{"id":10497,"date":"2021-01-06T11:22:18","date_gmt":"2021-01-06T11:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=10497"},"modified":"2021-01-06T11:22:18","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T11:22:18","slug":"john-moods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2021\/01\/06\/john-moods\/","title":{"rendered":"Musician of the Month: John Moods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I go by the name of John Moods.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to share with you a little journey through my current thoughts \u2013 a small piece of my ever-shifting consciousness.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"John Moods - I Wanted You (Official Music Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yPKi6q9D_PM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Through my life\u2019s journey I have come to realise that the source of my anxiety always stems from not knowing something. What I am, who I am, where I am and where I am going. Every bit of my identity that can be described with human language is a construct. I am here typing these words, my inner being looking out through the eyes of my head onto the screen. I am on a planet floating through the universe, and sometimes when I\u2019m lucky I am able to know that I know very little.<\/p>\n<p>Where does the mystery begin? Where does it end? I could say I know everything about an apple. I\u2019m familiar with it. But it is also a sacred object, with an unimaginable design. It is a mysterious expression of cosmic creativity, made from the building blocks of the universe. The same cosmic code that constitutes you and me. Every time I start to think about anything, no matter how mundane, the deeper I go with it, I always reach the same place. Behind everything there\u2019s a gigantic world of not knowing. Everything we know is just the tip of an iceberg.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"John Moods - The Essential John Moods [Full Album]\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bQ9iS4_O0bs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I equally don\u2019t know why I chose music over everything else. It just attracted me like a magnet. I never get tired of it. Recently I began to understand the magic of words a little better and I\u2019m dabbling in poetry, which for the first time I am enjoying immensely. I am convinced that language (including this text) is utterly confusing and misleading. I believe <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/history\/the-origins-of-poetic-creation\/\">poetry<\/a><\/span> is the only true language as it simulates accurately the workings of the subconscious mind, and therefore it feels more true than the forest of symbols we usually operate within.<\/p>\n<p>I have released one album of music so far called \u201cThe Essential John Moods\u201d. I have written and recorded two more since then, but I feel I\u2019m only now approaching deeper layers of songwriting. I am also certain that I\u2019ll never get anywhere. At least nowhere close to a destination. I think of my life and my relationship with music as a creative odyssey.<\/p>\n<p>Growing up middle class in Germany in the 1980s, the son of a judge and a Polish Homeopath, I have been slowly simmering in the soup of late twentieth century post-spiritual materialism like many my peers. My parents were a little into church, a little into Yoga, a little into science, but generally as confused in life as anyone else. Death was rarely mentioned, and if it was its presence was so heavy that one could almost feel the temperature drop in the room. There was no lightness to death, and I learned to regard it as something foreign; always avoiding the topic in conversation.<\/p>\n<p>My parents were, and are, lovely people, but back then they just didn\u2019t know what to teach me about life\u2019s purpose. They wanted me to have good grades and do well in life, but spiritually they were just beginning their own journeys, and their messages were mixed or confused. I literally had no idea why I ought to do anything in life. For a while I moved through it cluelessly or mechanically. Definitely the relative wealth of my upbringing (never a lot of money but never existential scarcity) made it possible for me to float and feel depressed.<\/p>\n<p>It was only through my own confrontation with this question of death in a non-intellectual, more holistic way and a great deal of suffering that I grew more in touch with the finite beauty of life and realized that the absence of death was like a severed limb, an absence ultimately rendering life meaningless.<\/p>\n<p>And these were just my personal experiences. But of course I am just a part of the human family and this eventually led me to think about the state of consciousness of the world I grew up in, and live in today. So what is the consciousness of our current time? How are the majority of people dealing with the problem of not knowing? And why do we seem largely incapable of admitting how little we really know about life?<\/p>\n<p>I always found it impressive to hear highly intelligent people such as Fritjof Capra, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg utter humble statements, outlining the limits of their knowledge. There is so much fear hidden behind human surety. When we can&#8217;t admit what we don\u2019t know, we will never truly be able to accept the great unknown and flourish in it. Instead we will try to conquer it, label and name things and in the process pretend that we have already mastered it.