reframe

Living the Surreal Life

// February 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Art, Music & Poetry

Shock-rocker Alice Cooper describes an early encounter with Salvador Dalí, in February, 1973.

“Let me tell you about the first meeting. We sit down at the St. Regis in New York, which was sort of Dalí’s stomping ground, and eight unisexual nymphs wearing chiffon and glittery eye makeup walk in. Then Gala, his wife, in a full tuxedo- top hat, gloves, spats, cane, everything. Then Dali comes in and he’s got Aladdin shoes, purple socks that Elvis gave him, blue velvet pants, and a giraffe-skin coat, and goes, “The Dalí… is here.”

Full article in Spin Magazine, February, 2009.

The Dying of the Light

// April 26th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // Leadership Development

It is a strange cocktail of love and selfishness we dwell upon, when truly incredible people disappear well before their time. When we cannot stomach further sorrow we find it, this sense of loss that is at once completely personal and felt for the human story as a whole.

Both Bruce Lee and Jeff Buckley died suddenly in there early thirties just as they were completing the work that would have seen their mastery revered in their own lifetimes around the world. Posthumously, the creations and abilities of both men have inspired massive audiences who can only grasp at the reverberations they left behind- their magnificent ripples in the pond of human creation.

I am especially sorry we did not get to see a later date Bruce Lee (1940-1973). I fancy that were he alive today we would not be calling him Bruce Lee, nor would his fame be centred on the films of his “younger years”, rather Master Lee would be renown as bringing martial arts and eastern philosophy to a renaissance unknown in our modernity. I imagine he would have taken a form somewhat like Morihei Ueshiba, the sage-like father of Aikido, acknowledge as the finest martial artist in history- a living embodiment of somatic harmony. Bruce’s unrealised later years would have been a blossoming of his philosophical side, as his study of formless form (Jeet Kune Do) expanded mental heights upon the rarest of physical perfection.

“I have not invented a “new style,” composite, modified or otherwise that is set within distinct form as apart from “this” method or “that” method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds. Remember that Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirror in which to see “ourselves”. . . Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one’s back.”
-Bruce Lee

The “Lost Interview“. An unedited 25 minute interview with Bruce Lee on the Pierre Berton Show. Recorded on 9th December 1971 in Hong Kong. Google Video.

With Jeff it’s harder to gauge how his future would have unfolded. Too quickly we think that rockstars don’t age well- and hold secret solace that Hendrix did not go gentle into that good night. But Jeff was far more than a rockstar. He was a composer, a guitar virtuoso, a three-octave voice of serenity. An eclectic and multi talented musician from whom it is impossible to guess what forms, what layers of harmonies and pure streams of emotion would have manifested if he had lived past thirty-one.

I will always recall a piece on his album “Live at the Sine”. During a folk-rock set someone in the audience calls out the name “Nusrat”. Jeff replies by performing a spontaneous version of the Urdu Qawwali “Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor Hai”- stating that it’s original singer, Pakistani Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, “He’s my Elvis”.

A beautiful BBC Documentary on Jeff Buckley. Google Video.

From their art and their practice it is clear that Jeff and Bruce both had a deep spiritual awareness. An awareness which emerges as the mastery of the one- the one discipline or field- slowly becomes the mastery of the many. At this level it seems the differences in paths fall away, and the common summit of human potential is laid bare. If only they were spared the years to speak to us from these lofty heights and teach the lessons open to so few in human history- how the way can become our way.

旅に病で
夢は枯野を
かけ廻る

Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
the withered fields.

-Basho’s last poem

Get Happy

// February 19th, 2007 // No Comments » // Leadership Development

Not that I’m saying you’d be any happier where I grew up in Manchester, where two of my three uncles have been fired at with Uzis…”

“What,” Ricard interrupts, “is an Uzi?”

“It’s a machine gun.”

“Ah.” The monk pauses. “I understand what you’re saying. I believe that, if I had to live where you live, I could. By choice, I would not move there. But if you allow exterior circumstances to determine your state of mind, then of course you will suffer; you become like a sponge, or like a chameleon. I have lived in difficult areas. I lived in Old Delhi for almost a year. That really is a miserable place. And yet sometimes I felt so light there. It was like – how can I put this – different weather.”

Robert Chalmers interviews Matthieu Ricard- a Buddhist monk, confidant of the Dalai Lama and neurologically speaking, a most remarkable man.
Full article in The Independent online edition

Two-thousand and Seven Dawning

// January 10th, 2007 // No Comments » // Leadership Development

This has been a time in the coming.

In 1922, shortly before publication of “The Prophet”, the great humanist poet Kahlil Gibran started to complain of the illness that would deteriorate until his early death nine years later. In his letters from the time we read,

“But my greatest pain is not physical. There’s something big in me. I’ve always known it and I can’t get it out. It’s a silent greater self, sitting watching a smaller somebody in me do all sorts of things.”

What strikes me about Gibran is his ability to express the deeply spiritual element of the Human, without religion or philosophy. Many other traditions, notably the Hindu sages, have delved deeply into these concepts. They name this greater Self the Atman, and this smaller somebody the Maya, or source of illusion. Perhaps looking at Gibran they would say that he knew only moments of this greater self, and that his end found him before be found his end. But I feel this is only a half-truth. Gibran was a sage of the seasons and knew their rise and fall within him. He played a game, that these bearded ones seem to shy from, and was duly elated and crushed by it. And how else could it be?

Depending on the moment, I am certain that there are many roads or one. For some time I have considered the benefits of this path or that, critiqued this choice or that. But I realised once again that I am well upon my way and a good many more footfalls is what is needed if I wish to see these mountains that loom so large upon the horizon of my mind.

