Layer 525 . . . Great Artists, Enlightenment, Zen, Dawkins and Obscurity

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In the previous blog I wrote about some of America's greatest living artists, and it seems to me I need to say a little more on this subject. The job of an artist is ultimately to raise awareness, to express, celebrate and comment on the human condition, and to bring a little (or a lot) more enlightenment into the world.

There should be no doubt that artists such as Dylan, Cohen, Springsteen and Young fulfill all of these criteria. Anyone who doubts Dylan's credentials as an artist and a poet should read Christopher Ricks' wonderful "Dylan's Visions of Sin" and Michael Gray's "Song and Dance Man - the Art of Bob Dylan", and also pay careful attention to Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man".

Anyone who questions Leonard Cohen's right to be called a great artist also ought to pay attention to his words, his poetry and his music, and then allow themselves to go "a thousand kisses deep", or simply take a walk down "boogie street".

Bruce Springsteen's art, on the other hand, is based on a very different sort of poetics, and a determination to speak to his audiences clearly and directly, without obscurity, but without being in any way patronising or underestimating their intelligence. Of course there will still be idiots like Reagan who completely fail to understand the irony in a song like "Born In The USA", but Bruce has learnt to live with this as a fact of life.

Neil Young also comments on his country and his fellow humans through songs like Ohio, Let's Impeach The President and Restless Consumer.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/11/layer-84-music-politics-neil-young-and.html

http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/therestlessconsumer_wm.html

Neil's all-time masterpiece may well be the Sleeps With Angels album, and in particular the track "Change Your Mind", which not only has brilliant lyrics but also features scintillating, extended guitar solos which tear at the senses and wrench emotions from stony souls. Try listening to this track on decent headphones with the volume turned up in a darkened room, with or without the video on the screen -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZWPgScALU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWXy-8vNxrs&feature=fvsr

You'll need to be in it for the long run though - all 14 minutes and 55 seconds.

http://www.neilyoung.com/   -  Horse Back -  This is even longer!

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Enlightenment and Obscurity

You have to hand it to Richard Dawkins - he draws attention to some pretty important stuff and gets people talking:

What is the proper place for religion in Britain's public life?

Britain became engulfed in a culture war last week as secularists and believers clashed over the role of religion in public life. Even the Queen intervened to defend the Church of England's role. Richard Dawkins, whose survey about Christianity in the UK ignited the row, defends his position on secularism, faith and tolerance in conversation with Will Hutton of the Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/19/religion-secularism-atheism-hutton-dawkins

Once again Will Hutton ventures into territory he's not really qualified to have strong opinions about. It's not clear from this article that he really understands secularism.

On the other hand, Oxzen has issues with Dawkins' disbelief in what some of us are calling spiritual intelligence. He's not the only one who fails or refuses to understand this crucial intelligence. Most people do.

Here's what Oxzen said in Layer 12:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-12-spiritual-intelligence.html

Key concepts for developing spiritual intelligence can be found in schemes of work with a sharp focus on human values. These are values that are subscribed to by humanists and by people of no particular religion, as well as by members of the many different faith communities throughout the world – values that give meaning to life and help to direct our most positive beliefs and actions. They are values that help to make our families, our communities and our societies better places to live in for all of us. Without such values we descend into strife, conflict, selfishness and aggression.


The following list is a summary of the key words and concepts we need to understand as part of a curriculum for human values and spiritual intelligence.


TRUTH
Curiosity, Equality, Honesty, Integrity, Intuition, Optimism, Truthfulness, Self-knowledge,
Reasoning


LOVE
caring, compassion, friendship, forgiveness, generosity, helpfulness, joy, kindness, tolerance, sharing, sympathy, patience


PEACE
calmness, contentment, dignity, discipline, happiness, honesty, humility, understanding, patience, reflection, self-confidence, self-control, self-discipline, self-respect, optimism


RIGHT CONDUCT
Contentment, Courage, Dependability, Duty, Ethics, Gratitude, Good behaviour, Healthy living, Helpfulness, Leadership, Initiative, Unity, Respect, Responsibility, Sacrifice, Self-confidence, Self-sufficiency, Simplicity, Perseverance 


