Yoko, Meghan & Cécile.

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One thing that the marriage of the TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex has revealed, is just how hideously racist Britons are. Naturally, as all bigots especially the most invidious racially predatory will have you know, ‘It has nothing to do with race!’ The DailyMail has made an industry of acting as a de facto wing of the EDL in its campaign of destroying the marriage of the Sussexes.

Every single day its gaggle of writers launch another volley of hate to feed their hate-filled multitude of devotees whom they simply abuse in their quest for more advertising revenue. Last week, their legions of bigots were gleeful when not only was the Duchess of Sussex not at Royal Ascot but neither was her husband. Naturally, the rumour was that Her Majesty The Queen had banned the Sussexes from attending Royal Ascot. Of course, last year when Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge was on maternity leave, she did not attend Royal Ascot. Furthermore, not once did her husband attend Royal Ascot. That is the tradition.

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Naturally, when these photographs of this year’s Royal Ascot emerged, the plethora of bigoted DailyMail trolls were celebratory of how happy and wholesome everyone looked. Of course, they were commenting on the homogeneity of the group; their was even talk that the RF looked so much happier without the American in their midst.

The following day, it was announced that the Royal Foundation was disbanding. This not only gave cause for wild celebration by the DailyMail trolls but in hindsight, it was speculated that the group looked as happy as they did at Royal Ascot because at that point, the dissolution of the Royal Foundation would have been known to all. This was seen as more proof that HM The Queen did not want Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex around Indeed, clearly, the Sussexes were headed for divorce and it was only a matter of time before there would be an announcement to that effect.

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By no means was tabloid culture then what it is today; however, there was no getting around the fact that there was unrelenting animus that was decidedly racist towards Yoko Ono because she was non-white. Of course, at the time as now and is always the case, there was strident denial that there was prejudice involved in the animus towards Yoko Ono. Heaven only knows that Linda Eastman was not a Briton, yet she was not reviled and hated for being an outsider as was Yoko Ono.

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So intense was the racial animus towards Yoko Ono that John Lennon had to relocate to New York City to seek peace away from being unrelentingly reviled by Britons, who were nothing more than unmasked Klansfolk; though there were three other wives, Yoko Ono was solely to blame for the demise of the Beatles. Indeed, Britons have John Lennon’s blood on their hands for having racially preyed on this man and his wife to the point where he had to flee and take refuge in a land where guns rule. Paul, Ringo nor George had to flee England because Britons did not approve of their choice of a wife.

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Neither Linda Eastman nor Montréalaise Autumn Kelly were subjected to the same animus as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex for being outsiders marrying much-loved Britons. True, every woman marrying into the BRF experiences blow-back. Sarah Ferguson, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Catherine Middleton and on and on. Truth be told, neither Linda nor Autumn were subjected to similar animus as Yoko or Meghan simply for being Caucasian and therefore, deemed acceptable.

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Britons may well succeed with running TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex out of town as they did John Lennon and Yoko Ono but know this, Tungsten has got powerful players in her corner. For starters, if the Sussexes were exiled, Oprah et al have the power to have her appointed as honorary chairperson of the Academy Awards – some such title of an American-British film society – not the American wing of BAFTA – which would see Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex each year present the award for Best Film at the Academy Awards.

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More to the point, when are Americans going to stop kowtowing to Britons because of the latter’s archly over-compensatory inferiority complex, of all things, masquerading as posh, sophisticated, superior and aristocratic. Why should an American actor, after having graduated with distinction from Julliard sit by and watch yet another English actor waltz in and claim the American award for best actor in a film which was not even an American production; this has repeatedly happened in the past. And so like Britons it is; they are the only island dwellers in the English-speaking world who never lose their god-awful accent regardless how long they sojourn abroad. Whether five years or fifty, you can also count on the expat English to maintain their posher-than-though English accent. Some may be readily charmed/fooled by all that posh posturing but it is so much obvious BS.

Glenn Close did not win the Best Actress BAFTA in 2019 that honour went to Briton, Olivia Colman in The Favourite. Ever possessed of this obsequious need to suck up, the Academy and its members voted Olivia Colman Best Actress at an American Awards show when the production was not an American production and Glenn Close was not going to win the Best Actress BAFTA and did not. One thing is clear from her acceptance speech, Olivia Colman is a one-hit wonder and will never win an Oscar again, just as Matthew McConaughey never will; after all, his Best Actor award was by default – so great was the need to deny Chiwetel Ejiofor an Oscar for his masterful performance in 12 Years A Slave.

When Britons prove themselves such ugly racist boors as with Yoko Ono and now Meghan Markle, why indulge, suffer or tolerate these people overlong? Throwing Oscars at them because they talk as though they’ve got a horse’s hoof stuck up their arse, there is nothing much to celebrate when one’s claim to fame is having subjugated 2/3s the world way back when and having enslaved and or brutalised those persons.

Of course, Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex chose not to move next-door to the Cambridges at Kensington Palace. For one, there is every reason to believe that the Cambridges’ marriage currently is nine parts façade and with a numerology attitude of 9, HRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, apart from not being the sharpest tool in the box, is also conceited, stubborn, bigoted and intolerant and also is in tight with those pompous-arsed minor royals the Michaels of Kent et famille who with their racist perspective were none-too-shy about showing their true colours, blackamoor and all with Meghan suddenly in their midst and to whom they would have to curtsy.

