.
The Best
I’ve said some pretty harsh things about England in my time, so this might be a good time to show some sort of balance in my opinions of our national life.
An English village can be a place of pure wonder on a day in the month of May. There are certain aspects of the English climate, the landscape, and the character of the people that have combined down the centuries to produce environments that are truly delightful.
Taking walks around my friends’ village this week it really struck me that there’s a visual, sensory and aesthetic richness that’s quite amazing. There’s unbelievable beauty in the buildings, their gardens, the natural flora and the way these elements combine within a relatively small place. It’s an environment that’s grown organically over the centuries, without any strategic planning as such, and it all fits snugly together in the most wonderful way.
First, there’s the stream that plunges down through the village from the moor, a stream that over the centuries has cut from the rock a steep-sided valley, in which buildings now cluster and nestle. The higher you walk, the more the sides of the valley draw together and the steeper they get, until the village abruptly ends with a single large house and its garden, right beside the stream, with immaculate lawns like the baize of a snooker table.
This property almost fills this top part of what is almost a ravine - and only a narrow track ventures around and beyond it, and makes its way further and higher, up into the woods and onto the moor.
The stream plunges over rocks and provides the musical backing track for your walk in this part of the village, splashing and gurgling its way down to the sea, about a mile away.
In this place the weather never gets so hot or so dry, or so cold, that it threatens the existence of the hundreds of plants that are to be seen here - both the native ones, like the silver birches and honeysuckles and foxgloves, and the strange and the exotic ones that the English went out and collected and brought back here from around the world.
Even on a dull day in May the colours combine in an amazing display of nature’s incredible palette. The lovely blues of the Californian lilac still abound here in May - much later than places further south and east. The yellow blossoms of the laburnum hang delicately here and there. The subtle lilacs of the wisteria, and indeed the lilacs, crop up frequently.
Trees are still in blossom everywhere. The cherry blossom season is over, but there is still white, pink and yellow blossom in abundance. The hawthorn is at its peak in May.
And then there are the shrubs. Pyrocanthus, rhodedendrons, roses of every colour, both standards and climbers, fuchias, and so much besides. Exotic shrubs I’ve never even seen before, alongside the common and garden varieties. We grow them because we can. Because we appreciate and adore their shapes, textures, colours, fragrances, beauty. This place is stunningly beautiful, not least because of the care and attention that has gone into planting and maintaining this variety of living things, down the years.
There are flowers all over the village. From the tiny ones growing wild in wall crevasses and between the rocks by the side of the stream, to clumps of irises, daisies, buttercups, etc, springing up everywhere. The daffodils and tulips are long gone, but their places have been taken by a seemingly infinite variety of others that avoid the frosts of the early Spring, but delight in these somewhat warmer days as Spring draws to an end.
There’s a proliferation of window boxes and hanging baskets, containing geraniums, pansies, violets, petunias, and a host of others.
Green! There’s a lush, fertile backdrop of every imaginable shade of green, everywhere you look. Grasses, hedges, trees, flowers, ferns, shrubs. Green - that speaks of the abundance of water, and of sunshine, but not too much heat or sun so that things dry out and turn brown or parched yellow. You can’t imagine things in this sheltered spot ever drying out. The surrounding hillsides are an unbroken mass of lush green canopies of trees in full leaf, climbing up towards the moors, clinging to their rocky purchases in the thin red soils.
Beyond the flora there’s the crafted and built elements of this environment, the products of our national imagination and creativity. The subtle and yet substantial houses and cottages that are gathered together in such neighbourly and intimate proximity. Their brick, stone, slate, wood and glass, in harmony and proportion. None of them trying to outdo their neighbours in any way that speaks of showiness or excessive pride in itself. Homes that are content to have two or three bedrooms, a cosy lounge and a kitchen. Everything that anyone needs for a good life, an equal place in the community. For here we are all equal, even if some are slightly more equal than others, as Orwell, a true English genius, would have it.
The village becomes a true community because of the buildings it shares, for all to use. And these too have their own beauty, and their own modesty. The main street of the village is where we find pubs, cafes, shops, galleries, tea rooms, guest houses and churches. All of these date from the early part of the last century, or the century before that, or even the one before that.
The best of the Victorian and Georgian architecture sets a standard that’s hard to measure up to for contemporary architects working to budgets that are either too tight, or in some cases too lavish. The English vernacular is all about substance, not show; modesty, not brashness. Its materials are for the most part local, and blend well into the landscape. They don’t try to dominate it, or stand apart from it.
The people here, like their buildings, the flora and the landscape, are calm, modest, harmonious, gentle, quiet, unassuming, warm and friendly. There’s a definite feeling that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which is as true for the people themselves as it is for the environment that’s been created over the centuries. They live for the most part in a spirit of mutual appreciation, cooperation, trust and respect. They organise art shows, charity events, concerts and cultural meetings of various descriptions. They are proud of their community and participate in the events that help to bring people together.
The pubs serve the best cask-conditioned ales, good wines and tasty food. The staff are friendly and attentive. There’s an atmosphere that speaks of lives well lived, of relaxed joie de vivre and interdependence. Here, no man or woman need feel like an island. In the winter time and early Spring log fires blaze their warmth from iron grates.
In the shops people take time to show recognition, to chat, to banter, to smile. Yesterday there was a small queue lined up at the counter of a shop, clutching their purchases - wine, beer, newspapers, magazines, various foodstuffs. “You know the saying - anticipation makes it more enjoyable”, said someone cheerily, to a customer who’d been standing in the line for a couple of minutes. “I’ve only got tampons and toothpaste”, said the customer, pensively. “Pity it’s not condoms”, said the next in line, to the great amusement of everyone within earshot.
Oh yes, our English wit and humour. There’s another priceless national asset.
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The Worst
I’m beginning to get very angry with politicians who claim they’ve been doing a good job for children, who like to polish their egos by saying they’ve been taking good care of young people. It brings to mind a routine by the brilliant American comic, Chris Rock. He berated parents who like to preen themselves by boasting “I take good care of my kids!” by yelling at them “That’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do, you idiots!”
This is what we need to say to politicians who boast they’ve spent millions on improving schools and opening more nurseries - “That’s what you’re supposed to do!”