NON-VIOLENCE
appreciation of others, brotherhood / sisterhood, citizenship, compassion, concern for all life, consideration, cooperation, unwillingness to hurt, equality, forgiveness, global awareness, good manners, loyalty, social justice, service to others, respect for people and property, unity, universal love, collaboration

My feeling is - without having read his book on science, religion and atheism - that Dawkins and his ilk set up a false dichotemy with God on the one side and total disbelief in any sort of spiritual intelligence on the other . . . . . .  whereas most people neither have any definite belief in God nor any disbelief in the 'spiritual'. This would appear to be a perfect example of the wisdom of crowds - that the majority of people believe there is something within most of us that directs us towards the values and virtues listed above - in the broad categories of truth, love, peace, right conduct and non-violence. The question is not whether spiritual intelligence exists, but where do we sit on a continuum that goes from high spiritual intelligence to low spiritual intelligence?

The two most spiritual words I know are lovingkindness & enlightenment. Professor Dawkins has a problem if he can't understand or reckon with these key Buddhist concepts. I commend him in a spirit of lovingkindness for his stance in favour of atheism, but I'd recommend him to pay greater attention to Buddhist philosophy and metaphysics.

Enlightenment? Don't know what it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(spiritual)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensho

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Layer 497 . . . Multiple Intelligences and the Life of Pi

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Multiple Intelligences and a Novel - 'The Life of Pi', by Yann Martel

I have friends who own Kindle devices who no longer consider buying proper books from bookshops unless they're unavailable for the Kindle. Personally I love having proper books around me, and I continue to find so many good books at bargain prices. I've been meaning to buy and read this prize-winning novel, The Life of Pi, for the past decade, and recently came across it in the books section of my local MIND charity shop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yann_Martel

In his author's note, Yann Martel says this:

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

This sentence has several key words - citizens, artists, sacrifice, reality, belief, worth, dreams and imagination.

These are all important words. As far as 'imagination' is concerned, Albert Einstein once made the observation that imagination is more important than knowledge.

Whilst an artist apprehends life through direct observation, analysis, reflection, deduction, inference, intuition and empathy, it requires an effort of the imagination by writers and artists to translate and shape ideas into a form that gives them the power to communicate with others.

The Life of Pi is a book created by a true artist. The only real complaint that one could have with it is the claim it's a story which will make its readers believe in God. Maybe it works with those who would quite like to believe in God, but it didn't do that for me. What it does do is provide, within the context of a gripping narrative, some very interesting thoughts on nature, consciousness, and different kinds of intelligence.

Quotes from the book:

"Father was a natural. [?] He made up for a lack of formal training [education] with an intuitive gift and a keen eye. He had a knack of looking at an animal and guessing what was on its mind. "

[Leaving aside the fact that animals don't have reflective minds, we can understand this means 'guessing' the animal's concerns and intentions. However, we might want to query the author's use of the word 'intuitive', and we might wish to substitute 'empathetic', which is a very different kind of intelligence. Even so, Pi's father could also have had quick flashes of intuition.]

"I have no conscious memory of my first go-around in a temple, but some smell of incense, some play of light and shadow, some flame, some burst of colour, something of the sultriness and mystery of the place must have stayed with me. A germ of religious exaltation, no bigger than a mustard seed, was sown in me and left to germinate. It has never stopped growing to this day."

[The rest of the description of the sights and sounds and smells of a temple is brilliant, and well worth reading, on page 47. However, we might have to query the use of the term religious exaltation. Why religious? Why not 'spiritual'? After all, the temple could as well have been Buddhist. Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion. It has no use for a God, or gods. Its essence is spiritual intelligence, which is a quality we can all possess, to a greater or lesser extent. The highest form of spiritual intelligence is the ability to experience exaltation, awe and wonder. Buddhists, atheists, agnostics and humanists can all, through their spiritual intelligence, experience transcendental exaltation, awe and wonder.]

On page 63 is a description of someone experiencing exaltation in a Christian context:

"I saw the Virgin Mary . . . When I say I saw her, I don't quite mean it literally, though she did have body and colour. I felt I saw her, a vision beyond vision. I stopped and squinted. She looked beautiful and supremely regal. She was smiling at me with loving kindness . . . My heart beat with fear and joy."

