Trance Music Quotes

They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air.

This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely

Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air

This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me," whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. "Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!

Music That Brings, The Meaning Of our Life. Music That Shows, The Light From Our Soul. When This Music Touch Our Hear, We call it TRANCE. When This Music Control Our Emotion We call it "THE SENSATION OF TRANCE

Music gives inspiration...one that sounds windy with humming sound, such can put you in a trance, only to come back and discover some witty ideas.

So word by word, and line by line, The dead man touch'd me from the past, And all at once it seem'd at last The living soul was flash'd on mine, And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd About empyreal heights of thought, And came on that which is, and caught The deep pulsations of the world, Æonian music measuring out The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance-- The blows of Death. At length my trance Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt.

Musicians do not get on stage without hearing the song singing inside of them. Poets do not write as if they are jotting down a sermon, they see everything in their subconscious before presenting it to the conscious, which they later turn to  readable materials. Artist do not draw and paint without painting in dream states, trance, or see an art form that others do not see. Being creative does not calls for being any supernatural entity, but in creating with the entities inside of you.

What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways. I stretch out on the floor with my ear parked next to the speaker, in a trance. I place the album cover over my face to block out any interruption as "I'll Be Your Mirror" seduces me. I immediately add the song to my mental list of top ten songs ever. And as I'm bobbing my head with dreamy abandon, I hear a voice. "Nice choice, DJ," it says. I slowly slide the album cover down past my eyes and look up. My eyes spy his shoes first--paint-splattered brogues. My heart stops when I look at his face. Pale skin, messy black hair, emerald eyes...Senor Smolder! He's eighteen, maybe nineteen. And no, my imagination didn't lie, he is just as devastating now as he was the first time I saw him. Only even more, because he just complimented my taste in music.

Time is distance, and when it is suspended, we are no longer in the world but a part of the world. That is what the music of Orpheus did to the women who in a kind of collective trance or ecstasy tore his head off and tossed it into the sea, where it drifted slowly away, still singing.

Gary tried not to notice how pale Savannah was as she fixed him a pot of coffee.Her satin skin was almost translucent.He was groggy from the trance-induced sleep and had a hard time waking up, even after a long shower. He had no idea where the change of clothes had come from,but they were lying on the end of the bed when he awakened. Savannah was beautiful, moving through the house like flowing water, like music in the air.She was dressed in faded blue jeans and a pale turquoise shirt that clung to her curves and emphasized her narrow rib cage and small waist.Her long hair was pulled back in a thick braid that hung below her bottom.Gary tried to keep his eyes to himself.He hadn't seen any evidence of Gregori this evening,but he didn't want to take any chances.He had a feeling the one thing that could change that remote expression fast was to have another man ogling Savannah.

I also had the ability to create alpha-state music in my head, go into a creative trance, have musical visions, and

Rave emerged spontaneously, neither planned or designed. It was a genuine grass roots phenomenon, egalitarian and welcoming. Thousands danced in fields all through the night, out under the moon, in order to achieve a trance-like, ecstatic state. It was a form of communion and it was pagan as fuck. Needless to say, it couldn't last. The press and the government, appalled by such non-violent having-of-a-good-time, moved quickly to crush it. Ultimately, though, they weren't quick enough. Rave grew too big too quickly, and it attracted the attention of those who felt they could make money from such events. Once this happened and the superstar DJs and the superclubs arrived, the focus shifted from the raw crowd back to the event itself. Rave's spell was broken.

This trip to Atlantic City was multi-purpose, which was not unusual for government operations in which I was forced to participate. I had a major cocaine transaction involving Noriega to attend at the airport; a message to deliver to Philip Habib pertaining to the Contras, and another programmed in by Habib in answer to Reagan; country music "entertainment" 4 aspects; and prostitution to Habib according to Reagan's instruction.