To all the politicians who say they’re making sure more kids than ever are doing well academically - that’s what you’re supposed to do!
The question which then arises is, SO WHAT? What is it you’re NOT doing that you SHOULD be doing?
Do they now enjoy school more ? No.
Do they have a more positive attitude to learning? No.
Do they have more emotional intelligence? No.
Are they more creative and imaginative? No.
Do they read more widely and read more books for enjoyment? No.
Do they feel like they’re exploited and treated like pawns in somebody else’s game? Yes.
Do they resent more cramming for tests, having to take more tests and having to do more and more homework? Yes.
Do they feel more stressed and more anxious? Yes.
So what’s any of this got to do with taking better care of kids, as opposed to processing kids more efficiently through results factories? Nothing at all.
Which isn’t to say that lots of schools haven’t improved. But that improvement down to the efforts of the professionals in schools, not down to the amateurs, the career politicians.
When was the last time a politician came up with an original idea that could improve the lives of children? When was the last time a politician had a vision of something that could transform the lives of children and make them better and happier?
No, what politicians have done is convince even the educationalists that their job is to ‘prepare children for the world of work’. To convince parents that the way to judge a school is on its position in a league table. To convince teachers and head teachers that the only thing that matters is success in tests and exams. Or at least to make them fearful of the consequences if they can’t improve test scores and meet government’s arbitrary targets.
We used to be fearful of what would happen to the education system if it was governed by payment by results. Well we’ve got that, and we’ve also got a system that simply dismisses people if schools don’t meet government targets. And we’ve got an education service that’s allowed all this to happen to them.
I’m sick of it all, and it’s obvious that children are sick of it as well.
More of this tomorrow.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Layer 45 Voices, Time and the Floyd
.
This is a double blog, as I won’t have time to write one tomorrow.
Wonderful Radio 4 today featured a writer, a novelist, I’ve never heard of - Kate Mosse. The interviewer mentioned that Kate has created a very good website, on which she has a whole section of advice for writers.
http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/intro.asp
He website also has very interesting interactive section, like a blog, where she shares what she’s doing as a writer whilst she’s actually working on a novel - the idea being that she gets feedback from a certain section of her readership as she’s writing her next novel, which affects the way she’s writing it.
This is pretty much what I’ve been saying to friends about my enthusiasm for blogging - if everyone comments on everyone else’s blog it really helps to generate new ideas, helps to refine your previous writing, etc. The interactivity is crucial.
I guess in years gone by when people had no telephones, let alone email, if they wanted to share their thoughts and their lives with good friends then they pretty much had to write letters - lots of them. These days we can just publish blogs - letting the whole world know what we’re thinking and doing, or just letting a select readership have access to our journals, and giving them a means of instantly feeding back.
I have several good friends who are good writers, though most of them have yet to officially publish anything. Some of them annoy the living daylights out of me because they are so talented and such good writers, and yet they make little or no time in their busy lives for blogging or writing a journal, or whatever.
They all recognise that the process of putting their thoughts into writing is incredibly enriching, like a meditation. And yet they don’t have the drive or the energy to do it, at least not regularly. Or maybe they don’t think it’s worth the effort, or maybe they have misgivings about sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings, and don’t see the point of keeping a journal that’s pretty much for their eyes only.
I’m now fascinated by the thought that the thing we might miss the most about somebody we don’t see frequently is their voice - meaning their unique perception, their take on the world, their way of expressing themselves, their sense of humour, their original thinking, and so on.
And the more I think about this the more I feel angry that our schools don’t recognise that this is the most important thing we can do for children - to help them realise that they have an individual voice, an individual take on the world, a unique perception, which they need to recognise and learn how to express to the full.
It’s all very well learning to enjoy the individual voices of great writers, through reading them as often as possible. But children usually take in an implicit message that only the voices of published writers are interesting and important and valid - i.e. their own voice is extremely unimportant and invalid. In fact they don’t even understand the concept of having an individual voice.
I remember coming across Harold Rosen’s efforts to address this issue back in the seventies, through his work as a secondary school teacher and researcher. And subsequently his son Michael’s continuation of this work, especially in books like Did I Hear You Write?
I remember my own time as a teacher, returning from a day’s outing with my class, and hearing them ask the dreaded question, “Do we have to write about it?” Well no, they didn’t. It took me only a few minutes to scribe on the board their recollections of the actual events of the day. What was the point of 25 - 30 children all writing a useless list of “We did this, and we did that; we went there, and we saw this, and we had our packed lunch . . . “
All that I asked of them, in return for a brilliant day visiting exciting new places, was to write down their individual impressions of their experiences. What was interesting? What was exciting? Funny? Scary? Puzzling? And then, having written their individual thoughts and feelings, their responses and their conclusions, they loved listening to one another read out their pieces. Lots of appreciation and laughter. Which then inspired another burst of writing - “Oh yes! I’d forgotten about that! That’s what I thought as well! I need to write about that!”
They soon learnt that what’s important in the process of learning is not so much recording the facts as recording their individual take on the facts, which is as true for a science experiment or the discovery of a new maths concept, as it is for a geography or history or art or geology field trip.
Being able to examine and reflect on our own unique and individual thoughts is a vital part of living and learning - about ourselves and about life in general.
It’s a waste of time being an individual human being unless we enjoy our individual humanity, and the individuality of others. Unfortunately our school system doesn’t care for developing children as individuals, and certainly not as individual writers, and it claims it has no time to do so, as it rushes each day to cover the ‘curriculum’ and prepare for tests.
A cracked record? Moi?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Time and the Floyd.
Last night was Pink Floyd night on BBC4. A whole evening of brilliant TV, and music, and without a single advert. Pure magic.
The story of the Floyd is a fascinating one. There are so many elements that make their story so unusual. They were a unique band to begin with, thanks to Syd Barrett. I hadn’t fully appreciated what a strange, wonderful, courageous, charismatic and brilliant human being he was in those early days, before he lost his mind. I hadn’t realized either how much his talented peers had loved him, and how much they had missed him, both personally and musically, after he’d gone off with the fairies.
His whole spirit was unique, iconoclastic, anarchistic. And the band therefore didn’t give a damn about fashion and trends and commercialism. Sure, they wanted recognition and appreciation, but not as individual egos. It was all about the music, and what they had to say about life, the universe and everything.
