terms of spirituality and religion. When I was about 16 or 17 in high school I noticed that I was really interested in meditation and seeking Truth and a deeper meaning to my existence. I ended up wandering into a metaphysical bookstore that was near where I lived one day and saw a book by J. Krishnamurti called You Are the World; I bought it on a whim. It ended up being a book about questioning conditioning. He put everything into question in terms of what we accept as true or real and why we do so. It was maybe the first time I did that - to look at the ideas and beliefs I held about God and Truth and ask myself if they were accurate and what I was getting from it.

So that started my questioning which then led into years of meditating and reading. I've always been an avid reader of scripture and philosophy and never went to college so that was kind of my education. In the mid-1990's I met Ken Wilber and became really good friends with him and read his book called A Brief History of Everything which was a major watershed opening of my mind. Then about four or five years ago I did something called the Big Mind project with a man named Genpo Roche, a Zen master who developed a piercing kind of Zen questioning process. Since then I've come full circle by re-investigating the Bible from a metaphysical point of view - reinterpreting scripture in a way that relates to consciousness. That has been the main focus of my life for the last four years. It's definitely not a type of Christianity that people would recognize as typical or dogmatic; it's about the furthest you could be from fundamentalism but nonetheless Christian in nature. I'm really discovering the Bible for the first time in terms of unlocking its potential to teach us about reality.

Alongside all of that, it's music all the time. Music and songwriting is an extension of that search and has given me a lot to think about. It's been a fount of inspiration for me throughout the years and people seem to dig it.

Trevor: What are you finding in the life and teachings of Jesus that you weren't finding elsewhere or that you're finding unique?

Ed: It's unique in it's power, unique in it's breadth of influence. But you have to get away from looking at it as just a moral code and dig deeper into the language of the Bible and I'm interpreting it as it relates to consciousness itself or being itself. One of the simple ways that I see the power in it is every time the Bible says God or Lord or Christ is to relate that directly to consciousness itself, which is ever present and intermingling with your own being at a very deep level. So that unlocks an interest in prayer and meditation that was there but is now even more driven to a deeper place, understanding that as we touch that deep level that our life becomes the fruitage of that. We're happier, our relationships become more harmonious... "you shall know them by their fruits" stuff starts to happen. There's an extra sparkle in my eye and a smile that wasn't there for a while by ucovering that because of the depth of this prayer and practicing going to that place where we all become one. There's a very powerful silence there and it really reveals a lot.

As a musician and artist, you can't really ask for more than that. I come out of these periods with incredible inspiration and want to sing about it. Being able to go full circle and pick up the Bible again has been very powerful for me because it was a book that I really just didn't understand in a way that meant much to me for years. It's a sort of a coming home, but in my own way. It has been really, really exciting and powerful.

Trevor: You're currently offering the free download of your song "Forever" on eddieklive.com. It's a beautiful acoustic version of the song with the great line, "The darker the night, the brighter the dawn." Can you tell us a little about your inspiration for this song?

Ed: Again, coming from rediscovering the Bible and words like faith, that particular lyric is trying to express that when we see our ideal - the best case scenario, the most loving scenario, the fullest life, God or Truth - to keep our attention there in spite of what is appearing as an obstacle or limitation. As you keep the faith and keep your attention on that ideal and get more and more stronger doing that you find that the negativity leaves. You discover you've moved past the limitations and closer to the ideal in ways that are beyond imagination. Everyone has experienced that but this was just putting it into a context that is hopefully inspirational to people. It's something that has had an incredible impact on my life.

Trevor: All musicians talk about that mystical thing that happens in a live setting where there's a unity and connection you have with the audience. I'm sure it happens at both the loud rock concerts with the band as well as in the quiet, acoustic solo performances that you're currently doing. Can you talk about how the texture of that is different in both of those settings?

Ed: It's really different. Look, I love to rock. I've been in a great band for years and love to turn up the amps and have all the lights going and the big PA. But there's a part of you that sits by yourself in a room and writes a song that doesn't get to be on stage then. He has to recoil back into a little place of being there, but not really. Stripping it down and making it an acoustic, intimate setting really allows that guy to come forward. I had really kind of missed him. You obviously have that when you start out, when the crowds are smaller, but as the band gets bigger and your art succeeds, it becomes a persona that is designed to fill these big spaces. With this "Open Wings, Broken Strings" tour, the idea was to strip that down and put artists on the bill that were also ready for those types of things in their music. There's a fullness about the show that everyone is sharing in and the crowds are just loving it. A lot of them have said to me, "I never knew it could rock that much or be that compelling." That trips me out because that's where the music comes from, but I guess yeah, if you've never seen me acoustic you wouldn't know. This is just another view and it's really neat.