Excellent,” says Gray, rubbing his hands together, a gleam in his eye. “The last person to sing gets to buy the drinks.” Ivy grins wide. “You’re on, Cupcake. I’m going to sing the house down.” We all pause, our gazes darting back and forth as a certain sense of terror falls over the table. Ivy sees us and slaps her palm onto the table. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I know what you twats are thinking! If I suck at dancing, I’ll suck at singing? Well, I don’t. I’m awesome.” Awkward silence ensues, and she snorts. “What? You think I don’t know I suck at dancing? I just don’t give a shit.” She glares at Gray, though there really isn’t any anger in the look. “So you can stop dancing like an ass now.” A strangled sound leaves him. “You knew?” “Of course.” She tosses a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “You’re too coordinated on the field, and you kind of forget to suck when you do those victory dances.” He gapes at her for a long second, then gives a bark of laughter. “I fucking love you, Special Sauce.” With that, he hauls Ivy into his lap and kisses her. Fi, however, finally snaps out of the trance she’s been in since Ivy confessed. “You sneaky shithead,” she shouts over the music. “All these years I’ve been covering for your craptacular dancing, and you knew!” She shakes a fist. “I swear to God, Ivy Weed…” “Oh, please,” Ivy counters. “You pretend you suck at baking so you don’t have to cook for family holidays.” Fi sniffs, looking guilty as hell. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ivy leans in, her eyes narrowed. “Midnight cookie baking ring a bell, Tink?” Fi’s cheeks flush, and she studies her nails with undue interest while muttering something about traitor sisters under her breath. “Those are for PMS cravings and nothing more. I was baking under duress.

IN PERSIA I SAW that poetry is meant to be set to music & chanted or sung--for one reason alone--because it works. A right combination of image & tune plunges the audience into a hal (something between emotional/aesthetic mood & trance of hyperawareness), outbursts of weeping, fits of dancing--measurable physical response to art. For us the link between poetry & body died with the bardic era--we read under the influence of a cartesian anaesthetic gas.

Practice and playing music has to be like a religious experience. It has to be your religion, you know; it has to be your trance. You get something from a devotion to it and digging deeper into yourself and the nature of reality.

They’d leave open loops (or unfinished metaphors and stories) in my mind that they’d close a week later. They’d play music designed to elicit specific psychological reactions. They’d put me into trances so deep that hours went by in the blink of an eye.

I feel,” Simon went on, “that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don’t you agree?” Clary rolled her eyes and didn’t answer; Simon hated trance music. Her attention was on the girl in the white dress. Through the darkness, smoke, and artificial fog, her pale dress shone out like a beacon. No wonder the blue-haired boy was following her as if he were under a spell, too distracted to notice anything else around him—even the two dark shapes hard on his heels, weaving after him through the crowd.

If you really want a child to thrive and blossom, lose the screens for the first few years of their lives. During those key developmental periods, let them engaging creative play. Legos are always great, as they encourage creativity and the hand-eye coordination nurtures synaptic growth. Let them explore their surroundings and allow them opportunities to experience nature. . Activities like cooking and playing music also have been shown to help young children thrive developmentally. But most importantly, let them experience boredom; there is nothing healthier for a child then to learn how to use their own interior resources to work through the challenges of being bored. This then acts as the fertile ground for developing their powers of observation, cultivating patience and developing an active imagination-- the most developmentally and neurosynaptically important skill that they can learn.

dissipated in the cool air, ghosts of sound, lingering in the periphery of light and shadow. The sun had set. Shadows crept across the room. But Adrienne stared straight ahead, lost in a trance of remembering. The music had carried her away, to another time and another place, when she was young and in love and the future still sparkled with possibility.

Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle's cousin repeat what he's just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he's being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn't it, not at all-it's that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.

Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle's cousin repeat what he's just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he's being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn't it, not at all - it's that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.

He saw her once, and in the glance, A moment’s glance of meeting eyes, His heart stood still in sudden trance: He trembled with a sweet surprise— All in the waning light she stood, The star of perfect womanhood. That summer-eve his heart was light: With lighter step he trod the ground: And life was fairer in his sight, And music was in every sound: He blessed the world where there could be So beautiful a thing as she. There once again, as evening fell And stars were peering overhead, Two lovers met to bid farewell: The western sun gleamed faint and red,

Between Myself and Death To Jimmy Blanton's Music: Sophisticated Lady, Body and Soul A fervor parches you sometimes, And you hunch over it, silent, Cruel, and timid; and sometimes You are frightened with wantonness, And give me your desperation. Mostly we lurk in our coverts, Protecting our spleens, pretending That our bandages are our wounds. But sometimes the wheel of change stops; Illusion vanishes in peace; And suddenly pride lights your flesh— Lucid as diamond, wise as pearl— And your face, remote, absolute, Perfect and final like a beast's. It is wonderful to watch you, A living woman in a room Full of frantic, sterile people, And think of your arching buttocks Under your velvet evening dress, And the beautiful fire spreading From your sex, burning flesh and bone, The unbelievably complex Tissues of your brain all alive Under your coiling, splendid hair. * * * I like to think of you naked. I put your naked body Between myself alone and death. If I go into my brain And set fire to your sweet nipples, To the tendons beneath your knees, I Can see far before me. It is empty there where I look, But at least it is lighted. I know how your shoulders glisten, How your face sinks into trance, And your eves like a sleepwalker's, And your lips of a woman Cruel to herself. I like to Think of you clothed, your body Shut to the world and self contained, Its wonderful arrogance That makes all women envy you. I can remember every dress, Each more proud then a naked nun. When I go to sleep my eves Close in a mesh of memory. Its cloud of intimate odor Dreams instead of myself.

