Italian Alps #6: Winter Arrives

 The first snow.  Although the video was posted a couple of weeks ago, on December 17th, he states that it is actually November 29th, which for that location and altitude makes more sense for the season's first snowfall.

He's starting to think ahead a little, planning on getting more wood stored up at his cabins before he knocks off for the winter.  The winter snows probably won't entirely melt off until late April, or even May, and he'd like to come back and get started on some of the interior work in late February, early March.

He's working in this episode in a lower room, which gives me the creeps.  I've had to spend too much of my life in dimly lit basements, either to work or to live, and it's like being interred in the earth before your time.  I hate it.

But then he steps outside and the view is so majestic, stunning, and inspiring that I can see that whatever he might have to do, it's worth his while and time well spent.

And so....

Italian Alps #5

In this episode our friend describes the evolving thought process that brought him to this location.  He actually bought a camper a year prior and went looking around Spain, Italy and Switzerland in order to locate the right site.  There were almost too many choices.  It's interesting how the process of looking at different properties helped him determine what exactly it was that he was looking for.

What I like about this guy is that he's committed to the process.  He doesn't fight it; he accepts its parameters and works with it rather than against it.  No haste.  He appreciates what the different sites offer, but also doesn't ignore red flags or potential problems.  He allows the search to help define what he wants.  He's zeroing in.  Interesting to hear his thinking and how it slowly evolved.  The monetary considerations.  In the end, he spent slightly less than $30,000 in US dollars.  Amazing.  He's savvy in his thinking.

A little shorter video, then.

Italian Alps #4

Firewood. I know it has to be done but I hate to see a tree cut down.  Beautiful beings who aerate our planet, with whom we exchange breath, our very source of life.  The utilitarian mindset of man since the early neolithic.  We lost our ability to be acutely in tune and in touch with the world around us when we became settled and sedentary.

But I think there's an ebb and a flow to all this.  I believe we've developed civilizations many a time, only to lose them again when they've outlived their purposes.  As I used to tell one of my brothers-in-law, an avid hunter and fisherman, "Don't worry, Don -- in twenty thousand years we'll all be living in caves and tanning hides again."

In this video, even our host has fallen prey to speeding up his film!  As though the tempered pace of labor was not a thing of beauty in itself.  That's something you learn on a farm.  Imagined short-cuts and rushing through a job usually lead to having to do it all over again, more carefully this time.  He's momentarily forgotten that in a job well done, the reward is as much in the doing as in the finished product.  The door looks lovely but I would have preferred to have seen this done in real time.

Fortunately, his eminently sane neighbor has saved the day and invited him in out of the rain and cold.  Johannes has been there six years at this point, I believe, and has some valuable information to pass on.  I love that they chat about simple, mundane things.  But then we glimpse Johannes' little wooden chapel, which is absolutely gorgeous.  The wood is luminous.  Something in the iconography is hidden in the far reaches of my mind -- not from this lifetime, thankfully!  I have enough personal baggage without having to carry an entire tradition on my back as well.  I love having the freedom to fashion my own beliefs as I see fit.

His solar panels survived the autumn/winter winds.  I wondered when he was setting them up how they'd fare once the wind began to blow.  I'm happy to see our friend at the end of the video, ruminating on the inspiration of living in such a vivid natural setting.  And so...

Ludmilla Reifschneider

In the fall of 1979, I was at loose ends.  Gainfully employed but without a place to live, I was bouncing around from friends' floors to couches, to cots in basements, and wondering when this would end, when one evening someone I knew handed me a little ad for a room that they'd cut out of the University of Washington student newspaper.  "I thought of you when I saw this," the person said to me.  So, a few days later I called on it and drove over to the house, which was in the Ravenna district of Seattle, a mile or so north of the UW campus.

As I pulled up in front of the house, a strange sensation of recognition came over me.  Though I'd never been there before, there was something familiar about the house.  That's a sense of intuition that used to operate more strongly in me, so I took note of the feeling.

I knocked on the door and when it opened, beaming up at me out of a wheelchair with a thousand watt smile was an 89 year old Ukrainian/German immigrant, as I was later to learn.  She invited me into the kitchen for a chat.  After only five minutes, she asked if I wanted the room.  I wasn't sure, so we continued talking.  A few minutes later I suddenly blurted out, "Yes, I would like the room."  My host then told me she had interviewed 28 different people but when she opened the door and saw me, she knew I was "the one."  This mattered because the room in question was the only one adjoining hers, so the rapport was crucial.  Such was my introduction to a new, or an old, friend named Ludmilla Reifschneider.

Ludmilla, or Mrs. Reifschneider, as I came to call her, was born in the region of Bessarabia, which is located around Odessa, situated between the Ukraine and Romania.  I quickly discovered that when Mrs. R (as I will now refer to her), who spoke only broken English, would speak a fragmented sentence of pidgin English, I would somehow get the entire thought behind what she had said, and I would respond to the larger thought that I was perceiving.  Mrs. R's eyes lit up when she realized this and we shortly thereafter began a series of long three-to-four hour discussions, which covered her early life, our mutual philosophical speculations, and the history of her adult life.  You won't find another like it.

So what I intend to do is recount Ludmilla's life, as I remember her telling it to me.

She was born to a country parson and wife.  As she told me, at the time there was the tradition of "holy men" still active in Russian/Ukrainian life and there were pictures on the walls of her family home of holy men who lived in various locales around the larger area of Russia.

As her mother told her, one day when she was working in the kitchen, she heard her husband, Ludmilla's father, talking to someone in the living room.  Due to the layout of the house, Ludmilla's mother couldn't see to whom her husband was speaking.  After about an hour, it occurred to her mother that she was only hearing her husband's voice and no other, so she peeked around the corner. He was alone.

When she asked him to whom he had been speaking, he pointed to one of the "holy men" pictures on the wall and stated that this saintly figure had just paid him a visit and told him many things which he couldn't repeat, but he had been told to wrap up his worldly affairs, as he was going to die in three days. And so it happened.

Later, when Ludmilla was nineteen and, I believe, pursuing an education preparing her to teach, she fell in love with a brilliant seventeen year old student at college.  The love was mutual and they married, later having two children, a son and a daughter.  It was clear that this was a passionate love, as Mrs. R told me.  But, alas, her husband, brilliant as he might be, was prone to drink and when he did, would bring ladies of the night home, in order to "save them."

I asked Mrs. R why she put up with this behavior.  She said, "When you truly love someone, you forgive them everything."  I'm not sure that would fly today, but this is how she felt then.

