heres a video of what went down in spain last year, albeit more of an LZF lighting promo than a music video,  you can still catch a glimpse…and in a few short days, im heading out to try it ONE MORE TIME!!!!!!     yippie kay yeah!!!!!!

lzf rithma spain

Such a pinnacle of cashmere-soft emotion arises upon returning home, and i mean home; the room in which i spent my early adolescence, in my mammas house.  The soft hum of Topanga Canyon Blvd. right nearby, the crickets, the sagebrush-infused, quiet air.   Moments ago, i sat on mammas bed & talked with her, just like how we did in our closest moments growing up,  then we held each other, a moment longer than usual.  Heartfelt.  Real.

Contrast seems to be the main undercurrent in my life right now,  the river of change swelling into a larger flood with each new day.  Months ago, in December,  i entered the rehab community in effort to change my life from ‘heroin addict’ into something a bit more shiny; and to scuba dive into the depths of my murky emotional state after 5 hard years of abuse and search the ocean floor for a pebble of hope, but instead of a pebble, i found a seed, something that i could nurture and struggle with, something that could grow, full bore, into the illustrious life that i already had but then

lost in the thick opium fog.  With that seed of hope, i could maaaaaybeeee one day (soon even) become that person again, every day a new hunter Thompson novel,  every personal encounter an empathetic cirque de solelil, but this time sans the twack, this time without the tar, the foil, the flame.

Thats the poetic version of it.  If i were to break it down to brass tacks, nuts & bolts, id say the last 6 months have been a total cluster-fuck.  Being contained in rehab for 45 days was profound, painful, educational, and belly laughing all at the same time.  Early days out of the heroin kick are eerie as all hell,  a roller coaster free fall “6-flags” ride, flames and all.  In the course of 5 minutes, i would go from loving a conversation to wanting to hide, wanting to jump the fence and go get high (which i did at one point), completely understanding the program to hating the living shit out of the program and then wanting to read or play guitar,  all in a moments time.   But then it evened out, i made beautiful and close friends there much like the friends made in a Theatre production, a tight knit group of a dozen or so people who love each other as their own blood, probably know and care about more for each other than anyone else on this earth,  with the bittersweet melancholy knowledge of how fleeting it all is…that no matter how much we bleed together, no matter how heartfelt our connections, the group itself is a means to an end and will inevitably end soon.   So then i graduated rehab, took that ‘first drive’ out of there, a drive notorious for the vivid colors, the swirling emotions, that crisp breath of freedom.

For sleep reasons at the moment,  im going to circle back later to the incredible experience at the Sober house, the dark and depraved relapses, the revelations, and the final letting go of Mighty Queen Tyrant heroin from my life. Tonight i must sleep ’cause tomorrow im DJ’ing at some dive…

For the last two weeks, ive been in a desolate industrial area of Oakland, working hard & heavy construction to convert our space into a place i can grow my seed of hope into an analog/digital empire, take a new stab at the music production and later the live show, and, more importantly, to do my part  to balance the terror of life with the beauty of life, by way of music and art and bringing people together.

In Short: ITS ON.

truly,

rithma

The old Rithma webpage is gone. Remember it? it was beautiful with all kinds of do-hickies and features, but the world has changed. Changed to ADD land, changed to a place full of people who mostly have time for tweets and maybe a video. So fuckit. Rithma HQ is now a one page affair, where you can read the stories, watch the movies, and hear the music all in one go. current posts are sooper old (pre rehab, from a different lifetime…),
but stay close and i promise to take you on a wild ride soon.

Love & Music
/rithers

The stories here, the history, the crime, the laughter!!! It paints so much more an intense and fearless picture of humanity than you get in the states.
Actually i said it wrong, because both places have their proprietary beauties. For instance, well a bunch of things. In America, i can recall days and nights of parties where all us boys & girls were hanging out together, in a circle, true friends, no sexual tension between us. No existe aqui em Brazil, or at least the southern region that i’ve seen. Women are either paired off with men or hanging out with other women, and if you’re a girl hanging out with a guy, there “must be something going on”. But then again, there is a respect between the sexes that you dont find in the states, like its totally okay for girls to be girls and guys to be guys, and its not like men are “stealing” sexuality from the women. The women are taking as much as the men. Hard to explain, as is much here, and i kind of feel silly pretending like i’m capable of explaining any of it…ive been here all of 6 days (which feels like a whole separate lifetime) and it would take a whole lifetime to understand all the subtle cultural innuendoes here.
Anyways, ill continue. There are several points that stand out the most, things i had no clue about before coming here. 1, they could care less about america. Say goodbye to being the appreciated gringo and picking up hot chicks because you’re from the states. Brazil is more breathtakingly beautiful than you could imagine, they are all very aware of that, and nobody is leaving. 2. Bossa Nova was big in The States. (!!!) how many years did i listen to the hits of Tom Jobim, Astrud Giberto, And Joao Giberto, dreaming of a brazil that appreciated that music as much as i did??? YEARS. I built my Brazillian fantasy on Bossa Nova, which roughly translates into “New Wave”, and was pretty much ONLY appreciated outside Brazil. Say hello to a million Samba songs that EVERYONE knows, from the wino to the president, from the 5 year old to the grandma, None of which we’ve heard in the states, save for a few by Giberto Gil and Caitano Veloso.
3. Socializing is key. The best storyteller wins all, the best dancer wins all. There is as much an art to storytelling here as there is to dancing, and good luck getting a word (or a dance) in edgewise if youre not well versed in both. Enjoy looking at the beautiful women, but good luck.
4. Crime. The cities and ghettos are live organisms that live in violent harmony. Ive always held the belief that “right & wrong are all just perspective”, but now it swells up in my heart like a big piece of magic that will help me through this world. “Fighting Crime” is just one side of the game. Whether you are black or red in the giant game of checkers, you are human. Alive. Feeling and fighting and loving. There is no stopping it,
there is no sustaining it. In the end it all plays out just how its supposed to, and we will live on. Together we become the life blood of the one worldwide human organism, fleets of us, cities into organs, highways into blood veins, internet into brains, optic fiber into nerves. Welcome to humanity 2.0, people!!! We are here!