Hunger became an ally. My metabolism changed and my understanding of this land changed with it. On the night the wind howled, our tents rattled like bones. We were camped by a string lake. Pans of ice made of bunched crystals floated by. Pale green on top, the clear sides looked like see-through rows of teeth. When the sun came, the bunched stalks disintegrated: deconstructed chandeliers. I heard music—not Dennis’s but candle-ice tinkling. The whole lake chimed. Lying on top of my sleeping bag by the water, I lost track of my body. I wasn’t floating—there was nothing mysterious going on—but something had let go inside me. The weight of my boots, my abraded heels, ankles, and toes ceased to hurt and no longer impeded my journey. I had entered a trance state. The equation was this: hunger + beauty = movement. I wanted only to keep going.

Rather, I found through this experience that there is significant similarity between meditating under a waterfall and tidying. When you stand under a waterfall, the only audible sound is the roar of water. As the cascade pummels your body, the sensation of pain soon disappears and numbness spreads. Then a sensation of heat warms you from the inside out, and you enter a meditative trance. Although I had never tried this form of meditation before, the sensation it generated seemed extremely familiar. It closely resembled what I experience when I am tidying. While not exactly a meditative state, there are times when I am cleaning that I can quietly commune with myself. The work of carefully considering each object I own to see whether it sparks joy inside me is like conversing with myself through the medium of my possessions. For this reason, it is essential to create a quiet space in which to evaluate the things in your life. Ideally, you should not even be listening to music. Sometimes I hear of methods that recommend tidying in time to a catchy song, but personally, I don’t encourage this. I feel that noise makes it harder to hear the internal dialogue between the owner and his or her belongings. Listening to the TV is, of course, out of the question. If you need some background noise to relax, choose environmental or ambient music with no lyrics or well-defined melodies. If you want to add momentum to your tidying work, tap the power of the atmosphere in your room rather than relying on music. The best time to start is early morning. The fresh morning air keeps your mind clear and your power of discernment sharp. For this reason, most of my lessons commence in the morning. The earliest lesson I ever conducted began at six thirty, and we were able to clean at twice the usual speed. The clear, refreshed feeling gained after standing under a waterfall can be addictive. Similarly, when you finish putting your space in order, you will be overcome with the urge to do it again. And, unlike waterfall meditation, you don’t have to travel long distances over hard terrain to get there. You can enjoy the same effect in your own home. That’s pretty special, don’t you think?