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A den of racial predators is no environment in which to bring up black children and that would also include those generational members of Kensington Palace staff, who would think nothing of being openly racist towards Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex and her children, For Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex the minor royal Micheals of Kent are no different to Samantha Grant and Thomas Markle Jr. She endured the racially predatory bullying in childhood, which is precisely why she has absolutely nothing to do with them and with damn good reason. Trust you me, there is not a single black person on this planet who would suffer any such environment. It is not human, not civilised and a goddamn waste of time.

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Carping on about how much better Cressida Bonas would have been as a wife to HRH Prince Henry of Wales, is a moot point. Who knows, perhaps, Harry was being forced into the relationship so that his older brother could have access to Cressida’s older sister, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. Is it any wonder why Sam Branson keeps his wife as far away from the isle of England as possible. Of course, had Harry married Cressida, this newfound media love for Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge would not have eventualised. She would be portrayed, even more so, by the DailyMail as workshy and they would even up the practise of only printing photographs of her when her face is at rest, which is a decidedly hard affair. For being blonde, blue-eyed and with an artisan’s fey beauty, Cressida, had Prince Harry married her in May 2018, would currently be eclipsing Catherine, who is now being seen as a fashion icon. No matter how DailyMail repackage and champion Catherine, she is a relative dud when publicly speaking as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex has time and again proven. The Duchess of Sussex’s commanding performance at the 2018 British Fashion Awards at Royal Albert Hall truly was a study is grace, poise, elegance and commanding stage presence. You’ve either got it or, as in Catherine’s case, you don’t. Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex is quite confidently aware that a mic is Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge’s kryptonite.

The DailyMail and its gang of racist boors can vent and gloat all they want but if HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex were to have married a conservative Muslim and converted, for fear of ending up with their fetid skull on the small of their back, every one of their cowardly racist boors would know to keep their damn mouths shut. Of one thing they are certain, fucking with blacks will earn you no serious repercussions. The DailyMail‘s hacks have proven that England is the isle of the original hooded klansfolk; they are just a little bit more evolved to the point where their hoods have become invisible but no less ugly are they. In the end, who could give a fuck; the boors of the isle of England most certainly did not invent Jazz and speaking of which…

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After having pored through this year’s TD Toronto Jazz Festival lineup, I knew that there was only one show that I cared to attend. The Diana Ross show at the Sony Centre though tempting, however, the centre is just too cavernous a space. Jazz needs the warmth and intimacy of a smaller venue. Besides, I knew damn well that coming the day after the Pride parade, there would be queens aplenty in the audience. Most of them would be expecting the usual Diana Ross show; however, this was going to be a Jazz show.

As ever, I did not attend Pride parade, never have. Back in 1986, Merlin and I hauled arse to a dinner party in the Annex where an artistic director associate of his, held court. Frankly, neither men liked each other but for professional reasons one endured much. Among the group of 8 souls was a redhead interior decorator from New York City who was the most vile dirty-arsed bigot conceivable. Naturally, with yours truly present, he just had to wax overlong about what a scourge on human civilisation blacks the world over were.

Merlin stealthily reached across my plate and removed my steak knife from the plate and placed it to his left as I sat on his right. Finally, when we got home by cab as Merlin sought to shift my mood by playing some Miles Davis, I went and retrieved a pair of scissors and demonstrated to him on returning to the living room, “That’s it, I am cancelling my membership in Gay society. God only knows it is not as if these blasted, motherfucking lisping, bottom-feeding people invented Jazz.” For me what really settled it, was the redhead boor’s decree, “Sorry dear but there is no black in the rainbow.”

Of course, a couple of years back the Black Lives Matter delegation, which had been invited to march in the Gay Pride parade, were booed, heckled and pelted with unopened water bottles. That very day on my way home, I was also attached and it was much fuelled by the general anger at having had the Black Lives Matter contingent in the parade. To this day, the pride community are still mad at the Police and had banned them from participating in the parade, all because they allowed the Black Lives Matter group into the parade. Even though the group had been invited, they were treated by spectators as though they did something as irresponsible as simply showed up and high-jacked the parade.

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The above photograph was the look for the opening act, one of those regrettable experiences, which alas the Canada Council foists on one, god only knows why. Banal and as sexually intriguing as a live webcam set up on a couple of koala bears in repose, some things just have to be endured to get one through to the real deal. As my date, an ageing Jewish actor/writer with the most wicked sense of humour is always great company, we sat in the back row, all to ourselves, in fits of delicious giggles – we were poring through online photographs of Céline Dion parading in haute couture in Paris in the lead up to Paris Fashion Week; when asked what I thought of her whacky, over-the-top, beyond desperate behaviour, I flatly put in, “it ought damn well to be kept leashed and staked out back.”

Next, it was my turn to come undone when no sooner than having slipped in the breath mint that he whispered, “those are the new mint-flavoured super laxatives, I was telling you about.” How soul-gnawing is emulative institutional Jazz whose practitioners know nothing either of blacks or black culture? Hell, even after the bass solo, there was no applause from the house.

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Finally, like a lover with the most foul breath but whose girthsome jousting simply won’t be denied – then the malodorous rogue leaves and you shudder in disgust and return to breathing like a human rather than a goddamn humpback whale – the opening act vacated the stage and when the stagehands were done, only the grand piano was left. Out then walked Cécile McLorin Salvant with a puckish accompanist and it was readily obvious that there is an indelible soul connection between the two, which speaks to intimacy most rare and also more than a dozen past-life connections. Even Cécile’s body had changed, she looked more lived in, she was getting good loving and it showed.

