Just Another Brick

I was looking at Samantha Brick's website, just to see where on earth this person was coming from. I found that it wasn't that dissimilar to my own... an attempt to say this is who I am and this is what I do... oh and if you like the look of me, why not give me some work... It's what we're all doing, isn't it?

Brick's "crime" seems to have been (a) to write for the Daily Mail (and a few of us have done that, too) and (b) to expose how she perceives herself and how she thinks the world perceives her.

The observer is the observed, as discussed in a previous post, and Brick seems to be tied up in a feedback loop or two when it comes to being aware of what's going on. But that, too, is not much different from the rest of us, is it?

So instead of pillorying her, maybe we should just see if there is something of us in her, and vice versa. And if there is, maybe some compassion would be in order.

The Juice On Johnson

Robert Johnson... He had to get in here sooner or later... If Sleepy John Estes was scary (see previous post), then Robert Johnson was downright terrifying. He became known to me through the composer's credits on Rambling On My Mind (which Eric Clapton slipped onto the Blues Breakers album) and Four Until Late (which Eric Clapton slipped onto the first Cream album, Fresh Cream).

From there it was a short step to hearing pretty much everything that Johnson had ever recorded in his brief but almost unbelievably brilliant blues career.

There's not much to add to all the thousands of words written about Johnson. It's enough to point out that without him, it's difficult to imagine any of the subsequent evolution of blues/rock. Oh, and can we please remember that it was Johnson, not Zeppelin, who coined the immortal line: "You can squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg."

Men Of Mystery

Dylan, Tooting, doubling up, Like A Flower, Sabatini, Scaravelli... One thing leads to another in BlogWorld... And Vanda Scaravelli's yoga probably leads on to Jiddhu Krishnamurti. It was the great teacher Krishnamurti who introduced Scaravelli to Desikachar ... If you're interested in any of this, follow the links... But be warned, once you start going into the teachings of Krishnamurti, you may find (and even accept) that there is no way back out again.

While Dylan, or his songs, seem to come from the mind and heart of a shaman/poet/jokerman in tune with mystery and that semi-enlightenment that shines through the work of musical and poetic geniuses, Krishnamurti appears to be the full real deal, the mind and heart in full enlightenment and in complete touch with the nameless.

Why mention Dylan and Krishnamurti in the same sentence? I've seen them both on stage and can't think of any other humans of that stature that have moved me as they have. But while Dylan notoriously declared he saw himself as "a song and dance man" (which those who have seen him in recent times will probably appreciate), Krishnamurti always made it clear that "this is not an entertainment".

Krishnamurti, like Dylan, sees the positive in the negative. Only in rejecting everything that is "known" can one come to truth, or, more correctly, can the truth reveal itself. It's not clear whether Dylan has now rejected religion, although a telling line on his 2009 album Together Through Life suggested that the road that had led him from 1973's Knocking On Heaven's Door to 1997's Tryin' To Get To Heaven (Before They Close The Door) had finally brought him to the conclusion that "The door has closed for ever more, if indeed there ever was a door..." Is it just me, or is this one of the most powerfully haunting lines Dylan has ever sung?

Krishnamurti rejects religion, along with nationality, identity, politics, philosophy. You name it, he rejects it. And, like Dylan, he gives you no answers, just asks questions... and suggests you ask questions... for all the answers are inside you... and you are the world (literally, not theoretically). And that statement is a universe away from the dire charity song We Are The World (which, amazingly, managed to drag in Dylan for a fleeting contribution).

Krishnamurti always comes back to the fact that the observer is the observed, the thinker is the thought. The "I' is a false construct of thought, memory and psychological time... and psychological time does not exist, any more than the past or the present exist.

Heavy stuff. But if you want lighter stuff, you'll be content with preachers, gurus, entertainers and those song and dance men who have no connection to the power of mystery.

