#nonduality

5 posts

STOP LOOKING: an Alan Watts chase film about the seeker who is the sought
Projects 4 min

STOP LOOKING: an Alan Watts chase film about the seeker who is the sought

STOP LOOKING is Song 13 in Out of Your Mind, and the chase film. Stop hunting the one who is looking, because the thing you are searching for is the one doing the searching. The eye cannot catch the eye behind the scan. Watts told it as a comedy: a thief climbs floor to floor with the police behind, up to the roof, nowhere left to go. The film chases hard over a Bach-toccata EDM, then drops into a dead-still heartbeat, and the thing the bunny was hunting turns out to have been here the whole time. CC BY 4.0.

THIS IS IT: an Alan Watts radiant film about the it that is already looking
Projects 5 min

THIS IS IT: an Alan Watts radiant film about the it that is already looking

THIS IS IT is Song 12 in Out of Your Mind, and the radiant film. It is the warm twin of One Hand. Where that one was a black void and silence, this one fills with light. The it you have been looking for is the one that is looking. You are it, already, you just disguised it so well you forgot. So the film does not climb to its point, it settles into it: a pre dawn field, a bunny walking toward you, and then the light blooms and two more selves are simply there. A Hildegard chant score that was always already home. CC BY 4.0.

ATMAN: an Alan Watts cosmic film about the self with no smaller container
Projects 4 min

ATMAN: an Alan Watts cosmic film about the self with no smaller container

ATMAN is Song 15 in Out of Your Mind, and the most reverent. Atman is the self in the vastest possible sense, not the small self in a bag of skin but the Self with no smaller container: behind the self you call you is another self, and behind that another, nested all the way down. Your breath is the galaxy turning. A grand Tallis choir that modulates up forever by rising thirds, a matryoshka of nested bunny selves over a turning galaxy, and a cosmos that turns out to hold a figure made of stars. CC BY 4.0.

ONE HAND: an Alan Watts silence film about the koan that breaks the answer-machine
Projects 4 min

ONE HAND: an Alan Watts silence film about the koan that breaks the answer-machine

ONE HAND is Song 11 in Out of Your Mind, and the silence film. It is the one about the koan. Watts said the koan is not a riddle to solve, it is a device to break the machine in you that needs an answer. Hear the sound of one hand, now explain it, and the explaining stops. So this film is the opposite of every other one in the series. A black void, a pool of light, a meditating bunny, an enso drawing itself, and a sparse Honkyoku Zen score. The empty space turns out to be full of stars. CC BY 4.0.

MAYA: an Alan Watts hall-of-mirrors song where a stick figure dances inside the illusion
Projects 4 min

MAYA: an Alan Watts hall-of-mirrors song where a stick figure dances inside the illusion

MAYA is Song 09 in Out of Your Mind, the Napkin Films series built from the Alan Watts lectures. It is the one about the convincing illusion of separation: lift one mirror, another one lights, and each reveal hides one more until the audience is you. So this one is a literal hall of mirrors, and the Plan 9 bunny dances inside it on a real skeleton rig over a proper EDM score with an anthem hook. CC BY 4.0.