Before proceeding, let me just state that this was the most phenomenal and best Jazz concert that I have ever attended. From Hoagy Carmichael, to Barbara Streisand, to Bessie Smith, every song was her own and every song was a master class in musicianship and phrasing. Then two things happened that blew me even further away; firstly, she sang, Midnight Sun. This is a song that for me as long as I live, will always evoke the most pleasurable memories of living at John Hirsch and Brian Trottier’s Moore Park Home at 187 Hudson Drive in the summer of 1990 after Merlin had passed and I reinvented self and took the time to travel. Until this concert, no one had ever done a better version of Midnight Sun than Sarah Vaughan, whose version daily played at that lovely Moore Park home.

Secondly, Cécile paused and asked if anyone in the audience was French, to which there was a boisterous response and then she asked to sing a song in French. By the time she was done, I was reduced to tears, even my usual jaded friend was blown away. At the conclusion the house went wild and I was reminded of those years living in Montréal and attending all those summer festivals across the province.

Let’s see Canadian, Diana Krall sing en Français in this supposed bilingual country and I am not talking any of that tawdry attempt at French musicianship as with the likes of Emilie-Claire Barlow et al. Unlike those frauds who suffocated the blackness out of Jazz in the 90s and beyond, Cécile is the real McCoy. The primary musical instrument in human civilisation is the voice and when it comes to Jazz, not only is it a language that is the extension of the griot tradition, nothing sounds like, feels like, moves you like the instrument that is the black voice; there simply aren’t any comparisons. This is the voice, the instrument, when on walking through your door can revivify and empower you like no other instrument can and most especially so after having experienced racial animus for the 14th millionth and fifty-seventh time in this lifetime.

During the course of the show, her accompanist did something that I had never before witnessed, Sullivan Fortner got from the piano stool to reach inside and pluck on the strings, making for all intents the most beautiful mbira imaginable. Sullivan proved himself the perfect accompanist to Cécile and it was clear by the end of the concert that these two lovely, magical and gifted souls have thankfully found each other and how we are better for them being in the world. The love and harmony they share, was as rich and smooth as the warmest honey satiating the palate. Even the encores were concerts onto themselves. If there is anything that can be said to be good, to have come from Roy Hargrove’s passing, is that it created the opportunity for both Sullivan and Cécile to form a most productive collaboration.

As we left Koerner Hall, both of us giddy with joy for having been richly inspired, there was a guy outside the theatre, hawking the program for Jazz FM. Brusquely, I declined taking one, I soon explained that I had no desire to be associated with the Jazz radio when they went and hired someone whom Merlin dismissed back in his early on-air days as VJ at MuchMusic as a smug bigoted asshole. Indeed, an ageing leopard does not his spots lose. Just for writing a few hit songs and having made a few million dollars changes nothing. As Merlin always said, “a man changes clothes and nothing else.”

Though last year, there were three good concerts during the Jazz Festival; this year, one only needed to have attended one concert and boy am I richly inspired for having done so. On parting, we both agreed that it really was an awesome concert; more than that, we admitted that it was high time that we saw Rocketman before it goes to video.

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For your ongoing support, I am ever grateful. Buy my glorious books, the incomparable series with Michael overleaves appendices; truly, they are human civilisation’s first dream memoirs.

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©2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved,

Dolphin House Pets and Glimmers of El Greco’s Muse (Redux)

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On the cusp of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Georgia O’Keeffe Exhibition opening this month, I am repost this blog.  Do please enjoy.  

Whilst the Moon transited both Libra and my fifth house, these next dreams occurred on October 1, 1989.  Too, it was the seventh anniversary of that magical, and a bit cool, Friday evening in Hell’s Kitchen when Merlin and I would meet… yet again. 

Of course, at the time, he was rather ill with full-blown AIDS and horribly suffering from Candida.  However, as I have known more than 200 persons to have passed of AIDS, Merlin’s AIDS-related illnesses were mild manifestations of what can eventualise with AIDS.  I have always been grateful for that. 

These dreams – one a touchstone dream with Olaf Gamst’s old-souled son as he was during a life when he was an assistant, muse and lover of El Greco’s, the other a dream set remotely in the past on this planet or possibly on another world where the indigenous folks were decidedly extra-human though Sol III human-looking enough – were welcome inspiration. 

Too, the dreams were dreamt during the second sleep cycle that day.  Back then, I took naps as often as I could afford.  Merlin fainted several times each day and the sheer gravity of what we moved through was exhausting at times.  As he would have it, no one knew that Merlin fainted multiple times daily. 

At the time of these dreams, I had taken to the pyramid to meditate with crystals and eventually ended up privately crying at the share stark finality of what imminently loomed on the horizon.  Thus, sleep was a welcome refocussing of my energies – if only briefly.  Of course, sleep and its elixir, dreams, ever kept me focussed, inspired and aware of the macroscopic. 

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In this the first dream, I see Eleanor Bissell – my Canadian-History and English teacher at Harbord Collegiate Institute; she was doing some gardening in a blue dress that was floral-printed.  This garden had tall old trees in it.  There were hydrangea plants – large ones at that.

I went over and I greeted her and said, “Hello, Mrs. Bissell.”

I told her who I was and she had on her glasses and her breath was short.  She was just the same as when I knew her in the waking state.

This dream, the second, was set in another time and another place.  I was captured by this man in a castle-like dwelling.  A very Moorish setting, like in Spain, it was; it was not Moorish architecture like in Northern Africa but it was more so in southern Spain.  Perhaps, it was Andalusia or thereabouts.