I remember well their early days - the incredible live shows they performed just after “Arnold Layne” - coming into the mod haven of Coventry Locarno on the back of their chart hit, and playing unbelievable spaced out music that was nothing like Arnold Layne and nothing like anything anyone had ever heard; playing in semi darkness, with a liquid light show projected over the entire stage.
The audience wasn’t stoned, as such, but it sure felt that way. I guess people either loved it or hated it. Either you got it or you didn’t. I guess quite a few of my mod mates might have been unhappy that it wasn’t an evening of Arnold Layne type ditties, and headed off to the bar. I didn’t really notice anyone else. I was too wrapped up in the music and the performance. These guys were the house band of the incomparably trendy and freaky UFO Club, for chrissakes. Not that I’d ever smoked a joint, let alone taken LSD.
Arnold Layne, though untypical, was itself a great song. I still have a pristine 45 rpm copy of it. Such wry humour, such a strange thing to write a song about. Someone’s strange hobby. Collecting clothes. Moon shine, washing line. A see-through mirror. "He dug it". Lyrics and a tune you could never forget.
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/p/pink_floyd/arnold_layne.html
That was the beginning of a lifelong fascination and appreciation, right through to my current enjoyment of David Gilmour’s ‘On An Island’, and his band’s brilliant performances of ‘High Hopes’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’ on the DVD. Nobody else plays and sings like that. The Floyd completely stole the show when they invited Roger Waters back to perform at Live8 in Hyde Park in 2005. Which would have happened with or without Waters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/06/30/bmfloyd30.xml
Their very early stuff, though immature and relatively amateurish, on account of them being non-musicians (apart from Rick Wright), was totally original, totally off the wall. They maintain, perhaps a little tongue in cheek, that they weren't good enough as musicians to copy or imitate what other bands were doing, so they didn't. Following Syd's example they weren’t afraid to experiment, and improvise, and jam. Their gigs were all about improvisation and jamming. Nobody had ever seen or heard anything like it. And this was before Dave Gilmour joined the band.
By the time I saw them in Manchester in 1969, at a college gig, they were on their way to becoming megastars, and Gilmour was a well-established member. The light show was projected all along one side of the hall by now, as well as all over the stage area. They had well and truly mastered their instruments, and the stage was filled with their gear - a huge drum kit, amps, speaker units, even kettle drums and a gong.
Their catalogue of tracks by now included Astronomy Domine; Careful With That Axe, Eugene; Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun; and A Saucerful of Secrets. All of which are immortalized on the great live album recorded at that Manchester College of Commerce gig in June 1969 - Ummagumma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummagumma
Coincidentally I was also at the first ever live performance of Floyd's Atom Heart Mother at the legendary Bath Festival in Shepton Mallet in 1970, but that’s another story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Festival_of_Blues_and_Progressive_Music_1970
I also remember standing in the amphitheatre in Pompeii in the mid ‘80s and picturing the Floyd playing there, performing the amazing track Echoes from their album ‘Meddle‘, in Live At Pompeii. They showed clips from that last night on the TV, including shots of them strolling around the rim of Vesuvius, which is indeed an amazing experience. Awesome!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd:_Live_at_Pompeii
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2hFZ8KnsSo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sein6WnbY0
You can get a flavour of the film from the comment on the youtube video, posted by StripeyElephant - "Holy fuck this is the best thing I've ever seen."
My own favourite part of it is the middle section, where the camera tracks slowly around huge menacing black stacks of speakers - studying an unbroken black wall of speaker units, with protruding horn units looking like military grenade launchers, about to lob sonic bombs around the deserted amphitheatre. Roger Waters' bass thunders and throbs its incessant pulse
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
followed and accompanied by Gilmour's howling, wailing, pleading guitar; soaring and wrenching your spirit, demanding you go with it to some otherworldly place in his emotional universe, accompanied by Rick Wright's vibrating rotating wail of electronic organ and Dave Mason's precision drumming and splashing smashing cymbals. I still find electrifying the moment when Gilmour first cuts into the bass drone with the nastiest bluesiest most jagged chord imaginable, whipped into some previously unknown sonic dimension by his incredible mass of electronic gadgets and effects.
(There may be little point playing this video unless you're able to pump it through a good sub-woofer setup or some good headphones)
You may like to know that, according to an old book of mine about guitar players, Gilmour used to use (pre digital and Midi) an effects board consisting of a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, an MXR Phase 100, a Dynacomp noise gate, a Uni-Vibe, a Pete Cornish Custom Fuzz, a Jim Dunlop Cry Baby, and three sweep pedals. "This new state of the art board had sophisticated revolutionary switching capabilities - each effect could be individually by-passed or configured in any sequence, and there were three outputs for various amps." On the other hand, this may be too much information.
The centrepiece of last night’s broadcast was a documentary about the making of Dark Side of the Moon, which is now seen as their magnum opus, and which they are quite rightly extraordinarily proud of.
It was so interesting to find out that it was made in the Abbey Road studios, pre-computers and digital recording, and the sonic effects were all done on an early sequencer and using tape loops set up on banks of reel to reel tape players. Of course! And of course nobody else had ever tried to work in this way. Nobody else was so experimental and innovative.
Roger Waters’ lyrics might now be viewed as typically ‘angry young mannish’ (as he does himself), but he was able to encapsulate perfectly in words what so many of us were feeling in the aftermath of post-60’s disillusionment - feeling about materialism, about the rat race, about the lack of sanity in the world, about militarism, about mortality, about religion, and about ‘hanging on in quiet desperation’. Lyrics that were not wordy, lyrics that were economical and evocative and precise.
The programme told the story of how Clare Torry came to perform her incredible improvised wordless vocal over Rick Wright's brilliant ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’. They described how their old mate Dick Parry was invited to play his wonderful sax pieces on ‘Us and Them’ and ‘Money’. They also told the story of how the strange rambling voices and the manic laughter were specially recorded for the album.
I first heard Dark Side of the Moon lying beside a log fire in a darkened room in the house of a VSO teacher in Northern Nigeria in 1973. In the context of the time, and having just a week ago emerged from the Heart of Darkness, so to speak - from the jungles and rivers of Zaire and Central Africa - it was an unforgettable and mind-blowing experience.
