“Love” | Anthony Satori
“Life is a song – sing it. Life is a game – play it. Life is a challenge – meet it. Life is a dream – realize it. Life is a sacrifice – offer it. Life is love – enjoy it.”
– Sai Baba
Life is a Song
culture
The Mystical Nature of Music
“Golden Conch Shell” –|– Anthony Satori
“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Some people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music playing very loudly on the radio.”
— Hunter S. Thompson
The music of the conch shell, for many cultures, has for millennia been the means for calling together the community for celebration, ritual, or a collective endeavor of some kind. For other cultures, it has represented a musical entreaty to communicate with the supernatural world. And for other cultures still, the conch produces nothing less than the sound from which the very universe was created.
I Dream
“Gondolier” –|– Anthony Satori
“I dream of painting, and then I paint my dream.”
― Vincent van Gogh
Consciousness
“A Toast” | Anthony Satori
“As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall.”
— Ram Dass
Happy Lunar New Year, everyone!
Artemis
“Artemis” | Anthony Satori
“Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets [of nature] have been preserved for so many years just so we could discover them?”
— Orville Wright, co-inventor of the first airplane. (1903)
Nature holds so many wonderful mysteries. It’s like a giant cosmic Easter Egg hunt that has been carefully set in place for us to enjoy, and I picture a benevolent Creator just sitting back and watching, with pleasure and pride, as we seek — and gradually discover — the endless gifts and surprises that have been hidden for us throughout nature, around the universe, and even within our own souls.
Historical Note: This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which sent two American astronauts to walk on the moon for the first time in human history. Just this week, as well, a brand new mission has been announced by NASA, scheduled to return humans to the moon by 2024. This new mission is called Artemis. In Greek mythology, Artemis is the godess of wilderness, exploration, archery, and the moon. She is also the twin sister of Apollo.
Walden: Life in the Woods
“Walden House” | Anthony Satori
“My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors.”
“Walden House II (Interior)” | Anthony Satori
“All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction [one may] derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all.”
“Walden House III” | Anthony Satori
“The snow had already covered the ground… and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast.”
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Life in the Woods, 1854)
The Light Within
“The Light Within” | Anthony Satori
“If you are to shed the light of the sun upon others, you must first of all have it within yourself.”
— Romain Rolland
Artist as Bacchus
“I, Bacchus” | Anthony Satori
“Music, [poetry, and art] are the wine which inspire people to new generative processes, and we [artists] are Bacchus, pressing out this glorious wine for mankind and making them spiritually drunken.”
— Ludwig van Beethoven
I Do Not Know Its Name
“Golden” | Anthony Satori
“There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.”
— Lao Tzu
This week was the start of the Lunar New Year. Kung xi fa cai, everyone! (A wish for happiness and prosperity.) Cheers!
Dark Side of the Moon
“Moon Dust” | Anthony Satori
Just a few short weeks after NASA landed the Insight rover on the surface of Mars, the Chinese space program successfully landed a probe on the previously unexplored “dark side” of the moon. What wonderful accomplishments! I cannot wait to find out what we see, what we discover, and what we can all learn from these missions. Science, art, nature, spirituality — these are such crucial areas of exploration, because they each, in their own way, make us realize how we all, as humans, have so much more in common than we have differences between us.
Satori Circle | Art & Culture 