To thine own self be true

“A sacred place is any space that is set apart from the usual context of life. Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.”–Joseph Campbell

-1-
Over and over
great green waves
pound and crash
on black rocks
eternally.
Improvised waterfalls
have their moments
in a magnificence of spray.
It is where the
large white explosions
take place
that I live no more.

-2-
Now the green tides
roll in, breakers
turning white to foam
addressing
the remaining crags.
This is my home
my perspective.

-3-
Even less of me
and now just waves
ascending and then
rushing in as
gulls stitch sky
above the
shining waters.

-4-
There is much
which is not of
others or even man.
Continuous tides
24/7 elsewhere in
tides of imagination.
A love temple
on the rocky cliff–
the ruins of some
nameless dream.

-5-
In the end
just a sound
of waves
on unfamiliar shores
water channeling sand,
spilling, then refilling
a ceaseless white.

(December 11, 2012)

…………………………………

There are whites other than the snow of a long winter. And there are preferred worlds where imagination chooses to live free.

“Art is the transforming experience.”–Joseph Campbell

“So that’s what destiny is: simply the fulfilment of the potentialities of the energies in your own system.”–Joseph Campbell

Reading Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark” in grade 12 opened up innumerable young, new possibilities for me at a critical juncture in my Romantic life. That is when I first became aware of the possibilities of “unbodied joy”–an ideal which has guided my soul ever since.

That same bird-spirit has kept me close to a musical path ever since, whether listening to or playing–a veritable “rain of melody”. Too, Shelley made me aware that poetry and music are closely aligned and his “poet hidden” was an elusive ideal which did not materialize until I hit my 30s and, even better, 40s and 50s–when there was more reason to sing “profuse strains of unpremeditated art”.

For the best writing–“hymns unbidden”–arises naturally from “A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want”, and its unexpected realization–whether that occur in the heart, soul, spirit, or all three.

Moreover, ironically, some of the best music and writing arises from “sweetest songs…that tell of saddest thought”–such is the mature knowledge of personal experience and change in life and love.

Looking back, I was incredibly lucky, then, to have learned and experienced “half the gladness/That thy brain must know”, and to have been fortunate many years later to have “Such harmonious madness/From my lips…flow”.

And so today in minus 30 windchill, a writer pays homage to Shelley’s bird whose “music sweet as love” has blessed my life intermittently and deeply warmed me in cold winters past.

……………………………………

“Can spring be far behind?”–Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

“He who loses his life shall find it.”–quoted by Joseph Campbell

Two of the most inspiring Christmas movies ever are the Alistair Sim version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and Frank Capra’s movie It’s a Wonderful Life. They have inspired many generations of viewers with their simple, yet profound core messages about life.

Both show us the great difference between (transitory, ephemeral, living) presence and (deathly, ghostly, forever) absence–or the extreme loss of presence. In the Dickens’ former, Scrooge comes to learn the hard way that absence can be a terrible point-of-no-return and that he has meanly absented himself from his family, his sister, her son, his fiance, his employee Bob Cratchit, and his business partner Marley. In his heartless obsession with accumulating meaningless wealth, he has also alienated himself from whatever good qualities he once possessed or valued in the past.

It is only through realizing unchangeable, irrevocable absences like those of his dead sister, fiance, and Marley and by being given a glimpse of a future without Tiny Tim and himself, that he is able to reconnect with finer values of kindness, love, and generosity. These values, in turn, help him to reconnect positively with both society and his once-better self. In the world of A Christmas Carol, the only other alternative is grim, stark hopelessness, suffering, and death, as amply revealed by the three ghosts who visit Scrooge.

Scrooge’s final appreciation of presence and being alive become epiphany and reason enough for him to celebrate and re/connect with the social world. Though this change comes late in his life, Scrooge ‘magically’ finds that he can will any possibility into being with humor and a better attitude–key positive manifestations of both presence and consciousness.

Likewise, George Bailey, the main character in It’s a Wonderful Life, suddenly finds himself ‘lost’ and ‘gone missing’ in a way reminiscent of Scrooge, but, in contrast, he is truly a desperate man driven by crisis to the brink of suicide. The beginning of his salvation occurs at the bridge when he saves his drowning guardian angel Clarence. That event alone reveals George’s essential nature of putting others before himself, something he had previously done all his life.

