Layer 361 . . . Soul Music, The Emperor, Chisels, Oil Cans and More Taoist Advice

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Soul Music

There's a series on Radio 4 about "pieces of music with a powerful emotional impact". It's called Soul Music. The latest programme featured Beethoven's 5th piano concerto.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008mj7p

As part of Oxzen's investigations into classical music, this programme was duly listened to. (This is a bit like Rik Mayall doing his Kevin Turvey thing. Several of his 'investigations' are on YouTube - work, depression, the supernatural, etc. Anyone remember John Sparkes and his 'Shadwell' or 'Siadwell' monologues? Also on YouTube. Inspirational Welshness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Turvey )

Soul music!!! As if!

This concerto is known as The Emperor. Someone said he loves it because it's 'heroic' and 'imperial'. Someone else prattled on about 'intense sadness', 'melancholy' and 'joy'.

This isn't soul music. This is music for manic depressives. Music to experience mania and depression to.

It's also very obvious that the only other people who like this stuff - that's to say who REALLY like this stuff, as opposed to listen to it sometimes because it's SUPPOSED to be good music - are people who have played, do play, or used to play in orchestras. And the reason they like it is because they appreciate how DIFFICULT it is to play. The Emperor is WELL hard, apparently. During the programme people kept going on about how you need to be a VIRTUOSO in order to play the piano part. So all in all it's also music for clever bastards who enjoy being in the club of people who can either play such CHALLENGING music or else they KNOW that they're not quite good enough to play it. Obviously truly great music HAS to be difficult to play. So now we know. Nothing to do with 'soul', whatsoever.

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In a similar vein, the most important work - the really high status work in our society - is work that's intellectually demanding. It doesn't have to be satisfying or enjoyable in itself, but it does need to be intellectually difficult and impossible for most people to do. Skilled craftsmanship, on the other hand, which is also exceedingly difficult and demanding, is generally not seen to be something to aspire to.

Simon Jenkins wrote this excellent piece about work last week.

Graduates shouldn't be afraid of the chisel and oil can

George Osborne's call for a manufacturing revival is welcome. Working by hand is better than doing it solely with the head

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/07/george-osborne-manufacturing-revival-welcome

George Osborne  this week called on the nation to revert to "manufacturing" and reject the culture of the City.

Well he might. The credit crunch seems certain to lead to widespread graduate and white-collar unemployment, forcing young and old into work they would have considered beneath them a generation ago. Job-starved young people must go into cooking, gardening, decorating and personal services, even if they call them catering, landscaping, interior design and consulting. Eton now teaches cookery. Oxford has yet to pioneer a course in motorcycle maintenance.

Ever since Ruskin deplored the onset of mass production, craftsmanship has been elevated as an intrinsic virtue. Only recently have psychologists and sociologists suggested that working with hands is more than just aesthetics, but is embedded in the human gene. Hands are what drew us from the slime. Thumbs differentiated us from other mammals. Neglect the hand and you distort, torture and dissatisfy the brain. That is why pianists live so long.

When Matthew Crawford's The Case for Working with Your Hands came out last year it was treated as amusingly eccentric. "Real men" were told they should stop being slaves to their screens and Wi-Fis. They should drive nails into planks and wield spades and frying pans.

Nor is this another case of the lawyer who became a plumber because the hourly rate was higher. Crawford did indeed notice that graduate entry into the American professions was plummeting, with those supposedly educated for them drifting into listless semi-employment, "a state of uncommitted future potential". But he also noted something quite different. He himself doubled as academic and motorbike mechanic, and wondered why he always tired after a day at the former yet felt strangely exhilarated by the manual labour of a newly restored motorbike.

The sociologist Richard Sennett likewise noted a cerebral reward from playing the cello and cooking. In his book, Craftsmanship, he concluded that the handling of tools was far more than just a passing stage in human evolution. There were "skills in manual labour that link hand and brain and which are still not recognised". To Sennett it is cruel "to assume downward mobility in those who love working with their hands". It is a natural human activity. We likewise recognise the satisfaction a parent gets from caring for a baby. Childcare is skilled manual labour that delivers more than just family bonding.

Crawford assaults the binary tradition of grammar versus technical schooling that developed through the 20th century, "a partition of thinking from doing that has bequeathed us the dichotomy of white collar versus blue collar, mental versus manual". In Britain this saw its apotheosis in the 1944 education act. The 11-plus test distinguished "high aptitude" as theoretical and grammar, from low aptitude which was technical and hand-working. It then enshrined the separatism in different institutions and, de facto, different social classes.

