Another Day, Another Dollar.

I've always hated this saying.

Because it's not enough.

And I don't mean monetarily.

The Love Of Many Things

"It must be a good thing to die conscious of having performed some real good, and to know that by this work one will live, at least in the memory of some, and will have left a good example to those that come after. A work that is good - it may not be eternal, but the thought expressed in it is, and the work itself will certainly remain in existence for a long, long time; and if afterwards others arise, they can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and do their work in the same way."

Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. From the book: Dear Theo, The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh edited by Irving Stone. A good biography of Van Gogh is by David Sweetman.

The need to express oneself, one's feelings and hopes and loves, to impart to others one's viewpoint nakedly, unadulterated, unaltered, true...The mathematician comes close but the artist comes closer.

In Another Key

There is a storyof a first century rabbi who was asked by a pagan to explain the whole of the Torah while standing on one leg and if he could achieve this, the pagan would convert to judaism. The rabbi stood on one leg and replied, "Do not do unto others as you would not have done to you. That is the whole of the Law; go and learn it".

Compassion yet again.

So simple yet so difficult to achieve.

Today's listening pleasure: Damageby Sylvian & Fripp.

Faith

Fun times mixed with a little bit of seriousness.

This site has an interesting quiz called what's your spiritual type.

Little did I know that I have more in common with Neo-Pagans and Liberal Quakers than my own born faith (Eastern Orthodox)!

Today's listening pleasure: Supertramp's Even In the Quietest Moments.

The Key

Communication is a key to compassion.

The more we talk to each other, get to know each other, taste each other's food, listen to each other's music and stories, stare into each other's eyes, experience each other's cultures, the harder it is to de-humanize each other and we can end the waste.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I enjoy music and so read a few online forums dedicated to different kinds of sounds.

One thing that always puzzles me and frightens me at the same time is the absolute worship and attachment we have to artists.

It seems to me that by exalting a fellow human being who happens to play an instrument better you or me only diminishes both the artist and the fan.

Maybe, by exploring our common humanity, the music or any other art would actually be more meaningful to us and speak to us on a deeper level.

Today's listening pleasure: Yes.

Dream - 5

Change - pain - scream - metamorphosis - fear - experience - instructerless - loss

Expectation Is A Prison

Pre-conception, pre-judgeing, predeliction, expectation, assuming:

Went to a fund-rasing hockey game for my son's school the other day. Walking into the arena I noticed the sweet* smell of marijuana; automatically assumed the kids were smoking...but what if it's the parents?

* By sweet, I meant the actual smell seemed sweet. I'm not attempting to use lingo from a younger generation.

What did I say above...Pre-conception, pre-judgeing, predeliction, expectation, assuming.

What Am I Doing Here?

Thesiger: A review.

There are passages in Wilfred Thesiger's book, My Life & Travels, An Anthology, where I often wondered what I would do in his position. Whether facing wild animals with a single bullet left, or travelling with companions in unsafe regions, who were revealed to be outlaws; what would I do?

The answer is simple. I wouldn't have been there in the first place.

And that is also the one simple reason to read this anthology of Thesiger's travel writings. He has travelled like the great explorers of the 19th century, mostly on his own two feet, in inhospitable yet breathtaking lands and written about both the discomfort and beauty in the same upper-class, British, dry, understated way that by implication gets your heart racing.

His meticulous and dreary counting of bedbugs (there were sixty) while in Iraq show a perverse, and dare I say it, mad dogs and englishmen sort of stiff upper lip that both attracts and repulses at the same time. The reader thinks, why didn't he just go sleep somewhere else? Well, because then he might not have an amusing and strange event to write about.

His non-chalant recounting of a beating he received in Africa makes one wonder if he isn't going too far in recounting obviously painful memories. He writes about the violence that "it is not something to be repeated". Unless you're at the club old chap.

Although the dry writing can be off-putting, the decription of lands now forever changed by the inhabitants and other invaders and the toils made to get there are enough of an invitation to get the reader going.

The Enemy Is Us

OK, so I used the word "they" a number of times in yesterday's post.

Yes, it occurs to me that an understanding of oneself is needed before understanding anyone else, but I don't want to the navel-gazing to get in the way of knowing your enemy.

Shit, I did it again.

