This is a song by John Butler, who hails from Perth, Australia, but who's another of our "citizens of the world." The song is entitled "Ocean."
Having listened to multiple live versions over the years, it's nearly impossible to choose one that is truly representative because they're all good and they're all slightly different since he never plays it exactly the same way twice. But he nearly always performs it on that beat-to-hell twelve string that has such a wonderful ring.
I also find myself wondering whether he's referring to the external ocean we all know, or the inner ocean of which we're all a part. The inner ocean is made of a subtle fire, and this is one distinct tenor of its Voice. It comes through us all differently and we each give our own unique expression of it. John's merely one of the many channels for its emergence into this world.
By El Buho, which, if I'm correct, is really the front-name of English-born Robin Perkins, who found his inspiration in the forests, rivers, and mountains of Latin America. He's also an environmental activist. I like rhythmic electronic music, so here you go. Filmed in San Diego.
One more post on this duo, Tanya Wells and Paulo Vinicius. This video is from the same performance in New Delhi, same crowd, but what I find interesting this time is a little later in the song, as the camera pans the audience, you see how vividly certain members are living the song. It's a ghazal by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who's beloved in the Urdu-speaking world. I've only read one volume of his poetry, but when someone is taken to heart in this way, it must be for good reason. And so as Tanya Wells sings this ghazal, you see how deeply affecting it is for people -- they have lived with these lyrics, these songs, and it has gotten inside them. It is a living part of their lives. This is the way poetry and song is alive and vital in the Urdu language.
I want to know who writes the melodies for this music, this poetry? Because, whoever they are, they have a direct line into the human heart and its intrinsic pain and longing. I wish I lived in this culture; I have nothing in common with my own. I'm an exile in my homeland. This music is my heart's true homeland.
These two people are a bridge over which we can cross to experience beauty in another form, in another part of the world. And maybe the people there will finally feel seen, and heard.
Here we are again, with an artist whose origin is apparently in the West, but who inhabits multiple cultural influences. This is a duo that goes by the name Seven Eyes. The singer, Tanya Wells, is British/Swiss but spent several years as a child living in northern India, her parents being members of a meditation/spiritual community. Tanya studied Hindustani classical singing while there and, as will become obvious, is fluent in Urdu and the popular Punjabi and Pakistani vocal style that is evident in singing the qawwali or ghazal.
The other half of the duo is Brazilian guitarist Paulo Vinicius, who hails from a background of European classical guitar training. In this video Tanya and Paulo are joined on the tablas by Gayan Singh.
The performance is at a music festival in New Delhi. Imagine singing in another language and musical style, in its place of origin. Talk about a tough audience to win over. But they gradually begin to warm to the performance as it proceeds.
This is music of the heart, and of the longing of the heart. It strikes me as one way we can truly honor one another, by absorbing the inward truth of another tradition, really hearing and understanding it, and then giving it back with all love.
There is a note that Tanya Wells hits at the end, the 4:38 mark, which seems to come from the bottom of her heart -- somewhere deep -- the cry of the embodied soul cut off from its Source -- it just stuns me. How could God not hear that? So, enjoy --
Revital Carroll, a native of Israel, also found her spiritual purpose in the culture of Odissi dance, and began a school of dance called Shakti Bhakti. Apparently she lives here in the Bay Area but dances throughout the world. So here again we have another of the new human beings: born in Israel, incorporating the spiritual heritage of India, and now living in northern California.
I mentioned a few posts ago what I call the "new human beings," people who transition from one culture into another and yet seem free and independent of both. Due to the paucity of my own international experience, I have mostly met or become aware of people who either border my own culture, or have moved into it in some way or another.
But of course, that is a door that can swing both ways. Here is the story of a woman who went from the West to the East, drawn to a tribe in Rajasthan, to their experience of life, to one of their most vital art forms, dance, and who not so much made that form her own, as gave herself and her life to that form as a part of her own spiritual quest.
Art in the West has for centuries had a quasi-religious or spiritual component invested into it by both proponents and critics. But in the East, there is nothing "quasi" about this: each form of artistic expression is devotional by its very nature.
This is an example of someone who has made their life and energy an act of spiritual devotion. It really is the highest expression of any given form of art. I'm not sure I could do this myself, but I honor and admire someone who is capable of such commitment.
I work with children so this gives me pause for thought about how I interact with them. What message am I sending? But it also applies to us as adults, inasmuch as our current reality is a result or product of our own childhood traumas or troubles. I know this is relatively simplistic, but that doesn't mean it is untrue. It's simply another piece of the puzzle. Who are we as people? And why are we the way we are?