[Of course, lovingkindness is a key concept in Zen and Buddhism.]

Page 193

"Nature draws the grandest of pictures, and I felt the feelings of wonder and smallness that we all feel, and I got a clear sense of direction from the spectacle, most definitely, but I mean that in a spiritual sense, not in a geographic one." 

P 195, on instinctual intelligence:

"With time and experience I became a better hunter. I grew bolder and more agile. I developed an instinct, a feel, for what to do."

[Don't we all. Or maybe we're born with it, and often lose it along the Way.]

Page 232

""Look . . . a bolt of lightning!" I saw how he felt about it. He was flat on the floor . . . limbs splayed and visibly trembling. The effect on me was completely the opposite. It was something to pull me out of my limited mortal ways and thrust me into a state of exalted wonder."

[Many of us have times when we're keen to transcend our 'limited mortal ways' and reach for more spiritual dimensions of consciousness - states of exalted wonder.]

Page 233

""Stop your trembling! This is a miracle. This is . . . this is . . . " I could not find what it was, this thing so vast and fantastic. I was breathless and wordless . . . But I was smiling . . . one of the few times during my ordeal when I felt genuine happiness." 

"At moments of wonder it is easy to avoid small thinking, to entertain thoughts that span the universe, that capture both thunder and tinkle, thick and thin, the near and the far."

[This raises questions about how often in our schools, colleges, universities and workplaces we transcend 'small thinking', and entertain thoughts that span the universe, both the near and the far, the interior and the exterior.

Do we not owe it to our young people, at least, to enable them in various ways, through various means, to recognise, understand and appreciate the spiritual and the transcendental? Why would we not want them to see the difference between the spiritual and the merely religious? Why would we want them to leave their spiritual intelligence completely unrecognised, untapped and undeveloped?]

Page 297

"Don't bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?"

"We're just being reasonable."

"So am I! I applied my reason at every moment. Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater."

Page 311

"He was  such an evil man. Worse still, he met evil in me - selfishness, anger, ruthlessness. I must live with that."

[Spiritual intelligence requires a spirit of lovingkindness - the opposite of 'evil' - which can be a word to describe the destructive unleashing of destructive emotions. Even decent people, and certainly young people who have yet to acquire the skills required to exercise emotional intelligence and to combat destructive tendencies, sometimes display behaviour they are not proud of and must afterwards live with. Emotional intelligence is the harmonious working together of the six intelligences in three dimensions to combat destructive emotions and their potential consequences.]

As for valuing and supporting our artists - shouldn't we should be even more concerned about how we produce artists, and creative people generally? Shouldn't all of us have a right to an education that develops intelligent artistic perception, expression and skills - in all of us and not just potential professional artists?

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Layer 462 . . . Voices, Artists, Adele, Music, Honesty, Authenticity, Expression, Zephania and Springtime

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Voices

For artists, finding a personal voice is all. This is true for writers, singers, musicians, painters, sculptors, etc. It's discovering what you care about, what you have to express, and finding a way to say it.

It's possible for quite young children to discover a personal voice, given the right opportunities, given plenty of encouragement, and an absence of indoctrination and repression. Many children, however, merely parrot the voices they hear around them. You can hear these parrot voices in both working class and middle class families.

It's possible for young people to produce authentic art. It's also possible, and in our society also extremely likely, that many adults never find within themselves their authentic personal and individual voice.

Adele Adkins' success as an artist is being compared to the Beatles. Adele, like Lennon & McCartney, writes personal and honest songs about what it's like to be young, passionate, glad to be alive, and capable of experiencing extreme emotions.

Not only that - she also, like John & Paul, has a distinctive singing voice that has terrific range, power, emotion and individuality.

In their early days of learning to play in a band Lennon & McCartney, like Jagger & Richards, chose to sing the songs of grown-up black artists - adopting the persona and the 'voices' of people who clearly knew what they were writing songs about - voices full of honest passion, pain, love and celebration. These were black artists who knew about love and sex, about attraction and rejection. Whereas most young white guys in England in the Sixties were more likely to be experts on hanging around the chip shop and going to the youth club.