Just listening to some new music on some good quality hi-fi would in itself have been mind blowing after all the time I'd been without it, after all those weeks of traveling across the Serengeti, through the mountains of Rwanda, and along the mud roads of the central African rainy season. Coming into contact with the Dark Side in those circumstances was a breathtaking sonic culture shock and mind-fuck of the first magnitude.
Dave Gilmour says in the documentary that he only wishes that he’d been able to have the experience of hearing the album for the first time, from start to finish, completely ‘out of the blue’. Well Dave, I can tell you, listening to it in its entirety in the stoned darkness of an African evening in front of a flickering log fire was spine-tinglingly overwhelming and incredible. And for that, many thanks.
It says something for the quality of the documentary and the strange brilliance of the band and their music that even my son, no lover of rock or the sixties or psychedelia, sat with me and watched it all through, even though he was dog tired after a double shift at work. There’s hope for him yet! He’s a wonderful young man, but has a lot to learn about music, which, by the way, he seems to have stopped listening to. He’s reached a hiatus. The day he plays and enjoys one of my precious vinyl albums on my turntable I’ll know he’s getting fully on message and fully on track.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398868/
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Having just re-listened to 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene', I'm still amazed by the insane power of Roger Waters' diabolical screaming, and recall vividly the effect of it during live shows. Thrilling, scary and and somehow liberating. I didn't realise at the time that you were allowed to be so full-on crazy and anarchic in public - so utterly emotionally over the top. If you were standing close to the stage it was as disturbing and disorienting as witnessing The Who smashing their instruments.
Sure, it was wild and anarchic and pointless and childish, perhaps. But then isn't this what art is supposed to be about, at least some of the time? Delving into our innermost darkest thoughts and feelings, and expressing them, in words, images, colour, movement and sound. As I say, a kind of liberation.
It's interesting that Michelangelo Antonioni was so determined to have this track in 'Zabriski Point', and I well remember what a controversial movie that was when it was first released.
And going back to Romeo and Juliet (see Layer 31) there an interesting image in Romeo's response to being told "From Verona thou art banished" -
"There is no world without Verona walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence banished is banish'd from the world,
And world's exile is death; then 'banished'
Is death misterm'd. Calling death 'banished,'
Thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe,
And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.
------------------------------------------------------
One final thought, Let Pink Floyd be an inspiration to all fledgling musicians and writers - don't be put off your desire to be creative and expressive by a lack of technical training and know-how. Don't worry about not being able to do what others can do. Do your own thing, create in your own way using whatever skills and abilities you have, and enjoy whatever you do. Be original and then you can't be judged by conventional standards. Start a new genre of your own perhaps. And the more you do it the better you'll become.
.
This is a double blog, as I won’t have time to write one tomorrow.
Wonderful Radio 4 today featured a writer, a novelist, I’ve never heard of - Kate Mosse. The interviewer mentioned that Kate has created a very good website, on which she has a whole section of advice for writers.
http://www.mosselabyrinth.co.uk/advice/intro.asp
He website also has very interesting interactive section, like a blog, where she shares what she’s doing as a writer whilst she’s actually working on a novel - the idea being that she gets feedback from a certain section of her readership as she’s writing her next novel, which affects the way she’s writing it.
This is pretty much what I’ve been saying to friends about my enthusiasm for blogging - if everyone comments on everyone else’s blog it really helps to generate new ideas, helps to refine your previous writing, etc. The interactivity is crucial.
I guess in years gone by when people had no telephones, let alone email, if they wanted to share their thoughts and their lives with good friends then they pretty much had to write letters - lots of them. These days we can just publish blogs - letting the whole world know what we’re thinking and doing, or just letting a select readership have access to our journals, and giving them a means of instantly feeding back.
I have several good friends who are good writers, though most of them have yet to officially publish anything. Some of them annoy the living daylights out of me because they are so talented and such good writers, and yet they make little or no time in their busy lives for blogging or writing a journal, or whatever.
They all recognise that the process of putting their thoughts into writing is incredibly enriching, like a meditation. And yet they don’t have the drive or the energy to do it, at least not regularly. Or maybe they don’t think it’s worth the effort, or maybe they have misgivings about sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings, and don’t see the point of keeping a journal that’s pretty much for their eyes only.
I’m now fascinated by the thought that the thing we might miss the most about somebody we don’t see frequently is their voice - meaning their unique perception, their take on the world, their way of expressing themselves, their sense of humour, their original thinking, and so on.
And the more I think about this the more I feel angry that our schools don’t recognise that this is the most important thing we can do for children - to help them realise that they have an individual voice, an individual take on the world, a unique perception, which they need to recognise and learn how to express to the full.
It’s all very well learning to enjoy the individual voices of great writers, through reading them as often as possible. But children usually take in an implicit message that only the voices of published writers are interesting and important and valid - i.e. their own voice is extremely unimportant and invalid. In fact they don’t even understand the concept of having an individual voice.
I remember coming across Harold Rosen’s efforts to address this issue back in the seventies, through his work as a secondary school teacher and researcher. And subsequently his son Michael’s continuation of this work, especially in books like Did I Hear You Write?
I remember my own time as a teacher, returning from a day’s outing with my class, and hearing them ask the dreaded question, “Do we have to write about it?” Well no, they didn’t. It took me only a few minutes to scribe on the board their recollections of the actual events of the day. What was the point of 25 - 30 children all writing a useless list of “We did this, and we did that; we went there, and we saw this, and we had our packed lunch . . . “
All that I asked of them, in return for a brilliant day visiting exciting new places, was to write down their individual impressions of their experiences. What was interesting? What was exciting? Funny? Scary? Puzzling? And then, having written their individual thoughts and feelings, their responses and their conclusions, they loved listening to one another read out their pieces. Lots of appreciation and laughter. Which then inspired another burst of writing - “Oh yes! I’d forgotten about that! That’s what I thought as well! I need to write about that!”
They soon learnt that what’s important in the process of learning is not so much recording the facts as recording their individual take on the facts, which is as true for a science experiment or the discovery of a new maths concept, as it is for a geography or history or art or geology field trip.