This is a video in which one savors a little more of the spice of Kiran Ahluwalia's personality, or her personal sensibility.
The setting is India, an place which certainly encompasses within it entire worlds. So the application of the term "hayat" or "life" for the video or setting is well deserved. There's probably nothing you won't find in India; it seems to cover the entire gamut. In my travels, I made a connection between Italy and India, which may seem odd to some. But I got the sense that both contained all of life: high, low, and everything in between. That impression evoked for me the mental image of roses growing out of manure. I hope that doesn't offend anyone. It's not meant to be a scatological condemnation of either culture. It simply means that both countries have widely disparate and contradictory elements that, rather than impairing the spiritual health of the country, instead somehow contributed to the intrinsic spirit of each nation.
Also, in terms of Kiran Ahluwalia expressing herself as a free woman in a society where gender norms are less fluid, well -- women all over the world are in a steep uphill battle against the atavistic and intransigent misogynism that's so prevalent across the globe. I applaud Kiran's independence both as a woman and an artist.
Han Shan, or "Cold Mountain," was one of China's most distinctive and peculiar characters in the hermit-monk, mountain recluse tradition. I first learned of him by reading Gary Snyder's translations in a reprint of one of his early volumes of poetry, "Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems."
Gary is a worthy figure in his own right, having grown up in the be-you-ti-full Pacific Northwest, an early and lifelong mountaineer, and probably the best exponent in the West of the Native and Buddhist approach to the environment and the earth.
I saw Gary read poetry a couple of times at the old Elliot Bay Bookstore down in Pioneer Square in Seattle. He always struck me as the real deal, decked out in his work boots, jeans, and flannel or plaid wool shirt. In another, that uniform might have smacked of affectation, but it really was the Seattle/Portland dress of functionality in the chilly Pacific NW.
Anyway, Gary did some nice translations. He was working on them in the fall of 1955 when he and Jack Kerouac met. Later, in the spring of '56, he and Jack shacked up, quite literally. They shared a run-down zen hojo shack on a hillside in the hills of Marin, in a eucalyptus grove below a horse pasture. Jack was studying Buddhism and Gary, would immortalize both in his later novel, "The Dharma Bums," and was preparing to go spend the summer as a fire lookout in the North Cascades. Gary was preparing to head to Japan to become an actual Zen monk. He didn't return permanently to the US until 1969.
Han Shan left the world and lived for thirty years in the Tien Tai mountains, specifically on Cold Mountain, in a large open cave. We can quote him from one of Gary's translations as saying, "Who can escape the world's ties and sit with me among white clouds?"
Others in the West have since been drawn to Han Shan and his crusty wild wisdom. This whimsical video contains short interview clips with an assortment of Western poets and scholars, narrated mostly by Bill Porter, and I thought it would be an interesting introduction for the neophyte to this unique and unusual world of the mind, heart, mountains, poetry and China's enduring fascination with its own most intransigent characters.
Kudos and a karmic gift to anyone who watches the video to the end: you'll be incarnated in the future as a gifted poet recluse in the mountain peaks of China. Hope to see you there.
Your family, friends, and most other people never know you, not really. Family's vision is obscured by the interactions they've had with you throughout your life and its slow development. You get cast in a role and are never really successful at emerging from the confines and constraints of the limitations that your family places upon you. The insufficiency of their understanding impairs their own vision of you. You've always had a secret life within that was untranslatable, unspeakable, incapable of communication. It is the essential you inside that (almost) no one will ever know. And yet, it leads you on, if you're brave enough to continue to listen to the whisperings of your own heart despite the opposition of those closest to you, seeming friends, open enemies -- or the sheer apathy of the world at large. If you're lucky, there have been a few chosen people scattered along the way, those who saw you truly, or at least glimpsed momentarily some truth about you, and if you're really fortunate, they might have shared that with you and the affirmation was enough to keep you going.
Lacking that, you simply have to affirm yourself in the face of all odds or the complete dearth of understanding you encounter. Or the misconceptions and projections of others. It's a hard task to walk through the world and remain even somewhat clean. Hopefully, life's blows don't shut down your instincts or shake your sense of who you really are and you don't cave in to the doubts of others, or your own. Persevere. You will succeed in your own way, on your own terms, in your own time. Keep walking.
A former student at the school where I teach, who's been an old friend since she was two, is now a budding cellist. She and her mom sent me this video today and I wanted to share it with whomever is interested.
