The music is responsive, the journey is internal: this is The Flaming Lips. In a world of political tension, The Flaming Lips have emerged to provide guidance and share a few profound thoughts with anyone open-minded enough to listen.Wayne Coyne, the lead singer for the Flaming Lips, once told GQ that he treated the designer suits in his wardrobe like wash-and-wear; he threw them in the washer and dryer, dry cleaning be damned. He also pointed out that higher-end suits were easier to clean stage blood from. That loopy charm, marriage of practicality and frivolity, and irreverence is everywhere present in talking with his band mate, the very authentic and talented bassist Michael Ivins.
After a very long conversation with Ivins, I had traveled through time and space into an amazing science fiction fantasy and landed back again at my desk a very changed woman. We were both in environments familiar to us. I was in my Century City office and Ivins was on the road for a six hour drive through Texas on his way to Austin. I was in journalistic guise. He was heading for that orgy of commerce, music, and promotion known as SXSW. But by the end of our three hour rambling, switchback conversation both of us were in places distinctly different from where we had started, and it had nothing to do with our physical locations.
Before that final goodbye, I didn't know that I had wandered so far from home and it was a transcendental and cathartic relief to have stumbled upon such peace. Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Michael Ivins are the brave men of the Lips taking any adventurers along with them through magical lands that are dark and bright with music and mystery. The Flaming Lips latest album, "At War with the Mystics" can lead even the most distant traveler to home-- a home they never knew.
Ivins understands the space traveling power in each of the Lips albums from “The Soft Bulletin” to “Yoshima Battles the Pink Robots”, he thoughtfully gives his talents to fans. “Once (our albums) go into the world, it becomes the property of others. People attached their own experiences to it and it becomes their own.” Carrying the heavy weight of ego and responsibility is free from such words. Each show that the Lips perform and each song that they put down for whomever to pick up encourages the listener to exercise their own free will to own whatever experience, thoughts, actions or dance that it is to them. Ivins joyfully and freely passes his thoughts and talents to listeners. Genuine giving music and shared experience moves souls and lights many paths to find their own unique paths to different thoughtful resting places.
Where is home? Is it the traditional land of heaven? “At War with the Mystics” and Ivins present a radical approach to these questions by asking more thoughtful ones about complex and dangerous givens in our culture. Ivins explains that “when people are concerned with what happens to you or where you go when you die, you end up making some pretty dicey decisions with your time here on earth.” Fear of going to hell or the possible promise of a place of heaven are completely abstract and are as Ivins states as “silly as the childish idea of Santa Claus.” The point is that no one has seen hell as no one as seen the Easter bunny so why spend your precious time on this planet making decisions to get to a place that does not exist in the beautiful reality we all share in now even this very second reading this article?
The Lips teach that the more can never be filled because it does not exist. There is no perfect state being that you can try to achieve. Everything is subject to change and the possibilities of life’s surprises are everywhere. That is where the Lips lead us to stand; it is the place of the unknown with a child’s curiosity to see where we are going to land, it is appreciating and loving our lives for what they are now, not what they might or might not turn in to.
“At War with the Mystics” is a protest album. It is a protest against our war in the Middle East and a protest against all the limitations of enjoying life that come while people make short sided choices for the promise of an abstract destination. Ivins led me home, a personal place of consciousness that only I could achieve by being fully present during our conversation and taking it for what it was, nearly three hours of my time here on earth.
And no, I was not under the influence at work and eating any magic mushrooms. No drug is going to lead you where I am. It comes from a state a true awareness in the midst of complex confusion.
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