On the Roads to Revolution
It’s been a pretty big week for uneasiness here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. What with Earth Day reminding us how screwed up we are – perhaps beyond repair, and twenty some people with rifles attempting to defend the Constitution, and Mercury in retrograde (how about all those missed connections with the volcanic ash across the pond?)…
It all kind of leaves us asking ourselves what Portishead asked in the 1990′s:
“How can it feel this wrong?”
Well, I ask myself that all the time.
But in honor of the occasion, we give you Loss of Eden Uncovered 003, where we perform what is really a pretty serious song…but still naked.
Please enjoy Loss of Eden’s cover of Portishead’s “Roads” with a bottle of responsibly organic wine to drown your sorrows, and be sure to recycle the bottle afterward. Stay mellow…ish. No rifle required.
Loss of Clothing
To quote the always apropos Britney Spears, “They want more? Well I’ll give them more!”
Yes, yes: it’s episode 002 of Loss of Eden’s new series, “Uncovered” – where we bring you more music, less clothing.
This time we’ve got more music, more outtakes, more of me doing goofy things like trying to pull off David’s pants while keeping my hair extensions in place so as not to cause a wardrobe malfunction…
And as always, less clothing!
Enjoy responsibly.
Beyond The Ordinary…Yup, that's pretty much us.
At Loss of Eden, we’re fans of anyone who’s ready to take on the big subjects: the Evil Federal Reserve, how to manifest your way out of a nasty 2012 situation, and probably the trickiest thing of all: knowing yourSelf. You know, the usual daily quandaries…at least they are to us, but then I guess we’re sort of Beyond the Ordinary, huh?
In any case, Loss of Eden has much love for the folks at beyondtheordinary.net and is really pleased to be among the featured independent music artists on their website, which has information and broadcasts on a wide range of subjects including science, ancient wisdom, sustainability, art, music, and much more. Here’s a link:
http://www.beyondtheordinary.net/music.shtml
Mellencamp Must Read
Just wanted to take a moment and post a link to this must read article by John Mellencamp for Huffington Post. Loss of Eden loves Mellencamp, especially when he writes sensible stuff that everybody needs to hear like this one. A little on the long side, but totally worth the read:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mellencamp/on-my-mind-the-state-of-t_b_177836.html
More Music, Less Clothing
After days of planning and preparation…the fastening of tapestries to the wall, the positioning of the Virgin of Guadalupe and The Coming Insurrection on the mantelpiece, the crafting of crotch-leaves and the sewing of hair extensions…
We have finally filmed our great masterpiece:
Loss of Eden Uncovered
(where we bring you more music, less clothing)
There’s no turning back now. Gaga cover + nakedness + The Coming Insurrection is sure to be a recipe for Youtube infamy to last across the Ages!
(by Ages we mean minutes in this, the Aeon of Twitter-heads. It’s sort of like converting back from cat years.)
With the wind in our hair and the Duraflame log warming our butt-cheeks, we are poised and destined to become the Charlemagnes of the internet!
Or just continue to labor in obscurity. You decide:
Pin the Tail on the Product Placement: Starring Lady Gaga and Beyoncé
Watching the new Lady Gaga/Beyoncé video for Telephone is like Where’s Waldo for the new millennium. How many product placements can you find?
I found: Virgin Mobile, LG, Diet Coke, PlentyofFish.com, Polaroid, Wonderbread, and was that Mayo by Kraft?
Pretty good, huh?
On youtube, someone left a comment that asked, “What happened to artists taking pride in their work?” No, he wasn’t berating the new video! Silly. This viewer was very concerned about artists “making cheap crap” for music videos, and was overcome with praise for the Telephone video and all of its creativity.
Because creativity looks real good ‘n’ stuff. And like so many things that look real good ‘n’ stuff…
Creativity takes money.
Music artists no longer make record companies money – or enough money – and we’re looking at the most “successful” ones here. To be sure, the record companies aren’t seeing 1990′s Madonna dollars from all this, and if they’re not seeing the big dollars, creativity doesn’t really fit into the budget.
But Gaga and Beyoncé? These rich girls wanna be pretty and hot and have videos that are pretty and hot too – you know, with great lighting and makeup and of course…
The Pussy Wagon.
Luckily, products like Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, and Polaroid all want to be in pretty advertisements too!
(Not sure if they require the Pussy Wagon on their rider for TV appearances).