Four different times in Ludmilla's life, she lost everything she owned.  The first time was during the Russian Revolution.  As she recounted it to me, they were all asleep at their house in the country when a man pounded on their door in the middle of the night, telling them all the houses were being put to flame, and that they must join him immediately in his wagon if they wanted to live.  They did, and their home and everything in it was burned to the ground.

Somehow, they survived, her husband found employment, and life carried on.  Mrs. R told me that as long as Lenin was alive, everything worked.  However, the next tragedy occurred -- Ludmilla's husband died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 37.  That meant Ludmilla would have been 39, with two children.  As she had steadfastly refused to join the Communist Party, finding employment of her own was a dicey proposition.  However, a friend was able to procure her a job in a kindergarten, but it would involve a move to another region of the country.  So, for the second time, Ludmilla left behind everything that she owned and moved there.

I forgot a story.  I'm not sure exactly where it fits in, except that it must have been during the Revolution.  As I recall, the two armies were referred to as the White and the Red.  A fleeing officer from one of those two armies -- I forget which -- knocked on her door and begged to be hidden.  She quickly took him in and duly hid him in her house.  When the soldiers of the opposing force came to search her house, they threatened to kill the family if he was found there and although they searched the premises thoroughly, they did not discover the hidden officer, who then escaped.

I asked Mrs. R how she could withstand the danger and emotional tension of such a situation.  She said she always felt in her life that God was at her back, and that she was not alone, and that allowed her to be strong.  In fact, I remember now that she was always adjuring me to "be strong!"

As life went on, and time rolled into the 1930s, Ludmilla entertained some courters.  She showed me a picture of herself, maybe around the age of 29, and she was an attractive woman, but one whose strength of character was evident in her countenance.

There was one German man who kept pursuing her.  Ludmilla, who was a redhead, couldn't seem to get rid of him.  This man had been sleeping with any redheaded woman he could, purporting to search out whether the hair on their head was dyed or not.  I'll leave it to you to figure out how he determined this.  Ludmilla was not impressed.

However, three nights running, Ludmilla had a dream in which her first husband appeared to her and told her she must marry this man, as he would become the best friend she would ever have in life.  Ludmilla recounted these dreams to her mother, then still living, who told her that because the dream had happened three times, she must obey it as an omen from Spirit.  And Ludmilla, when telling me this story, told me that although she passionately loved her first husband, her second husband became the best friend of her life and, if she had to choose which to be with when she died, she would choose her second husband.  Even though, as she told me with a twinkle in her eye, he was a lousy lover.

But then WWII broke out and here Ludmilla was, married to a German man, in Russia, in the middle of the war.  The two of them fled then, from Russia to Germany, and she had to leave her children, who were older, behind, as well as everything she owned, of course.

And thus she spent the balance of WWII living as a Russian woman married to a German man, in Germany, in fear every moment that her slight accent might give her away.

One night in the middle of the war, Ludmilla awakened to a brilliant apparition of the Virgin Mary hovering over the foot of her bed.  Mary told her that all would be well and that she and her husband would survive the war.  Her husband awakened while Ludmilla was in the middle of this conversation, perceived something of the light in the room, and after Ludmilla told him what had happened, they both got down on their knees and prayed in thankfulness.

Appropos of nothing, I recall Mrs. R telling me that she had the talent of reading cards and foretelling people's futures, but stopped this at some point.  I also recall her telling me of picking mushrooms in the forest to survive and once finding a completely moldy piece of bread which had dropped behind the stove.  She ate it.

After the war ended, and the partition of Germany occurred, as fate would have it, Ludmilla and her husband found themselves in East Germany.  Life was still hard.  They applied to emigrate to America and the day came for their interview.  Her husband went in first and so enraged the immigration official that Ludmilla rushed in, smoothed the situation over, and they were allowed to emigrate.  I think this was in 1950, perhaps later.  And for the fourth time in her life, Ludmilla Reifschneider left behind all her worldly possessions.

They were sponsored by a church in Seattle.  Although her husband was an engineer, and she also had a university education, they spoke no English.  So they became the live-in janitors for the church.  They scrimped and saved all their earnings.  One day, Ludmilla saw a particular house for sale.  She realized that due to its proximity to the University of Washington campus, and the rabbit warren of rooms in the house -- I forget how many rooms it had but I seem to remember rooms on three floors and bathrooms both upstairs and in the basement -- at any rate, Ludmilla realized this house would be their support in life.

Unfortunately, Ludmilla's husband was opposed to the purchase.  For the first time in their life together, Ludmilla stood up against her husband and insisted that they buy the house.  He became so angry -- "red-faced," as she told me -- that he was impotent ever after.  Again, with a twinkle, she told me it was no great loss, and the house became their home, and it was exactly as she had pictured it -- the never-ending stream of students paid for most of their expenses for the rest of their lives.

Her husband had died some years before I arrived on the scene.  But somehow, after arriving in America, Ludmilla discovered that both of her children had survived the war and were living in the Soviet Union.  Because she was in America and the Cold War was on in full force, Ludmilla posed as her children's aunt and began 25 years or more of sending material things to them.  She knew all her letters would be read, originating in the USA, so this ruse continued until at last travel to the Soviet Union was allowed in the mid-Seventies.  Ludmilla travelled as the "aunt" and was able to meet with both of her children.  I recall her saying how they whispered within their own apartment when they spoke with her, for fear of being found out.

And it was one of my regular chores to go to stores and purchase whatever Mrs. R wanted me to get, and then it would be boxed up and shipped to the Soviet Union.

Although I stayed in the room less than a year, the friendship endured.  A few salient characteristics of Mrs. R -- she believed in reincarnation.  In fact, she told me she knew me from before.  She thought it possible that I might have been her brother.  Strange to say, around the same time I gave a popular musician a ride up to Vancouver, Canada, to do a show (I had produced a concert for him in Seattle), and he told me that I had a strange earthy wisdom about "the body" and I reminded him of a Russian peasant.  As I believe we all live countless lives, and we encounter one another over and over, in different roles and guises, I had no problem sharing Mrs. R's point of view.

She had jokingly told me that when she died, she would appear to me in a dream.  But she still wanted to live.  Finally, in the spring of 1984, after a long stay in the hospital, she told me she no longer wanted to live and died shortly thereafter.

And sure enough, one night that summer, in the middle of a dream the phone rang, and a voice began to speak to me.  Guess who it was?!    All the hair on my neck and arms stood up at once, but bless her heart, my friend Mrs. R had kept her promise.  I should have known she would.  

Italian Alps #3

 In thinking a little more about this fellow and his project up in the Alps, what stands out to me is the pleasure he takes in his work.  He's in no rush, he's not anxious about time, he doesn't get upset -- he really is just enjoying the process.  I don't know a lot of people who work in this way.  Usually, people are so focused on the end result that they rush through what they're doing.  Like the people who speed climb -- almost a kind of jock mentality.