On a break from the tour, I went south to Bali, a place the choreographer Toni Basil, whom Eno and I had met during the Bush Of Ghosts sessions, had recommended as being transporting and all about performance. I rented a small motorcycle and headed up into the hills, away from the beach resort. I soon discovered that if one saw offerings of flowers and fruit being brought to a village temple compound in the afternoon, one could be pretty certain that some sort of ritual performance would follow there at night. Sure enough, night after night I would catch dances accompanied by gamelan orchestras and shadow-puppet excerpts from the Hindu Ramayana--epic and sometimes ritual performances that blended religious and theatrical elements. (A gamelan is a small orchestra made up mainly of tuned metallic gongs and xylophone-like instruments--the interplay between the parts is beautiful and intricate.) In these latter events some participants would often fall into a trance, but even in trance there were prescribed procedures. It wasn't all thrashing chaos, as a Westerner might expect, but a deeper kind of dance. As In Japanese theater, the performers often wore masks and extreme makeup; their movements, too, were stylized and "unnatural." It began to sink in that this kind of "presentational" theater has more in common with certain kinds of pop-music performance that traditional Western theater did. I was struck by other peripheral aspects of these performances. The audiences, mostly local villagers of all ages, weren't paying attention half the time. People would wander in and out, go get a snack from a cart or leave to smoke a bidi cigarette, and then return to watch some more. This was more like the behavior of audiences in music clubs than in Western theaters, where they were expected to sit quietly and only leave or converse once the show was over. The Balinese "shows" were completely integrated into people's daily lives, or so it seemed to me. There was no attempt to formally separate the ritual and the show from the audience. Everything seemed to flow into everything else. The food, the music, and the dance were all just another part of daily activity. I remembered a story about John Cage, who, when in Japan, asked someone what their religion was. The reply was that they didn't have a strict religion--they danced. Japanese do, of course, have Buddhist and Shinto rituals for weddings, funerals, and marriages, but a weekly thing like going to church or temple doesn't exist. The "religion" is so integrated into the culture that it appears in daily gestures and routines, unsegregated for ordinary life. I was beginning to see that theatricality wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was part of life in much of the world, and not necessarily phony either.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. …yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; Nor do we merely feel these essences For one short hour; no, even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast, They alway must be with us, or we die. For ‘twas the morn: Apollo’s upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold, To feel this sun-rise and its glories old. With a faint breath of music, which ev’n then Fill’d out its voice, and died away again. Within a little space again it gave Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave, To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking Through copse-clad vallies,—ere their death, oer-taking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay Watching the zenith, where the milky way Among the stars in virgin splendour pours; And travelling my eye, until the doors Of heaven appear’d to open for my flight, I became loth and fearful to alight From such high soaring by a downward glance: So kept me stedfast in that airy trance, Spreading imaginary pinions wide. When, presently, the stars began to glide, And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er A shell for Neptune’s goblet: she did soar So passionately bright, my dazzled soul Commingling with her argent spheres did roll Through clear and cloudy, even when she went At last into a dark and vapoury tent— Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train Of planets all were in the blue again. To commune with those orbs, once more I rais’d My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed By a bright something, sailing down apace, Making me quickly veil my eyes and face: What I know not: but who, of men, can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet?

We permit a new future to enter the room with these startling encounters. A young boy from Austin, Texas, Charles Black Jr., stood and knew it when he was just sixteen years old, thinking he was going to a coed social at the Driskill Hotel in his hometown in 1931. It was a dance, the first in a session of four, yet he remained transfixed by an image that he had never seen before. The trumpet player, a jazz musician whom he had not heard of, performed largely with his eyes closed, sounding out notes, ideas, laments, sonnets, “that had never before existed,” he said. His music sounded like an “utter transcendence of all else created.” He was with a friend, a “ ‘good old boy’ from Austin High,” who sensed it too, and was troubled. It rumbled the ground underneath them. His friend stood a while longer, “shook his head as if clearing it,” as if prying himself out of the trance. But Charles Black Jr. was sure even then. The trumpeter, “Louis Armstrong, King of the Trumpet” as it turned out, “was the first genius I had ever seen,” Black said, and that genius was housed in the body of a man whom Black’s childhood world had denigrated. The moment was “solemn.” Black had been staring at “genius,” yes, “fine control over total power, all height and depth, forever and ever,” and also staring at the gulf created by “the failure to recognize kinship.” He felt that Armstrong, who played as if “guided by a Daemon,” all “power” and lyricism, “opened my eyes wide, and put to me a choice”—to keep to a small view of humanity or to embrace a more expanded vision—and once Black made that choice, he never turned back. This is what aesthetic force can do—create a clear line forward, and an alternate route to choose.

poised over the now-silent keys. The notes of the night serenade dissipated in the cool air, ghosts of sound, lingering in the periphery of light and shadow. The sun had set. Shadows crept across the room. But Adrienne stared straight ahead, lost in a trance of remembering. The music had carried her away, to

the moment the baby heard his lullaby, he too fell into a kind of trance, as if for the first time someone had recognized the animal inside him and made a safe place for it.

Please listen to the hi-hat on the recorded version of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks.” Listen through once. Allow yourself to be trans- ported back to the time or place when you first fell deeply into that trance of sound, so wide and powerful it gave a new depth to your life, a depth you had not known to search for. Or maybe this is the first time you are hearing the song. In that case, I imagine you prefer different music altogether. Maybe you discount rock and roll as ego-driven, disconnected from that channeled light of Bach or Satie or Django or Monk. No matter. Allow the resistance to rise here as well, then wait for the moment the song breaks through, rings that same truth, that same transportive bell of beauty, that hyp notic atmosphere music offers. How beautiful to find lessons in our resistance. This may be a foundation of spiritual practice, to dive into the center of no and investigate. All those pronouncements and walls dis- solve like so much dust under the microscope of mind. The trance of song—loud, immense, gorgeous—does the same.