If the career path that has been the assumption of British higher education for 50 years is outdated, the good news from the academics is that its replacement may be better adjusted to human nature. A key indicator is what many brain-workers do in leisure or retirement. The civil servant who plays chamber music, the lawyer who turns to cabinet-making or the banker who takes up cooking would once have been regarded as stepping down from their true calling and indulging in hobbies. Properly intellectual "retirees" dabbled in consultancy or wrote a novel.

The message of Crawford and Sennett, as it was for Ruskin and Morris, is that there is nothing mentally subordinate in working by hand. The gardener, the cook, the needleworker or the craftsman is not pandering to some Ruskinian aesthetic. He or she is pursuing a route back to the inner self that may indeed be more direct than working solely with the head – or the screen.

These are skills that cannot be mastered in a day. Many require disciplines learned over generations by trial and error and thus a structure of rule-based apprenticeship and training. They are thus woven into the custom of the community. But they may also be activities more attuned to the human body and brain than, say, reading or writing a book. Perhaps Milton's "precious lifeblood of a master spirit" has been sanctified too long. It is time to hear it for the chisel and the oil can.

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Taoist Advice for Great Leaders - Part 2

Deviation from the path of reality (of Tao), and avoidance of change, can result in the harming of life by power. There is then no value in power.

The leader is secure when he is in a state of tranquility and peace. There is no situation where one cannot use illumination, and there is no place that can damage true illumination.

When illumination does not penetrate reality, injury is caused.

Self-governance, selflessness, and the refinement of the inner self is a serious matter.

Timing, knowledge, illumination, and true recognition make the difference between leadership success and failure.

Wrath, cupidity, and other disruptive conditions eat away at the natural reality of tasks and goals.

The manager should avoid excessive force. Parting is a natural process where reason prevails.

Impetuosity must give way to a path that travels between intensity and laxity.

Mundanity and obstacles are encountered constantly. The leader who follows the path of the Tao wards them off when they are met.

Learning from those who can teach and avoiding blind practice offer the leader a clear path of accomplishment without obstacles or obstruction.

Ignorance, arbitrary action, and vain imaginings of growth result in a rising into darkness, not into illumination.

Avoid complacency, self-satisfaction, and false joy.

Every leader is deeply involved in the development of others. However, the most important development is self-development.  This is the precondition for the development of others. Self-development is the true basis for an inexhaustible source of nourishment and development for all.

Every leader must get rid of his ego to move along a path of development and creativity.

Sincerity, selflessness and illumined strength are to be strived for by the leader and those around him.

Knowing the Tao is knowing when to stop.

Be aware of those many occasions when the leader must await proper timing. Manage oneself and others in such a way as to turn back from error.

The leader who achieves illumination and action in concert finds the path of the Tao effortless and clear.

The way of the Tao is to achieve richness and presence through attainment and balance. These represent fundamental leadership values, as do the importance of dealing with all matters adaptively and to depend on oneself, not on fate.

The leader in tune with the Tao deals with the world without destroying it, and transcends the world while he is in it.

To follow the path of the Tao, a leader knows when to hurry and when to relax. He knows what will bring good results,a dn he knows when to stop.

Joy is the delight found in leading along the path of the Tao. The leader who finds fulfillment encounters the true reality and essence of joy. Wealth and material gain alone are not the delight of the leader who follows the path of the Tao. Would you rather indulge yourself in self-satisfaction and outward appearances?

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Ed Miliband on the Politics Show yesterday was a bit like an eager young puppy. He was OK, but it was all pretty lightweight and insubstantial. It's doubtful whether, at the moment, he's convincing people who don't already rate him, and doubtful if he's converting anyone to the Labour cause.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v94rt#clips

The show ended with a clip of Anne Widdecombe dancing in a blue tent. That's entertainment!

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Football, Business and Governance

The chief executive of Liverpool FC says they've had two very good offers for their business. Which says everything, really, about the mentality of people who run football. None of them give a damn about the 'club', as such; none of them care about the non-business aspects of football; none of them has any loyalty to the fans, the community, or even the players - who are presumed to be mercenaries to the core.

Most people would love to see Liverpool, and its greedy owners, crash and burn. It would have been helpful in that respect if Gerrard and Torres had both left in the summer, thereby reducing the monetary value of the business to very little indeed. In which case there could have been some proper consideration of how the fans could become owners of the enterprise, and turn it back into a proper club - run for the benefit of the team and the fans, and not just a business, run entirely for the financial benefit of the owners and shareholders.

There's an analogy here, bursting to get out, with the way that entire countries are run - but there's a distinct lack of time and energy and inclination to pursue it at this juncture.
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Layer 68 Zen, Tao, the Olympics, Warfare and the Zone.

