Fun Stuff and Useful Media
eBooks available to you now include:
Music As Self-Care
Sobriety and Music
Desire, Intention, and Music
Saturday in the Park Public Sing-Along
Did you know that there’s a monthly public sing-along you can join in person if you’re able to be at San Diego’s beautiful Balboa Park on the second Saturday of each month? The link above will take you to the Meetup page for that regular event for more information. The next lyrics are at the link below:
Lyrics for the Next Saturday in the Park Public Sing-Along
Bill’s Speaker Intro and Short Bio
What’s Bill Doing Now?
Bill’s Musimorphic Journey on Substack
Resources for the Former “Suicide Without Judgment” Meetup Group
The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address
Every Monday at 11:11am PT, we read this Address online for anyone who wants to attend. It takes about 20 minutes, and it is a practice that, as the Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons has said, “We’ve been waiting for 500 years for people to listen. If they’d understood the Thanksgiving then, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
To join the reading, click the link above.
A Brief History
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy or the Six Nations, is one of the oldest participatory democracies in the world. It was established by the Peacemaker (Dekanawida), a visionary leader, with the assistance of Hiawatha, a skilled orator. The Confederacy united five nations—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—around the 12th to 15th centuries, with the Tuscarora joining later in the 18th century.
The Confederacy was formed to end cycles of inter-tribal violence among these nations and promote peace, unity, and shared governance. The Peacemaker introduced the Great Law of Peace, a constitution that outlined principles of collective decision-making, mutual respect, and harmony. The governance system operates through a council of clan leaders (sachems), representing each nation, where decisions are made by consensus.
The unification under the Haudenosaunee Confederacy set a model for democratic governance and significantly influenced later political systems, including aspects of the U.S. Constitution.
Get your copy of the Words at this link: The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address – The Words That Come Before All Else
Music Quest Discovery
This one-hour experiential video leads you through a practice of understanding how music can be used to release grief.
The Plutchick Wheel of Emotions
Understanding emotions, even having language for them(!), are essential to a practical practice of music. This wheel is used extensively in Musimorphic. It’s not the worst, and it’s not the best; Dr Brené Brown has done extensive work in the area of emotion, and you may respond to music in ways that are more complex that what a simple wheel can show you, so we also have an ongoing survey that might interest you as a kind of deeper dive into your own responses to music.
Tension and Release in Music Over Time
The best music follows a predictable pathway, whether in a single song or an entire symphony. It’s no mistake that the same pathway exists in the best literature, theatre, and cinema.
David R Hawkins’ Levels of Consciousness
This is another way of accessing music’s impact on us, and it is also included in the ongoing survey mentioned above alongside the PLutchick Wheel of Emotions.