It was brown stone which had been burnt by the Sun for years and years, tens of millennia, as a matter of fact.  I got captured and I was taken back into a room with a man; he was saying to me, “Of course you’re mine.  You’re 63%!”

This percentile was supposed to signify, if you like, being bad or evil.

He was describing things to me because he was the epitome of what one would consider evil.  I was saying, “No I’m not.”

I was saying that I didn’t want to be there and wanted to be let out.

The thing is, it was not me; rather, I was the son and he was a bronzed person; he was very swarthy but not Black.  I was his offspring; I was, in fact, his son.  Then some people came in and they were all there and I asked if I could get out with them.  They, however, said no that I couldn’t because they were alright.

They said that they were all 50% and that I was not.  I supposedly had to be 50% and therefore, as I was his son, I had to stay there with him.  I was really upset and somehow I managed to be stealthily taken away during the night, after the father left, by a woman.

She wore long flowing garb and she was again very Mediterranean or Middle Eastern-looking.  She had long limbs and café au lait complexion.  She told me how it all went that I was her son, by the same man, and that she was one of his many lovers.

However, he was never supposed to have a child by her; as a result, when she became pregnant because he so loved her, he broke with tradition and he had her put up in this particular part of the castle.

It was really fortified and very abandoned-looking but she held out there.  Nobody ever came to this part of the castle and it was very terraced and had a lot of inner walls in it.

The walls here were of a slight sandy colour and we were alone at nighttime.  As we were talking, there was battle going on behind us over in another part of the castle; the battle occurred in another part of the fortified town that supported the castle.

There were a lot of cries because there was battle going on.  You could hear a lot of horses neighing and cantering, as in the Crusades, if you like.  I don’t, however, recall having heard any gunfire.

She was telling me not to worry because he would never harm me.  Said she, I was quite well protected.  He did love me in spite of his cruelty and there was no way that he could hurt me because she was fiercely protective of me.

If he had done anything to me, she would be forced to expose him and he knew and feared that eventuality.  She told me to just go on outside and play.  So, I went out into the yard and it was a wonderful elaborate garden – very organic.

It had this pool and there inside were dolphins.  I went in to play with them.  It was a muddied pool but very large like a manmade lake.  They were playing with me as I frolicked in the water with them.

One of them had its fluke pressing down on my bum from above me.  Whilst sandwiched between them under the surface the other used it nose to push up against my breastbone and solar plexus; thus, they propelled me through the water at great exhilarating speeds.

It was a beautiful sense of motion because, of course, they travelled quite fast and they always stayed clear of going out too far.  There was a point at which they had jokingly made a fast turn and I hadn’t caught up.

So I went to stand up and it turned out that it was a very large pool and a rather deep, deep pool.  I panicked when I broke surface and they assisted me back to the shallow area.

When I came back indoors both the father and mother were there now – the swarthy humans, that is.  I said to them that there was something here in the pool a big opening, you could feel it.

I also sensed it from the dolphins as being something in the pool that they themselves feared.  The father figure was laughing and told me not to worry about that because he knew, of course, what it was.  The mother had remained quite silent and looked at me, all the time, because she was slightly to his left and behind him as he spoke.

All three of us were next in a room in the castle and, somehow, the dolphins were here as well.  There was a break in the floor, a wide open hole, and they came up and were swimming and churning up the same muddied-looking dark water.

A man then entered who looked like and was, in fact, the American actor who starred in the film, Paris, Texas.  I think that the actor’s name is, Harry Dean Stanton, but I am not certain of that; he is a scrawny, hard-faced, thin-lipped man.

He came in and had a gun and said, “I want to get paid.  I’m doing work in this building and I’m not getting paid.  I’m tired of being held up here.  Deliver!  Or else I’m going to take you out and shoot you.”

It was an interesting-looking silver gun.  I was standing up on a cabinet and he went to shoot me but I knew that he wouldn’t shoot me.  He had, in fact, turned the pistol so that the two shots rang off to my right.

What surprisingly came out, when he fired the shots, was water; however, it had light in it.  It was like lasered water and it shot out in a large chunky jet and went almost instantaneously to the wall and crashed there.

He shot rounds of it and both parents remained absolutely icy cool; they paid him very little mind.  Later on, the mother telepathically told me not to worry because he couldn’t harm me; too, she telepathically shared that I was not to move and give in to fear.  I was not to show any signs of panic.

*This was clearly a civilisation which was set here on Earth long millennia before the current ape-central, fear-ruled madness we now know.  This was a time long ago in human history when there was contact between both humans and cetaceans.  Telepathy was de rigueur; too, psychic abilities were more evolved then.

Perhaps, this was an Atlantean society or some other civilisation which predated the Atlantean.  The persons were seemingly of Mediterranean extraction and it was, however, definitely not Egyptian.

I would guess that it was post-Egyptian – the latter having occurred easily more than 60 thousand years ago; although, Europeans in their racist elitism – never having had anything to rival pyramids in Europe – reworked the agedness of Egyptian civilisation to their ends.

**I am now left to believe that this was in some way an Extra-Human civilisation where the humans closely resembled Earthly humans.  They were, however, swarthier and were archly telepathic.

Too, their foreheads were also considerably higher and had a slight concave look at the top.  Dolphins, it seems, were kept as indoor pets – just as cats and dogs are for humans.  Hence, there was the watering hole, which led to a vast underground network, where the animals could come and go from the fortified castle to the ocean, however far off.  END.

