I'm honoured that I made it to round two... but that's as far as it went. Anyone else feel like sharing their "round 2"s?

ZEITGEIST IS THE WORD

In a recent interview for New York Magazine promoting two films and a new record, pop-superstar Madonna was quoted as saying:

“Do I understand this opinion that I’ve adopted or this Zeitgeist that I’ve allowed myself to be swept up in? Because you could have the best intentions but not have enough information and make huge mistakes.” (New York Magazine.)

Mid-way through 2007, around the time of the Pumpkins' residency shows at the San Francisco Fillmore, I got an excited call from my mother; a woman whose bloodline stretches back to the Incan Elders of Peru, a sacred people tucked away in the deepest crevices of the Andes Mountains:

“I just saw the most powerful documentary I've ever seen. It's about the nature of who has power in this world, driving home the message that in order to change the world, all we have to do is drop our belief systems and learn to cultivate compassion from the inside out, you know, all the stuff I've taught you all your life. The movie is called Zeitgeist.”

Zeitgeist, the word, has been popping up more and more since I first heard it was going to be the title of the re-formed Smashing Pumpkins record. Admittedly, when I first heard it, I just tossed it off as another Z-word fascination from Zorro Zero. But when the album finally came, and the lyrical themes began to set in, a curiosity about the Zeitgeist began to emerge.

What is the Zeitgeist?

Loosely put, it's the now times. It's everything we use to define what and who and when we are.

But why the importance of it? Why highlight that as opposed to any other random term to describe a generation? Is there something we're supposed to be paying attention to? Is there something to be learned from the now times? And what are we looking for by looking at it?

This is where thousands of years of Andean ancestry, fringe ideas that include everything from Free Masons to the Mayan Calandar 2012 mystery, and Billy Corgan all begin to merge and make some strange kind of zeitgestical sense.

I don’t know what I believe
But if I feel safe
What do I need?
“United States,” from Zeitgeist, Corgan.


What do we believe, anyhow? Generally speaking, we like to think of ourselves as free thinkers -- especially us liberated music fans. Many of us could probably make a list of the things we believe in, but in any given year, many of those things could be very different. While change and growth is encouraged in our society, if you examine what directs those changes, rather than the items on the lists themselves, the “what” will begin to create a larger picture; a cycle of pleasure and pain, going towards what is growth in our minds, and protecting ourselves against danger.

Ultimately then, it is the reactions we have to our experiences (all the thoughts and judgments we constantly make to gage the world around us) that shape our belief systems. What this means is that everything we believe to be true about the world, everything, is merely a reaction, and by extension, is part of a series of chemical reactions that has been taking place since well before any of us were born. So the idea that we are free thinkers begins to get a little nebulous. It might seem more like we are in a state of constant protection from the chaos of the world around us.

If we are not truly free thinkers, then we should be able to find borders of our thoughts: areas of our mental capacity, that despite our nature as infinite beings of the universe, are finite walls of “truths” that don't require any further examination. These are the things we just believe out of the nature of being a human on earth.

In a logically examined belief system, (meaning, taking any random thing you might believe, like “tarantulas are scary,” applying the questions of why that is, or how you know that to be true, and repeating the questions to each answer) eventually all arguments lead to, “well, that's just the way it is.” There's a point we get to our understanding of the world around us where it is hardly worth asking why that works the way it does, because it just seems so obvious or unimportant. That is the border of thought. That is the finality of what you know, and to think beyond that is kind of silly.

That is the Zeitgeist, the borders of our thoughts, the belief systems that lead us implicitly. From there, the nature of our reality is born.

What is interesting, however, is that “just the way it is” has shown to be an extremely flexible standard. We don't need to watch the news for very long before realizing we all have radically varying views of how the world works and how it should be. We don't need to venture very far into history books to discover that “just the way it is” has not always been the case. For instance, there was a period when people thought that Earth was the center of the universe.

But why is this important? If we all believed everything all of the time, how or why would we even function?

To uncover this mystery, we can point to another enigmatic Corgan production, the first Pumpkin-incarnation's farewell piece, Machina: The Machines of God.

Both the art direction (stunningly created by Vasily Kafanov) and the lyrical content of the album tend to point to some kind of greater idea involving the ancient science of alchemy; a quasi-mystic tradition, often credited as the first science of the world. The album's artwork seems to make specific reference to well known alchemical texts, and Corgan's lyrics and accompanying cryptic story seem to offer a hint of deeper meaning, a secret code waiting to be cracked.

Fans familiar with the internet in 2000 flocked to the band's web site to fervently discuss the secret messages embedded in Machina. Soon fans found themselves embroiled deep theological and philosophical discussions while passing along information about the ancient traditions of alchemy, its deep relations to the nature of the universe and the inner workings of man-kind. Ideas spurred on other ideas, and soon the answers seemed less important than the actual act of creating a community of thinking. Adam Ware observed and documented this phenomenon which became the source of his fantastic thesis: "Speaking in Rhyme and Riddle: Hybridity in Billy Corgan's Machina".