This guy's the antithesis of that.  He's efficient but he's not rushing.  He actually enjoys the process.  Now, why should that mentality be so foreign?  I really can't think of anyone I've ever worked with who had this approach.  Maybe part of why I've sought it in other ways, through other cultures and other times.  Nice to see a current, contemporary example of it.  I wonder if it's more of a European mindset?

Anyway, here's the third installment.

Italian Alps #2

The not very glamorous work of cleaning up, digging ditches, cutting back, sweeping, fitting a new door on his rock "house" -- there's a Zen element of "chopping wood, carrying water" to all this.  Funny, how birch loves to come back into an open space. 

It's kind of fun to watch him puttering about, meeting with a surveyor (really a building engineer), having lunch with the priest who lives around the side of the mountain.  Now, if he just starts writing "mountain and river" poetry up there, he'll remind me of all those ancient Chinese hermit/poets I love so much.

The priest is a little like those old guys.  I like him.  A good, knowledgeable neighbor to have -- an ally.  Looks like he's been chopping quite a bit of wood himself.  What a great way to live.  Love all the horticultural info.  I'm not a big fan of horse radish or rhubarb, but I'd eat the berries.

The priest is from Austria; the originator of this video from the Netherlands, I gather.  More anon.

In the Italian Alps

I'm rarely envious of anyone but I would genuinely like to trade places with this guy.  Failing that, let's just say that I admire him and his grand idea.

 

Hozier Medley

Simple, unassuming, somewhat offbeat and whimsical.  But melodic.

 

Roslyn

This song briefly alleviated the annual melancholy of being a thousand miles away from everyone that I love and care about for the holidays yet once again.  Lest I slip too far down that slippery slope, look what happens -- someone comes along and makes something beautiful like this.  

Looks like a blustery cold evening, doesn't it?  These indistinct people, whoever they might be, have no right to be playing their guitars so melodiously and singing a siren song that's blowing away on a wing and a prayer.  

For a moment, I thought this was an example of people steeling their spirit to these dark days but then I realized this was recorded three days before the world shut down, 3-9-2020.  May such beauty prevail against all odds.

I love the fact that I can't really see them.  We are all just ciphers -- and are fortunate if the beauty happens to come through us for a moment.  We can only give it our singular expression, but nobody owns it in a personal sense.  Rather, it is who we really are, back behind the facade we so faithfully present to the world.

 

Perry Leopold 1970

 I had never heard of Perry Leopold back in 1970.  In fact, it was only a few years ago when I stumbled upon this song, "The Absurd Paranoid," which hailed from an equally obscure album, "Experiments in Metaphysics."  Apparently this fellow paid to have 300 copies of his album printed in 1970 and then proceeded to give them away on a street corner in either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, I forget which.

If you want to know what the Sixties were like, that action, taken in June of 1970, perfectly exemplifies the addled mindset of the time.  I recall that at the Isle of Wight Festival, held in September of that year, concert goers rioted over the fact that they had to pay to get in to the festivities.  "Music should be free!" was the refrain.  They tore down the fences and knifed a security guard.  Hard to hold the moral high ground when you behave like that.

Anyway, there's something sort of cosmic about this song, which is why I'm including it.  Also, the style of guitar playing reminds me of Robbie Basho, who was riding a bit high at the time, and I wonder if Perry Leopold had been listening to Basho's early albums.

So, another splash of color in my pastiche of 1970.

Atif Aslam, Coke Studio

This is from back in the day when Atif Aslam was still a bit of a rogue.  He's since straightened up, alas, looks sharp and very orthodox.  But I liked him better as a rogue.

 Anyway, the guy can really sing.  This is another song produced by Rohail Hyatt for Coke Studio long ago -- 12 years.  Does anybody remember who, what, or where they were twelve years ago?

The song walks that fine line between sacred and secular love, a false division anyway.  When Aslam hits the note for the word "Beloved" 2 minutes and 30 seconds in, listen for how long he holds that note -- it's my favorite part of the entire song -- but it's interesting throughout.  This is just a little more of a glimpse into the culture of Pakistan, which I confess, I really know nothing about.  We're learning together.  Hit the "closed captioning" for the English translation and then, enjoy.

Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities

 I first discovered Shahzia Sikander's art perhaps a dozen years ago and was immediately drawn in by the vivid, sensual, visionary yet critical material that she generated.  I've recently purchased the book produced in concert with this exhibition, "Extraordinary Realities," which recently ended at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.  Shahzia, who originally hails from Lahore, Pakistan, lives now in NYC.  

After I've perused the volume in question, I hope to have more to say about this artist, her perspective, and her fascinating work.  This is a continuation of my purview of artists who herald from Pakistan, and is a variation upon the larger theme of how we conceptualize our sense of identity.

The Logic of Prayer

I lost my temper at a co-worker on Friday.  It only lasted a moment, but a moment is enough to do a fair amount of damage.   Who was right or who was wrong doesn't matter: in fact, neither of us was right and neither of us was wrong.  We just disagreed at a particular moment about what to do.  Nothing too terrible about that, right?  Except for the emotional stridency and rigidity I felt at that moment, and to which I exposed my co-worker.

Fortunately, the other person is a "big" person and when things calmed down a bit we talked it through.  I apologized profusely, probably too profusely.  And shortly thereafter, I found myself thinking about a prayer.

There's a prayer I repeat every morning -- one of three -- called "The Prayer of Repentance," dictated by the spiritual master Meher Baba.  I don't know for how long I've been saying this prayer daily -- 30-some-odd years or so.  To quote another afficiando of this prayer, "It covers just about everything that I might get up to in a day."  It's repentance in advance, you might say.

The basis of the prayer is very old: it's the ancient Zoroastrian tenet, "Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds."  According to a Zoroastrian gentleman with whom I spoke in India, or "Parsi" as these folk are known there, the faith is about 7,000 years old.  When I mentioned to him that scholars were confused about when Zoroaster actually lived, and sometimes place him between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago, the Parsi gentleman told me a fascinating tidbit of oral history from his own tradition.  He said that when Abraham -- yes, that Abraham -- was present on earth, the Zoroastrians of the time recognized him as their prophet returned, and insisted upon calling him by the name Zoroaster, hence the confusion.  The historical Abraham lived, I believe, about 3,800 years ago.

Anyway, the prayer in question, which I'm not going to quote, continually weaves the thread of thought, word, and deed, changing the order so that sometimes it's deed, word, and thought, or word, thought, and deed.  I always find it interesting when reciting it to notice this re-ordering of the words and wonder at what Meher Baba was up to when he chose to weave it in this way.

