VR Birthday
By: Tom Nickel
Tags: Xr, Virtual Reality, VR, Birthday, Ram Dass

I don’t see Ram Dass as a guru, more like the Lenny Bruce of spirituality. I love to listen to him talk. He makes me think.

That’s why I’ve been hosting sessions in VR centered on Be Here Now, talking about what he said 50 years ago. Working through his recorded workshops. We are now at, Behind It All.

By the time 15–20 avatars assembled, I stopped my rambling intro played the clip. Ram Dass reminding me pleasantly for the umpteenth time that my attachments keep me here.

We listen for a little then we talk a lot. More avatars drop in and join the conversation.

By noon we’d had enough fun with our gross physical plane, the astral and causal planes, and of course the Formless.

My plan for the day was pretty formless itself and when I noticed a cool looking jazz concert on the AltspaceVR Daily Events menu I knew what was coming next.

I know this must sound crazy to anyone who hasn’t been in a fully immersive Virtual World, but Saxy’s Jazz Club is right up there with any jazz club I’ve ever been to.

It reminds me of Paul’s Mall in Boston back in the 70s, except Boylston Street is a hard place to find parking and VR isn’t. This isn’t a promise but that might be my last no-parking-at VR-shows joke.

I was swept up by the feel of the place in one second and not too many seconds after that, SirSaxy himself started the program. I don’t even know where he was, playing his sax, but to me he was right there at Saxy’s Club with the rest of us.

I noticed my friend Geoffrey and he came over to my table. I messaged Grape and Nicerly and they came too, but our room was full so they were in another Saxy’s instance. Advocates of the Everett, Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics feel right at home in VR.

SirSaxy played a few Christmas standards, his jazz interpretations. Chestnuts Roasting, oh man, he really got the feelings flowing on that one.

Then a mind blowing thing happened. Another avatar went up and sat at the keyboard. He accompanied on, Little Drummer Boy, with SirSaxy or someone as the vocalist. They had it going. They were together like one instrument. hen the vocalist stepped away and the sax came back, the keyboard was right with it.

The two artists were not in the same place. They were feeling each other’s rhythm and dealing with the lag time and they just plain nailed it. No one had any idea until they told us. I might not even be describing it correctly.

What they did is considered impossible. One voice, One sax. The accompanying accents from the piano. Different locations but brought together here. The whole crew was emotional. The crowd felt it.

SixSaxy sat down. Someone else came up, sang two more beautiful slow jazzy, ending, Oh, Holy Night. I didn’t know it, but we were experiencing a MetaCulture show. From their About Us on the Web:

We were born out of the necessity for the representation and inclusion for people of color in virtual reality space. Metaculture’s mission is to shift the narrative from being strictly consumers to being creators and contributors by making culturally relatable events, experiences and spaces.

They’re doing it.

It was late afternoon and I had been in VR most of the day. Why stop now I thought as I dropped in to Slicks Comedy Club. I know Slick Rick and I’d been meaning to check out his place but I’m usually feeling too busy. Not today.

There was a lively crowd, but not out of control. The comics could perform, do their acts and not just deal with hecklers. I stayed for three of them. They weren’t A-List or B-List. But they weren’t just goofballs telling fart jokes. They made some funny observations, got off some good lines. The young man in the picture above riffed amusingly on God for a while.