Trevor: In that setting you can talk about the meaning behind the songs and share the background a little bit. Are there any of your songs that you're particularly enjoying "clearing the air" about? Is there any song that you really enjoy telling the real story and meaning behind because it has maybe been misunderstood in the past or is perhaps a bit cryptic?

Ed: You know, I keep them that way a lot. I actually just did an introduction to "Lightening Crashes" the other night and said if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me what this song meant, I'd have a lot more dollars. I basically stepped off it again by saying that I have a feeling about what it means but people have received such different impressions about that song in lots of good ways that I don't want to influence that. I've said it's about reincarnation for me at periods of time in my life but I still tend to back away from that because there's something about the openness of it - letting it be interpreted in the way people receive it - that is really powerful.

www.eddieklive.com

RockOm contributor, artist, community member and friend, Michael Garfield interviewed groundbreaking author and philosopher Ken Wilber in early 2008. In this excerpt, the two discuss the evolving "role of music."

Michael Garfield: Well, one of the things that I've been talking about with my friends is something that's kind of central to a lot of people's world right now: the changing role of music in our culture. That there's this technological revolution that we're going through now, it's a revolution of communication, and so the role of communication is expanding - like it tends to, in the middle of a technological revolution.

Ken Wilber: Right.

MG: And just as someone who's given a lot of thought to what the consequences of new modes of communication and discourse are going to mean, in the 21st Century, how do you see the role of music expanding or changing in the next ten, twenty, fifty, hundred years?

KW: Yeah. Well it depends on how you look at music, in terms of its actual functionality, its actual contours, its actual definition. We sort of begin with pointing out that music is an artifact. So it's something that is created, meaningfully, by human sentient beings. And it has a component of it that can be looked at as just purely expressive, which is something in a sense that an artist can theoretically just do alone, but then it also has a communitive aspect. Something that is meant to be conveyed to another sentient being. And that then opens the artifact to being interpreted at the altitude that it's created at.

[Ken's uses the word "altitude" to mean a particular station along the continuum of psychological development. The more developed you are, the higher your altitude.]

And this then leaves music's self-expressive and communicative capacity coming from a particular altitude. And different types of music, or even within types of music, individuals and different artists in specific types of music can pretty much span almost an entire spectrum. And so what we're looking at is a range of signifiers [signals] that are both self-expressive and communicative. And particularly in the communicative mode, it's a system or pattern of signifiers that's going to go through a particular medium, and the medium itself can be an important part of the message, but it goes through a particular medium and then is decoded as a signified [the signal's meaning] in a human or a group of human beings.

And so that essentially means several things, in terms of the role of music, what music is doing, and so on. And one is that you can look at the actual content of music, its actual altitude, and whether it's evoking a sort of second or third chakra rock and roll beat -

[The chakras of the body's subtle energy system are roughly equivalent to the stages of human psychological development - chakras two and three are correlated with the emergence of the ego and personal power.]

- or whether it's more cerebral, and Bach-classical music sort of sixth or seventh chakra [the nexuses of intuitive insight and divine union, respectively]. And you can look at it in terms of that kind of altitude evoking, and that refers essentially to the structure of music, and the structural altitude that music fits into as a signifier - and, again, whether it's aiming at lower chakras or intermediate chakras or higher chakras - but you can also look at music as its capacity to evoke states of consciousness. And this is probably one of the most important aspects of music as a spiritual transmission. Because music at any level can start out as a third-person artifact, and then can actually end up as a first-person identification. A person can actually end up feeling one with the art in a nondual flow state [in which the boundary between self and other is completely dissolved]. And if not a flow state, then as a pure witness, a contemplation of the art as being so beautiful or so arresting or so provoking that one is thrust into a causal witness state.

[The witnessing state is a state of pure awareness, unidentified with any of the objects of consciousness - the featureless self of this state is "causal" in the sense that all things arise within its spaciousness, and so there can be no prior origin.]

And if that deepens or intensifies, it will go from that third- or second-person into a first-person identification, and one gets into a flow state, one loses one's self in the art. The art evokes and pulls forth a capacity for causal or nondual Spirit. And this can happen at, again, virtually any altitude, just as states, peak experiences can occur at any altitude. But looking at the state transition itself is one of the really important aspects of looking at art, because at whatever level a society is at, art is one of its primary means of transmitting causal and nondual Spirit.