Android Girl Just Wants to Have a Baby! The first thing I do when I wake up is run my hands over my body. I like to make sure all my wires are in place. I lotion my silicone shell and snap my hair helmet over my head. I once had a dream I was a real girl, but when I woke up I was still myself in my paleness under the halogen light. The saliva of androids emits a spectral resonance, barely sticky between freshly-gapped teeth. After they made me, the first thing they did was peel the cellophane from my eyes. I blinked once, twice, and cried because that's how you say you are alive before you are given language. They named each of my heartbeats on the oceanic monitor: Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I listened to them blur into one. The fetus carves for itself a hollowed vector, a fragile wetness. In utero, extension cords are umbilical. Before puberty, I did not know there was such a thing as dishonor. Diss-on- her. This is what they said when I began to drip petrol between my legs. A tension exists between ritual and proof, a fantasy and its execution. Since then, I have been to the emergency room twice. The first time for a suicide attempt, and the second time because my earring was swallowed up by my newly pierced earlobe overnight, and when I woke up, it was tangled in a helix of wires. The idea of dying doesn't scare me but the ocean does. I was once told that fish will swim up my orifices if I am no longer a virgin. Is anyone thinking about erotic magazines when they are not aroused, pubes parted harshly down the center like red seas? My body carries the weight of four hundred eggs. I rise from a weird slumber, let them drip into the bath. This is what I'll leave behind - tiny shards purer than me. I have always been afraid of pregnant women because of their power, and because I don't yet understand what it means to carry something stubborn and blossoming inside of me, screeching towards an exit. The ectoplasm is the telos for the wound. A trance state is induced when salt is poured on it, pixel by pixel. I wish they had made me into an octopus instead, because octopuses die after their eggs hatch and crawl out into the sea, and I want to know what it's like to set something free into the dark unknown and trust it to choose mercy. If you can generate aura in a non-place, then there is no such thing as an authentic origin. In Chinese, the word for mercy translates to my heart hurts for you. They say my heart continues beating even after it is dislocated from my body. The sound of its beating comes from the valves opening and closing like a portal - Guanyin, Yama, Nuwa, Fuxi, Chang'e, Zao-Shen. I first learned about love by watching a sex tape where a girl looks up from performing fellatio and says, show them the sunset. Her boyfriend pans the camera to the sky, which is tinged violet like a bruise. In this moment, the sky displaces her, all digital and hyped, and saturates the scene until it collapses on me too, its transient witness. I move in the space between belly ring and catharsis. That night I have a dream where I am a camgirl, but all I do on screen is wash my laundry. Everybody loves me because I am a real girl doing real girl things. What lives on the border between meditation and oblivion, static and flux, a pomegranate seed and an embryo? I set up my webcam in the corner of the room and play ambient music while I scrub my underwear, letting soap bubbles rise up from the sink, laughing when they overflow on the linoleum floor - my frizzy hair, my pockmarked skin, my face slick with sweat. A body with exit wounds. I ride the bright rails of an animal forgetting. And when I wake up, the sky is a mess of blue.

There, in the center of the chamber, sat a small, golden harp. Cold leached through Nesta, clarifying her thoughts enough to realize where she stood. That the music of the priestesses had lulled her into a trance, that her own bones and the stone of the mountain surrounding her had been her scrying tools, and she had drifted to this place …

She could see how easily someone could succumb to the hex music weaved over them, the temptation to lose oneself within the hypnotic trance-like beats. No thoughts of the future, or the past, only the immediate present, as if life itself had condensed into a single moment.

the school the Seer had set up trained select men in the calling of prophet. If a man felt he had the calling upon him, he would be interviewed by the Seer for sincerity and integrity. If accepted into the school, he was then educated in the Torah and Wisdom literature of Israel and surrounding nations. Prophecy was not merely foretelling of the future by revelation from Yahweh. It was mostly forth-telling of truth, be it directly from Yahweh’s revelation or from the learned precepts of their sacred texts. Prophets would spend long hours in the spiritual exercises of religious devotion and scribal disciplines of learned education to become messengers of Yahweh. Hearing from their god involved both supernatural and natural pursuits to be both holy and wise. Part of that education included the playing of musical instruments that would accompany ecstatic trances and dances.

When melodies and chord changes are masterfully combined, a grand movement takes over our entire body, awakening heart, nerves, and emotions with a primitive force. One can see it in the ancient dance of the enchantress: her hypnotic jingling of costume, her trance to appease the gods.