Like Scrooge, he is shown life without his presence and an alternate nightmarish version of his own community–a negative view caused by his absence and his granted wish to never been born. After a final repentance, George is given back his less-than-perfect life, grateful for the chance to recover both presence and life. Like Scrooge, his limited/limiting, blinkered attitude changes and he embraces life, with all its problems and shortcomings. That said, both protagonists find a richness through their experience and a renewed appreciation of presence and others. And as both characters discover, nearly anything becomes possible when one fully accepts and embraces life and presence.

Today we still hear that Christmas can be a stressful, isolating time of year for some individuals in our society. For those who may find themselves similarly ‘lost’ or ‘gone missing’, these two classics offer helpful perspectives on some of the ‘basics’ for finding or recovering meaning in one’s own life.

…………………

*A reminder that all Campbell quotes used on this blog for reference study purposes are excerpted from Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion

(reprise in response to previous–winter window–entry)

“God is in the detail/s.”–Gustave Flaubert, “The bien Dieu est dans le detail.”

Moments of being are those more elusive transitory times when one is especially aware of the sublime pleasure and excitement of a given moment, and how it is unique and distinctly different from the many more ordinary, mundane moments in the passing flow of daily life. Moments of being tend to ‘announce’ or ‘proclaim’ themselves with an extreme obvious positiveness. At the time that they are experienced, the person (and sometimes persons) involved know and sometimes even share the specialness, uniqueness, and importance of the moment. Often there is a definite pleasurable sense of discovery, revelation, or epiphany about the moment in question.

The “being” part of whatever moment usually manifests itself in/as a heightened sense of being or becoming. A moment of being might very well also be the consciousness of significant change–possibly of imminent or possible change–an awareness of great hitherto inexperienced individual or situation potential. In any case, moments of being are primarily inner individual experiences in response to context and external events.

It is not surprising that moments of being comprise our most treasured memories of important things that have happened to us in the past. Think back to when you had special recognition that no one else you’ve known has had such as being chosen by your principal to receive the gift of a painting for the school’s official opening, or of being allowed the privilege of playing disc jockey in charge of your high school’s noon-hour intercom music. Often it is these sorts of special defining moments which determine one’s direction in life, too, career-wise.

Often moments of being have to do with relationships such as the first time one spoke to or spent time closely with a particular person. Experiences with members of the same or opposite sex in a first-time intimate way can introduce us to aspects of ourselves and others that ‘mark us’ for life.

Moments of being sometimes occur in moments of learning through the arts such as when we read a very emotionally moving book such as To Kill a Mockingbird, experience a powerful piece of music such as Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” or visit a gallery containing Monet’s enormous panels of water-lillies. In such experiences, we are moved through our senses to experience something deep and true about the human condition that connects us with other people and other times. Moments of being can have that kind of broadening, enriching impact and influence.

We know, too, that nature can also create moments of being, an effect we attain anytime we go to the mountains, the seaside, or desert. Under favorable active or contemplative circumstances, interaction with nature can produce deep inner effects that go way beyond words to transportive spiritual satisfactions, akin to those we might call religious. In that sense, ‘God’ can be found in the “details” that make up whatever moving moments of being.

As we look back on our lives, we find that our lives can, to a large extent, be defined and understood by the many personal moments of being that we have been lucky to experience and sometimes fortunate to share and communicate to others. To them, we should pay special attention, as we should, indeed, to all passing, precious transitory moments, regardless of their relative ‘shine’ in the great scheme of things.

“We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand…and melting like a snowflake.”–Marie Beynon Ray

on a cold December morning is to unveil a frosty filigree etched on the window, and to recall Omar Sharif as Doctor Zhivago delighting to the same in David Lean’s film.

(for Dave Brubeck)

“Yet a bird, almost the minute it’s hatched, I’m told, already knows its song.”–Gabrielle Roy

(sunset, Dec. 6)

(from a signed Dave Brubeck letter I have)

July 27, 1988

Dear Pat,

Thank you for your letter. It is very difficult to give someone else advice, because I believe, in the end, one makes choices not from heeding other people’s advice, but from listening to one’s own inner voice. So, the best advice I can give to an aspiring musician, or to someone else for that matter, is to try to know yourself. The life of a musician is not always a rewarding one in terms of money earned, or social position, or family life, so to be a musician means lifelong dedication to music.