 No matter. We loved the Beatles belting out Roll Over Beethoven, and the Stones rocking to Round and Around. Reeling and a'rocking - what a crazy sound. However, we loved even more their own songs - their first singles - Love Me Do, Please Please Me, She Loves You, and Help! These were voices full of energy, excitement, longing and lust.

There was an article about Adele Adkins in the Guardian this week. She's an artist who's become a worldwide phenomenon since the release of her album called '21'. Little did I or anyone else suspect what was about to happen to her when I commented on her work back in January (Layer 428)

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2011/01/layer-428-sex-on-job-falling-in-love.html

Adele breaks Madonna's album record and closes in on Bob Marley

London singer's 21 tops UK charts for 10th consecutive week, eclipsing record of material girl at height of popularity in 1990

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/04/adele-breaks-madonnas-album-record

The 22-year old released 21 in January, since when it has also topped the album charts in 17 European countries and the US.

She has gone from being a promising young artist, who existed slightly in the slipstream of acts like Duffy, to become the biggest act in the UK by a country mile.

The last act to spend 10 straight weeks at no 1 with a studio album was Dire Straits with Brothers in Arms in 1986. The album with the record for the most consecutive weeks at no 1 is Bob Marley and the Wailers' Legend, a compilation which achieved 12 weeks in 1984.

The only disappointment for Adele, who starts a UK tour on Thursday 14 April, was that her song Someone Like You was knocked from the no 1 slot on the singles chart.

Adele matches the Beatles in latest chart success

Singer becomes first living artist since the Fab Four to have two releases in each of the top five singles and album charts at once

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/feb/22/adele-matches-beatles-chart-success

Adele has become the first artist since the Beatles to have two top five singles and two top five albums in the charts at the same time. Buoyed by her rendition at last week's Brit awards, the singer's newest single, Someone Like You, jumped 46 spots to become her first No 1 hit. That song joins Rolling in the Deep, which sits at No 4; on the album charts, Adele's first two LPs – 21 and 19 – are also at No 1 and No 4 respectively.

"It's amazing," Adele told BBC Radio 1. "I've never had a No 1 single [before]. I'm probably annoying everyone as well, as I cried at the Brits and everything. I'm just so overwhelmed – I can't believe the response to it."

Adele: the girl with the mighty mouth

As the London singer conquers both Britain and America with a smash-hit No 1 album, we meet a superstar in the making

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/27/adele-21-letterman-no1-interview

At live shows, Adele's on-stage banter has become justifiably famous, and most of it is like this, generous and filthy, broken up by bawdy laughter and what-am-I-likes. It has helped distinguish her since she first emerged in 2007, when a combination of a hot performance on late-night TV and then a prize at the 2008 Brit Awards marked her out as important new singing stock. Fours years on and she can still catch you by surprise: that wartime-landlady chitchat, then suddenly the dreadnought vocal.

"I get so nervous on stage I can't help but talk. I try. I try telling my brain: stop sending words to the mouth. But I get nervous and turn into my grandma. Behind the eyes it's pure fear. I find it difficult to believe I'm going to be able to deliver."

A few days earlier, back in London, Adele had most definitely delivered. One of a handful of artists booked to sing live at the 2011 Brits, she took to the stage at the O2 Arena and sang the closing track from 21 (that album already out in the UK and sitting at No 1 in the charts). On the record the song, "Someone Like You", is a simple but affecting ballad about heartbreak: a solid 11th track. Sung live at the Brits, the only accompaniment a piano, it altered a career.

Whoops and shouts from 16,000 in the upper tiers stopped as soon as she got going; on the arena floor even the tables of fizzed-up music execs fell quiet as Adele – now with sad and doleful eyes, now sneering, now fighting back tears – hauled everybody through the mangle of a break-up. It was an astonishing performance, and at the song's end she turned away from the microphone, biting her thumb, trying not to cry in the face of a standing ovation. Glitter fell from the eaves, making her exposed shoulders sparkle. Thousands downloaded a live recording of the track when it was put up for sale after the show. More than 5.5 million watched a YouTube upload of the performance, links to it fired about over email for the rest of the week. I was one of those emailers. Subject line: Bloody hell.