She felt as if she knew the stars, and had been among them, or would be. Why was it that in planetarium lectures the telescopic photographs flashed upon the interior of the dome were so familiar—not just to her, but to everyone. Farmers and children, and, once, Paumanuk Indians pausing in their sad race to extinction, had all understood the sharp abstract images, immediately and from the heart. The nebulae, the sweep of galaxies, the centrifugal clusters—nothing more, really, than projected electric light on a plaster ceiling—carried them away in a trance, and the planetarium lecturer need not have said a word. And why was it that certain sounds, frequencies, and repetitious rhythmic patterns suggested stars, floating galaxies, and even the colorful opaque planets orbiting in subdued ellipses? Why were certain pieces of music (pre-Galilean, post-Galilean, it did not matter) harmonically and rhythmically linked to the stars and suggestive of the parallel light that rained upon the earth in illusory radiants bursting apart? She had no explanation for these or a hundred other questions about the same matters.

Trance is not a type of music..,it is a religion.

I feel,” Simon went on, “that this evening DJ Bat is doing a singularly exceptional job. Don’t you agree?” Clary rolled her eyes and didn’t answer; Simon hated trance music. Her

Screenplay is a company that provides music videos to businesses. Music and video screens are such common attractions in city businesses that court sexual minorities that many of them subscribe to this service. Via disc-based or direct-to-system download, Screenplay subscribers pay for access to a service called “VJ Pro,” where they choose from different genres of music videos that loosely resemble radio formats: HitsVision, a Top 40 mix that promises subscribers “nothing but the hits from every source”; DanceVision, featuring “exclusive remixes, hard to find imports and popular mainstream hits and everything in between designed expressly for the fast paced dance environment”; UrbanVision, a rhythm and blues/hip-hop hybrid that purports “to be all inclusive”; RockVision, rock music featuring songs “from Classic . . . to Disco, New Wave to Old School”; CountryVision, “an upbeat mix of current hits and classic favorites”; and LatinVision, “designed specifically for the sophisticated Latin dance crowd that demands only the hottest and best in tropical, Caribbean, merengue dance and Latin pop.”48 Many gay bars subscribe to ClubVision, which features a mix of “techno, trance and euro-flavored . . . tracks.”49 For dance-themed bars, this subscription features “an extended autoplay feature and individual chapter stops for single track selection.

Church services often include ritualized group processes that can induce trance states. Music, prayers, and a mesmerizing preaching style can create a state of relaxation and suggestibility. When a congregation proceeds to sing and pray aloud together with enthusiasm and speaking in tongues, an individual can easily conform. The aroused emotions and the group consensus about reality are convincing enough to inspire a response to get saved, “rededicated,” or “filled with the Spirit.” In the typical evangelical service, after a rousing sermon comes the “altar call.” This routine is strikingly similar to hypnotic induction methods in other contexts: The key is to get people to focus attention inward rather than outward, so that they see, hear, and feel internally rather than externally, through the five senses. At such times, you are much more susceptible to suggestions and less able to use your critical abilities. After an emotional sermon, which has likely already employed manipulative techniques such as fear and guilt, you are asked to bow your head and close your eyes. Soft music plays while everyone focuses inward. Quiet hymns repeat “Jesus is calling” or “Just as I am.” The minister then speaks softly into the microphone, suggesting that the Holy Spirit is present and moving in the congregation.

There, in the center of the chamber, sat a small, golden harp. Cold leached through Nesta, clarifying her thoughts enough to realize where she stood. That the music of the priestesses had lulled her into a trance, that her own bones and the stone of the mountain surrounding her had been her scrying tools, and she had drifted to this place … The Harp gleamed in the darkness, as if it possessed its own sun within the metal and strings. Play me, it seemed to whisper. Let me sing again. Join your voice with mine. Her hand reached toward the strings. Yes. The Harp sighed, a low purr rolling off it as Nesta’s hand neared. We shall open doors and pathways; we shall move through space and eons together. Our music will free us of earthly rules and borders. Yes. She’d play the Harp, and there would be nothing but music until the stars died out. Play. I have so long wished to play, it said, and she could have sworn she heard a smile within the sound. What might my song unlock in here? A cold, humorless laugh skittered along Nesta’s bones. It sang again, Play, play— The song halted, and the vision shattered. Nesta’s knees gave out as the room swept in, and she collapsed onto the pew, earning an alarmed look from Gwyn through the crowd. Her heart thundered, her mouth was dry as sand, and she forced herself to rise to her feet again. To listen to the end of the service as she pieced it all together, realized what she had discovered in her unwitting scrying.