Being able to examine and reflect on our own unique and individual thoughts is a vital part of living and learning - about ourselves and about life in general.
It’s a waste of time being an individual human being unless we enjoy our individual humanity, and the individuality of others. Unfortunately our school system doesn’t care for developing children as individuals, and certainly not as individual writers, and it claims it has no time to do so, as it rushes each day to cover the ‘curriculum’ and prepare for tests.
A cracked record? Moi?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Time and the Floyd.
Last night was Pink Floyd night on BBC4. A whole evening of brilliant TV, and music, and without a single advert. Pure magic.
The story of the Floyd is a fascinating one. There are so many elements that make their story so unusual. They were a unique band to begin with, thanks to Syd Barrett. I hadn’t fully appreciated what a strange, wonderful, courageous, charismatic and brilliant human being he was in those early days, before he lost his mind. I hadn’t realized either how much his talented peers had loved him, and how much they had missed him, both personally and musically, after he’d gone off with the fairies.
His whole spirit was unique, iconoclastic, anarchistic. And the band therefore didn’t give a damn about fashion and trends and commercialism. Sure, they wanted recognition and appreciation, but not as individual egos. It was all about the music, and what they had to say about life, the universe and everything.
I remember well their early days - the incredible live shows they performed just after “Arnold Layne” - coming into the mod haven of Coventry Locarno on the back of their chart hit, and playing unbelievable spaced out music that was nothing like Arnold Layne and nothing like anything anyone had ever heard; playing in semi darkness, with a liquid light show projected over the entire stage.
The audience wasn’t stoned, as such, but it sure felt that way. I guess people either loved it or hated it. Either you got it or you didn’t. I guess quite a few of my mod mates might have been unhappy that it wasn’t an evening of Arnold Layne type ditties, and headed off to the bar. I didn’t really notice anyone else. I was too wrapped up in the music and the performance. These guys were the house band of the incomparably trendy and freaky UFO Club, for chrissakes. Not that I’d ever smoked a joint, let alone taken LSD.
Arnold Layne, though untypical, was itself a great song. I still have a pristine 45 rpm copy of it. Such wry humour, such a strange thing to write a song about. Someone’s strange hobby. Collecting clothes. Moon shine, washing line. A see-through mirror. "He dug it". Lyrics and a tune you could never forget.
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/p/pink_floyd/arnold_layne.html
That was the beginning of a lifelong fascination and appreciation, right through to my current enjoyment of David Gilmour’s ‘On An Island’, and his band’s brilliant performances of ‘High Hopes’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’ on the DVD. Nobody else plays and sings like that. The Floyd completely stole the show when they invited Roger Waters back to perform at Live8 in Hyde Park in 2005. Which would have happened with or without Waters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/06/30/bmfloyd30.xml
Their very early stuff, though immature and relatively amateurish, on account of them being non-musicians (apart from Rick Wright), was totally original, totally off the wall. They maintain, perhaps a little tongue in cheek, that they weren't good enough as musicians to copy or imitate what other bands were doing, so they didn't. Following Syd's example they weren’t afraid to experiment, and improvise, and jam. Their gigs were all about improvisation and jamming. Nobody had ever seen or heard anything like it. And this was before Dave Gilmour joined the band.
By the time I saw them in Manchester in 1969, at a college gig, they were on their way to becoming megastars, and Gilmour was a well-established member. The light show was projected all along one side of the hall by now, as well as all over the stage area. They had well and truly mastered their instruments, and the stage was filled with their gear - a huge drum kit, amps, speaker units, even kettle drums and a gong.
Their catalogue of tracks by now included Astronomy Domine; Careful With That Axe, Eugene; Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun; and A Saucerful of Secrets. All of which are immortalized on the great live album recorded at that Manchester College of Commerce gig in June 1969 - Ummagumma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ummagumma
Coincidentally I was also at the first ever live performance of Floyd's Atom Heart Mother at the legendary Bath Festival in Shepton Mallet in 1970, but that’s another story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_Festival_of_Blues_and_Progressive_Music_1970
I also remember standing in the amphitheatre in Pompeii in the mid ‘80s and picturing the Floyd playing there, performing the amazing track Echoes from their album ‘Meddle‘, in Live At Pompeii. They showed clips from that last night on the TV, including shots of them strolling around the rim of Vesuvius, which is indeed an amazing experience. Awesome!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd:_Live_at_Pompeii
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2hFZ8KnsSo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sein6WnbY0
You can get a flavour of the film from the comment on the youtube video, posted by StripeyElephant - "Holy fuck this is the best thing I've ever seen."
My own favourite part of it is the middle section, where the camera tracks slowly around huge menacing black stacks of speakers - studying an unbroken black wall of speaker units, with protruding horn units looking like military grenade launchers, about to lob sonic bombs around the deserted amphitheatre. Roger Waters' bass thunders and throbs its incessant pulse
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
Dugh ga buh ba - ba dum
followed and accompanied by Gilmour's howling, wailing, pleading guitar; soaring and wrenching your spirit, demanding you go with it to some otherworldly place in his emotional universe, accompanied by Rick Wright's vibrating rotating wail of electronic organ and Dave Mason's precision drumming and splashing smashing cymbals. I still find electrifying the moment when Gilmour first cuts into the bass drone with the nastiest bluesiest most jagged chord imaginable, whipped into some previously unknown sonic dimension by his incredible mass of electronic gadgets and effects.
(There may be little point playing this video unless you're able to pump it through a good sub-woofer setup or some good headphones)
You may like to know that, according to an old book of mine about guitar players, Gilmour used to use (pre digital and Midi) an effects board consisting of a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, an MXR Phase 100, a Dynacomp noise gate, a Uni-Vibe, a Pete Cornish Custom Fuzz, a Jim Dunlop Cry Baby, and three sweep pedals. "This new state of the art board had sophisticated revolutionary switching capabilities - each effect could be individually by-passed or configured in any sequence, and there were three outputs for various amps." On the other hand, this may be too much information.
The centrepiece of last night’s broadcast was a documentary about the making of Dark Side of the Moon, which is now seen as their magnum opus, and which they are quite rightly extraordinarily proud of.