Not long before the incident last week, I had stumbled upon a snippet of a prayer in a movie, which I presume to be from the Quran, which went something like, "For we have not thought as we ought to have thought, and we have not spoken as we ought to have spoken, and we have not acted as we ought to have acted," or something like that.  But it immediately struck me as very similar to the prayer I happen to say.  I asked my co-worker, whose heritage is Arabic, if the prayer was of Quranic origin and she stated that it was.  And then she started searching for a prayer on her phone.  I thought it was the one in question, but instead she came up with something surprising.  It is attributed to Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi.

Now before I quote this prayer, I'd just like to mention the difference that exists between our usual logical rationale, and the intuitive logic of the spirit.  They are two very different things.  Gandhi was obviously a political genius, and someone who had spiritual aspirations as well.  I find in the realm of spirituality or philosophical thought, that Gandhi's intuitive logic, if I may call it that, is impeccable.  All that I've said to this point is merely an introduction to the spiritual logic of Gandhi, which he gleaned from his own life and his own intent spiritual studies.  Here goes, as quoted by my friend and co-worker:

"Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.  Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.  Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits.  Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.  Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny."

Amen, Amin, and Ommmm.  So be it.

Addendum to Despair

I used the phrase "spiritual despair" in my last post and in past posts as well, but I'm unhappy with the phrase.  I think it paints an inaccurate picture.  Spiritual despair sounds like hopelessness, which is not the feeling I'm attempting to portray.  It might be more accurate to call it "spiritual unrest."  I'm trying to describe a feeling whereby one perceives, through a sensibility that is not entirely conscious, that things are not as they should be, if all were well.  Now, this can be a personal perception but it can also be a sense of the culture in which one is rooted, or even the world at large.  In this case, I actually mean all of the above, because I believe this unrest, this discontent, is rife and covers every level of life, from top to bottom, from the external to the internal.

At odd moments in my life, things have seemed to miraculously align, and I've had the strangest sensation that I am walking along a thin beam of light.  It only lasts for mere hours, or a couple of days at most, because the least wayward or inauthentic thought or feeling wipes one off that path.  This is, of course, an entirely internal and subjective experience.  Be that as it may, it perhaps offers a useful contrast to the sense of being out of alignment, which is more common, or certainly out of step with a culture or a world that both seem quite mad.

Though I am concerned with the world at large and hope to address many of the broad issues over the next year or two, through focusing on various writers, artists, or thinkers, all of this seems a house of cards if one hasn't taken care of one's own internal house, first and foremost.

Anyway, I wanted to address the use of the aforementioned phrase because I'm not happy with it and feel it gives a false impression.  I do not feel hopeless.  Angry at times, frustrated at others, but primarily, I feel determined to push on and walk the path I intend to walk, come hell or high water.  So be it.

Addicted to Hope

 Here's another film produced by Green Renaissance, "Addicted to Hope." The fellow in this film seems to have figured life out for himself.  I like that his name is never mentioned.  It's simply what he's learned and how he lives.  It gave me pause for thought, the distinction he makes between happiness and meaning. In my own life, I've not sought happiness so much as meaning. 

 The "pursuit of happiness" has always been a carrot on a stick.  We in the West have unconsciously believed -- an unexamined belief -- that happiness is the result of the fulfillment of our desires.  What a small, childish, selfish definition of happiness that is. 

As long as we think in strictly personal terms -- "I want my own happiness!" -- we will be striving towards a goal which will forever elude us.  And rightfully so.  We're fortunate if it eludes us.  Why?  Because then there is still the hope that we might find a deeper meaning than our own mere happiness.  The selfish pursuit of happiness implies that life is a competition.  It isn't.  Competition is something to be outgrown.  Cooperation is the way into the future.

In terms of helping people, as the protagonist of this little film suggests, I think it's important to remember that we aren't obliging anyone by lending a helping hand.  We're all just folks, struggling together, rather than against one another. 

The fact is, you can only truly help another person if you don't want anything from them.  Your actions will only really support their independence of thought and action if there are no strings attached.  As long you're still holding onto the idea of getting something in return, you're only involved in a transaction of selfishness.  Tit for tat.  While reciprocity is crucial in human relationship, calculation isn't.  If you're a calculating person, I don't want to know you.

However, if you're able to rise above that tendency and you aspire to be of some use to others, then you begin to enter the realm of impersonal love.  It's a case of expanding your sphere of interest until it is so wide, it collapses upon itself and your concern for others undoes your exclusive concern for yourself.  

Sometimes we need to hold people accountable.  But the first person you must hold accountable is yourself.  As our protagonist points out, we have no control over the circumstances into which we're born.  Perhaps they were tragic; you may have suffered mightily.  I don't mean to minimize that.

Although the damage is real, it need not define you forever.  Healing is always a possibility but it entails vulnerability, trust, integrity of purpose and intent upon your part. And real courage. The rewards, however, are immense. You fully join the panoply of life. And you can rewrite the part you play.

If you hold onto and honor the ideals that light the core of your own heart, then you have a light to offer another. Not everyone wants the light. Some prefer the dark. Leave them be.  It helped me to hear our protagonist remind us not to judge the way others have carried their own heavy load. 

Choice is our defining characteristic, our lever of Archimedes. I've made mine; you will make yours.  Life is not yet over.  That means there is still hope for meaningful action. And that's reason enough to go on.

A Few Light Ruminations

I've been thinking about the videos I posted regarding the gravitational curvature of space and the rippling of gravitational waves.  Physicists speak about it as a curvature or ripple in the "fabric" of space.  Okay, that's a quaint phrase -- the "fabric of space."  If space can curve, what is it that is curving?  If space can ripple, what is it that's rippling?  What exactly is that "fabric?"  Because as far as I can determine, physics has only inferred the "fabric" of space.  Of what is this fabric comprised?  A "fabric" has to BE something, right?  Surely some scientist has posed this question, but if they have, I've yet to encounter it.

Could it be possible that dark matter and dark energy are somehow the "fabric" of space?  Here I'm out of my depth, because I can't conceive in any three dimensional way what dark matter might be.  Again, we've deduced that dark matter exists, yet we can't actually perceive it.  It's a supposition, albeit one supported by tests and, presumably, mathematics.

The theoretical physicist David Bohm posited something he called "the implicate universe."  In effect, the implicate universe gives rise to the actual, physical universe.  Now, this is not a new idea -- esoteric systems of thought embedded within Sufism and Vedanta talk about the "subtle universe," a realm made of subtle energies, subtle matter, and templates, that subsequently give rise to the physical, or gross, universe of perceptible matter.