Boy, nothing says creative big budget music video like big budget corporate dollars. It’s really the only way to be pretty these days.
Sigh.
LossofEden.com is finally here!
Now our blog, LossofEden.net, will no longer be so lonely in this big internet world. A sister site has been born! Check out www.lossofeden.com
Loss of Eden on Coast to Coast AM
Loss of Eden’s “Here’s Your Revolution” was chosen for emerging artist bumper music on Coast to Coast AM! Our song was played on the February 7th show, which was about texts that were Banned from the Bible…pretty cool topic to match us with, when you consider that our band name is Loss of Eden. Check it out here:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2010/02/07
Freedom for Erin Go Bragh
Casey O'Brien
When my dear friend Casey took great care and enthusiasm to familiarize me with the song he wanted to hear at his death, neither one of us had any fully-conscious idea that within one week, he would be leaving. It was, in a sense, accidental, perhaps incidental, that he should have me hunting down an Irish song on Youtube as we spoke of community, change and Revolution…just as it was by an unusual play of chance – by accident – that I would encourage our friend Bryce to take video of Casey for over thirty minutes later that same night – the last time I would see him. One week later, there was a car accident with no fatalities, but all the same, it changed the course of events in the lives of friends overnight.
It would be easy for most to understand the car as an accident, and to understand the exchange the next afternoon between Casey and the bullet as not an accident at all. With what we’re told about people in locked rooms with guns, it is harder to see two accidents here, harder still to see both as meant to be, or in accordance with a young man’s Higher Self, with what he lived to do. And yet, as in any significant act, there were so many layers operating at once. The need for distinction arises because there is the idea that nothing is accidental, and also the idea that nothing is accidental, and we should be clear about which is which: whether we mean that Casey’s actions were deliberate, or that the way of all such things is deliberate when we have set ourselves on the path set out by the Higher Self.
Casey was a builder: military trained, an engineer by day, a dedicated Mason, and I knew him as a magician – the very mortar of our Temple. Not only was he the mortar that builds the foundation, but also the mortar who, alongside the pestle, was dedicated to the act of work, to the “doing.” In a sense, he was even the mortar of strength in war, the one that turns fire into flight against the air – a builder of strength itself in the way that he worked to fortify our group, or any group he was a part of.
When we got the news, Bryce recounted to me what he once heard Jim Eshelman say about death: that we have all these strings like rubber bands connecting us to the people we love, and when one of those people dies, it is as though all the rubber bands bounce back to us at once – so many springing ends showing us what we were together and giving meaning to myriad strands of moments. I say that there is always the chance of snapping latent in the rubber band itself, and this is no accident.
Three days after his death, our Temple held a Requiem for Casey at what was his second home, the Grand Masonic Lodge in New York. Looking across that room was like looking into a mirror of who Casey was, he was the image and the being and the nexus of all his closest friends: the ones tattooed from head to toe…the Masons in their tidy suits…the family of his ex-girlfriend, who reminded me of the midwest or what we mean by American family…and the magicians. You could tell that Casey was still doing the Great Work, still building a Temple where all can show up in the freedom of exactly who they are. Even in death he was in service to create this union of opposites in one hall, the same way that he had linked them together during his life simply by being himself. And his Work is not over.
If we talk about deliberate acts, we must remember that this was a young man with a code – a young man already striding towards the path of direct communication with his Higher Self, and one whose Higher Self perhaps knew that if a hidden voice was not loud enough for him to hear yet, the code he lived by might be. In the face of just how great a recklessness we ourselves are capable of, sometimes the only response is an act of valour, and perhaps this was one such act. When he showed me the song we were to play for him, he wasn’t just telling me what song to play at his death, as though he consciously saw it coming or had made plans of his own. His Higher Self was telling me what kind of work he would be going on to: bringing the possibility of Freedom into actuality. The idea that the flag of change should be drenched in red was written in his favorite song, but it is only on Earth that Freedom’s flag is ever Red. It was time to move on to the next build. O’Brien, MacDonagh, MacDiarmada, McBryde…go on in your strength.
When LoVe is spelled L.V.
by Ayesha Adamo
As if commercialism hadn’t killed music already…suddenly it’s as though deadness were a matter of degree.