Often people ask me why I chose to be a musician. My answer is “I had no choice”. In other words, it has been as far back as I can remember and will be until I die, as integral a part of my life as breathing. I hope my comments will help you.

Yours sincerely.

Dave Brubeck

…………………………….

To activate any photos not showing automatically, click on any picture frame. Then click “Continue to this website”–large pic, then smaller pic will emerge. When loaded, double-click upper left-pointing arrow twice to re-enter entire website with all blog photos now displayed. Pictures can then be enlarged or smallened as wished by clicking on photo. Three sizes in total.

“Know thyself”--words in a temple in Delphi

“To thine own self be true.”–William Shakespeare, Hamlet

(posted in memory of the great jazz innovator-pianist-composer, Dave Brubeck, 1920  -2012, one day shy of his 92nd birthday)

Suzanne

The Stranger Song

Going Home

The Sisters of Mercy

Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye

So Long, Marianne

Famous Blue Raincoat

Bird on the Wire

Chelsea Hotel #2

Who by Fire

If It Be Your Will

Everybody Knows

Ain’t No Cure for Love

Closing Time

Take This Waltz

Dance Me to the End of Love

The Future

Democracy

In My Secret Life

A Thousand Kisses Deep

It Seems So Long Ago, Nancy

………………….

Easily.

Life is fraught with risk all the way down the line. But it is important to pursue what gives you pleasure, meaning, and purpose. There are those moments along the way when you will hear the call. It is important to heed the call and risk at moments like that. These opportunities are not likely to happen twice.

There is a lot we repress along the way and this can build up. Things we ought to say and do sometimes.

But always it is your gut instinct you should listen to since you yourself will be the final arbiter of what incoming/arising information is relevant and true for you, as well as what you most need and want. Doing what others or society tells you can be a big and sometimes long mistake. There will be no shortage of others to tell you how to live, but few that will know you as well as you know yourself and what works best for you. In any case, roles imposed by others can be/come very restrictive. Far better to just be yourself or true to yourself/your core as Hamlet said.

The divine and eternal often end up as chosen projections or externals beyond the self. In fact, the divine and the eternal are to be found and known within the individual and others. As for the eternal, one need look no further than nature and William Blake’s lines from “Auguries of Innocence”:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.

And as Joseph Campbell has remarked, when we serve others, we are in service to the spirit which lives within others. It is important to remember, at the same time, that we have to serve and take care of the spirit within ourselves. That is our own very important obligation so as to avoid withering up and dying in various ways.

Each of us has a very unique road to travel which is our own. So, though we may be like others or have kindred spirits, it is our ‘mission’ and fate to go much of the day and life alone. Many days there will seem to be no clear route, but often if one keeps walking, the road thus created is the one we were meant to take.

As I’ve said in one of the first blog entries (“Conferring the Meanings of One’s Own Life”), we are the final arbiters of the meaning and purpose of our own lives. We decide what the true or final meanings of our lives will be, no one else. As the cliche goes, we have to (be able to) live with ourselves. There is finally a courage and integrity to this lifelong process.

But in later life, there might be a rightness to letting go, yielding, and accepting changes and other possibilities. In that, a rightness that may be conducive to freeing one’s perpetually restless heart, soul , and oneself beyond ‘normal’, the conventional, or one’s beliefs and expectations. Freeing the mind, heart, and spirit to/for larger living and larger states of consciousness, meaning and purpose. Again, risky and adventurous, but not out of sync with following one’s own bliss, as Campbell put it. (One does have to break eggs in order to make an omelette.)

“These are the days of miracle and wonder.” –Paul Simon, “The Boy in the Bubble”, Graceland

-1-

Watching McCartney play Thursday and thinking how this concert differed from the ones he and The Beatles gave in the ’60s up to the time of “Paperback Writer” when they realized audiences were just coming to see them and scream rather than respectfully listening to their music. And they could no longer duplicate on stage what they were doing for their last five albums (Revolver to Abbey Road).