who is the whitest one in this picture?

have any of you ever come home from a night youve been waiting for your whole life?
im not talking about genderized love here either, people.
im talking about listening to samba & bossa nova my whole life, wondering, wondering, wondering, and finally ending up in the most beautiful cosmopolitan city ive ever seen and also never ever heard of before,
Florinopolis, South Brazil, and then my friends Tim & Marco say “oh man, youre gonna love this place”,and theydrive me out to a giant wooden & steel shack out next to some sand dunes in between the lago & the atlantic coast. Its called “Casa de Samba” (house of samba) and, well you guessed it, live samba all night long, samba dancing, foja dancing, party party party like they’ve been doing for the last 100 years. Although completely different in style, the similarities between the American Blues > Jazz Progression is strikingly similar to the Brasilian Samba > Bossa Nova. European Whitey stole slaves from Africa, and in opression, the most beautiful and unifying thing in the world was invented….music with soul. I need peoples thesis’s here,,, i want to know more origins.
Another interesting thing i came across (thanks again tim case the human encyclopedia) is a phenominon called “foja” which (this is a few parter, ready?) has its roots in Reggae, the main reason (this blows my mind and gives me goosebumps) because in the very northeast corner of Brasil, they would catch early century Jamaican airwaves which braodcasted Reggae, so began “dancehall”type events with walls of speakers but very Brasilian style ‘coupled’ dancing. Crazy, eh? And get part two : the name ‘foja’ comes from here:
during WW2, there was an american military base stationed in this same northwest part of the country, and having nothing else to do, the american soldiers said, “lets throw a party FOR ALL”. they called the party “for all” and the best the brasilieros/as could say was “foh haa”, so the genre and generation and new style was born.
i swear people, this shit really flips me out, its like reading the book “dune” and then realizing your reading about your own people, the human race. there are so many subtleties, so many wrap-around-overlap-stories all cross mingling and determining who we are as a whole. i beg not to ever take it for granted as anything less than a complete miracle.
And by the way, look at my first Billboard!!!

rithma music, putting the ‘hick’ in house since 2006

i needed some toothpaste since they dont let you fly with it anymore. so, naturally, i went to the conveniance store to buy some toothpaste. heres what i found :

WHITEMEN TOOTHPASTE.
i know taiwan is heavily connected to america and all, but this is rediculous. Does this mean if i brush with this i will become a stately, white man? Is it engrish or is it racism?

Day 2 hour 1 -
The sun cracks a red glow off to my right, and in the reverse twilight, i can just make out the neighborhood below me. Sardines. Taiwan is roughly one third the size of California, and the city of Taipei clocks in at a little over 24 million people. Geographically speaking, the island is quite young, making most of it into steep, jagged, uninhabitable mountains and valleys. That is where the “aboriginals” live, Polynesian natives that were pushed out by the Chinese invasion some 400 years ago (sound familiar?) There are also rumors of cannibal tribes that live in the southern-most jungles. Theres your history lesson, more to come.

I got a glimpse, a tiny glimpse of this place last night before the jetlag and time travel pulled me under into deep, peaceful sleep. About a block from my apartment is a really happening little quarter, full of young people and bars and street vendors selling all variety of mystery meat and strange looking treats that i fear after a few drinks one of these nights, i am going to try. There are more moto-scooters on this island than people, they zip around every street and intersection like motorcycle gangs and sometimes you have to dodge them like those little bug things in the video game ‘Galaga’.
The reason i started thinking i was tired of travelling was that i was always going to the same places!
There is NOTHING in this world more gratifying than being a million miles from home, Not knowing even the simplest phrase in the local language, or the lay of the land, or any of the people….
And then you just figure it out from ground zero. There is NOBODY here who expects me to be any one way, no high school Steve lives in this body, no Om records Rithma, no spiritual Etienne. I am just a foreigner, walking the streets. A stranger, totally free. If i wanted to be Christopher Walkin, i could!
So with this clean slate, i must simply choose my highest state of being, and go from there. ‘Cause nobody will think any different.
/r

late night. putting together this blog has been the single thing keeping me from puttin the whole Rithma site up in grandeur, so for f*cks sake, i might as well put it together now…
late night in the studio recovering after a hard weekend in the office, planeride to P-town portland Oregon for as much debauchery as usual. Maybe even more. Reality slowly makes its long haul back into memory … of friends, of parties, of staying up all night like we werent when we were little. isnt being a grown-up just grand??? We can do whatever the hell we want now. So why not dress up in day glow animal outfits and scare the square people? Good idea.

Mindset these days hovers somewhere between deep spirituality and bad mouth comedy of the Dave Chappelle Show. Im Rick James, bitch. Anyways, without further adoo, welcome to the new notes from the ether. If i dont update with new new stories all the time, i will try & post shtuff from old journals, for the whole “my shoes” experience.