It was so interesting to find out that it was made in the Abbey Road studios, pre-computers and digital recording, and the sonic effects were all done on an early sequencer and using tape loops set up on banks of reel to reel tape players. Of course! And of course nobody else had ever tried to work in this way. Nobody else was so experimental and innovative.
Roger Waters’ lyrics might now be viewed as typically ‘angry young mannish’ (as he does himself), but he was able to encapsulate perfectly in words what so many of us were feeling in the aftermath of post-60’s disillusionment - feeling about materialism, about the rat race, about the lack of sanity in the world, about militarism, about mortality, about religion, and about ‘hanging on in quiet desperation’. Lyrics that were not wordy, lyrics that were economical and evocative and precise.
The programme told the story of how Clare Torry came to perform her incredible improvised wordless vocal over Rick Wright's brilliant ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’. They described how their old mate Dick Parry was invited to play his wonderful sax pieces on ‘Us and Them’ and ‘Money’. They also told the story of how the strange rambling voices and the manic laughter were specially recorded for the album.
I first heard Dark Side of the Moon lying beside a log fire in a darkened room in the house of a VSO teacher in Northern Nigeria in 1973. In the context of the time, and having just a week ago emerged from the Heart of Darkness, so to speak - from the jungles and rivers of Zaire and Central Africa - it was an unforgettable and mind-blowing experience.
Just listening to some new music on some good quality hi-fi would in itself have been mind blowing after all the time I'd been without it, after all those weeks of traveling across the Serengeti, through the mountains of Rwanda, and along the mud roads of the central African rainy season. Coming into contact with the Dark Side in those circumstances was a breathtaking sonic culture shock and mind-fuck of the first magnitude.
Dave Gilmour says in the documentary that he only wishes that he’d been able to have the experience of hearing the album for the first time, from start to finish, completely ‘out of the blue’. Well Dave, I can tell you, listening to it in its entirety in the stoned darkness of an African evening in front of a flickering log fire was spine-tinglingly overwhelming and incredible. And for that, many thanks.
It says something for the quality of the documentary and the strange brilliance of the band and their music that even my son, no lover of rock or the sixties or psychedelia, sat with me and watched it all through, even though he was dog tired after a double shift at work. There’s hope for him yet! He’s a wonderful young man, but has a lot to learn about music, which, by the way, he seems to have stopped listening to. He’s reached a hiatus. The day he plays and enjoys one of my precious vinyl albums on my turntable I’ll know he’s getting fully on message and fully on track.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398868/
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Having just re-listened to 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene', I'm still amazed by the insane power of Roger Waters' diabolical screaming, and recall vividly the effect of it during live shows. Thrilling, scary and and somehow liberating. I didn't realise at the time that you were allowed to be so full-on crazy and anarchic in public - so utterly emotionally over the top. If you were standing close to the stage it was as disturbing and disorienting as witnessing The Who smashing their instruments.
Sure, it was wild and anarchic and pointless and childish, perhaps. But then isn't this what art is supposed to be about, at least some of the time? Delving into our innermost darkest thoughts and feelings, and expressing them, in words, images, colour, movement and sound. As I say, a kind of liberation.
It's interesting that Michelangelo Antonioni was so determined to have this track in 'Zabriski Point', and I well remember what a controversial movie that was when it was first released.
And going back to Romeo and Juliet (see Layer 31) there an interesting image in Romeo's response to being told "From Verona thou art banished" -
"There is no world without Verona walls,
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.
Hence banished is banish'd from the world,
And world's exile is death; then 'banished'
Is death misterm'd. Calling death 'banished,'
Thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe,
And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.
------------------------------------------------------
One final thought, Let Pink Floyd be an inspiration to all fledgling musicians and writers - don't be put off your desire to be creative and expressive by a lack of technical training and know-how. Don't worry about not being able to do what others can do. Do your own thing, create in your own way using whatever skills and abilities you have, and enjoy whatever you do. Be original and then you can't be judged by conventional standards. Start a new genre of your own perhaps. And the more you do it the better you'll become.
.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Layer 1 The Writer
‘OK,’ he thought, ‘If I’m a writer, then I’d best be doing some writing’. But what about?
It didn’t matter. There were a thousand starting points, and a thousand possible strands. And in the end they would all converge. They would all meet up and interweave; they would layer and inter-twine, and they would become like a fabric or a palimpsest of sense and maybe some nonsense.
Like a painter he could start with the yellow or the red, or the green. So what was red in his life right now? What was green? What was yellow? And what was blue? Deepest, darkest blue?
Somehow or other he’d end up with a painting, and if he didn’t like the look of it, he’d paint something different right on top of the first painting, and carry on adding until he had something worthwhile, something he felt good about. He might end up with a painting that was several paintings right on top of one another. Only he would know what was beneath the surface.
These days he had problems with remembering. Some days he tried to remember who he was, and who he thought he should be. On the whole he’d made up his mind not to worry too much about what other people thought he was, since they themselves were usually pretty confused, and often didn’t have a clue. Either about him, or about themselves.
He thought he needn’t mind too much about remembering what he used to be, since he now had the freedom to be whatever he’d like to be. Maybe he’d always had that freedom. Maybe he’d had it, and somehow lost it. Maybe he’d got carried away by his mission and his cause, and got stuck for too long in his combat, and his fatigue.
But that was then, and this is now. There had been battles won, and battles lost, and a strategic retreat. At least he was still in the war. He was now living underground: part bohemian and part guerrilla. At least he still had his sanity and he still gave a fuck.
There is a war between the rich and poor,
A war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war
And the ones who say there isn't.
There is a war between the left and right,
A war between the black and white,
A war between the odd and the even.
Why don't you come on back to the war - pick up your tiny burden?
Why don't you come on back to the war? - let's all get even.
Why don't you come on back to the war, can't you hear me speaking?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’ve loved those lyrics (and that song - There Is A War) since I first heard them in Y & J’s flat in Manhattan in 1975. Leonard Cohen at his most brilliant. Who By Fire is on the same album - another brilliant song; incredible poetry. That was the summer of hitch-hiking around the States and Canada, my swansong, my last ever summer of being on the road, being a hitchhiker. My final fling at being Jack Kerouac, Dean Moriarty, Sal Paradise, Neal Cassady.