When they started performing together in the early ’60s, they played small clubs like the Cavern  and concert halls. They generally used small Vox amps and had no monitors or anything resembling what we would consider today to be satisfactory sound systems. In other words, they were a small house band at best before the nonstop screaming started. When that began, as you can hear in any concert clips up to when they retired from performing in the later ’60s, the technology did not match the hysteria and the logistics of the large arenas they had graduated to.

Watching Macca Thursday, you can certainly tell that the one Beatle who was a long-time performer and liked performing live was/is in his element with the state of current technology. Three large screens behind him so the audience can see him more close-up if they choose. Much larger amps and sophisticated p.a., such that even a potentially black-hole barn like Rexall allows for an ambient presentation of his music, probably in the range of 20-25x more satisfying than a Beatles concert of old. This has brought performer and audience closer than ever and made it possible for artists with great catalogues like Macca to communicate to the max with their fans. There is absolutely no comparison between McCartney performing at Rexall and a Beatles concert with constant shrill screaming, even in a small hall venue some 50 years ago.

True, the screaming has stopped now, but the technology has surpassed whatever sound barriers and made it possible to reproduce or match studio recording and, on numbers like Live and Let Die with pyrotechnical and lighting effects, to exceed the effects of very strong studio originals. I imagine this has had a lot to do with the resurgence of Macca’s live shows the last 7 years. The new razor-sharp band doesn’t hurt either–the four backup players are all better musicians than the original Beatles, ironically.

And so as I watched, I recorded with a modest camera, the various goings-on. I basically recorded excerpts of what I wanted: intros to songs, snippets of favorites–alternating between the big screen close-ups beside us and M onstage some 20 yards off. Nothing like this would have been available to Beatles fans 50 years before. I recorded M’s presence and to some extent, ‘the essence’ of the experience from a concertgoer’s point of view. I will always have this visual/digital record which I can call up on a camera, my computer, or t.v. of this remarkable one-time experience. The ‘residue’, atmosphere, and memory of the concert will continue into perpetuity for me and anyone else who may open the videos down the road. A strange, absurd permanence, continuity, and accessibility in an incredibly fast-changing universe.

-2-

My daughter headed off to Jasper for what turned out to be a picareque  After Hours (cf. Scorcese’s movie) version of a weekend.  Via texting, e-mail (with photos attached), and phone, she basically kept in touch every step of the way with my wife, creating a closeness, empathy, and lots of sympathy by the end as she dealt with various glitches and problems reminiscent of the original Out-of Towners movie. This kind of close contact would not have been as common or likely even a decade ago. Social media technology has brought people and families very close together. From the point of view of  a parent, such a voyage back in the ’60s would have amounted to seeing the child off at the bus depot, getting maybe one phone call to announce safe arrival at the destination, and then waiting in the bus depot (sometimes for unnecessary hours if there was a delay) to be reconnected again.  Technology has enabled the transmission of information from personal experience pretty much in the here-and-now. It has created multiple e-versions of presence. It has improved and increased communication flow and fostered way greater connection. What it does now would have been considered miraculous back in the ’60s.

-3-

I have been looking at personal experience and the world of late from the perspective of Information–that which we seek daily or long-term. The first episode above is about the information and insights that arose from a concert. It is about how Macca was/is able to communicate his ‘info’ to his fans live. It is about how we can record info (sound and visual) for later retrieval and call up as a record of our experience. Ultimately, the first anecdote is info about now and then historically speaking, and how technology has changed and enabled the arts, careers, concert-going, and connectedness between artist and audience.

The second anecdote is about the broadcasting and sharing of information from a personal life and experience, how that can and is communicated to others, how that connects people, and how much not knowing and separation have been and can be reduced. The technology increaseth and enableth the info. The info being what our personal experience is.

And lastly, there is the information of this blog entry, now broadcast and shared with you. You being the final receptor/arbiter of info to process and decide if any of it is interesting and has any potential relevance or impact/influence on your own life and experience, possibly creating further connections, or ironically, more separations. I think one concludingly realizes that there are choices here: choices to read or to continue reading. Choices also of how to interpret, process, and possibly assimilate or subsume the info of this entry–a position I have reached elsewhere on a number of other entry occasions. Our choices being us, who we are, what we want or need–what interests us by way, finally, of information and others. That which we potentially share with those who matter and those just ‘listening in’.