<\/p>\n<p>Never in human history has it been easier to look away from the sacred and the mysterious. Our bodies know it more than our intellects. Everything is always in flux and the creative expression of cosmic intelligence flows through us all. But it&#8217;s easy to be comfortable and distracted these days, as we are supplied with a constant steam of digital bread and circus by large corporations\u2026 <em>Netflix, Facebook, endless TV shows, swipe right, double click to like<\/em>. It has many shapes and names. It\u2019s a complex web of distractions set up to turn us into mindless pleasure seekers and to direct our gaze away from the mystery.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"John Moods - Almost Gone (live)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I_uLtGPE5PQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So the question that I, along with many of my contemporaries, now ask ourselves, is how do we get away from a world where we dominate nature through a fear that expresses itself in short-term greed, selfishness, and which is devoid of a deeper meaning?<\/p>\n<p>My personal and practical answers are: look at death; look at nature; listen to the silence; look at the limits of knowledge; try to find poetry and wonder again. <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/uncategorized\/what-we-learn-on-psychedelics\/\">Psychedelics<\/a><\/span> are a wonderful pathway to the mystery. Spending more time wandering in the wild is always good. Look at what <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/current-affairs\/global\/exclusive-brazilian-indigenous-leader-condemns-failure-to-protect-the-amazon\/\">indigenous peoples<\/a><\/span> have done for thousands of years sustainably, gently taking and giving back to nature. We need better ideas than those ascendant today. We require subversive joy in the face of immanent death and demise.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you very much for reading, and I wish you a wonderful life!<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a poem I <em>recently wrote:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>The Unspeakable<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>You&#8217;re a being of light and time<\/em><br \/>\n<em>now the universe<\/em><br \/>\n<em>is opening its mind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>to let you in<\/em><br \/>\n<em>to the other side<\/em><br \/>\n<em>where the streets are empty<\/em><br \/>\n<em>no cars<\/em><br \/>\n<em>nothing left behind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>let\u2019s take a ride<\/em><br \/>\n<em>morning\u2019s broken<\/em><br \/>\n<em>it was a long night<\/em><br \/>\n<em>we\u2019re standing in the doorway<\/em><br \/>\n<em>of an old beginning<\/em><br \/>\n<em>in a new design<\/em><br \/>\n<em>and a new god to pray to<\/em><br \/>\n<em>in a branded shrine<\/em><br \/>\n<em>praying to the mundane<\/em><br \/>\n<em>but keep finding the divine<\/em><br \/>\n<em>even with a blind eye<\/em><br \/>\n<em>you can see how it all combines<\/em><br \/>\n<em>where beauty and disaster<\/em><br \/>\n<em>intertwine<\/em><br \/>\n<em>how a storm sometimes can help your mind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>to communicate with the undefined<\/em><br \/>\n<em>the things you can never say even if you tried<\/em><br \/>\n<em>what\u2019s rotten and raw<\/em><br \/>\n<em>what\u2019s deep and macabre<\/em><br \/>\n<em>what\u2019s infinite slow<\/em><br \/>\n<em>the words that don\u2019t grow<\/em><br \/>\n<em>what you cannot let go<\/em><br \/>\n<em>the places inside<\/em><br \/>\n<em>unspeakable things<\/em><br \/>\n<em>unspeakable mind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>how it grinds and grinds<\/em><br \/>\n<em>the unstoppable device<\/em><br \/>\n<em>even if you slow the ride<\/em><br \/>\n<em>it\u2019ll rapidly unwind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>the machinery of time<\/em><br \/>\n<em>when you\u2019re the sensitive kind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>likely to get undermined<\/em><br \/>\n<em>it just hurts sometimes<\/em><br \/>\n<em>to see humankind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>scared and unaligned<\/em><br \/>\n<em>afraid of the breathing of the night<\/em><br \/>\n<em>a world of wrongs<\/em><br \/>\n<em>turned into a world of rights<\/em><br \/>\n<em>an animal so lost in sight<\/em><br \/>\n<em>confusing darkness with the light<\/em><br \/>\n<em>but maybe it will all clear up in time<\/em><br \/>\n<em>and the storm will pass us by<\/em><br \/>\n<em>another animal assigned<\/em><br \/>\n<em>to read the signs<\/em><br \/>\n<em>while the sun still shines<\/em><br \/>\n<em>on more disaster, more design<\/em><br \/>\n<em>more unspeakable words<\/em><br \/>\n<em>of an unspeakable mind<\/em><br \/>\n<em>a being of pure light<\/em><br \/>\n<em>you\u2019ll be.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>An old beginning<\/em><br \/>\n<em>in a new design.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Facebook: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/thejohnmoods\/\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/thejohnmoods\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Instagram: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/johnmoods\/?hl=en\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/johnmoods\/?hl=en<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I go by the name of John Moods. I would like to share with you a little journey through my current thoughts \u2013 a small piece of my ever-shifting consciousness. Through my life\u2019s journey I have come to realise that the source of my anxiety always stems from not knowing something. What I am, who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":10499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1432,4967,4968,4969,4970,4971],"class_list":["post-10497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-cassandra-voices-musician-of-the-month","tag-john-moods","tag-john-moods-cassandra","tag-john-moods-cassandra-voices","tag-john-moods-january","tag-john-moods-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}