But perception itself is a tricky issue.  We're confined to a universe perceivable to our physical senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing.  As we've learned thoroughly in the past 125 years, most of what exists is outside our range of perception.  That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist; it simply means that it isn't perceptible within the primitive range of our organs of sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch.

With subatomic physics and quantum realities, we've apparently reached the limit -- for the moment -- of our perceptual capacities, or our ability to infer the existence of things we cannot perceive in any knowable manner.  When dealing with subatomic "particles" -- a term which is a misnomer in itself -- we're only talking about probabilities.  We can only say what the probability is that something may be in a particular location.  And we approach the conundrum that what we're looking for at the subatomic level is only perceivable, and only seems to exist, when we look for it.  The looking fixes it, for an infinitesimal moment, in a measurable "place."  The measuring itself makes it appear to be here, rather than there.  It's wherever we look for it.  How's that for a skull-splitter?

It's possible that at this level we are dealing with the transition point, or the permeable barrier, between Bohm's so-called "implicate universe" -- or, in another nomenclature, the "subtle universe" -- and the universe we can see or measure.  In other words, where the template of subtle energy translates into and creates physical form.

Then there's the matter of time. Contemporary physicists all talk about time as though it is an existent component, or thing, in/and/of the physical universe.  Space-time, they call it, as though it were one and the same thing.  But my gut tells me this is wrong.  I have a strong intuitive sense that the perception of time is simply an illusion.  You may be able to someday "show" me space, but how can you show me "time?"  Clocks aside, we feel time pass, don't we?  Time is a matter of perception, is it not?  It's a perceptual illusion, perhaps.

I recently watched a science video wherein the narrator bemoaned that we are forever trapped in linear time, and the fleeting "now" is forever caught between the distant past and the imminent but immaterial future.  His feeling was that only memory allows us to escape the cage of the present moment.

Isn't that a strange way to think?  In terms of consciousness, instead of physics, we only ever have the present moment.  The "now" is curiously ever-existent as we seem to float upon it through the stream of living existence, all willy-nilly and beyond our control.  The stream of time, as many a philosopher has called it.

However, one of the postulations of relativity is that, with regard to time, all moments exist simultaneously.  In this conception, all of the past exists right now, equally with the present.  In the same respect, all future moments exist right now, in the present moment.  It's just that we don't have the apparatus of consciousness with which we could perceive this presumed reality.

Or do we?  If you study the history of consciousness as evident in mystical experience, what you find most often is a description that, at base, speaks of a tremendously expanded consciousness that is able to perceive in a way and in a manner far beyond our ordinary, rational 3D realm.  What if one version of expanded consciousness was that it allowed one to perceive what relativity predicts?  What if there is a state of consciousness, latent within human beings, which has the potential capacity to experience all of the past and all of the future, simultaneously.  How mind-blowing would that be?!  And yet there are some few historical figures, if you dig deep enough, who seemed to have a capacity resembling that.  Perhaps they were just the leading edge of human development, breaking the ground to which we may all someday wend?

In contemporary culture, there are certainly lots of folks who would like to have some semblance of that experience through the medium of psychotropic plants or hallucinogenic drugs.  But that's just the precocious and immature mind of present-day humanity.  You can't pretend to puberty before your body actually goes through those hormonal changes, entirely on its own schedule, not yours.  Thankfully, kids are more or less content to be kids, though the onset of puberty is happening earlier and earlier.  But what I mean to say is, these are states you can't have for the asking.  You have to have developed the psychological and, yes, spiritual maturity necessary for that state of consciousness to unfold in a natural way, just as you have to wait for your body to mature based upon its own timing.

Anyway, just some errant thoughts and a bit more recreational thinking.

Lyre Gauloise

 It's funny how the unique sound of a particular instrument is somehow characteristic of an age. For instance, I feel the guitar is the "voice" of this age -- both the acoustic and the electric, but to my mind, especially the acoustic.  

There was a time when that instrument was the lyre.  Here is a duet on the gallic lyre, and it calls to mind a haunting and bygone era.

Brian Greene, Stephen Colbert, and Gravitational Waves

Okay, more fun with science!  We just be a-floatin' on the pond of space....with the ripples rocking the boat.....aaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnd, whoops!  Out of the universe we go.  That's all, folks!

 

That Whole General Relativity Thang

A Stephen Colbert show from the fall of 2015.  If you can't stand Stephen Colbert, I understand -- he's a smart-ass.  However, this is a lively and entertaining show about a fun subject with special guest Brian Greene.

Olafur Arnalds

Another morning/sunrise song....don't ask me where he is, aside from it being somewhere in Iceland.  Love the little track built in the studio for the camera.

 

Outer Wilds medley

There's a fan base for the music of the video game, "Outer Wilds."  People delight in playing a wide variety of songs, either from the game itself or self-composed but inspired by musical themes from the game.  Here's one example wherein the musician uses every instrument in his personal collection to build the composition of this medley.

I love the fact that people are so drawn to this music in such a simple and direct way -- that it immediately makes them want to express the themes themselves.  Why is that?  There's a kind of innocence and purity to this attraction that you just don't find in the world anymore.  That's what I find so appealing about the phenomenon of this game and it's musical score.  It seems to have genuinely touched everyone who's played it.

 

Living Systems

 A few years back, I was in Graduate School in a program that went by the title,  "Cosmology and Consciousness."  It dealt with the ways in which science, be that interstellar physics or quantum mechanics, interacted with, gave evidence of, or otherwise intersected with versions of the term "consciousness."

Earlier today I went through all my notes from my graduate school classes, just revisiting what I'd studied and came across something brief I wrote about living systems.  I'm offering it here as an example, really, of the academic mindset and how opaque, arcane, and cryptic that can be.  This is the academic voice, laden with jargon.  I decided this wasn't the kind of writing that I wanted to do and the reasons are probably obvious and self-evident.  I'd rather involve my heart when I write and not just my head.  Here's "the head" part:

"A living system is a non-summitive whole whose properties cannot be predicted by the qualities of its constituent parts.  At a higher level of organization, new properties emerge which seem to be beyond the capacity of the individual component parts and were not present at lower levels of organization.  For instance, when hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce the unpredictable uniqueness of water.  Because of this, living systems cannot be understood by reductive analysis.

"A living system is a description of the relational quality of existence.  Organizational form is evidence of the functioning links and connections between systemic elements.  Living systems are adaptive; they are open to their environment and admit matter, energy, and information into their processes, metabolizing these for the sake of continued or evolving existence.