Almost instantaneously, in this the third dream, I was in another scene; it was one in which I was playing and my companion was Lars Gamst.  We were drawing, in fact, we were painting.

Lars said to the same actor, Harry Dean Stanton, who was now with me in this new dream – both the parents, incidentally, were no longer about.  Lars wanted the actor to assist him by editing.

The guy misunderstood him and didn’t know what was what.  What Lars was doing was covering the painting with a black wax and, later, he was then going to strip it off.  So he needed the actor to go and get the chemicals and equipment to go and strip off the wax.

He was somewhat impatient that the guy was so stupid and didn’t understand; Lars had had to spell out what he wanted.  I was trying to explain to the guy what to do and what Lars meant, as well as, the process involved.

When he did go away to get the things, I came over and approached Lars and assisted him in the painting of the work that he was doing.

*A rather insightful dream this one and the energies with Lars were, as ever, pleasant and sublime.  I find this a rather telling dream too because, in later years, on having Lars’s Michael Overleaves charted, I would learn that not only is he an old soul – first level old slave and entity mate to his equally old-souled father (Olaf Gamst) and sixth cast artisan like myself but he was the favoured muse of Doménicos (El Greco) Theotokópoulos and his chief assistant.

Naturally, for Lars to be so immersed creatively in a painterly fashion – in the dreamtime – was truly about revisiting a skill and time in the past which brought him great fulfillment both spiritually and creatively.  This was so clearly an astral plane encounter between us.

Being in Lars’s presence was quite expansive; you could actually feel his soul being deeply creative.  So fully dilated were his pupils, Lars’s eyes were almost pure black.  He was terribly eccentric and clearly there was much bleed-through from his having been greatly inspired in that lifetime by El Greco.  He worked feverishly with great attack.

He quite appreciated the fact that I was not a dolt and could be of able assistance to him.  This was such an astral plane encounter that it was as real and connected as that time we rode the subway together and the connectedness we shared blew my mind.

Incidentally, in that sixteenth century lifetime, Lars was much younger than the great artist and they did have a passionate relationship.  I have a distinct impression that there was a bleed through of what Lars looked like, in that lifetime, as his features were not as they are now; he was more Latin and darker, strong-nosed.

It was an aquiline nose.  Too, he was robust-energied and had massive hands like those of a sculptor’s.  Terribly expressive and passionate, too, were his hands.  END.

I was on the phone whilst speaking with Owen Hawksmoor, in this the fourth dream, and I could see about his apartment as we spoke.  I was calling him because I wanted to get laid and I was really raunchy and stir-crazy but he was not up to it.  I start calling him on it and I told him, “Oh yeah, why don’t you get up and go to the bathroom?  And drop your teeth in the glass of water, on your way, before you come back?”

In a very sarcastic manner, I had laced into him to which he responded by being coolly dismissive of me by broadly laughing at my desperation.

Somehow, Pandora da Braga was part of this dream and she had an awareness of my play for Owen and my resultant rejection.

*Featured art:  Santiago el mayor by El Greco.  At the time of the dream, Lars appeared as he did in a past life; his was a strong aquiline nose in the dream.  This look features prominently in many of El Greco’s works.  In that past life, Lars was a favoured muse, assistant and lover of El Greco’s who was in a recent incarnation the sublime American artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. 

As Lars is a slave soul, the look of St. Francis and also the look of Christ carrying the cross are those of a slave soul; at least that’s my impression.  Since, Christ was a seventh level king soul on his last life, the El Greco Christ of the aquiline nose is decidedly not a king soul and more so a slave with priestly airs.  Perhaps, this is how Lars looked then. 

What I also love about this particular El Greco painting is that the green draping proves an evocative prelude of things to come, as it were, with regards Georgia O’Keeffe’s sublimely sexualised flower paintings. 

For that matter, I love how Georgia O’Keeffe’s sensual masterpiece, Jack in the pulpit No. IV is a reanimation of El Greco’s Christ on the cross which is in the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan.  END.  

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Art:  Santiago el Mayor

Oil on Canvas

97 x 77 cm

1610 El Greco

Provenance: Museo del Greco

Christ on the Cross

Oil on Canvas

95.5 x 61 cm

1600 El Greco

Provenance: National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan

Jack in the Pulpit IV

Oil on Canvas

40 x 30 Inches

1930 Georgia O’Keeffe

Provenance: National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.

Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow

Oil on Canvas

48 x 30 Inches

© 1923 Georgia O’Keeffe

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© 2013-2023 Arvin da Brgha.  All Rights Reserved.  

Penetrating the Astral Veil.

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The dream occurred, on Thursday, September 12, 1996, whilst the Moon transited both Virgo and my fourth house.

Definitely this dream, without a doubt, was set on the astral plane.  Whilst in a large house, Harella and Pandora were there.  It was night time out.  Pandora was aggressively trying to have a current lover marry her.  It struck me, in fact, as being a bit desperate.

I took my leave from the house going outside.  There, I squatted on a rock and then threw my right leg behind me.  The look and feel was very à la Martha Graham.

The rock was quite large.  In what seemed to be a park, lots of beautiful tall trees towered all around me.  Lots of large rocks were beautifully placed about the rambling grounds.

Whilst in the partially-open, Martha Graham fourth position, I did lyrical port de bras with the right leg extended in the rear.  Lunging forwards, as though I were rubber-backed, I then reached backwards with my head almost resting on the rear leg.