Sure, this new model had its ancestor in making your ass the billboard for some designer’s name, but now there’s JLo’s new song “Louboutins” (aka Louis Vuittons, to the somewhat more articulate? No, in fact, Christian Louboutins: a brand you would only know if you’re power-bourgie enough to shop at Bergdorf Goodman), and for the very first time, the designer’s name will be fed into your fragile eardrums from your very own iPod. Not once or twice, as is usual with hip-hop product name dropping, but…
34 times per song play.
(that’s 8 times in a chorus for you ringtone kidz)
Pretty soon, you might even be singing along – spreading the gospel of Christianity a la Louboutins!
A pastor once told me that singing is as good as praying three times…
But let’s look at this analytically: Here we have a song in which the entire chorus states that JLo is “Putting on her Louboutins” again, and again, and again…
Wait – was she putting them on or strapping them on?
No wait..she’s throwing them on – of course!
“Putting” would have been too…ummm…pedestrian, while “strapping” them on wouldn’t fit the no-nonsense late modern lifestyle, and it sounds a little too kinky for the conservative folks.
No matter.
The verbs of life are no longer consequential. Only the nouns count these days, and only so much as their exchangeability allows for, what with our necrophilic desire to know ourselves through desirous union with the other…in this case, the sparkling stiletto.
OK, but now, I’m trying to understand the business model:
The mp3 has no (or nearly no) value because it has an unlimited shelf-life, and the iTunes shelf is always stocked. The supply is unlimited and an unlimited number of people may download the same file. Also, when you’re a famous artist like JLo, and often even when you’re not, the mp3 commodity that you’re selling will most assuredly be available somewhere on the internet for free.
Not-so-antiquated solution: you give the music away and expect people to buy the T-shirt.
Music is now the advertisement, not the product.
Now, for the recording artist, there’s still some money to be made in licensing, if you’re JLo, anyway (if you’re not JLo, you’re probably paying to submit your song to be licensed in return for a modest fee and the privilege of having your music in a show or commercial that will reach a wider audience – this thing they came up with called “exposure”). Naturally, licensing alone – even if you’re JLo – doesn’t fill a record label/publishing company’s purse like in the good old days of multi-platinum album sales and performance broadcasts that weren’t on youtube, again, for free.
And so, enter the new model: the song IS the advertisement!
No, not the advertisement for the recording artist, so you’ll find them cool enough to buy the T-shirt. The song is the advertisement for a 3rd party: a company who buys ad space on an artist’s album in the form of a song.
Hmmm…perhaps the word artist should be in quotes here.
In any case, I’m sure Jenny from the Block will “walk it out” all the way to the bank in her…”Louboutins.” And probably her Louis Vuittons as well.
I hear the album’s called “Love?” Love spelled with an “L” and a “V” and definitely a “?”
I also heard that Karl Marx wrote this romance novel called Das Kapital.
Our Deepest Fear
by Ayesha
Recently, someone very close to Loss of Eden asked me to add a familiar text to the blog – one that he feels speaks directly to his current situation, and to a pattern of envy that he has seen time and again. The passage was given to him by a friend years ago in a similar time of struggle; you’ve probably heard it before:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
This is perhaps the best known passage of Marianne Williamson’s writing. It comes from her book, A Return to Love, and has been quoted recently in two feature films, Coach Carter and Akeelah and the Bee, and also in the inaugural speech given by Nelson Mandela in 1994. While my spiritual work doesn’t generally lead me to hang with the Williamson/Deepak set, it’s hard to deny that this passage has an appeal that continues to speak to us all of the fear of owning exactly who we are – even the very best parts of who we are. And when we think of a thing like envy, and I don’t mean envy of physical possessions, but the envy of who a person is, aren’t we really talking about a fear that our own unique light is somehow not what the world truly wants from us, a fear of what might happen if that unique shine were discovered, if we let that light be seen? To hide one’s own light that another might feel brighter is simply to keep everyone in the dark. Let each to his or her own way that the path may be illuminated for all that seek to shine.
Fall Colours
by Ayesha Adamo
Last Sunday’s balmy weather had me sitting outdoors in Chinatown enjoying noodles, which wouldn’t be unusual – except for the fact that this is November and I’m in New York. In the seasonless grey of the city, marked only by the cramped signs and awnings of restaurants and shop windows, the disparity is less apparent. After all, the Yankees just won, and the spring-like weather seems in keeping with the overall mood of the city. 