"Living systems are holonic; they are embedded or nested within larger systems.  They represent a shift from an object ontology – the idea that objects are separate, stand alone, and are unique in themselves – to a relational mode or process whereby patterns intersect and interact, creating relational vortices and vortexes.

"Closed systems, on the other hand, are in theory isolated from their environment, cannot renew or maintain themselves indefinitely and inevitably suffer entropy, the continued and continuing loss of energy, order, and organization.  The idea of closed systems is predicated upon the Cartesian, mechanistic model of existence and the universe, and is presumably subject to the second law of thermodynamics and its concomitant loss of order, energy and form.

"It can be argued that closed systems don’t really exist within nature and are simply an example of a model, idea, or paradigm whose reality is no longer supported by the present understanding of physics.  At one time, there was a distinction drawn between the fields of biological science and hard physics but the gradual acceptance of the evolutionary scheme over the course of the past 150 years has erased that distinction and apparently proven it false.  All physical form is subject to some manner of evolutionary process, it’s just that biological evolution is incredibly accelerated in comparison to, say, geological processes.  In this case, it’s interesting to note that the information from the field of living biological science was applied “backwards” to the hard, or physical, sciences.

"The fact that living systems respond to environmental changes or stresses promotes the idea that they are self-transforming and self-transcending. Paradoxically, one could also say that the whole is less than the parts, in the sense that the constituent parts have potentialities which are not always in evidence, or called forth, by the holon in which they are presently functioning.

"The understanding of living systems can also be applied to the realm of human culture and is useful in describing the internal functioning of a living cultural milieu.  Paradigms are living systems, as are the various holons which comprise the many aspects of culture and civilization. In effect, systems theory seems able to describe many different and varying levels of existence, or “reality.”  It is most likely a basic building block of the nascent, new paradigm struggling to take root in the soil of the older forms."

 

A Slight Disclaimer

In case anyone noticed, at the end of the video regarding glaciation, the speaker rattled on for several minutes about dark energy, a topic apparently covered in earlier Space Time videos.  I was listening with half an ear and even less of my brain when I heard the phrase, "...the universe behaves mechanistically..." and I immediately thought, "Oh, come on, who still thinks of the universe in that way?"  Scientists, it seems.

It's an issue for me not because I'm anti-science -- I'm not -- but the hidden assumptions in the philosophical underpinnings of the development of science in the West are another matter entirely.  Someone could write a book about that called, "Where The West Went Wrong."  The whole Cartesian/Newtonian mechanistic view of the universe may have given us a host of practical applications, but it's come at the expense of the rest of life.  At the very least, it's a foray into the heaping sands of intellectual aridity.  I cast my vote with Thomas Berry, who said the Universe is not a collection of objects so much as it's a communion of subjects.  But more on Berry's perspective of the Universe later.  I'm not ready to delve that deeply into that subject matter just yet.

Suffice it to say, for me the Universe is a vibrant, living Reality in which we participate, and I'd rather we participate consciously and conscientiously than stoop to seeing objective reality as nothing more than an intellectual plaything, or the Earth as just a set of utilitarian resources to exploit, with life and existence further debased into mere commodities to sell.  

My hope is that science becomes a yoga for the West; in other words, that it continue to delve as deeply into the mysteries of existence as is humanly possible, and becomes a medium for the discovery of the deepest truths we are capable of fathoming.  Anything less is beneath us.

Huun-Huur-Tu

 The sound of the Siberian forest in the studio at KEXP, Seattle.  Mesmerizing.  Our collective shamanic origins.

Glaciation

An interesting little video that explains in fairly simple terms the many factors that produce glaciation and thus interglacials as well.

 

Lost Hollow Lament

A cover of a composition by Robin Bullock.  I don't know the performer's full name; under this video she simply goes by her first name of Rebecca.  I actually prefer her version of this song to Bullock's original -- I feel the more relaxed tempo in which she plays better suits it.

She's just playing quietly in an unassuming manner at home, and it's the perfect song to listen to while spending a quiet Saturday afternoon at home myself.

 

Interglacials

For a couple million years the earth has been alternating between long ice ages, often tens of thousands of years long, if not longer, and shorter interglacials, periods where the earth warmed considerably.  We live in such an interglacial.  Somewhere between 11,500 and 13,000 years ago, the earth entered the current  interglacial cycle known as the Holocene.  All of human history is presumably contained within this period.  Doesn't that seem like a bit of hubris?  Are modern humans really so unique -- so special?  Are we really the end-all and be-all of all  human development on earth?

Some years ago I read a book by a paleoclimatologist.  Much of it was directed at the contemporary issue of carbon in the atmosphere and how long it might stay there.  The climatologist wasn't terribly concerned and stated that he and his like had a longer view on things.  He thought we might miss the next ice age, which he surmised was due in about 30,000 years.  However, during this discussion of carbon and global warming, the climatologist mentioned that the earth was actually -- if memory serves me -- 4 degrees warmer during the last interglacial, which was from around 130,000 years ago to 117,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand years.

When I read that, what first struck me was that this is almost the exact length of our contemporary interglacial.  You know, the one which supposedly contains all of human history.  So I found myself wondering -- did humanity advance into forms of organized civilization during the previous interglacial?  Probably any archeologist would dismiss that idea out of hand.  "Where's the evidence?" they might say.

But the subsequent 100,000 years of ice scouring the planet might have dispensed with much of the evidence.  Even so, a few ideas have popped up which don't support this hypothesis so much as raise other questions.  For instance, there was a dig along a highway in southern California in 1992 which produced a mastodon skeleton whose bones, which were situated in what had been river silt, appeared to have been smashed by boulders which were small enough to have been hand-held, and which otherwise wouldn't have been deposited in river silt by ordinary geological processes, and there were smaller, sharpened rocks which seemed to match sharp broken edges of other mastodon bones on the site.  The skeleton was dated at 130,000 years.

All of that is to say, it suggests a human presence in America roughly 100,000 years earlier than any archeologist would even remotely countenance, and -- the salient point -- would have occurred during the last interglacial period.  

All of this, of course, is simply the view of science based upon European perpectives.  North American native, indigenous, or First Peoples state matter-of-factly that their own oral histories say nothing of crossing a land bridge across the Bering Strait.  Their own oral histories state that they've always been here.

I'm not going anywhere else with this idea today, but I find it poses much food for thought about human origins upon the northern American continent, or the development of human organization, if not civilization, on other parts of the globe during the last interglacial.  I'm just always keeping my eyes and ears open for more information upon these topics.  This is what I refer to as "recreational thinking."  It's just for fun.