And you had some questions about environment and in the modern world, as artists are the primary spiritual speakers - one way to put it - and in a sense, that's true. So what we're looking at are two different scales of what art does. One is the altitude that the signifiers of art are flying at, and that's a developmental altitude, it's an altitude of complexity, an altitude that is put into the artwork by the consciousness of its maker, by the artist, and will then tend to evoke the same level - in viewers or readers or listeners - the same level of signifieds as the level of signifier. And so in the modern, in the coming world, art does two things - one, it has a world of higher signifiers open to it, it has a world of integral or second-tier, in some cases, third-tier altitude open that it can resonate from.

["Second-tier" refers to the altitudes at which all previous altitudes are recognized as essential elements of one's own being, and less-developed individuals are treated compassionately and appropriately according to their own development. "Third-tier" refers to the altitudes beyond second-tier at which the self/other boundary begins to unravel - not merely as a temporary peak experience, but as a permanent feature of one's identity.]

And whether it's in music, or painting, or literature, it can transmit that second-tier evocation, that integral transmission. And then another is its capacity for states, and in this capacity, as in the past, art has a possibility of evoking state experiences in the viewer, listener, or reader. And these can be subtle states, of just emotional intensity, but it can be spiritual states of causal contemplation and nondual flow. And it was nondual flow, for example, that Schopenhauer had in mind when he talked about art transmitting spiritual awareness, where subject and object become one in the viewer, and that's a nondual flow state. So, sort of two parts - and that's just an analytical, third-person answer to the question.

There's also first-person answers to the question, which are just more aesthetic responses to what aesthetics is. But that's kind of an overview, a third-person view, of where art is and that it's opening up on a frontier now of a second-tier transmission as well as being able to transmit and evoke states of consciousness. And those are essentially similar in the past, except that they are going to be interpreted. If somebody comes out of a nondual flow state, and somebody happens to be at turquoise -

[Ken uses a color-coding scheme to refer to specific altitudes. "Turquoise" refers to a mature and stable realization of so-called "integral" or "second-tier" consciousness. See the chart from Integral Spirituality (hi-res image viewable here).]

- and the art itself was composed by a turquoise mind, then if you asked the person, the listener/hearer/viewer to explain the artwork, they will explain it from an integral vantage point. They'll explain it from an turquoise vantage point, in terms of just the effect it has on them. And whether that's music, and it just somehow "makes me feel whole," and whether it's literature, and there's a consistent writing from a second-tier perspective that's taken and conveyed and evoked in the narrative itself, or whether any sort of art in its communicative form now has signifiers that are available at second-tier. And this is basically, this is a fairly novel breakthrough. And certain great artists of the past have had a chance to push into second-tier cognitively and relate that aesthetically, but we're coming to a point now where there are a large number of everyday individuals that are at that - they're advanced everyday individuals, but it's somewhere upwards of five percent of the population, so that adds a mix to art that was not present before.

And the last thing I'll say about is, when it comes to art recognized by art critics, we have basically just about run the course of postmodern art, and that's art that has green-altitude signifiers [conveying an awareness of the social construction of the ego and systematically "deconstructing" it by illuminating its reliance on cultural context] and is heavily invested with normative judgments [declarations of right and wrong]. So art basically has been politicized, which is not really its function, but that's what green postmodern artists and critics have done with it. But we have about run that course, and so what's new is signifiers coming from integral. Signifiers coming from post-postmodern. And whether that's just in music composed by individuals at second-tier, kind of a certain resonance that comes across in that, or whether its actual narrative forms that convey these second-tier perspectives either explicitly by talking about integrative material or implicitly by coming from that altitude - however the form that they are, it has the capacity to use signifiers, and it is going to start using signifiers, that are post-postmodern. And that's going to be kind of huge. We're waiting to see how it breaks out, waiting to see what form it takes, waiting to see what narrative form it takes and particularly what visual arts do in the face of integral.

So that's all right on the horizon, and that's why it's a very exciting time in the art world, we're watching the death of a huge movement and the birth of what will be a huge movement, and we're right on that cusp.

Read Michael's entire article and interview here.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Michael Garfield is intent on demonstrating that everything is equally art, science, and spiritual practice - to revive cultural and individual investment in the renaissance thinking that finds equal value in thinking and feeling, description and experience. Working as a scientific illustrator and essayist by day, and a live electronic musician and performance painter by night, Michael divides his attentions between exploring and celebrating the vast complex vibratory spectacle that is our musical universe. His work has been featured at integralnaked.org, realitysandwich.com, and paullonely.com, and in Cause & Effect Magazine, iMAGE Magazine, and H+. Links to his painting gallery, live and studio recordings, and visionary music blog can be found at myspace.com/michaelgarfield.