"On the Road was written in three weeks, while Kerouac lived with Joan Haverty, his second wife, at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan. Kerouac typed the manuscript on what he called "the roll": a continuous, one hundred and twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size and taped together. The roll was typed single-spaced, without margins or paragraph breaks. Contrary to rumor, Kerouac said he used no stimulants during the brief but productive writing session, other than coffee." (Wikipedia)
The first-ever blogroll? These days he’d do it on the Internet. Apparently the original roll is now owned by someone who paid just over 2 million dollars for it. Food for thought. Especially when you recall that Jack died of cirrhosis after becoming a recluse in order to escape from the nightmare of celebrity.
Apparently Jack managed to meet and have conversations about Zen with Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki. Who are the modern-day Watts and Suzukis?
I need to get around to pulling together all my notebooks from my own hitchhiking days - with V in Europe, starting in ’68. 40 years ago, and a lot of water under the bridge.
After that I should bring together all my memories (including my notebooks, my photos and super 8 movies) of the epic trans-Africa trip in ’73. That would include the part where we drove in the VW microbus, B and P and me, and my friend J (as far as Nairobi), in our brilliant little 2-wheel drive camper van, all the way from Malawi to northern Nigeria, via Kenya and the Indian Ocean, and via Serengeti along with the wildebeest migration, and via the jungles and mud of Zaire in the rainy season . . . and it should take in the bit where I hitchhiked with B, after we’d sold the VW in Kano, up through the Sahara (and back again to Niamey via Tamanrasset so B could get a visa for Algeria) and back through Europe in the rainy season, the bloody freezing cold season, to England, just in time for Christmas.
Here's a coincidence - my mum remembering just the other day our house in Foxford, and B - funny freaky hippy little B - washing her hair in the kitchen sink. Mum still thinks about that, still smiles about that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When does the past begin, or - when does it end? Or when did it? Maybe there was no such thing as the past? Maybe there’s only ever the present? And should he even care about the future? Was there even a ‘he’ who should care about anything?
Obviously he was several he’s. Some of the he’s cared about a lot of things, and some of the he’s cared about nothing at all.
What was it Dylan said about caring? “I used to care, but things have changed.” Now there’s a guy who always knew stuff, who people turned to when they were looking for stuff, who always claimed he knew nothing. He knew nothing, and he knew everything. He knew so much that he knew he knew nothing.
But you know there will always be a part of him that cares passionately about lots of things.
The truth was that he knew better than to believe he was a simple entity, a single ego with simple truths pertaining to who he was and who he’d like to be.
Zen, for instance, knows that we change from moment to moment, and all we can really aspire to is knowing from moment to moment what we think we think, and what we really know that we know, and what we feel about what we think or what we know.
And whilst we ought to really care about what we are, and what we think and feel, and what we do and how we act - ultimately none of it really matters anyway. Our poor little egos are like atoms in the fabric of the universe. Individually they don’t matter a jot. But collectively they mean everything. Life is really that complicated, and that simple.
We’re all actors here. We may have our different methods, but we understand our ‘characters’, or we think we do, and we act accordingly. Even if we’re just improvising, or if we’re just working from sub-conscious mini-scripts - as they say in transactional analysis-speak. We’re still just actors really. Zen says that enlightenment consists in part of becoming spontaneous and authentic. How many people really feel they can afford to live that way?
I was reading the other day about how scientists have proved that atoms can be in two places at the same time. Atomic and sub-atomic. Macro and micro. Galaxies and solar systems. Suns, planets, molecules, atoms, electrons, neutrons, photons.
What the fuck are photons? Apparently "the photon differs from many other elementary particles, such as the electron and the quark, in that it has zero rest mass". Which as far as I can see means that it doesn’t exist. You should see what it says in Wikipedia about photons. Read it, blow your mind, and realise that you, if you’re a non-scientist in this instance, really do know fuck all. It’s really very humbling.
We are what we are. And then again, we’re never what we think we are, except in parts, for some of the time. Why worry about any of it?
Zen says empty your mind and allow wisdom to enter. Zen says there really is no such thing as mind. Zen says meditate, don’t worry, be ‘mindful’ of the now, because that’s all there is, really. Be spontaneous, be original, be yourself. Only there is no self, really. We’re all one, all part of everything. I can’t be part of anything without you. And without you I’m nothing. Without one another we can never be anything.
In fact, if we can only forget ourselves, and stop worrying about ourselves, and start caring for other people, then we can start to live properly. Zen, and Jesus, and all spiritual intelligences know that loving others - doing good things for others - is the best thing we can possibly do for ourselves. That’s just the way it works. This is the bodhisattva principle. That way lies the possibility of true happiness, or enlightenment, or a life well lived. Things fall apart when all we care about is ourselves. Love (though not self-love) is the magnetism and the gravity of the universe.
Mind you, we have to take care of ourselves if we’re going to be able to care for others effectively. This is another paradox. But taking care of ourselves is not the same as loving ourselves. We should be humble enough, and egoless enough, to neither love nor hate ourselves. Our many selves.
How to take proper care of ourselves is a very big topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Leonard-Cohen/There-Is-A-War.html
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/thingshave.html
http://www.bobdylan.com/moderntimes/home/main.html
It didn’t matter. There were a thousand starting points, and a thousand possible strands. And in the end they would all converge. They would all meet up and interweave; they would layer and inter-twine, and they would become like a fabric or a palimpsest of sense and maybe some nonsense.
Like a painter he could start with the yellow or the red, or the green. So what was red in his life right now? What was green? What was yellow? And what was blue? Deepest, darkest blue?
Somehow or other he’d end up with a painting, and if he didn’t like the look of it, he’d paint something different right on top of the first painting, and carry on adding until he had something worthwhile, something he felt good about. He might end up with a painting that was several paintings right on top of one another. Only he would know what was beneath the surface.
These days he had problems with remembering. Some days he tried to remember who he was, and who he thought he should be. On the whole he’d made up his mind not to worry too much about what other people thought he was, since they themselves were usually pretty confused, and often didn’t have a clue. Either about him, or about themselves.
He thought he needn’t mind too much about remembering what he used to be, since he now had the freedom to be whatever he’d like to be. Maybe he’d always had that freedom. Maybe he’d had it, and somehow lost it. Maybe he’d got carried away by his mission and his cause, and got stuck for too long in his combat, and his fatigue.