But perhaps Hubbard’s most enduring contribution to psychedelic therapy emerged in, of all places, the treatment room. […] Though he never used those terms, Hubbard was the first researcher to grasp the critical importance of set and setting in shaping the psychedelic experience. He instinctively understood that the white walls and fluorescent lighting of the sanitised hospital room were all wrong. So he brought pictures and music, flowers and diamonds into the treatment room where he would use them to prime patients for a mystical revelation or divert a journey when it took a terrifying turn. He liked to show people paintings by Salvador Dali or pictures of Jesus or to ask them to study the facets of a diamond he carried. On patient he treated in Vancouver, an alcoholic paralysed by social anxiety recalled Hubbard handing him a bouquet of roses during a LSD session. “He said, ‘Now hate them’. They withered and the petals fell off, and I started to cry. Then he said ‘Love them’ and they came back, brighter and even more spectacular than before. That meant a lot to me. I realised you can make your relationships anything you want. The trouble I was having with people was coming from me.’” What Hubbard was bringing into the treatment room was something well-known to any traditional healer. Shamans have understood for millennia that a person in the depths of a trance or under the influence of a powerful plant medicine can be readily manipulated with the help of certain words, special objects, or the right kind of music. Hubbard understood intuitively how the suggestibility of the human mind during an altered state of consciousness could be harnessed as an important resource for healing—for breaking destructive patterns of thought and for proposing new perspectives in their place.

Right in the middle of a Stevie Wonder concert, right in the middle of this musical trance, this electronic night with thousands in the stadium, a night worthy of Metropolis with the thousands of cerebro-motor slaves gyrating to the rhythm of synthesizers and all the lighter flames serving as a luminous ovation - a new ritual worthy of the catacombs - I feel a total coldness, complete indifference to this faked music, without the slightest melodic phrase, music of a pitiless technicity. Everything is both visceral and coded at the same time. A strictly regulated release, a cold ceremonial, very far in human terms from its own musical savagery, which is merely that of technology. Only the visual impact remains, the spectacle of the crowd and its phYSical idolatry, particularly as the idol is blind and directs the whole thing with his dead eyes, exiled from the world and its tumult, but absorbing it all like an animal. The same air of sacredness as with Borges. The same translucidity of the blind, who enjoy the benefits of the silence of light and therefore of blackmail by lucidity. But modern idolatry is not easily accepted; the bodies stay clenched. Technicity wins out over frenzy in the new metropolitan nights. Growing old is not the approach of a biological term. It is the ever lengthening spiral which distances you from the physical and intellectual openness of your youth. Eventually, the spiral becomes so long that all chance of return is lost. The parabola becomes eccentric, and the peak of one's life-curve gets lost in space. Simultaneously the echo of pleasures in time becomes shorter. One ceases to find pleasure in pleasure. Things live on in nostalgia, and their echo becomes that of a previous life. This is the second mirror phase, and the beginning of the third age.

Old England to adorn, Greater is none beneath the sun, Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn. Sing Oak, and Ash, and Thorn, good sirs, (All of a Midsummer morn!) Surely we sing of no little thing, In Oak, and Ash, and Thorn! Rudyard Kipling, ‘Oak, Ash, and Thorn’ (1906) In Rudyard Kipling’s classic Edwardian children’s book Puck of Pook’s Hill, a faery apparition casts a spell over two children by brushing a clump of oak, ash and thorn leaves across their faces. They enter a time-travelling trance in which historical figures – Romans, Domesday-era knights, feudal barons – manifest themselves and spin rambling yarns of their exploits, battles, treachery and derring-do, all of which have taken place across the very land that now forms the kids’ adventure playground. This vertical exploded view of England’s pastures is Edwardian psychogeography, designed to instil a sense of the heroic history that has cut its furrows deep in the soil, sowing the seeds of a national psyche. Ushered there by Puck’s cunning wood magic, the greenwood becomes the gateway to an idealised England where the imagination runs naked and free, until the time comes to swish the oak, ash and thorn twigs once more, awaken from the English dreaming and return to … well, in Kipling’s children’s case, no doubt a piping hot tea of crumpets and scones, lavished upon them by a servile nanny.