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There was a superb documentary on TV recently about the planning and construction of the Great Wall of China. First there was the programme about two guys riding motorbikes right across Mongolia, and then this very informative look at how the Chinese determined to prevent the Mongols from attacking and plundering Beijing and the rest of China.

It’s interesting how chains of thought originate. Thinking about the Chinese approach to warfare sent me off on a quick skim in my copy of an ancient book, Sun Tzu’s Art of War. You can read what Wikipedia says about the book at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War , but I think I’ll try to add something to the entry since it fails to emphasise the book’s roots in Taoist thought and practice. It also fails to emphasise the book’s relevance to our overall attitude and approach to life in general, even though it mentions its applicability to business and sporting environments.

In general we in the West are ignorant of Taoist thought and practice, and its importance as philosophy and spiritual guidance. We also fail to recognise that Zen developed out of not only Chinese Buddhism but also ancient Chinese Taoist thinking and beliefs. In essence Zen and Tao are identical.

Wikipedia tells us that Sun Tzu “taught that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through a to-do list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a competitive environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.”

The essence of Zen and Taoist thought is that in order to prepare oneself for living well we need to train ourselves, through meditation and other practices, to focus our minds at all times in the present, so that we can respond “quickly and appropriately” (i.e. spontaneously) to whatever “unexpected situations” we may find ourselves in. By all means allow yourself to dream and your mind to wander, to imagine and to create, and reflect on past experiences, but the time to do that is during ‘meditation’ or during conversation with friends. But don’t engage with the world unless your mind is focused and very much in the present.

In order to combat those who would exploit us or do us harm, and in order to protect and nurture those for whom we are responsible, as would a Samurai, for example, we need to be fully aware and living in the moment, with our minds, our instincts and our intuitive faculties clear, calm and ready to respond with speed and precision. This is what people taking part in sports have come to call being “in the zone”.

It’s also what the “positive psychology” movement calls “Flow”.
[ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) ]
“Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. Colloquial terms for this or similar mental states include: to be on the ball, in the zone, or in the groove.”

Wikipedia continues with the following:

Components of flow

Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following as accompanying an experience of flow:

* Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
* Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
* A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
* Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
* Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
* Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
* A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
* The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
* People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

Not all are needed for flow to be experienced.”

Wikipedia then adds:

"Religion and spirituality

Csíkszentmihályi may have been the first to describe this concept in Western psychology, but as he himself readily acknowledges he was most certainly not the first to quantify the concept of Flow or develop applications based on the concept.

For millennia, practitioners of Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Taoism have honed the discipline of overcoming the duality of self and object as a central feature of spiritual development. Eastern spiritual practitioners have developed a very thorough and holistic set of theories around overcoming duality of self and object, tested and refined through spiritual practice instead of the systematic rigor and controls of modern science.
The phrase "being at one with things" is a metaphor of Csíkszentmihályi's Flow concept. Practitioners of the varied schools of Zen Buddhism apply concepts similar to Flow to aid their mastery of art forms, including, in the case of Japanese Zen Buddhism, Aikido, Kendo and Ikebana."

In any kind of sport being “in the zone” is what ultimately matters, assuming one has already developed to a high level the skills one needs to employ in the endeavor. In cricket a batsman can’t hope to prosper unless he’s “in the zone”, and everything “flows”. A bowler can only be successful if he’s “in the zone”.

And it’s the same in life. It’s important to be driven by passion, but it’s crucial to be able to direct one’s passion and one’s instincts from a basis of quiet, calm and confident awareness of whatever situation we may find ourselves in. Gung-ho aggression will probably lead you directly into your own little Valley of Death, especially against a smart opponent, whilst the heat of the moment is not the time to be asking ourselves “what should I do here?”, either.

Instincts will basically cause us to react with “fight, flight or freeze”, and are pretty useless when what’s required is consistent application of effort and engagement in a continuing process.

Ultimately one may decide to retreat, for instance, but it’s not the same as fleeing in panic. The 33rd hexagram in the I Ching is called Retreat, and the Wilhelm translation has this to say about it:

“Retreat is not to be confused with flight. Flight means saving oneself under any circumstances, whereas retreat is a sign of strength. We must be careful not to miss the right moment while we are in full possession of power and position. Then we shall be able to interpret the signs of the time before it is too late and to prepare for provisional retreat instead of being drawn into a desperate life-and-death struggle. Thus we do not simple abandon the field to the opponent; we make it difficult for him to advance by showing perseverance in single acts of resistance. In this way we prepare, while retreating, for the counter-movement. Understanding the laws of a constructive retreat of this sort is not easy. The meaning that lies hidden in such a time is important.”

