God's Unruly Friends

An interview with Ahmet Karamustafa.

Tumult, Son Of Thunder

... if one has the stomach to add the breakages, upheavals distortions, inversions of all this chambermade music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son of Thunder, self exiled in upon his ego... ~ James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 184.

Rebel Music

The Vocation Of The Dervish

"We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes." ~ James Joyce, "Araby," Dubliners.

Wild Democracy

Dervish politics from The Simplicity Collective.

Discourse De La Servitude Volontaire

Candle In The Window

Safe houses on the Underground Railroad would leave a single candle burning in the window as a signal to those who were seeking refuge.

The Dervish Lebensform

The dervish Lebensform is founded upon the moral obligation to be intelligent which, when practiced with diligence in a world that resists it, induces bewilderment. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind/ Cannot bear very much reality. (Eliot, "Burnt Norton"). Bewilderment causes some to recoil in fear, others to go neurotically or even psychotically mad, and still others to thirst ever more intensely. These last--the thirsty ones--are the dervishes. Literature, song, dance, painting, calligraphy--all of the arts take them to ecstasy. And yet, These are only hints and guesses/ Hints followed by guesses; and the rest/ Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action... (Eliot, "The Dry Salvages").

Minstrels

Innermost House

I'm The Air You Breathe, The Food You Eat, The Friends You Greet In The Swarmin' Street...