Back to the awareness board.

Us and Them - Part 2

Wandering around the blogoshpere you can't help but notice how many people identify themselves as christian, republican and conservative, not neccesarily in that order, but taking each of those words and using them as if they meant the same thing.

They've really taken a shine to the ease of this self-publishing world, my guess is because they don't have to deal with the questions and criticism that participating in a forum might produce.

They proudly proclaim their ignorance of history and the worthiness of their faith based system of reason (if that is even possible) while complaining that the enemy dopes the same.

They fall back to literal, fundamentalist preachings because they can't make sense of the reality around them and then accuse the other side of being narrow-minded and doing the same.

They cast the enemy as insane lunatics, bent on the destruction of a certain way of life because of their mis-interpretation of a holy book yet believe literaly in their own holy book which presumably means they also believe in the last judgement and the end of this world.

They forget that words can have different meanings to different people based on education, up-bringing, regionality and a host of other reasons. I might be a christian but if I'm not their kind of christian, well, there goes the neighbourhood.

There is a division in america. And because america is the greatest, strongest power in the world today, you're with us or against us is a dangerous statement.

I'm more and more convinced that communication is the key not sloganeering and monologues, not demonstrations in the streets but demonstrations on the netwaves.

The one uncertainty I have is: what if even communication is not enough?

Social Lubricant

St Patrick's day and me feeling out of place at a local watering hole. Fish out of water feeling. From childhood to now, it doesn't go away.

But after a few beers, we're all nameless friends.

Today's listening pleasure (of course): Van the Man

A Prayer

Death aproaches. Four young police officers perish.

It affects those who are left alive and mourning, even those with only tenuous ties.

The reaction here is more than the usual horror because of aquaintance, friendship even, with people involved in police activities.

Why don't we feel/react this way every time, regardless of personal knowledge of the victims?

The Boys of Summer

Spring training.

Once, I would have relished those words like no other. It meant longer days, cool nights, the smell of cut grass...blahhhh!

Look, major league baseball is sick with an incurable wasting disease. The smell of decay is now leaking out for all to whiff. Steroids, insider trading, a used car salesman running a rudder-less ship, blaming the fans and moving once vibrant, viable and valuable franchises for a pittance...problems ad nauseum.

Baseball used to be a modern type of rite of passage for North American boys. Perhaps not as usefull as those of the Bantu or Iroquois, but just as neccessary.

Now it's become a mockery.

I really did love the grand old game, once upon a time. Now it's enough to make me hurl.

How Soon Is Now

Some of the people who watched the Spielberg film Minority Report may have seen that the movie was based on a short-story by Philip K. Dick written in the mid 50's.

The story (and movie) posits that sometime in the future, the US will discover that certain people have pre-cognitive abilities; that they will be able to view the various possible futures ahead of us. The US then creates the Pre-Crime Department and uses these "pre-cogs" to discover and prevent serious crimes. This department then arrests and imprisons people based on what they "will" do in the future.

The short story, unlike the movie, throws somewhat of a paradox at the reader and allows that if a person knows that they will commit a crime, they may be able to change that particular future thread and open up a new future.

But of course, that then means that some innocent people have been accused of and imprisoned for crimes they have not committed or will not commit.

The US today has created the Department of Homeland Security. It's mission is to prevent, pre-empt and deter against aggression targeting the US territory, sovereignty, domestic population, and infrastructure.

Some of the methods used to prevent aggression seem to infringe upon basic constitutional rights entrenched in the minds of US citizens if not the laws of the country. Fingerprinting arriving travellers from certain countries, secret search warrants that do not have to be disclosed for some time after the search has been executed, the mining of seemingly innocuous data such as library records, and seizing and holding people for an indeterminate amount of time based on something they have not done yet but may...

I love Phil Dick's work but I really don't think I'd like to live in one of his schizophrenic, time-slipping, unreal worlds.

I don't seem to have a choice.

Today's listening: The Smiths

Can't Find My Way Home

I've been reading over several of Hunter Thompson's work since he committed suicide several weeks ago.

What has struck me, especially about the later work, is that he seemed to have lost his sense of humour about everything. The last few years worth of columns for the San Francisco Examiner still have all the bile and outsider on a rampage feel but they are no longer tempered with irony or fun.