Like Miles Davis, Graham often used to turn his back on his audiences. This was primarily between songs, while he was retuning his guitars. For Graham, in the early 1960s, was privy to a secret alternative tuning system known as DADGAD, which he was reluctant to share with any rival guitarists in the crowd. He began using it around 1962–3, on a trip to the bohemian Beat capital Tangier, where he spent six months and earned his keep by working in a snack booth selling hash cakes to locals. The raw Gnaoua trance music preserved in Morocco’s town squares and remote Rif mountain villages stretched back thousands of years, and Graham was hypnotised by the oud, a large Arabic lute which resembles a bisected pear (the word ‘lute’ itself derives from the Arabic ‘al-ud’) and has been identified in Mesopotamian wall paintings 5,000 years old. The paradigm of Eastern music, defining its difference from the West, is the maqam, which uses a microtonal system that blasts open the Western eight-note octave into fifty-three separate intervals. DADGAD is not one of the tunings commonly used on the eleven-string oud, but Graham found that tuning a Western guitar that way made it easier to slip into jam sessions with Moroccan players. The configuration allows scales and chords to be created without too much complicated fingering; its doubled Ds and As and open strings often lead to more of a harp-like, droning sonority than the conventional EADGBE.

My dad loved to drive, but more than that he hated to stop. This made him at best a questionable tour guide. The hours would drone on as we crisscrossed the country in the dank and ever more malodorous car. The four of us would grow restless and cramped in the backseat, perennially arguing with each other and inventing games to fight off the monotony. My dad would press forward relentlessly, trying to make six hundred miles a day, every now and then invoking the three shut-ups rule and lashing out into the noise and cramped restlessness of the backseat. In the front seat my mom would patiently act as his navigator, reading the map, periodically making Wonder Bread and lunchmeat sandwiches, and now and then twisting the dial on the radio to try to find some music and local news. I finally figured it out. My dad’s mind had been shaped by flying a B-29 bomber on long-range missions. As he drove, my mother became the navigator, and we were the crew, although it wasn’t clear whom he wanted to bomb. You could see the business in his eyes. He smoked constantly, the strong odors of his Camel or self-rolled cigarettes or of his weird metal-stemmed pipe piercing our nostrils and often bringing the rear windows down, even in the most brutal heat of the day. His eyes were intent, never leaving the road in front of us. But every now and then an alert for a coming historical marker would pop up along the side of the road, causing my dad to suddenly snap out of his trance and remember that this was not actually his air crew sitting in the backseat. A teachable moment had arrived, giving him a quick opportunity to exercise his parenting skills and a chance to shower us with some much-needed cultural immersion. “Okay, guys, historical marker coming up on the right. I’m going to slow down to forty-five miles an hour. There it is, here it comes! Jim, read the SIGN!” I

FALLIERE WAS TWENTY-EIGHT, with the dark, Gallic looks of someone who seemed like he’d be more at home DJing trance music in an underground Paris nightclub than poring over reams of printed computer code during a commute on the Métro. In reality, he was fairly shy and reserved, and sifting through dense computer code was in fact a much bigger draw to him than spending sweaty nights in a throbbing club.

Last night I was lying on the bed doing a double crostic and looked up a quotation in the paperbacked Quotation Dictionary that I carry around with me specifically for that purpose. I immediately became lost in the book and read all the Shakespeare ones right through very slowly. There was hardly a line there that I didn't immediately know but seeing the miraculous words in print again doomed me to a long trance of nostalgia, a stupor of melancholy, like listening to really massive music, music that moans and thunders and plumbs fathomless depths. i wandered through the book for a long time but no other writer hit me with quite the same regard as William S. What a stupendous God he was, he is. What chance combination of genes went to the making of that towering imagination, that brilliant gift of words, that staggering compassion, that understanding of all human frailty, that total absence of pomposity, that wit, that pun, that joy in words and the later agony. It seems that he wrote everything worth writing and the rest of his fraternity have merely fugued on his million themes.

The world economy can tank, fuel prices can rise, clubbers can stop listening to nineties trance music, and interest rates can go through the roof, but people will always want to murder other people.

Brother Clarence had wanted her to take over as song leader, and she had turned it down. If what she was hearing from the speakers was the direction the church was going in, it was just as well. She was forty-two, and she knew every generation thought their music was better than the next generation’s music, but this truly was garbage. Absolute garbage. Sugary ballads to Jesus, crowing anthems, trance inducing chorus repetitions. And why exactly did DeWayne need a ten-person praise team on stage all singing the melody?