Before dawn [in New York] she'll be woken by her manager who'll tell her that she's beaten Gaga and gone to No 1 in the UK for the first time in her career. She'll cry and call her mum. Then she'll find out that the Brits performance so jolted the public that her previous single, "Rolling in the Deep", has moved up to No 4; that her album, 21, has held fast at No 1 in the album chart, and that the album she released three years ago, 19, has reached No 4. She'll end the day with two albums and two singles in the top five, the first time such a thing has happened for 50 years.

Assume, by the way, that Adele is swearing at all times. Between words, between syllables, she effs as easily as she laughs, and it would not be easy putting Adele, as Adele speaks, into print.

There's been a lot of red pen, but on occasion she needs to be done proper justice. "Can somebody get me a facking screwdriver? I'm going for the facking wiring. Doing my facking 'ead in. Unbe-facking-lievable."

It all started for Adele on TV, with a Beatle. Some of her early songs caught the attention of producers on Later… with Jools Holland in summer 2007, and without a release to her name she was plopped on an episode to sing next to Paul McCartney. Heart-flutters, light-headedness – but Adele delivered and, not for the last time, charmed an audience meant for someone more famous.

A buzz picked up around her: killer voice, that cherubic face and unapologetic size-14-ness, her oozy sass. When it was announced that she'd won a newly minted Brit award in late 2007, something vaguely titled "the critics' choice award", her debut album was still weeks away. But she'd released a single, "Hometown Glory", the cover of which showed Adele looking soulful in a London caff and sharing foreground space with a bottle of Sarson's vinegar. A certain tone had been established.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/20/adele-21-review


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7eSVLVsQ-M


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUqtq6PTe9w&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OryxJ6GTHE&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shVBya9pEJY&feature=fvwrel

The Official Charts Company announced that Adele is the first living artist to achieve the feat of two top five hits in both the UK Singles Chart and the UK Album Chart simultaneously since The Beatles in 1964. The album 21 debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, with first week sales of 352,000 copies. It is now the biggest-selling album download of all-time in the UK. In its tenth consecutive week at number one in the UK, 21 overtook Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection for longest consecutive weeks at number one by a solo female artist, and has become the album to have the longest run at number one in twenty five years since Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms in 1986. - Wikipedia

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Zephania

I've written about the brilliant Benjamin Zephania before, and today he was on the radio talking about his 'inheritance tracks'.

One of his teachers had told him that he was a 'born failure'. However, he then heard a record called "Young, Gifted and Black" . . .

The track he chose to 'pass on' is Labi Siffre's "Something So Strong" - a song about liberation and a people's determination to be liberated - "An amazingly uplifting song."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/03/zephaniah-dropped-av-leaflets-outside-london

BZ's website:

http://www.benjaminzephaniah.com/content/index.php


The more you refuse to hear my voice
The louder I will sing
You hide behind walls of Jericho
Your lies will come tumbling
Deny my place in time
You squander wealth that's mine
My light will shine so brightly
It will blind you
Cos there's......


Something inside so strong
I know that I can make it
Tho' you're doing me wrong, so wrong
You thought that my pride was gone
Oh no, something inside so strong
Oh oh oh oh oh something inside so strong

http://www.lyricsondemand.com/l/labisiffrelyrics/somethinginsidesostronglyrics.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labi_Siffre

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otuwNwsqHmQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcbpsYj1LXw

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Beautiful Springtime

By the way - it's full-on Springtime, and it's glorious. This whole week has been amazing for sunshine and temperatures in the top teens and low twenties. It's been possible to sit out in the sun and get the beginnings of a tan. It's brilliant to feel the sun again.

All around there are flowering cherries, plums, apples and magnolias in full magnificent blossom, and there are still many daffodils and tulips in their prime.

Just starting now are bluebells - there were quite a few coming out in the cemetery yesterday. Next to come out will be the lilacs and ceanothus.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ceanothus&hl=en&rlz=1C1SKPM_enGB405GB420&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=UxagTaDZCcSYhQe18bn6BA&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=667

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