WASTE LAND Official Trailer from Almega Projects on Vimeo.

Click here to see the video at NPD.

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

In the film, Billy is played by Brad Davis with a screenplay by Oliver Stone based on Billy’s autobiography and divides viewers into opposing camps: those who think it’s one of the most intense real-life dramas ever made, and those who abhor its manipulative tactics and alteration of facts for the exploitative purpose of achieving a desired effect. The film went on to be nominated for seven Academy Awards and won an Academy Award for “Best Music”, “Original Score” by Ennio Morricone, “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium”

Now 33 years later, actor, writer and director Billy Hayes sets the record straight, sharing his harrowing experiences with audiences in his one man show, Riding the Midnight Express at the Hayworth Theater, 2511 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles at 8pm on Thursday nights for a limited run.

The show clarifies some disputed points in the film but it is Billy’s humanity that shines through his 80 minute monologue. Billy’s emotions surfaced often during the show and while it is fascinating to hear the story told in his own words with grace and humor, it is his amazing courage, unwavering hope and heart that shines through his intense performance and life.

Many other men in that prison and other American men in other prisons around the world during the 60′s and seventies were broken or emotionally scarred for life receiving the same kind of treatment Billy did and the story of his escape is every bit as compelling as his arrest and prison story.

If you are interested in the true story of a a young and foolish kid who thought at the time he was invincible and paid the price, Billy’s one man tour de force is well worth seeing and, if you know any young person who is teetering on the edge with drugs, this is a cautionary tale that shows the dark side of what can be a glamorous projection. In this regard, a college tour and Broadway run are being explored.

Finally, Billy makes it clear that not all Turkish people are brutal, a fact, he has dedicated his life to righting as the film’s portrayal dramatically reduced tourism to Turkey for years. In 2007, Billy Hayes traveled to Turkey to apologize for the way the country was depicted in “Midnight Express,” saying that the image of Turkey produced by the film ”was not fair to them or true to my experience.”

More recently Billy was featured in a National Geographic special, Locked Up Abroad.

In short, I was deeply moved to see and hear a man who has made it through a dark night of the soul with his humor, dignity and love still intact.

For tickets, visit the Hayworth theater website, thehayworth.com.

http://www.wayseermanifesto.com

This extraordinary post-modern rendition aptly illustrates a common understanding, as it were,
Cary and Michael Huang’s demonstration offers an interesting object-lesson around the perennial wonder at our place in the universe.Their particular question-demonstration – the relative scale of time and space – strings together all the known dimensional equations that could possibly illustrate an answer, and all of it measured to the ‘nth’ degree, no less.

This is clearly a case of the mind bootstrapping it’s way up to the mystery, isn’t it – only embraced in the final moments out of sheer exhaustion! But it is also similar to a fish trying to analyze – and thereby objectivize – water, when it’s very existence could not possibly be separate from it.

We know that some can only ‘hold the mystery’ once they feel they’ve got their mind around it – or have at least given it their best shot. But many of these are people like you and I, though disguised as skeptical scientific materialists  – and having put aside their original childlike wonder, not to say their ‘divine intuition’, now trot out their strongest possible resistance to making any ‘poetic leap of faith’ whatsoever.

So this is why we turn to art, poetry, nature and our mythic sensibilities, and surely these are what really constellate the greater context in which to fully experience our humanity – in contrast to extolling the endless intricate measurements of a left-brain Newtonian world, more recently sopped up to the detriment of less expendable human qualities – and apparent today in all our societal institutions.

It is where we have found ourselves again through all the ages, and will continue to do so when the prideful machinations of ‘the scientific prerogative’ have either fallen to the ground in shattered and irretrievable shards, or soundly put in their place, as it were. For we, and all that is around us, are already greater than the sum of the parts!

Having said that, I notice that the musical back-up tells a lot of this story all by itself ….

But here I want to simply call attention to the way in which these and similar types of fashionable discussion result from our common insistence, in the western mindset – as an a priori bias –
that somehow existence precedes consciousness!

Fortunately quantum reality is showing us it can only be the other way round.

– Peter Oldfield

Ram Dass’s long-awaited Be Love Now is the transformational teaching of a forty year journey to the heart. The author of the two-million-copy classic Remember, Be Here Now and its influential sequel Still Here, Dass is joined once more by Rameshwar Das—a collaborator from the Love Serve Remember audio recordings—to offer this intimate and inspiring exploration of the human soul. Like Deepak Chopra’s Book of Secrets, the Dalai Lama’s Art of Happiness, and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Coming to Our Senses, Ram Dass’s Be Love Now will serve as a lodestar for anyone seeking to enhance their spiritual awareness and improve their capacity to serve—and love—the world around them.

Ram Dass, one of America’s most beloved spiritual teachers, sparked a revolution forty years ago with the publication of Be Here Now. This landmark classic inspired an entire generation to see the world in a different light. Over the past four decades Ram Dass has been a beacon for seekers worldwide, challenging us to find new sources of meaning and purpose in our lives.

Be Love Now is the third book in a trilogy that began with Be Here Now and was followed by Still Here, Ram Dass’s acclaimed work on aging, changing, and dying. In Be Love Now, Ram Dass shares what he has learned in his remarkable four-decade-long spiritual journey. Through timeless teaching stories, compelling and often humorous personal anecdotes, and soul-stirring insights, Ram Dass tracks the stages of his own awakening in his trademark down-to-earth style. Starting with his days as Harvard psychologist and psychedelic inventurer, continuing through his profound encounters with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and moving beyond the reawakening brought on by his near-fatal stroke, Ram Dass shares his life experiences while offering a timeless teaching on love and the path of the heart.

Guiding us through the pitfalls and perils of our own spiritual path, Be Love Now is both a deeply personal and wonderfully universal exploration that will open hearts and minds. Ram Dass once again blazes a new trail, inviting all to join him on this next stage of the journey.