betaphilings

The boy in the blue hoodie is my son. In high school he created an open source telephony platform that four years later has its very own conference. This picture was taken today at AdhearsionConf 2010 in San Francisco.

I’ve been following the live feed on UStream. It does a mother good to see and hear her child at such a considerable distance. I’m in southeast Texas; he’s in northern California.

The highlight of today’s event was a presentation by a Canadian programmer who described how Adhearsion allowed his team to create an interactive art project for Montreal’s 2010 Music and Technology Festival.  The goal of the Mutek project was to use social media to create good vibrations to help heal the earth and its people.

Passersby called into a number posted on a building and were told how to generate the digital music that can be seen streaming across the side of the building. It’s a beautiful example of collective, harmonic music-making by strangers on a street.

Pretty impressive, I’d say. Way to go, Jay!

“We run the world. We dictate the terms of the global economy. Others find a place in that structure or they risk annihilation. No challenge from another system or another state is acceptable.” — America

“The soul returns to earth in a body similar to its last one and has similar talents and inclinations.” – Plato

(left Edgar Cayce, right David Wilcock)

FINALLY, after eight years of flitting around the internet like a butterfly in a field of flowers, I FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. It’s all right here on this single link — four hours that answer every question I’ve ever had about who we are, what we’re doing here, and where we’re going. If you haven’t heard David Wilcock speak, please scroll down his page to the first video in the 2012 Event Horizon series. There are four videos in which he talks about the prophesies and science leading up to our forthcoming Golden Age. It’s mind-blowing. It’s what I’ve been looking for.

“Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.” —George Santayana

I LOVE DAYS LIKE THIS when my Google Reader serves up content that literally takes me to another level. That’s what happened today when I clicked on Timeframe TV and read this movie description.

A boy has a dream that he can float, but unless he holds on, he will drift away into the sky. Even when he is grown up, this idea recurs. After a strange accident, he walks through what may be a dream, flowing in and out of scenarios and encountering various characters. People he meets discuss science, philosophy and the life of dreaming and waking, and the protagonist gradually becomes alarmed that he cannot awake from this confusing dream.

That’s all I know about Waking Life when I settle in to watch it. As I’m watching, I keep thinking that the boy, the nameless protagonist, reminds me of Wiley Wiggins, the skinny, long-haired freshman in Richard Linkletter’s 1993 cult classic Dazed and Confused. It’s hard to tell if it’s him because the film has been digitally animated.

Well, imagine my surprise when the credits roll at the end and I see that it was little Wiley in yet another Richard Linkletter film.

I met Wiley when he was 10 or 11. His father and I worked together in Austin in the eighties. I remember hearing the story of how Wiley was approached on 6th Street one day and asked if he’d like to be in a movie. He said sure. That’s how he got the Dazed and Confused job. He was 15 at the time. He is 25 in this 2001 film.

I feel like I found a bright green emerald in the rock pile!

I LOVE THIS MOVIE! Linkletter is still as dazed and confused as ever, but we’re all like that when it comes to making sense of dreams. Wiley is perfect in the role of the dreamer — vulnerable, confused, and relentlessly seeking.

Here are eight minutes from the final scene in Waking Life. The guy at the pinball machine is writer/director Linkletter, and the other guy is Wiley. If you want to see the whole movie, click on TimeframeTV.

The Greatest

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind of waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of the flood
Stars of night turned deep to dustMelt me down
Into big black armour
Leave no trace of grace
Just in your honor
Lower me down
To culprit south
Make ‘em wash a space in town
For the lead
And the dregs of my bed
I’ve been sleepin’
Lower me down
Pin me in
Secure the grounds
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
Two fists of solid rock
With brains that could explain
Any feeling

Lower me down
Pin me in
Secure the grounds
For the lead
And the dregs of my bed
I’ve been sleepin’
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind of waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of the flood
Stars of night turned deep to dust

“We all create exactly what we need.” —Adyashanti

Or how to start a movement —

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