In the front, the rock sloped down before me.  As a result, this did not give my front leg much purchase.  Once, whilst in the midst of another port de bras en dehors, I had lost my footing and began slipping forward down the rock.

For feeling as elevated of spirit as I was, I simply pushed off the rock and took my lyricism to its higher octave.  I was flying!  Knowing full well that I was on the astral plane, there could have been no better celebration than this.

Though low-level flight, it was still the same sweet languorous movement as when enjoying the port de bras.  On swooping down out of the air, I flew mere inches off the verdant zingy grass.

Reaching upwards, I brought my arms up in an opening fifth position which then splayed outwards to second position.  This swept my body upwards as my arms were stretched out, much like wings, with the wrists splayed back a bit to the rear.

This, of course, created greater aerodynamic ease as well as exquisite aesthetics.  Legs together, feet perfectly pointed, I moved through the air like some glorious dragonfly in flight.

More than that, I had a sense of being an exotic bird of paradise with a long tail.  Immediately, this brought back images of my first flying dream set in that Amazon aviary in October 1966 – whilst I effortlessly fell from imaginings into lucid dreaming when ensconced in the favourite forking branch of the genip tree, my familiar, in Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts.

Whilst staying in that position, I was able to effortlessly fly.  From time to time, I flapped my arms much like a crane’s majestic wings.  Swooping around to the left, I flew in an arc, returning to where I had taken off.

Considerably higher in the air, at this point, I could see the rock way below.  The rock was beautiful with an intense vibration.  The trees below formed a grid of vibrant, powerful negative-ioned energies.

I could readily discern the wind currents based, in fact, on the way the crowns of the trees were being swept about.  The majestic trees lyrically swayed with abandon.

Swooping further down, I flew down into the valley beyond the rock.  By simply arching my back, I was able to soar back up into the air.

My head I arched upwards and back to the right, in a flying port de bras, which took me higher and to the right.  This was the most gloriously liberating experience imaginable.

To help with the lift, I raised the left arm a bit.  This further took the body, up and around, in a sweeping arch.  Greatly inspired, I droned, besotted by the magic I creatively weaved,

“This is so abso-fucking-god-damn-assed-lutely beautiful…”

With that, I roared with laughter enjoying the abandon of spirit that I felt.  Though not as if in slow-motion, my flight was rather slow.  My movements were birdlike and possessed of a gracefulness that was truly rare.

Unlike that initial flying dream, set in the Amazon aviary in October 1966, there were no birds about to have inspired my splendid unfoldment of spirit – but it sure was sublime.

The trees looked not unlike American elm trees rather than evergreens local to the Canadian West Coast.  There were, in fact, no evergreens anywhere to be seen.

Flying away, I swooped up again.  Now I was soaring even higher.  At that, I then dove down, with swift precision that took me below the crowns of the trees.  Now I was about forty feet off the ground.

At this level, I went flying into the thick cover of the stand of trees that stood closest to the rock on which it had all started.  Most of the treetops were higher than I was at this point.

Whilst I flew, I simultaneously became aware of both my sleeping body and my further expanded, awakened consciousness.  At this point, extrasensory perception ascended to a higher octave and extended the limits of the already expansive experience. 

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fpDream one.  Simultaneously, I was lying in the house with Harella and Pandora.  We were on the bed in the girls’ bedroom in the Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts house.

Again, as I lay there, I was immediately reminded of the experiences on Boxing Day, 1972.  Once more, I felt as dissociative as when having the OBE: out-of-body experience, into the massive greenhouse of my genip tree familiar.

As I laid there on the bed, it seemed as if my feet were placed higher than my head.  I was, however, not overly concerned.  Pandora, much as she had on Boxing Day ’72, entered the room walking past me.

She looked at me because I laid there loudly snoring which, in the dreamtime, was strange.  I decided against awakening as I did not want to have to interrupt my parallel dreaming wherein I was blissing out whilst in flight.

I had no intentions of focussing on my snoring for it just might have awakened me.  I assured myself that it was okay to be snoring; it did not mean that I was in any danger.

At that point, I knew that I was definitely astral projecting.  When I became refocussed in the snoring body, I then recalled my astral self.  It was a true joy to feel my body fidget as my astral self resettled into its familiar berth.

Feeling confident and cocky, I decided to have another stab at astral projecting.  I wanted to fly… to soar again.  Being liberated was much too wonderful to have not further explored.

Keenly focussed, I again began astral projecting.  This time, as I began the cicada-like process of leaving the shell of my sleeping, still snoring body, I looked down at my body.

To my amazement I saw the astral self’s cord.  It looked as if an illumined string of dental floss.  However, this was a bit thicker.  It was actually a series of beads that were as if strung together by an intense, though soft, white light – a most luminously nacreous string of tiny, light-emanating pearls.

The cord was attached to the body between the belly button and the solar plexus chakras.  That part of my body felt expanded and wide-open.  On both bodies, the cord was attached at the same points.

I chose not to focus overlong on the deeply somnambulant body below me on the bed.

Dream onex.  Tumbling over on myself, I was now flying on my back.  Slowly flying through the house, I was – for astral projecting – able to know what was coming up ahead.

Here, in this expansive state, my spatial awareness was much enhanced.  I moved headfirst and not feet-first.  Moving through the house, I headed towards the kitchen knowing that Harella was there cooking.

On entering, Harella turned around and looked up at me as I slowly flew through the room over her head.  Surprised at the sight of me she said in a thick Nevisian accent,

“Buh aryu looka trouble ya t’nite.  Boyh ah weh y’ar go so?”