Like Socrates I see sophistry everywhere; purveyors of packaged truths aimed at our recurring desire for the absolute- that impossible ecstasy of the answer. Yet I too see wisdom flowing abundant in the Great and the Human. In leading physicists and philosophers alike I see a depth of truer understanding, a knowledge which cannot be easily known, lest communicated, lest taught. Would it be folly to tease it out and make it one’s work? And perhaps, as for Gibran, how else could it be?

Travel well my friends and may we meet at many crossroads in the coming year.
Peace.

The Republican Beast-Elephant is Dead

// November 10th, 2006 // No Comments » // World Issues

“Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”
- Lenny Bruce, 1925-1966.

Bill Hicks, December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994.

Shipwrecked by the Laughter of the Gods

// November 2nd, 2006 // 1 Comment » // Leadership Development

In a June 2005 Wall Street Journal article, “Ted Haggard, the head of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals, jokes that the only disagreement between himself and the leader of the Western world is automotive: Mr. Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas he prefers a Chevy.” Link

Perhaps Bush’s Press Secretary would like to add one more difference to the list- Mr Bush spends his free time clearing scrub in Texas- whereas Haggard flies to Denver for amphetamine heightened sex trysts with male escorts. Link

In 2004, the NAE that Haggard led reaffirmed, that “Homosexual activity, like adulterous relationships, is clearly con­demned in the Scriptures.”

As Kahlil Gibran wrote-

“But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,

But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?

What of the cripple who hates dancers?

What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?

What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?

And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers?

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?

They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.”

While Walking, Write

// February 8th, 2006 // 1 Comment » // Art, Music & Poetry

“Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you have walked alone on foot, let’s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about five thousand kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking and what it truly involves than you ever would sitting in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.”

And thus Walter Herzog ushers my blog into a seasonable start for 2006. Herzog himself walked on foot from Munich to Paris to visit an ailing friend, critic Lotte Eisner. Furthermore, he once ate his own shoe after losing a bet to fellow filmmaker Errol Morris. Morris was interested in making a film about a pet cemetery (Gates of Heaven) and Werner believed Morris was not ambitious enough to make the film. This story was the subject of a documentary by Les Blank called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.

Below are stills from his 1992 film Lessons of Darkness, which comprises destructively beautiful footage of the Kuwaiti oil feels after the first Gulf War.

Synergies, a Salute and So on

// September 21st, 2005 // 3 Comments » // Art, Music & Poetry

A few days ago an expat friend who lives in my building gave me a book that Tom left when he was in Alexandria a few months back. Actually the book was one I vividly remember seeing Tom locked upon, drinking intensely from the pages in a manner that is uniquely his. And so by the by this copy fell upon my way and I too have been so locked. The title reads “Slaughterhouse Five; or, The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a Fourth-Generation German-American Now Living in Easy Circumstances on Cape Cod (and Smoking Too Much) Who, as an American Infantry Scout Hors de Combat, as a Prisoner of War, Witnessed the Fire-Bombing of Dresden, Germany, the Florence of the Elbe, a Long Time Ago, and Survived to Tell the Tale: This Is a Novel Somewhat in the Telegraphic Schizophrenic Manner of Tales of the Planet Tralfamadore, Where The Flying Saucers Come From”. (1969)

Possibly the best subtitle given an English text and for a book so good that Joseph Heller, author of “Catch 22″, endorsed it as a damn fine absurdist/humanist war story. The Banned Book Project says it was “Banned by almost everyone at some point since its publication. Burned in Drake, N. Dak. (1973). Banned in Rochester Mich. because the novel “contains and makes references to religious matters” and thus fell within the ban of the establishment clause. Challenged at the Owensboro, Ky. high School library (1985) because of “foul language, a reference to ‘Magic Fingers’ attached to the protagonist’s bed to help him sleep, and the sentence: ‘The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the fly of God Almighty.’ ” Challenged, but retained on the Round Rock, Tex. Independent High School reading list (1996) after a challenge that the book was too violent.”

It’s beautiful and illustrative and absurd and too real and is told to the reader like some confidante, drunken uncle who knows you understand his kind of crazy. I shall not parade samples of his genius and ruin the meal – if you like wonderful things, and you do, read this book. But I digress. Whilst reading this felicitous copy I switched to a cultural landmark of our times, John Stewart’s “Daily Show”, and surprisingly John was interviewing this same Vonnegut, now at age 82. He looked like the confidante uncle would at his age and luckily for us his kind of crazy still had the ring of laughter, truth and vinegar to it. So synergies and salutes to this great man, who by the by falls in league with both Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell as World Federalists- ie those who advocate a democratic federal world government. Please tell these fathers of modern physics and western philosophy that they were not “in touch with reality”.

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why”. – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5

My apology to Jeff Buckley.

// March 3rd, 2005 // 4 Comments » // Uncategorized

Look Jeff*, let me start directly, Im sorry. I was wrong. Years ago when friends told me about you, I scoffed. I mocked. I described your tender ballads as “injustice music”. Little did I know you had created the Best Song in the World. Yes for those of you who haven’t heard “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley, acquire it now, listen to it repeatedly, and make your life better. Some say Jeff drowned in the Mississippi after downing a bottle of jack daniels, but I believe he was last seen walking into an empty studio where he recorded Hallelujah and disappeared, leaving the track behind for us. If he didn’t go to heaven at least he gave us a small peace of it to echo sweetly for eternity.

* Jeffrey Scott Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997) was an American singer and guitarist whose unique voice, spanning four octaves, launched him to semi-celebrity.