Did the drink and drugs finally take its toll? Did the strange and violent actions in the last years point the way to a depression that couldn't be overcome? Did the accolades and celebrity wear thin as he found himself less relevant in a world where bad craziness was the norm rather than the exception?

In the forward to his second selection of letters, Fear and Loathing in America: The Gonzo Letters Vol. 2, Thompson writes, "...no matter where I was, or how weird & crazy & dangerous it got, everything would be okay if I could just make it home."

Somewhere along the journey, maybe between the Woody Creek Tavern friends and the family constantly waiting for him at home, he lost the way.

Today's listening pleasure: Blind Faith

Spring Forward

The days are getting longer and bringing a smile to my face.

There's the sickly yet sweet smell of decay rising up from the ground. Smile.

Over-sized clothes are being left at home. Smile.

I can finally walk around in running shoes. Smile.

Horrible Workers

In 1871 Arthur Rimbaud, still a teen-ager, wrote a letter to his friend Paul Demeny. In it he describes what he is attempting to do with his life and art in order to create a new poetry and a new language. Indeed, Rimbaud almost seems to be saying that he wants to create a new type of human being through artistic freedom.

Although most of the letter is characteristic of a schoolboy from a small town trying to impress an older and more experienced friend (name dropping and half-understood philosophies), there are some passages that attain a certain power and anticipate or point directly to several future developments in art and poetry.

Surrealism; dada; free verse; the marrying of beauty and ugliness to birth a new, sometimes quite humorous graffiti; using slang words to jar against the elegant ones, forcing the reader to read between the lines; re-inventing language that was inadequate for the goal of a new poetry; these are the gifts Rimbaud left behind in this letter and other writings.

Rimbaud writes (this condensed paraphrase and translation are mine– the whole letter in French can be found here): A poet becomes a visionary by a long, gigantic, rational dis-organization of all the senses. All forms of love, suffering and madness. He searches himself. He cultivates his soul and reaches the unknown. Then, bewildered with panic, he ends up by losing the intelligence of his vision; at least he has seen them! Let him be destroyed as he leaps through things unheard of, unnamable; other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has collapsed.

Rimbaud’s letters and work have been used by some to advance agendas on drug-taking or debauchery. Some of the translations in English have also not helped by using words such as crazed and derangement, adding to the myth that artists must suffer and debase themselves for their art.

My own feeling is that Rimbaud had asked himself, how can freedom be attained by a mind that has been conditioned by its oppressor and proceeded to answer with the letter, then by living out and writing down his attempts until he turned his back on poetry and concerned himself with more earthly matters.*

Keeping in mind the time Rimbaud was living in, he seemed to be attempting to escape some of the teachings of the catholic church and the constraints of his culture; he was trying to figure out a way to live outside oneself…trying to escape the building blocks of personality, of being, to get to the essence, the primitive or innocence inside oneself…the first, true man…

In a sense, his attempt at freedom is similar to the search for enlightenment in many spiritual teachings. The difference is that Rimbaud is using poetry as a means to attain this enlightenment.

Rimbaud died at 41 after having lived and worked for many years in north eastern Africa. The legend has him writing his famous A Season in Hell, then turning his back on poetry and art, but he actually continued sporadically writing until the demands of earning a living in a rough country wore him down.

Other horrible workers did come after him, continuing to use words to look for something else. James Joyce and his stream of consciousness writing, Breton’s surrealist manifesto and automatic writing, Philip K. Dick’s mix of psychology, conditioning and future technology, Kerouac’s bop prosody and Burroughs’ cut-up method were partly interested in getting underneath reality (or what we think is reality) to find the real story.

Here’s to all the horrible workers. I think you know who you are.

* For valuable insight into Rimbaud’s life and art I am indebted to Graham Robb’s Rimbaud: A Biography.

Other excellent works on Rimbaud are: Wallace Fowlie's Complete Works of Rimbaud especially as it has both the French and English translations of his work and selected letters.

Alain Borer's Rimbaud in Abyssina gives an excellent look at Rimbaud's days in Africa.

Henry Miller's The Time of the Assassinstells you more about Miller than anything else, but does have some insight into Rimbaud's works.

Payment

I came across one of Robert Fripp's aphorisms today.