I paid her no mind and pretended to be asleep – I was after all lying on my back.  The sink was by a large window that was framed by natural, exposed wooden beams.

Harella, however, was not standing by the sink.  There were a few flowers on the windowsill.  On moving towards the pane of glass, I told myself not to worry about striking it.

With that I began increasing my vibration such that my projected astral self became a body of intense white light.  Effortlessly, at the same rate of slow flight, I travelled through the thick pane of glass.

Thrilled at my accomplishment, I devilishly laughed enjoying myself.  This was just as thrilling as that sublime dream encounter with Merlin, when he passed me the Sunday New York Times whilst at a café, where we had sat at a deuce having brunch on a glorious, sunny Sunday morning.

*That particular dream was had, on Wednesday, December 1, 1993.  END.

With that, I was outside in the dark whilst still in flight.  The window looked out to a ravine way below.  The drop below was considerable, with me in flight, high above the valley way below.

Adjusting, I tumbled over onto my stomach in order that I might meet the demands of flight at such heights.

Using sweeping motions of the arms, again much like a bird, I began flying.  Such utter abandon it was, too.  I was so pleased that I had decided to leave my body and have another round of astral projection.

I flew as if a bird of prey and the feeling was positively delightful.  After awhile, I returned indoors but soon enough decided to again go outdoors.  All I wanted to do, once more, was to pass through the thick pane of glass in the kitchen.

Again, I upped my vibrational frequency and allowed my body to effortlessly move through the thick pane of glass.  It was as though I were passing through the Chinese glass-beaded curtain, that Merlin so loved, which hung in the door to our 20 Amelia Street, Cabbagetown Toronto home’s bedroom.  Once again, I was flying facedown above the ravine.

With great speeds, I began flying; this time swooping down lower into the depths of the ravine, I further explored whilst in flight.  The thrill of speeding past the vibration of the treetops below me was exhilarating.

*It had much the same effect as, when joining Merlin on that magic carpet-like transport, in the august dreams of July 9, 1993.  END.

Soon, I arrived at a village which seemed as if somewhere in Africa.  Since I knew that I definitely was on the astral plane, I sought to explore the environs by alighting in the middle of a narrow street.

Straight away, I kept up a leisurely pace when moving through the village and drinking in everything about me.  There was a lot of lush vegetation, all around, wherever you looked.

As I came on a bend in the earthen street, it was nighttime here.  There I saw some of the villagers in the most colourful African costumes imaginable.  These were the most exquisitely dark-skinned Blacks that I had ever seen.

Yet, there was something about these Blacks that was different to their waking-state human counterparts.  They were so very exciting to be around that they simply radiated life and light energies itself.

I was thrilled to have encountered them.  They were playing the music which so richly informed my childhood.  This was the music of ‘Sports’ and foreday morning at Christmas time whilst growing up in Sandy Point, St. Kitts.

One of the instruments that they played was heavy-looking brass cymbals.  They banged them with great gusto.  As well, there were myriad drums on which they beat a frenzy that was truly admirable.

This was truly the most frig-all glorious music heard in too long.  There was no other way to have responded to this music than to have danced.  Here I moved as if truly possessed.

As though alighting into my body to vicariously experience the joy of being ensouled in a body anew, I truly felt that I was being channelled by a host of spirits.

Indeed, my very soul itself was moving in on the cicada-like shell of my projected astral self.  I threw my head back and howled with delight at being so richly empowered.

For the most part, these regal Blacks seemed to be troubadours who were part of a travelling circus.  There were jugglers and acrobats.  The cymbal players were low to the ground and in back of them were the drummers, on a float, where they were some four levels high.

They were quite a sight to see.  Yet, I still couldn’t quite fathom what it was about them that proved somewhat slightly different.  Then when one of the cymbal players took off his instrument, I noticed that their arms were differently proportioned to humans’.

Basically, there were less than three inches between their elbows and their wrists.  The distance from the elbows to the shoulders was the same as for a human from wrist to shoulder.  Indeed, we were clearly not in Kansas anymore…

This was a very energetic, high-frequencied race of Blacks.  Though small in stature, they were not pygmies.  However, goodness, this race of Blacks had such incredible presence to them.

Theirs were the most beautiful smiling eyes imaginable.  The closest one could think of is the beauty of the eyes of Blacks from Fiji – whom racially obsessed foreigners would like to believe are not Black.  Absurd!

For not having been enslaved and subjected to the prevailing Western, absurdist, racially predatory animus, Fijians are a people whose spirits were not broken.  These astral beings were a wonderful people whose spirit had not similarly been broken.

These astral plane Blacks were a people possessed of the most beautiful-sounding laughter.  It simply tickled the soul to hear these people laugh.  These people were very serious about their music; it was on the order of high spiritual contemplation.

At one point, they arrived at a spot where they set up what looked like a drum that was made from metal.  Cone-shaped, it looked like an oversized toy top with four layers of circular steel which were separated by two or three inches.

Naturally, the smallest circle of steel was at the narrow bottom of the instrument.  Once set up, they began directing energy from the other drums which conversely caused the large metallic drum to spin.

As the top-like drum spun, the winds passing through it created a sound that was akin to an engine with a high-pitched whir.  As the sound progressed, the pitch kept on rising higher and higher whilst soaring to stratospheric octaves.

I was about to take my leave of them, on discovering their outré-proportioned bodies, when the sound of the set-up drum pierced through me.  So, with that, I turned around and headed back to investigate their ritual.