There are at least three levels of motivation for making a funeral mix. As I have mentioned (in Part I and II), personal comfort - planning-as-insulation from an intensely impartial and unforgiving void - is one. But beyond the narrow constraints of such half-conscious, fear-motivated scrambling - the secular and self-serving penitences of our iPod culture - there are nobler reasons to leave a funeral playlist (or any artifact) that communicates something you are no longer able to say.

A moment of explanation. Back in 2005, I heard Ken Wilber speak in Denver, and he was discussing how we can't determine a person's motivation from their actions alone. This is because as we mature psychologically, our sense of self becomes more complex and extends to more and more of the world we experience; what used to be "it" becomes "me." We start in a swirl of undifferentiated experience and learn through laborious error that there is a difference between "self" and "other." Then we learn that we have a body, but are not exclusively that body; then we learn that we have thoughts, but are not exclusively our thoughts. All of these things are there the whole time, but as our inner world becomes richer, we learn to recognize them as distinct objects of our experience - and, simultaneously, learn that these things that are parts of us are not us, in the sense that "I" remain "I" without them. As a child grows, what she considers "me" (and therefore "mine") grows in an expanding concentric ring, and this passage - from "egocentric" to "ethnocentric" to "worldcentric," or concern for self, then family, then all people - offers an entire spectrum of reasons for her to do any particular thing.

Ken offered, as a mundane example, the use of makeup. Someone can wear lipstick because it makes her feel pretty (egocentric); or because it will please another person or other people, or it's "the right thing to do" (ethnocentric); or because by beautifying herself, she's making the whole world more beautiful and thus acting in service of a universal ideal (worldcentric). And you'll never know by watching someone make kissy faces in the mirror whether she's doing it for one of these reasons, and not another.

(If any of this is unclear, here's more about egocentrism, ethnocentrism, and worldcentrism.)

With that in mind:

If I'm going to make a list of songs to be played at my funeral, I want to do it for the noblest reasons I know. I'm not going to do it merely to sandbag my own fear of mortality, or to relish forcing my will on people in a moment of unique vulnerability. I want to make an offering of music that has helped me deal with mortality and bereavement, in the hope that I can bring some modicum of peace to a world defined by suffering. I want to share the sole remaining thing I will be able to give people after I die: perspective.

After all, losing someone is scary. Even when we can't completely fathom the death of our own bodies, we feel death directly in a small way when the people with whom we identify pass on. "I feel like I lost a piece of myself," we say, and the truth is that we did - even if our limited Western notion of compartmental identity doesn't acknowledge it as such.

The music playing at my funeral, then, is also the music playing at their funeral. And what would you want to hear when you're dying? A dispatch from the other side, alleviating the unbearable mystery? Loving acknowledgment and the permission to feel what you're feeling? A reminder of how this passage is what unifies you with everyone else? Music can offer all of these things in one form or another.

And peace is contagious - so if I have the means to offer it to even a few people, it can ripple outward through their thoughts and deeds and affect everyone else, people I never had the chance to meet. In fact, why wait until I'm dead? Why conserve the gift for a handful of friends and family?

From here on out, I'll use this column to examine the songs I would offer to anyone who survives me. This is the music that accomplishes (in my opinion) the highest potential of music: to connect us so deeply to the world that we are dead before we are dead, that we are unafraid of death (and thus, unafraid of life). Affirmative even in their difficult truths, these songs have given me a solace I haven't found anywhere else. Hopefully, they'll make you feel a little bit more capable of handling the grim reality of my death, and yours.

Previous articles in this series:

PART I: The Soundtrack To Your Funeral, I: Playing DJ To The Bereaved
PART II: The Soundtrack To Your Funeral, II: Putting Death in a Box

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael Garfield is intent on demonstrating that everything is equally art, science, and spiritual practice - to revive cultural and individual investment in the renaissance thinking that finds equal value in thinking and feeling, description and experience. Working as a scientific illustrator and essayist by day, and a live electronic musician and performance painter by night, Michael divides his attentions between exploring and celebrating the vast complex vibratory spectacle that is our musical universe. His work has been featured at integralnaked.org, realitysandwich.com, and paullonely.com, and in Cause & Effect Magazine, iMAGE Magazine, and H+. Links to his painting gallery, live and studio recordings, and visionary music blog can be found at myspace.com/michaelgarfield.

Discuss this article