The act of turning lead into gold is the cornerstone belief held about alchemist's sacred traditions. The literal act of which is a constant source of speculation, no one is quite sure if such a thing actually occurred. But metaphorically, the alchemical traditions seem to offer a spiritual, or perhaps instinct-based view of the idea; that the act of turning lead into gold is something that happens from within, and only from within can the outside be changed. This is a sentiment which can also be ascribed to the deeply spiritual and ancient Eastern practices such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

What is being described in the metaphysical version of turning lead into gold is evolution, becoming something else, finding ways to use that which seems sterile, and learning to use its essence to create something brand new which is valued as growth and prosperity. Using this idea as a guidepost, and remembering that our reality is based on our reactions, the logical end here is that a physical change cannot occur until a mental one does. Evolution from here is going to be decision of consciousness.

DNA is reaching out to your frequency,
“Glass and the Ghost Children,” from Machina, Corgan.

This is where the Zeitgeist comes into place. We know that the now times are troubled times. They have been troubled times for as long as we've been able to document human history. And so, our search to discover ways to achieve harmony, through science, creativity, or just asking why, has led us to find that what we had previous thought was the case, could turn out to not be the case at all. But rather than using our unconditional love to embrace the unknowingness of life, we build a frame around it, and call it something which has qualities which we can ascribe aesthetics to which then become a part of a greater web of ideas which are all interconnected, and allow us to interact with one another.

So the point then, like Madonna was asking, can we believe our Zeitgeist? Can we understand these borders we've put up for ourselves? Have we taken the time to fully understand all the mechanics of what we are employing? And it seems with as much war as we create, as much disease as there is, and over all disharmony, our belief systems are riddled with holes. It's time for an evolution, it's time to break out from behind the Zeitgeist.

“Sentimentalism in the context of preserving that which meant something to our ancestors and therefore is encoded secretly in our dna is something I am raptuous (sic) about,”
Billy Corgan, blog post on smashingpumpkins.com.

Literally the day I read this quote, my mom called me up for another great moment of synchronicity:

“Have you ever heard of epigenetics?”

She quickly sent me a lecture by Dr. Bruce H. Lipton, where he describes the process in which our cells react to their environment either in a state of growth or protection. This can be thought of as health or disease. But their environment is strictly a chemical reaction zone, in which proteins call upon our genes to provide DNA which allow the proteins to deal with the environment. The chemicals in that environment are strictly controlled by what our brains pump out, which is a response to our reactions to everything that happens to us.

So what the study of epigenetics is finding out, is that, quite possibly, the way we think determines what happens to us. The human genome is the map, or the blue print for the how to deal with the chemicals that we send to the cells. Therefore, while in Utero, our cells are reacting strictly to the chemicals being sent down by the mother. All of her chemical reactions are strictly based on everything that has ever happened to her, and by extension, she was affected by everything that ever happened to her mother, and mother before that, and so on. In a way, epigenetics says we are victims of the conditioning that has taken place since the origins of life. But if that's the case, then we are also our own liberators.

Let me embrace every single living thing
Let me be every single moment I ever misunderstood
“United States” - from Zeitgeist, Corgan

It's interesting that these things are coming out now. Modern researchers of the Mayan calendar (literally, the calendar system used by the ancient Mayans) have noted that the calendar reads like a timeline of human history, complete with markers for dramatic changes in previous hominid evolutions, and sees into the future as far as 2012. The calendar ends there and that's the punchline. Conspiracy theorists and doomsday sayers have their own ideas about what is going to happen on 2012, but like “Y2K,” there probably won't be much more than some kind of ironic freak out.

Figuring out how to turn our own personal lead into gold is best left up to each individual. Considering the speed with which all the world's calamities appear to be approaching and happening, it might seem that in four years we could all suddenly see the light and learn to trust our unconditional selves to guide us into eternal bliss. But the conditions for such a shift would seem even greater than the ones we face today, and that can only be left for time to tell. Less important than the actual date is just to keep asking “why” and seeing how far you get, and see how far you're willing to go.

“The universe is full of black holes,” says Corgan in a song played during the Fillmore residencies, “The Rose March.” And that's just the way it is. It's true, we can't get around them. They will suck us up, and what is on the other side, no one knows. So somehow, it's up to us to dismantle our belief systems, because protecting ourselves from the inevitable is not in harmony with growth. We can't rely on rock and roll to hold us up. We can't rely on democracy to hold us up. We can use them as fantastic tools to help us through, to find the clues that reflect our instincts to grow. We get to hold ourselves up and face the unknown, and we hold the light of our unconditioned love right up to it. It's up to us how we react to it. It's up to us if we allow the bubble to grow, or burst.

Don't take my word for it though, watch and see, and make up your own story to it. Watch and see if that word, Zeitgeist, keeps coming up. Watch and see if it get usurped by popular media, pop stars, rock stars and product lines . Watch and see if Madonna will keep gracing magazine covers decrying “Why we must be free.” Watch and see if people suddenly get that the magazines themselves represent an industry that requires its population to be in a constant state of desire and lack, completely contradictory to our inherent infinite nature. Clearly, “we've a little longer to go” (Corgan, “The Rose March”), but we're definitely turning corners like never before.