 

Me and Steve

 This is me and one of my oldest friends, Steve (I'm on the left in the checked shirt).  I remember when I first saw him -- it was 55 years ago and it was on a basketball court.  I was a year ahead of Steve in high school.  We played football and basketball together.  Steve was the best, strongest, and fastest defensive lineman I ever saw.  I played behind him as a defensive back and doubled as the quarterback.  We had a good football team; were always considered one of the best teams in the state.  Once after a basketball game my sophomore year, I was at the concession stand trying to find something edible when Steve sauntered up and offered, "What's the matter, Lance -- nothing intrigues you?"  I just thought, "Damn, someone who knows the word 'intrigues' -- I'm gonna have to get to know this guy."  And I'm glad I did.

We hauled hay together, presumably fished together (I just sat with my legs over the side), drove too fast, drank cheap wine, stupidly smoked filtered cigars, and double-dated.  Steve stayed local and eventually farmed with his dad, taking over the operation.  Several times over the past 15 years I've taken a summer off from the school I work at and have driven truck for Steve during harvest -- primarily wheat.  Everything got bigger, though -- trucks, combines, acreage -- and I finally felt entirely out of my element.

Steve and his wife Ann (whom I've known for 47 years) flew down to Sacramento to buy a beautiful deep red convertible sports car.  They then drove over to San Leandro but first stopped in Walnut Creek for a visit.  We toured the school I work at then hit the Cheesecake Factory.  Lots of talk, lots of laughs, and -- lots of love.  

Steve's sister Christi, who was a year ahead of me in school, sent me this picture that Ann took last Wednesday.  It's a happy twist of fate for me that these two, Steve and Christi, are also two of the dearest, truest, and longest-lasting friends that I've been fortunate to have in life.  There is nothing better than a lifelong friendship. To know and love people who truly know you, love you, and stand by you, no matter what -- that's the real deal.

Roma

 Another song from the Barcelona Gipsy Balkan Orchestra.  Someone posted below the video the following text explaining the derivation of the music:

"About this extraordinary and wonderful song: the first part of the song (00:00 - 2:25) is by Saban Bajramovic, called 'Opa cupa' (only music; the text was afterwards written by Marija Kovacevic in the Serbian language). Šaban Bajramović was a Serbian-Romani musician known as the 'King of Roma Music.'

The second part (2:25 - 4:30) is the song ¡Ai Carmela! - one of the most famous songs of the Spanish Republican troops during the Spanish Civil War. This song refers to the Battle of Ebro (one of the most important rivers on the Iberian Peninsula). As the Danube is the most important river in Serbia (and Europe), BGKO has merged two distant countries, cultures and the whole of Europe with this song. That's why I am extremely grateful. Viva la musica! Greetings from Serbia!"

And so, the song itself, and the fulfillment of my promise to provide something a little more lively by this group of musicians, truer to their collective musical nature.

BGBO Reprise

 Something unusually quiet by the Barcelona Gypsy Balkan (formerly "Klezmer") Orchestra, one of my favorite bands.  For those of you with a little gypsy in your blood or your soul.  Next time I'll find something livelier, but I loved the setting of this piece.

Sonnet For The Palouse

A week or so ago when I was in Half Moon Bay, I bought a used copy of Bill Bryson's book on Shakespeare and read that while on vacation.   Historically speaking, London in the late 16th century was a volatile, fluid, albeit interesting place.  The state spying on its citizens, Protestant and Catholic enmity and political intrigue, and the thought police of church and state together.  Yet still people got up to all manner of unbeknighted enterprises.  Like staging plays.

Any discussion of Shakespeare necessarily touches upon his sonnets.  They were apparently published as a pirated edition some time well after he had written them.  In fact, Bryson said the form was already considered a bit passe' by the time Shakespeare's sonnets came out.  And I thought the form an Elizabethan stalwart.

When I graduated with a B.A. in English, the head of the department surveyed my transcript and said, "How did you ever manage to get through here without reading any English writer past Shakespeare?"  That wasn't entirely true; I took classes such as "Native American Creation Myths," and "19th Century  Feminist Literature."  I just didn't read any actual English or American poets, novelists, or essayists after Shakespeare.  Call me idiosyncratic.  No matter.  He approved me.

The sonnet as a living, vital poetic form died long ago.  RIP.  My fond hope is that the ghazal will make a successful transition into the English language, with all its rich possibilities, and replace the staid and outworn forms of verse trailing along behind the car like so many clattering cans after the wedding.

30 years ago, I was doing some writing.  I'd sent some poetry to a fellow teaching in the Graduate Program at the University of Washington and he invited me to an ongoing workshop.  It was a shark pool; very competitive.  But at one point, we all had the assignment to write a sonnet.  So I tried my hand at it.

Having partly grown up on a farm, I thought I'd write a paean to the land that shaped me in so many ways -- the Palouse, a geographic anomaly formed by Ice Age floods, ancient lava flows, and the subsequent centuries of wind and dust.  This is the poem that came out, entitled "Sonnet for the Palouse."

 I walked those hills for years and ate their dust;

listened to the earth turn, watched wheat grow

and served the sentence of my father's choice.

The silent sky just burned, intensely blue.

Restlessness defeated by expanse:

what was there to do, where to go?

Winter made a nondescript advance;

pastel shades of grey and quilted snow.

If I could rip the mask from off that place,

what sudden inner vista could I cull?

Would night reveal a warm effulgent face

or day undress in dark and light annul?

Though years ago I fled its vacancy,

this landscape circumscribes and mirrors me.

It sounds a little nihilistic to me now.  I no longer feel that way about that land; I would write an entirely different sonnet now.  But that's how I felt at the time -- I was still dealing with the shadows and ghosts of my childhood passage through that locale and it would be years before I was free, free to simply experience the energies of the land as they really are, to feel rejuvenated and uplifted by the land's intrinsic power.

I can see I'm going to have to attempt a new sonnet about the Palouse one of these days, if I can gird my loins and gather my wits.  Until then....

Hasta la Raiz

An interesting song, interesting video, and interesting vibe by Natalia Lafourcade.

 

A Tip of the Hat to Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac

 It's a day dedicated to thinking about the brief but vital friendship between Jack Kerouac and Gary Snyder.  Through their meeting in the fall of 1955 to their residential camaraderie of spring, 1956, fertile seeds were sewn for the future of ideas in America.  The Sixties, and certainly hippies, would never have happened without the cross-fertilization of Beat poetics -- which really was just the triumvirate of NYC outcasts William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Kerouac -- and the early Buddhism of Snyder, Phillip Whalen and Jack Kerouac, chiefly Snyder and Kerouac.  Kerouac published a novel, "The Dharma Bums," in 1958 and Snyder's Cold Mountain poems appeared sometime thereafter.  Together, they launched thousands of spiritual quests, some sincere and some quixotic.