"When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.
When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it."

I think he's forgetting that in the end, the audient, fan, punter, interested buyer of music, whatever you want to call him/her always "pays" for it as well. Perhaps to a different degree than the artist but payment nonetheless.

Bird Lives!

Charlie Parker died 50 years ago today.

Sheer speed coupled with mastery of melody; throw in inventiveness with harmony and this meant that Bird and bebop caused a revolution in jazz still heard today.

My own personal feelings on hearing Parker's music was amazement that he could say so much in such a short amount of time and improvise so fluidly on standard tunes.

Powerful, lyrical and just simply great toe-tapping, swaying and swinging music.

Ooh...look at me, I'm gushing!

Office Politics

Sigh...enough said.

Emptied to Fill Up

Overdosing on Keith Jarrett music lately (yet again). I've been listening to much of his live solo work. The fact that this is totally improvised music and he is able to create such beauty for seemingly hours on end is just... magnificent. I'm jealous and quite envious of his ability. Oh I know that his natural ability has been honed by years of practice and discipline, practice that most of us never achieve but it’s just easier to say I’m jealous of some inborn mastery rather than admitting I should be working much harder at my own disciplines.

My understanding of his way of working is that he prepares for the concert by totally emptying himself of thoughts, ideas and pre-conceived notions. Once he feels emptied, he is able to sit at the piano, take in the atmosphere of the concert hall and audience, his own emotional state (and how successful he has emptied himself), and allow these elements to bring forth the music that, Jarrett says, is constantly around us.

Whatever he does resonates with me and during certain passages I literally get goose bumps.

Sublime stuff.

Surfing with the Buddha*

How can we know what people are really like? Is trying to look at things from their point of view enough? Can we really "get into" someone else's head? How does one turn the ideal of compassion into true empathetic feelings for someone else? Enough so that you "feel" what they feel and can then so identify with them that any violence against them becomes violence against yourself.

*If this isn't a song title it should be.

The Meaning of Sacrifice

For a selfish and slighty self-centered man, there is no greater lesson in true sacrifice that cleaning up after sick children, letting them fall asleep on you breathing their germs into your face and facing it all again the next day.

Frustration

The children are sick and sometimes all you can do is sit by the bed and hold their hands.

Not to Touch the Earth

Earthquake during the night.

I was awake and the rattling shook me. OK, not a great pun there but the trembling and shaking of the house and bed reminded me of the power of mother nature. Normally I feel very comfortable whether in the city or out in the country but once in awhile I remember that I'm not in charge of everything around me. Heck, I’m not even in charge of what’s inside me most of the time.

Expectations

The expectations on the first born, especially sons, can be a harsh reality to bear. All the failed plans are passed down and placed on the young shoulders of others. The burden of these unwanted ideas slowly warps the personal dreams of the bearer and as both parties gradually succumb to the weight, stunted growth appears in the relationship. It withers and then bears sour fruit in the next generation.

Notes after watching a neighborhood football game.

Vacation

Reading over some of the dreams I've recorded (and some I haven't), I realize that I really, really need a vacation!

Dream - 4

Fragment:

A group of people bunched together and discussing work-related items. I am among them. I can recognize some colleauges, while others are not known to me. It's not clear if we are at the office as the surrounding outside our circle is grey and indistinct. The conversation turns to over-work and someone mentions another co-worker (who is not there) and says he looks close to exhaustion. The discussion continues with descriptions of his face and posture, indication his fatigue. Then a few people point at me and say, "Look, just like him." I start to protest and the dream fades away.

The Bottom Line

This person is still annoying me. Even though they actually haven't done anything to bug me in awhile, I am still annoyed. What exactly am I annoyed about? That this person once did something wrong to me; that this person might do something wrong to me in the future; that this person is the opposite of what I am trying to become; that this person is very similar to what I am today?

How do you let go when you don't really want to?

Clueless and Slightly Slack

Part of the problem is that most of us are smart enough to know just how not-smart we are. And yet we still act cluelessly most of the time.

Sarcasm Is Not Lost On Me...Mostly

All right...so, after the many arguments, disagreements, questions and emotional disturbances, I realized that it is sometimes better to be kind than to be right.

And, lo, the heavens opened, trumpets blew and there was peace in the land.