Em Tempo Real

It’s a crazy world out there! Civilization is slamming into an entropic wall (see Peak Oil, Climate Change, Economic Meltdown, etc.) while our so-called leaders deliver the same old rhetorical platitudes as though everything were under control. Worse still, people seem to enjoy being distracted and lied to. Isn’t it better to be prepared with the truth, then to be vulnerable in blissful ignorance? Eventually we all have to face the greater truth that is developing around us. We are facing a future that even the most privelaged cannot escape.

Author Daniel Quinn warned us that we need new vision, not new programs. In other words, if we don’t overcome some fatal flaws in our worldview, no amount of political will or technological innovation is going to save us.

It is our minds that are the problem.

In the introduction to his book, “Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America”, author Charles Bowden put it this way:

“. . . we’ve been in a long war and we’ve lost that war and the war has poisoned us and our ground. If we admit these facts, we might survive. If we don’t, it really won’t matter if we survive because we will be functionally dead. Pick up any newspaper, our obituary is everywhere on the pages”.

Indeed. We are living our own obituary every single day, and yet we hold false hopes up as empty prayers. We always believe we can think our way out of any problem, but we never really question the basis of our thinking, and whether it might be fundamentally flawed.

Bowden’s Blood Orchid paints a pretty accurate picture of where we are at:

“We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived. But when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life. And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us.”

So with that in mind Bowden asks us to consider the following:

“Imagine the problem is not physical. Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth. Imagine it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness. Imagine the problem is not physical and no amount of driving, no amount of road will deal with the problem. Imagine the problem is not that we are powerless or that we are victims but that we have lost the fire and belief and courage to act. We hear whispers of the future but we slap our hands against our ears, we catch glimpses but turn our faces swiftly aside . . . Imagine the problem is that we cannot imagine a future where we possess less but are more. Imagine the problem is a future that terrifies us because we lose our machines but gain our feet and pounding hearts.”

For real progress to happen, we are going to have to challenge our basic assumptions and really put our minds to the test. In music, this is what the Avant-Garde is really all about. Not necessarily throwing out every rule or old idea, but thrashing them about in order to find a new path that works.

Em Tempo Real is an avant-garde compilation of Portuguese jazz-rock artists that was published on the El Tatu label in 1991. Featuring works by Plopoplot Pot, A Maquina Do Almoco Da Pancadas, Luis Desirat, Rafael Toral, Joao Oliveira E Silva, and No Noise Reduction.

1. Dislexibertaria – Plopoplot Pot – 0:37
2. Down Nwot Not E Rock Pot Recipiente De Pedra Das Not As Da Edadic Baixa – Plopoplot Pot – 7:48
3. Sub Perficial Mersa – Plopoplot Pot – 5:38
4. Ataque Nocturno C/Radar & Waltz – Plopoplot Pot – 5:52
5. O Degrau – A Maquina Do Almoco Da Pancadas – 5:07
6. 7:5:3 – A Maquina Do Almoco Da Pancadas – 3:41
7. Barcos Na Agua – A Maquina Do Almoco Da Pancadas – 6:15
8. Pasagens Da Madeira – A Maquina Do Almoco Da Pancadas – 3:57
9. 3′38,844 – Luis Desirat, Rafael Toral, Joao Oliveira E Silva – 3:41
10. 2′47,599 – Luis Desirat, Rafael Toral, Joao Oliveira E Silva – 2:50
11. 4′59,269 – Luis Desirat, Rafael Toral, Joao Oliveira E Silva – 5:05
12. Artscratch – No Noise Reduction – 0:40
13. Everyone Else’s Universe – No Noise Reduction – 1:48
14. (The Fantastic) Boots Random – No Noise Reduction – 1:43
15. Twilight Zone – No Noise Reduction – 0:57
16. Stop Loopin’ Around (Intro) – No Noise Reduction – 0:08
17. Noise Won’t Tear Us Apart – No Noise Reduction – 0:26
18. A2000 Beat – No Noise Reduction – 1:39
19. Landscape Generator – No Noise Reduction – 2:09
20. Jimi Sets The Sample On Fire (Best Sound Available) – No Noise Reduction – 0:47
21. The Incredible Marvin – No Noise Reduction – 1:15
22. No Noise Reduction – No Noise Reduction – 0:33