But that was then, and this is now. There had been battles won, and battles lost, and a strategic retreat. At least he was still in the war. He was now living underground: part bohemian and part guerrilla. At least he still had his sanity and he still gave a fuck.
There is a war between the rich and poor,
A war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war
And the ones who say there isn't.
There is a war between the left and right,
A war between the black and white,
A war between the odd and the even.
Why don't you come on back to the war - pick up your tiny burden?
Why don't you come on back to the war? - let's all get even.
Why don't you come on back to the war, can't you hear me speaking?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’ve loved those lyrics (and that song - There Is A War) since I first heard them in Y & J’s flat in Manhattan in 1975. Leonard Cohen at his most brilliant. Who By Fire is on the same album - another brilliant song; incredible poetry. That was the summer of hitch-hiking around the States and Canada, my swansong, my last ever summer of being on the road, being a hitchhiker. My final fling at being Jack Kerouac, Dean Moriarty, Sal Paradise, Neal Cassady.
"On the Road was written in three weeks, while Kerouac lived with Joan Haverty, his second wife, at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan. Kerouac typed the manuscript on what he called "the roll": a continuous, one hundred and twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size and taped together. The roll was typed single-spaced, without margins or paragraph breaks. Contrary to rumor, Kerouac said he used no stimulants during the brief but productive writing session, other than coffee." (Wikipedia)
The first-ever blogroll? These days he’d do it on the Internet. Apparently the original roll is now owned by someone who paid just over 2 million dollars for it. Food for thought. Especially when you recall that Jack died of cirrhosis after becoming a recluse in order to escape from the nightmare of celebrity.
Apparently Jack managed to meet and have conversations about Zen with Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki. Who are the modern-day Watts and Suzukis?
I need to get around to pulling together all my notebooks from my own hitchhiking days - with V in Europe, starting in ’68. 40 years ago, and a lot of water under the bridge.
After that I should bring together all my memories (including my notebooks, my photos and super 8 movies) of the epic trans-Africa trip in ’73. That would include the part where we drove in the VW microbus, B and P and me, and my friend J (as far as Nairobi), in our brilliant little 2-wheel drive camper van, all the way from Malawi to northern Nigeria, via Kenya and the Indian Ocean, and via Serengeti along with the wildebeest migration, and via the jungles and mud of Zaire in the rainy season . . . and it should take in the bit where I hitchhiked with B, after we’d sold the VW in Kano, up through the Sahara (and back again to Niamey via Tamanrasset so B could get a visa for Algeria) and back through Europe in the rainy season, the bloody freezing cold season, to England, just in time for Christmas.
Here's a coincidence - my mum remembering just the other day our house in Foxford, and B - funny freaky hippy little B - washing her hair in the kitchen sink. Mum still thinks about that, still smiles about that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When does the past begin, or - when does it end? Or when did it? Maybe there was no such thing as the past? Maybe there’s only ever the present? And should he even care about the future? Was there even a ‘he’ who should care about anything?
Obviously he was several he’s. Some of the he’s cared about a lot of things, and some of the he’s cared about nothing at all.
What was it Dylan said about caring? “I used to care, but things have changed.” Now there’s a guy who always knew stuff, who people turned to when they were looking for stuff, who always claimed he knew nothing. He knew nothing, and he knew everything. He knew so much that he knew he knew nothing.
But you know there will always be a part of him that cares passionately about lots of things.
The truth was that he knew better than to believe he was a simple entity, a single ego with simple truths pertaining to who he was and who he’d like to be.
Zen, for instance, knows that we change from moment to moment, and all we can really aspire to is knowing from moment to moment what we think we think, and what we really know that we know, and what we feel about what we think or what we know.
And whilst we ought to really care about what we are, and what we think and feel, and what we do and how we act - ultimately none of it really matters anyway. Our poor little egos are like atoms in the fabric of the universe. Individually they don’t matter a jot. But collectively they mean everything. Life is really that complicated, and that simple.
We’re all actors here. We may have our different methods, but we understand our ‘characters’, or we think we do, and we act accordingly. Even if we’re just improvising, or if we’re just working from sub-conscious mini-scripts - as they say in transactional analysis-speak. We’re still just actors really. Zen says that enlightenment consists in part of becoming spontaneous and authentic. How many people really feel they can afford to live that way?
I was reading the other day about how scientists have proved that atoms can be in two places at the same time. Atomic and sub-atomic. Macro and micro. Galaxies and solar systems. Suns, planets, molecules, atoms, electrons, neutrons, photons.
What the fuck are photons? Apparently "the photon differs from many other elementary particles, such as the electron and the quark, in that it has zero rest mass". Which as far as I can see means that it doesn’t exist. You should see what it says in Wikipedia about photons. Read it, blow your mind, and realise that you, if you’re a non-scientist in this instance, really do know fuck all. It’s really very humbling.
We are what we are. And then again, we’re never what we think we are, except in parts, for some of the time. Why worry about any of it?
Zen says empty your mind and allow wisdom to enter. Zen says there really is no such thing as mind. Zen says meditate, don’t worry, be ‘mindful’ of the now, because that’s all there is, really. Be spontaneous, be original, be yourself. Only there is no self, really. We’re all one, all part of everything. I can’t be part of anything without you. And without you I’m nothing. Without one another we can never be anything.
In fact, if we can only forget ourselves, and stop worrying about ourselves, and start caring for other people, then we can start to live properly. Zen, and Jesus, and all spiritual intelligences know that loving others - doing good things for others - is the best thing we can possibly do for ourselves. That’s just the way it works. This is the bodhisattva principle. That way lies the possibility of true happiness, or enlightenment, or a life well lived. Things fall apart when all we care about is ourselves. Love (though not self-love) is the magnetism and the gravity of the universe.
Mind you, we have to take care of ourselves if we’re going to be able to care for others effectively. This is another paradox. But taking care of ourselves is not the same as loving ourselves. We should be humble enough, and egoless enough, to neither love nor hate ourselves. Our many selves.
How to take proper care of ourselves is a very big topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Road
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Leonard-Cohen/There-Is-A-War.html
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/thingshave.html
http://www.bobdylan.com/moderntimes/home/main.html
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