Here's a photo of Kerouac at Gary's going-away party in Marin in early May, 1956 (Gary was off to study Zen in Japan for several years).  It's my favorite photograph of Jack.  He'd been meditating for about two and a half years; his mind and spirit appear calm, collected, and relatively quiet.

Here's a picture of Gary from around the same time.  He seems an early archetypal hippie, certainly one of the originals.  In fact, Kerouac used Snyder as his heroic figure in "The Dharma Bums" and I'd argue it was Gary's individual ethos, as portrayed in that book, that helped shape much of the cultural ethic that  subsequently emerged in the Sixties.

And lastly, a rather risque photo of Gary enjoying a skinny-dipping session with his Japanese wife and their young son in the Sierras in July of 1969, where he built his own home and where he still lives to this day.  Gary and his first wife* Masa divorced.  He then married the writer Carol Koda, who has since passed on.  I just stumbled upon this photo online and figured what the hell, I may as well share it.

A man in his prime, enjoying the natural life in a natural setting.  And that was Snyder's greatness, really -- the ability to enjoy his life in a healthy, rather than destructive way, and to explore and integrate a philosophy that was both personal and larger-than-self; that served the health of all.

What these two guys stood for at that moment in time was authenticity.  Snyder was able to maintain and gradually expand upon his with further growth but Kerouac's authenticity was a casualty of his fame, or rather, literary notoriety, and the loss of his own internal compass.  It's a continual battle in life to hold true to what is best in oneself.  External forces, often in the shape of other people or external pressures and events, buffet us, wear us down, challenge us, and chip away at our sense of who we really are.  Tough to stay true to one's own star throughout a lifetime.

*  A footnote:  I forgot Gary Snyder's two earlier marriages: firstly to Alison Gass in 1950 and later to the poet Joann Kyger.  Kyger, Snyder, Allen Ginsberg and Ginsberg's partner Peter Orlovsky traveled for several months together in India in 1962, eventually meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Renbourne Redux

After my happily meaningless and mundane post of yesterday, I felt the music didn't match the post.  I was just blathering, really, about something that will mean nothing to anybody.  But still, the music video didn't fit.  I was trying to find something authentically Scottish, and although the piece was composed by Dougie Maclean, a Scot as said, the song was a tad bit too wistful, methought.

So today a song by the late Englishman, John Renbourne, called "The New Nothynge" (sic re the Elizabethan spelling) accompanied by a video of castle remnants from Wales and elsewhere in Britain.  The song always calls to mind a vision of a court jester playing a lute and dancing in tights or pantaloons before the court.  I can even see in my mind's eye exactly how I would stage the dance.  Ah, life.  Ah, music.  And a bygone era....

John Renbourne, then --

Depression and Anxiety

...are signals trying to tell you something: you're a human being with unmet needs, and we're searching for fulfillment and happiness in entirely the wrong way..  A TED talk by Johann Hari that struck me as simple but true.

Outer Wilds Reprise

This is the extended version of the short song I posted a few days ago.  Its refrain is constantly going through my head.  Perhaps it's the simplicity itself that makes the music so evocative.  I couldn't care less about the video game from which it came; whatever the source, I'm happy to find a composition that's so appealing. 

I do like the graphic art with those little campfires all alone in the cosmos.  The humble origins from whence we all came.  Once in a while we're forced to return to those humble beginnings and we have to start over.  In some ways, that's where I feel we are -- this laborious civilization we've built doesn't work so well.

For me, I'm going back to square one: happy just to be alive, woven into the great mystery, this vast panorama of existence in which we all share. 

14.3 Billion Years

 It's been a lonely ride these 14.3 billion years.  I hope things improve from here on in -- I almost said "out" but I think I'd rather go "in" than further out at this point. 

May our beautiful blue planet and anyone with half a heart come along for the ride.  Don't give up hope -- ultimately the journey will make you whole.  

Universe, you're a love song after all.

(Music composed by Andrew Prahlow for the video game, Outer Wilds.)

Clair de lune

 The famous piano composition by Debussy transposed onto the guitar and performed by Roxane Elfasci.  I get the sense that she's lived with this piece of music for a very long time, probably since childhood.  Atmospheric.

 

Being Grateful

We think we're so sophisticated and smart but we don't know diddly compared to these people.  There's nothing to add; their own statements are simple, elegant, and true.  They lack for material possessions but not for understanding or happiness.

I had the same experience on one of my visits to India.  I realized I was picking up the impression that the village people I met, or farmers, were actually happier than people back in the States.  Why are we so superficially smart and yet so stupid about what really matters?

 

John Doe #24

 A song by Mary Chapin Carpenter that popped into my head today.  Someone pondering the vagaries of existence through the medium of the popular song.

Naan Yen

This song was my introduction to the great A R Rahman.  I find the strictly western instrumentation an interesting choice for this production by Coke Studio, which is based in Pakistan.  The song apparently portrays a person musing about why they were even born, and wondering what their fate might be.  What struck me on my initial listen, and what I still find striking today, is the utter lack of affectation with which Rahman sings.  There are no stage ploys, no grandiose gestures.  Just someone singing from the heart.  He's simply telling a story and asking a genuine, if existential, question.  I find that both moving and inspiring.  More to come from him.

 

Praying the Game

For some reason, the previous post about Purcell reminded me of this song, perhaps because of the orchestration.  One of the things I always admired about Pete Townshend was the way he could question his own faith.  This song is about the hypocrisy of prayer.

Now, that's a loaded statement -- but what Townshend is talking about is one's own hypocrisy -- using prayer, or using God, really, to avoid pain, most probably to avoid the consequences of one's own actions.  Wiggling like a worm on the hook.  Or perhaps as a subtle attempt to manipulate the outcome one desires.  As though one could cheat the Universe.  The Buddha reputedly said (in the vernacular), "Nobody gets away with anything."

It's hard to look within and see one's own hypocrisy, one's own lack of integrity, but we all have moments or entire areas of our lives where we're not up to snuff.  We talk a good game but we don't live it.  I'm as guilty as anyone.  Really, the only way out of hypocrisy is to be able to recognize and face it in yourself.  Strangely enough, facing one's own weaknesses and owning up to them instead of weaseling out, is real strength.  That's real character, despite what the world appears to say.

So Townshend is undercutting the pose of piety here -- his own pose -- or yours and mine, as the case may be.  

I find the honesty of facing one's own failings refreshing.  As long as you can do that, there is still hope....and there's a good Sunday morning sermon for you.