There, on the street, I saw the halved corpse of a White male.  Dark-haired and square-jawed, he was not remotely familiar.  I then noticed that, as he lay there, there were tiny lights along his jaw line.

So right away, I realised that he was an automaton and not someone who had been killed in a freakish accident.  I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on here.  I thought, perhaps, that this was some sort of strange, astral plane voodoo doll.

Of course, it more than likely wasn’t.  Obviously, they were engaged in some form of channelling and these accoutrements were what they used.  Thus they were able to affect communication with other planes and dimensions.

Now the musicians came off their float and formed a circle about the whirring, rotating metallic drum.  There, they beat a frenzy like there was no tomorrow.  Still, their playing could not drown out the high-pitched whir of the massive drum-like instrument.

It seemed as though their playing aided it to soar to even high planes of intensity than before.  I couldn’t believe that such sounds were possible.  However, its intense pitch was clearly able to affect the manifestation of something or other.

At this point, the rest of the villagers began flocking to the centre of the village.  They gathered about the circle of drummers as they ecstatically performed.  In a bid to get a good view of things, as events unfolded in their village, they were excitedly rushing in.

They struck me as being on the verge of expecting something momentous.  They were familiar with this ritual; it would seem that this had something to do with death.  This process revealed who had recently died or, more to the point, who was about to die.

Many of the villagers, who had rushed in, were villagers from Crab Hill, Sandy Point, St. Kitts.  Among them, I saw Maudie Hazel and several others from my childhood who looked much as they did then.

I figured too that most of these persons had already passed on in the waking state and, therefore, were currently astral plane habitués.  As someone from Sandy Point was about to die, this ritual was being carried out.

Here on the astral plane, this was how the announcement of an arrival was made.  Thus the predeceased would rush in, as it were, to find out who was about to crossover.

Too, they were there to serve as a welcome committee and help the newly returned habitués become adjusted.  Obviously, for some, there needed to be some getting used to being dead and returned to the astral plane.  The mood here was incredibly celebratory.

The new habitué was thrown an energetic party where the music was that of the most glorious time in the village – Jouvé morning.  Many were quite eager to meet old friends and get them oriented to their new realm of beingness.  It was all great fun.

What was a big item here was that the predeceased villagers were always eager to let the newcomers know who had killed whom, in some unsolved and highly-suspect, mysterious death or murder.

It was so akin to the richness of emotionality which village life in Crab Hill had been during my childhood.  It was great to be here.

Maudie Hazel was a real noisy, gossiping firebrand.  She wore a soiled white frock; it looked as if it had been her favourite, for years on end, when she was alive.

Looking as though she hadn’t done anything as momentous as died and left Crab Hill, her head was tied up in a kerchief.  She stood to my immediate left.

To have looked across to her strong warrior-spirited face caused me to well up with loving pride and laughter.  This woman was so lived-in and soulful that it nourished the very soul to have seen her – again.

Eventually, the steel drum came to a rousing climax.  At that, one heard a voice that sounded like a recording.  It was the voice of someone on their deathbed, giving their last words as they bade farewell to the world, before shutting down a life.

However, this was a recording that the person had made knowing that they were going to die soon.  To my way of thinking, it was clearly a suicide.  There was no mistaking the fact that it was David Templeman.

His voice was not unlike that of Pericles da Braga’s.  A very articulate and erudite register it was.  At the end of his speech, there was a succession of long, weary-sounding breaths which was customary of someone taking their last breaths before dying.

For all gathered, this was the most beautiful sound; they hung on to it and drew on heavy breaths themselves.  They were just as celebratory as if they were persons attending a birth – which, in essence, it was.  A rebirth it was, too, back to being an astral plane habitué.

By their pleasurable expressions, they were validating that it was death.  The return to the astral plane was a labour of sorts; it was being facilitated by others who had headed out on the journey earlier.

This, indeed, was quite the revolutionary discovery.  Needless to say, this left me wondering what exactly I was doing there.  There were no doubts in my mind that I had stumbled onto the astral plane.

These villagers were distinctly African in nature, even those who were familiar to me as being born in both St. Kitts and Nevis and whom I knew when growing up in Crab Hill.

Some were exceptionally long-limbed but possessed that unusual arrangement to their limbs that was decidedly not earthly human.  Long-legged too, they were all long-torsoed.  Their torsos were so long that they seemed as if possessed of more vertebrae than humans.

These people could dance with an electrifying magic that could, any day of the week, dance circles around Michael Jackson.  It was quite something to see this group of Blacks in another dimension.  Theirs was a very vibrant culture.

More than that, I was really keen to learn exactly how David Templeman had died or how he was going to die.  Either way, this ritual presaged his arrival onto the astral plane as arrivée, astral plane habitué.

The halved corpse that lay on the ground, which was clearly an automaton, was the channel that brought through the voice of David Templeman as he passed on.

There was a bit of chatter as a few astral plane habitués, who had lived in Crab Hill, were discussing exactly who David Templeman was.  It seemed that someone had not remembered who David was as the astral plane habitué had moved to America decades earlier.

Many of these Sandy Pointers, I did not myself recognise.  This I think was due to the fact that they had died when I was a child or long before I had even moved to St. Kitts from Nevis.

I must say that it was really good to have been around them.  It was all very interesting and made me feel as though I was in St. Kitts.  A thoroughly pleasurable interlude this was for me.

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Photo: Shamanic Maasai warrior.

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