Back in NJ, it’s been three days of rain and grey. I wonder if we’re turning into England…or Seattle. Today it’s like a monsoon out there, with no crisp fall days in sight. Sure, Starbucks is still rolling out the annual offering of pumpkin-flavored coffee concoctions, but the other signs that it is, in fact, nearly Thanksgiving are missing in action.
Now, the official first day of autumn was supposedly on September 22nd this year, and fashion tells us to pack up our summer whites by Labor Day, but these practices seem to harken back to an earlier time. To be sure, the only autumnal reds and golds I saw in September were at the annual West Indian Carnival in Brooklyn.
So I look to my familiar childhood friend, the giant maple tree in my backyard, for some answers, but see only a colour unfamiliar to the season: green. Not the green of “going green,” nor the green that lines the wallets of those who benefit from nourishing the disposable nature of our society’s consumerism…This just might be the green of what is already out of our hands.
Loss of Eden in Chinese?
by Ayesha Adamo
Last Friday, I had the chance to perform a couple of Loss of Eden songs – including one in a Chinese version that I’ve written – for a wonderful event to help raise money for victims of the recent typhoon in Taiwan. This was a particularly meaningful show for me because I spent several years living in Taiwan, and I have many good memories and friends there. Thanks to all the great people who packed the room last Friday and made it such a wonderful crowd to perform for, and of course for your contributions to this important cause. Also, thanks to AsianInNY.com for putting together such a great event. Here’s some coverage (in Mandarin):
http://ny.worldjournal.com/pages/full_local_story/push?article-??????+?????%20&id=3933515
Lisa (Letizia) Zindell
by: Ayesha Adamo
This blog is designed to represent not only the music, but also the personal thoughts, insights, and interests of the members of Loss of Eden. As such, it seems only appropriate to dedicate my first written entry to someone very important to me in my continued development as an artist and as a person.
Lisa (Letizia) Zindell and Ayesha Adamo: Rockstars
Lisa Zindell. Letizia Ann Marie Zindell. Lisa. The prom queen, the cheerleading captain, the salutatorian, the dance teacher…the DYFS worker, the girl with a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice, the Masters student in Social Work…the daughter, the girlfriend, the fiance, the ex-fiance…
The Friend.
In the summer before fourth grade, Lisa Zindell was my best friend. We spent nearly every day together – walking to the only corner deli in our tiny seashore town to get sodas and candies, playing imaginative games of dress up or pretending to be gypsies in the woods behind my house, going to late afternoon barbeques or learning to dive and do backflips into the in-ground pool at her house….On those long summer walks in our childhood, it seemed like we could talk about anything. It was one of the first times in my life that I felt I had a true friend.
And then there came a day when she stopped calling. She didn’t come over anymore, and I was no longer invited to her house either. I never knew why. We never spoke about it, but I watched her as she became…the popular girl. I was still invited to her birthday party the next year. She traced my creative drawings to put on the invites because sometimes that’s what love is.
There were times when she seemed like the Jacob to my Esau; she was the girl you always wished you were – beautiful, smart, popular, sought-after…included. Before I went away to school in tenth grade, we shared classes and cheerleading practices, but still there was a distance between us, seemingly insurmountable – a distance necessitated by her position up there in the brilliance of who she was, just a few steps ahead of me on the great ladder – a brilliance that I knew the shape of from being on the outside of it, from not being able to climb up quite as high. The last time I saw her was on the day she graduated high school and I came to watch. She was on top of it all.
On August 13, 2009, Lisa was choked and killed by her former fiance, who then killed himself.
For his repeated violations of the restraining order she had filed against him, Lisa’s killer was released on bail for a mere $1500. In this world that attaches a monetary value to absolutely everything, even the worth of a human being, wasn’t the life of a woman who dedicated her time and efforts to the protection of children and women facing dangers not unlike her own worth more than that?
To read the words of all the people whose lives she touched, whether in her work with DYFS or in teaching dance classes, as a close friend, or just as someone who lit up the high school hallways with her smile, is to know that the girl that I once played dress up with had grown into someone very special. To lose her as a friend when we were young was one of my first heartbreaks, but the deeper heartbreak still, the very adult heartbreak, is that I never got to know the great woman she was becoming. I would have loved to have known her.
When I walk back into those woods where we played as children, there is a tiny stream back there that’s almost disappeared by now and trees we used to climb in. The trees have grown too tall for climbing now, but I can nearly hear the laughter of the children that we were…somewhere…very high up in the brilliance, where the angels were ascending and descending.
