Hippy, Hipster - Gypsy, Gypster - Boxes, Society and Getting a Message Across

A mainstream media use of the word 'Gypsy'

After posting the following on my facebook page I received a reply from a now 'unfriend' that I was engaging in offensive cultural misappropriation regarding the use of the word 'Gypsy':

Alright peeps listen up! I've got the solution to this not quite right fitting in the box hipster thing. I was never a true hippy so I could never be a true hipster, which is the consumer evolution of the hippy. But I am a gypsy in many senses of the word and so the natural consumer evolution of a gypsy is well, guess what? You guessed it! I'm a f***ing Gypster!

Go the Gypster Revolution!

**Edit - Discussion question: Is using the word 'gypsy' in this sense offensive cultural misappropriation? If so, is using the word Nazi to describe a fanatic of something also cultural misappropriation? What is evolution of a language, what is western exhorbitance and what is appropriate? I've been pulled up on this so please, let's start a discussion about it.

I decided to ask someone from Eastern Europe, as I have a friend in Macedonia and this is the response:

for western europe i suppose it is not something offensive, because actually they don`t have gipsies since 60-70 years... slowly they died away, fade away... and people there don`t know what exactly is gipsy, for some of them it is even smth exotic... but in eastern europe it could be offensive, or you could be misunderstood if you say you live like a gipsy... but anyway, it will not cause you any real problems, just people here have a lot of prejudices about gipsies

So while I won't be reprimanding anyone for the use of the word within western europe if used on myself in either a positive or a negative tone, for myself I'll probably just use the word - Nomad.

The problem being here is that Nomadster is no where as phonetically attractive and I'm back to square one, and that is the square of having no square. Where is my box? I need a box to put myself in because all the derogatory boxes I naturally fall into in society work against me.

Hippy, anarchist, punk, bludger, free-loader - I may just have to stay with hipster and attempt to be more hipster. I represent a freedom that to many should not exist and a natural response to this is to negatively label me - Including the label of a drug addict or an alchoholic.

It's natural for a person such as myself who is in the public eye constantly to have high psychological defences. I also have learned about myself that I am a mimic and sometimes I conform to people's projections and expectations of me without conscious effort. This can work for me when I am around people that love me but it can work against me when I'm around people that despise me. I feel and see energy in the sense that I'm aware of a flow or a non-flow of it on the street and it has a great effect on my playing and singing and also the way I am received. I'm an unwilling shaman.

Unfortunately, I'm being serious about this, if I want to be heard I have to be seen in a positive light as an equal in society. The mass is controlled by public perception and this includes the convenient security of putting people in boxes.

While I want to encourage people away from the behaviour of automatically putting people in boxes, this is so far an ingrained conditioning that to assume I can get rid of it in one generation is a sensational fantasy. 

So to those of us that see the game and are serious about playing it we can see that being an 'individual' in the western sense of the word is a product of consumerism. 

I'm quite happy to sacrifice my 'individuality' in order to make my message and my voice heard.

My Hipster Breakfast and I

I've got my certified hipster breakfast here. Seeing as it is the hip thing to take pictures of your food especially if it is a hipster meal. Except I haven't yet got a selfie stick (aka Hipster Fail) to show that it is authentically my breakfast, and that it is indeed I that is consuming it.

Besides this, let's just presume that this IS my breakfast and I DID eat it this morning. Hipster excuses... jees.

Well, I've got my local hipster free range eggs, which are cooked just right without the eggs being runny, and mushrooms and my local farmer's market bought hipster tomatoes and guess what? You guessed it, it's gluten free because I did the hipster thing and left out the bread!

Beside this, it wouldn't be a certified hipster breakfast if it wasn't cooked in a hipster town like Margaret River and guess what else?

I've covered the entire dish with a hipster super food. Dulce flakes.

So I'm making the hipster improvements to my life and being a true hipster in the best hipster fashion I can be.

I was a hippy, and now I'm a hipster - and I'm reaping all the wonderful benefits that go with it. (well technically I was an extremely dark, anarchist hippy/ verging on crusty punk, but as long as I clean my dreads with coconut oil (organic!) I'll be able to turn by crusty punkedness into hipster certification!)

There's just one problem with this meal that everybody missed and unfortunately I'm going to tell you and let all your hipster bubbles down. Here it is.

I used coles brand pre-sliced mushrooms and coles brand packet lemon juice and coles brand uber processed the fuck out of salt. I also cooked it in a teflon pan which was made of the very un-hipster substance ALUMINIUM! (Sounds like ILLUMINATI but one thousand times worse!)

Well, this is a hipster fail in the unwritten Bible de la Hipster...

But you can't say that I didn't try.

Bu bow.

Finding Equlibrium

There are three factors for my way of thinking that divide my behaviour:

- Chemical/Biological: Coffee, Masturbation, Alchohol, Weed.

- Social: Friends, family, work, sex, groups.

- Astrological: Stars, Planets, Sun spots and flares, moon.

How do you decide what percentage of the above is affecting you in a time when you're having it hard or having a high?

For example, if I over indulge in a chemical behaviour alterant, I can at least hang my woes on a hook that I know isn't going to be there for very long if I just sit it out. 

Then there are times, the group I'm hanging out with are having a collective low or high and I share it with them as an isolated field of consciousness.

And then there is the reality that all is frequency and the stars, sun, moon and planets in different arrangements affect my behaviour and the greater mass of the whole population of the earth, in varying degrees.

Where do we decide to what effect each of these factors influence our behaviour and how can we be accurate to pinpoint the cause of a low or a high, or a highly intuitive period. At what point is it individual, communal or macrocosmic?

To see this clearly for me is to have security in the fact that even if I am low, it will pass and I just need to be patient with myself whatever the cause. Also at times, I will go so high that I feel I am over extending myself and can feel it will cause a greater low later to fly too high. 

I, like many people I'm sure, wish to find some sort of equilibrium.

To know the cause of each of the parts assists in this process greatly.

Monti

Music as a tool to release energetic blockages

I'm havin' a cup o' tea next to the river

An older lady stopped and had a chat to me while busking at the IGA yesterday and she told me she was a jazz singer. So we got on a bit and I asked her to sing for me. She didn't know any of my songs so she sang some scat ('da doo da doo da-s') for me over top of a jazzy chord progression and it was awesome. She left the experience full of energy, like when people don't know how to contain themselves, all bubbly and such.

Love to do that to people, fill them up!

A beautiful spanish girl came and sang with me at the farmer's markets the day before, extremely shy but looking for a way to participate, and with a little time and some guidance got her to break through a barrier to sing in public... I bumped into her for coffee later and she was very thankful for the experience of releasing that blockage describing it as a block in the solar plexus to the heart. This is what music is about for me, opening people up and giving them the opportunity to feel themselves in music.

Music is an energetic healing practice just like reiki or similar energy work methods. When we remove elitism from music and be open for participation, the musician is a magician, a wielder of life changing frequencies - the great work of music is a shamanistic art.

Monti