http://www2.unipr.it/~deyoung/I_Ching_Wilhelm_Translation.html

It’s not difficult to see how Sun Tzu, Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching, the I Ching, the Art of War, Zen and ‘positive psychology’ are connected. Neither should it be difficult to see how all of these apply to everyday life. But do we offer these insights to our pupils in schools and colleges? And if so, where’s it happening? Not in the National Curriculum, that’s for sure.
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Layer 25 Cool

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Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton, jazz musician, writer and broadcaster, born May 23 1921; died April 25 2008

Humphrey Lyttelton died last week. He was 86 years old and one of the coolest men on the planet. He was self-actualisation and Zen personified.

He loved art, music and laughter. He lived a life of continuous creativity on his own terms, and brought joy and laughter into the lives of anyone who knew him and anyone who watched him or listened to him perform.

“Politically, he was firmly, if surprisingly, on the left. Before joining the Grenadier Guards in 1941, he was sent to work in a south Wales steel mill to find out if he had the makings of a "captain of industry", but the experience turned him into a lifelong socialist.” (George Melly)

He taught himself to play a trumpet that he’d bought in the Charing Cross Road in 1936. After serving in WW2, with both rifle and trumpet, he went to art college. He became a musician and also a writer, broadcaster, cartoonist, composer, after-dinner speaker and critic.

“While music-making can be about bravura and bold proclamation, it is also about sharing, listening and waiting - and sympathetically responding. There is no conductor, often no score, so the latter qualities have to be even more finely tuned. These are not just pre-requisites for the making of good music, they are qualities for the making of a good life. An abundance of them is what made Humphrey Lyttelton special - and so widely loved, too.” (John Fordham, The Guardian)

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This last paragraph pretty much sums up what self-actualisation and Zen are all about. This paragraph describes a man who had fully developed spiritual, social and emotional intelligence. As well as having talent and intellect, and as well as being highly creative in several fields, Humph knew how to share, how to listen to others, and when and how to sympathetically respond. He was indeed widely loved.

He was a band leader, but he was a ‘servant-leader’. He was the epitome of Taoist ideals. The great books of Taoism, the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching, describe how leaders should fulfill their responsibilities, and Humph, being an enlightened leader, intuitively and instinctually seemed to ‘lead without leading’, as the books say. Although he never shirked ‘bravura and bold proclamation’ when those qualities were called for. He set out to work with the best people and to encourage them to give the best of themselves, and to become even better.

Jazz has always been about jamming. It’s about communication, interaction, improvisation, self-expression, group collaboration, getting the best out of yourself and out of other people who share your passion and your enthusiasm. It’s about putting yourself at the service of a group that’s trying to create something of quality, something meaningful and joyful, something worth sharing with a wider audience. It’s about playing and having fun. It’s about experimenting and trusting those around you to be original and experimental and creative, and getting further inspired by their creativity. It's about honest and direct musical expression of feelings ranging from joy to sadness, which is the blues, and jazz.

Having read a couple of obituaries I’ve picked up a list of words that describe Humph. They add up to a man who was totally cool. Everyone aspires to be cool, but most people know they will never be cool. Humph really was totally cool. He was cool when he was young, and he was still cool at the age of 86.

He was downbeat, understated, straightfaced, ironic, courteous, modest and moderate. But he had natural authority and could be intransigent and determined. He was broad-minded, charismatic, vibrant, funny, entertaining, enthusiastic and influential. “Fun was something he took very seriously”, wrote Jeremy Hardy, who also said Humph could show an austere demeanor, and that he had “disdainful and impassive lips that soon wrinkled into a lovely smile”. Hardy concludes that Humph was naturally and instinctively erudite and elegant, and that all in all “he was a beautiful man”. Blow that out your trumpet. That’s cool, man.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/28/radio.bbc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/30/bbc.radio1?gusrc=rss&feed=media
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Lyttelton (also contains other Humph links)
http://www.lastingtribute.co.uk/tribute/lyttelton/2805210
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3827144.ece

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Apparently Humph wrote 8 books, one of which I picked up a while ago in the £2 bookshop in Greenwich - “It Just Occurred To Me . . . The Reminiscences and Thoughts of Chairman Humph.(2006)” It’s been sitting near the top of my pile of books waiting to be read.

The front cover quotes Pete Townshend, who, whatever you may think about him, isn’t exactly given to mindless enthusiasm or over-generous praise: “Humph is cool. Humph is now!”

To give you a flavour of the book here’s a quote from Humph’s introduction.

