Recently at 11pm on a saturday night, a group of us found ourselves in the City at the 200% more-expensive-than-the-rest club: Ruby Skye. It’s a pretty cool place… if you like trance… it turns out the majority of the crew wasn’t a big fan but they all said they had a good time. “It was good to do something different” and “It was good to see you have so much fun jumping around” they said. That’s good enough for me. :)

Anyway, I was reading this About.com interview with Paul Van Dyk, number 1 DJ in the world for 2006 according to DJ Magazine and number 2 at the DJList.com, about his latest album “In Between” which is scheduled to come out on August 14th. He said this about title:

The music came together over a period of two or three years. There have been all these changes - the whole globalization thing, the climate change, and just as much me growing up. This is why it’s called In Between – as in between phases. Every single track has its own little story, and since I traveled all around the world through the timeframe of producing the music, the influences are from all over the world.

I’ve always been a fan of the smooth-sounding beats and incredibly-flowing transitions of trance. This album, I’m sure, will be just as good. Trance music, as expressed by this artist, now reflects some of the changes that this world is going through, that this world is in between phases… It’s so true.

History thus far, with the greed of man at its forefront, has led us to an organization of humans where billions are in poverty and a few thousand have the vast majority of the wealth. At the same time, we’ve seen in the last 50 years huge technological advances. How do we better the world with all this knowledge?

Baha’u'llah has said:

The world is in great turmoil, and the minds of its people are in a state of utter confusion. We entreat the Almighty that He may graciously illuminate them with the glory of His Justice, and enable them to discover that which will be profitable unto them at all times and under all conditions.

Shoghi Effendi, the great grandson of Baha’u'llah, said:

Beset on every side by the cumulative evidences of disintegration, of turmoil and of bankruptcy, serious-minded men and women, in almost every walk of life, are beginning to doubt whether society, as it is now organized, can, through its unaided efforts, extricate itself from the slough into which it is steadily sinking. Every system, short of the unification of the human race, has been tried, repeatedly tried, and been found wanting.

He also said elsewhere:

This will indeed be the fitting climax of that process of integration which, starting with the family, the smallest unit in the scale of human organization, must, after having called successively into being the tribe, the city-state, and the nation, continue to operate until it culminates in the unification of the whole world, the final object and the crowning glory of human evolution on this planet.

Disintegration to integration… Good thing we are optimists. :) For more discussion, join us this Sunday at my place at 7pm.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I can tell this was one of my dad’s favorite books because he took a fragment from it and used in the words he expressed to my mom during their wedding. Homework for me is to contact my mom and find out what those words were. :)

As for me, well I like this:

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

“And what of Marriage, master?”

You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore.
…
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
…
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
…
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Related to work:

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with your distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy…

As my “hermanote” George would say, “What a genius.” :)

To be continued… (when I finish reading)