“It just occurred to me that writing this book has been very similar to blowing an extended solo on the trumpet - following thoughts wherever they’ve led, through a jungle of ideas and memories, quotations and clichés, high notes, blue notes and, no doubt, a few wrong notes, for which I apologise in advance. On second thoughts, no, I don’t. You’ll get precious few right notes if you worry about hitting wrong notes.”
A bit like a blog really. Improvise, and be damned. Get blogging! Express yourself!

Gonna miss you Humph.

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Talking About Death, Talking About Life.

Friends are always shocked when I talk about death. “Well I am nearly 60, and I’ve had a very stressful life in some ways . . . ” I think it’s a big mistake not to consider the possibility of heart attacks, cancer, road accidents, whatever, and a mistake to deliberately avoid talking about funerals and wills. You need to sort these things out. It’s only fair.

I want my children to inherit my money, my house, and most of my worldly goods, such as they are. But they won’t want my precious vinyl collection, my CDs even, or most of my books. Or my diaries, notebooks and journals, though my grandchildren eventually might. A lot of my thousands of photos and videos won’t be of any great interest to them, especially the ones concerned with education. (Fortunately it’s easy to run off copies of the digital stuff for those who want them.) They won’t want my guitars, or even my cars. They won’t want my much loved and often played audio tapes. They definitely won’t want my cat, who is determined to outlive me.

Maybe I should just organise an auction for those friends and family who are interested in having any of my stuff, with the proceeds going to my children and grandchildren, or to charity. Anything not attracting bids could be just given away or thrown away. Which could well be most of it. Especially the cat. Then again, maybe auctions just favour the wealthiest, which wouldn’t be very fair.

I need to say loudly and clearly that I don’t want a funeral that’s in any way whatsoever concerned with God or Christianity. Got nothing against either of them. Just don’t want to have anything to do with them. No church, no chapel, no Bible, no priest.

Over the past couple of years I’ve needed to go to a number of funerals, all of them in churches and chapels, and all of them conducted by priests, or women who were very priestly. Every one a preacher. Every one droning out platitudes about life, death and God. Besides finding these things boring and frustrating I found them all quite disrespectful to the deceased and to the gathering.

I don’t blame the individuals - I’m sure they were sincere and were doing their best, as they saw it. But I don’t go to a funeral expecting to hear about and sing about the glory of God. I want to celebrate the life of the person I care about. I want to stay focused on the main business.

Most of the time these priests have never even met or known the surviving members of the family prior to the death, let alone the deceased. No wonder they pad it all out with waffle about God and Jesus and Heaven. They must surely get sick of doing it, the same stuff over and over, just different backdrops and different audiences of mourners for their performances.

I don't envy them. It can’t be easy going round meeting people who have just lost a loved one, asking them to give some information that can be used at the funeral. Meeting people who aren’t necessarily very able to communicate insightful thoughts at the best of times, let alone when they’re full of grief. Though there presumably are some priests somewhere who are gifted at this kind of thing, and gifted at conducting inspirational and meaningful funeral services.

I definitely DO want someone to read out something from Zen and Taoist texts. Something wise and wonderful that might bring some spiritual insights to bear on the situation, something that might be helpful or useful to at least some of those who come to see me off. Something that’s maybe transcendental and joyful and uplifting. Something that’s philosophical and wise, and nothing to do with religion.

Maybe someone should read something that’s funny and likely to make people at least smile. The funnier the better. Much better than crying. I’ve got at least a couple of friends who could MC, tell jokes and stories.

And music. Sweet soul music. Blues and boogie. Rhythm’n’rock. Especially at the party afterwards. Finally I get to play the music I like at a party. Pity I won’t be there to enjoy it. Maybe I’ll organise a pre-funeral party. Have a kind of dress rehearsal to make sure it’s going to go well. Ever the perfectionist.

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The Today programme on Radio 4 today had a feature on death and on American academic Randy Pausch: “Is the taboo about death starting to lift? Listen to Jeff Zaslow who co-authored the book of "The Last Lecture", and to Mike Jarvis, director of the Natural Death Centre.”
Read more about Randy Pausch, and why he decided to do a lecture on life and death when he knew he had only a few weeks to live, on the links below. You can also view his lecture on YouTube. Life, how to live it, and what lessons to take from it (see examples below).
This is another very cool guy. Only 46. Tragic.

"Never lose your childlike wonder. It’s what drives us.
Tell the truth and be earnest
Believe in karma.
Pursue childhood dreams and try to achieve them, but more than anything, live your life well."

http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Pausch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Meb_-wVop8I
http://it.wordpress.com/tag/randy-paush/