Krishnamurti died in 1986. He still seems to live in the minds and hearts of thousands of those who heard and saw him and tried to get to grips with his 65 years of teachings. He was 90. Dylan is still only 70 and has a few more gigs to play.

I can't think of anyone else but these two whom I would give almost anything to see... apart from maybe the Buddha... and Robert Johnson... uh oh, more blogs coming on...

Double Double Trouble

First, I manage to organise a music fest on the same day as Bob Dylan headlines a festival down the road (see yesterday's post). Then I find I've done it again.

I'm still finishing off the tweaks on my novel Like A Flower, when I find that a book called Like A Flower has just been published.

When I chose the title — and theme — of my book at the beginning of 2011, I checked everywhere to make sure nobody else had used it.

But Sandra Sabatini's Like A Flower has been published since then. I can hardly be too cross. Sabatini's book is subtitled My Years Of Yoga With Vanda Scaravelli. And it is absolutely beautiful to read and to look at.

Scaravelli was an amazing teacher who developed a "yoga with no name", concentrating on the awakening of the spine and working in harmony with gravity. I was fortunate enough to be able to study for a few years with one of her "disciples", Sophy Hoare, another remarkable yoga teacher, who still informs my own yoga practice.

Since Sabatini's Like A Flower is a non-fiction yoga book and my Like A Flower is a novel, I guess they can co-exist. I hope so because, without giving away too much, my title became the whole point of my book, so no other will really do.

Dylan Unlikely To Play Tootstock

Having organised the Tootstock festival for June 30, 2012, so that it didn't coincide with the Olympics, other gigs and everybody's holidays, I now find that Bob Dylan has announced his one and only UK date for the year is, yes, you guessed...

This is frustrating since I always go to see Dylan whenever possible. If you're alive at the same time as the greatest of all singer/songwriters, you have to make the most of it.

Mind you, Dylan has been known to add on extra dates around his "one-off" gigs. When he played the Feis last summer, it was supposed to be his only 2011 UK appearance, but he managed to sneak back into the country twice in the autumn for two more legs of his Never Ending Tour.

The only certainties are that I won't be going to see Dylan on June 30, and Dylan won't be playing Tootstock. But I'm willing to bet he'll announce more UK dates this summer...

Wrong Is Right

Thoughts of Sleepy John Estes and making a change led on to We're Going Wrong. It has to be a contender for the most perfect song. Okay, there's Like A Rolling Stone and A Day In The Life and Layla... and everyone can add their own contenders.

But We're Going Wrong, which first appeared on Cream's Disraeli Gears album in 1967, is perfect for its simplicity, for its emotion and, of course, for the musicianship.

Ginger Baker's wonderful tom-tom patterns on a 6/8 rhythm could probably hold the song together on their own. Jack Bruce's bass is largely restrained, but his pure voice is increasingly unrestrained as the song unfolds. And then we get Eric Clapton, at the height of his fuzzy-haired, woman-tone period, with sublime notes played in just the right places.

On stage in the Sixties, the song became a tour de force, and still possessed its power when Cream revived it — and themselves — in 2005.

Many listeners, particularly in 1967, took We're Going Wrong to be a political/philosophical/protest kind of a song. Look at the lyrics and you'll see why. But it is documented that Jack Bruce wrote it after a row with his wife, and that it is simply about a fractured relationship.

Whether it's about the failed relationship between two particular people or about all the failed relationships that make up the world we live in, the song works. And if the microcosm and the macrocosm are all one, then it's not even worth differentiating.

Either way Jack Bruce wrote a masterpiece. For him, it might have been personal. For us, it's a perfect and universal call for change.

First Time I Met The Blues

The first real blues record I ever heard was an album by Sleepy John Estes and it was actually quite terrifying. I had never heard anything remotely like it in my little schoolboy life.

Not only did it sound scarily grown up, but it opened a window into another, darker, more real world.

And it wasn't just that voice and that guitar. There was also the blues harmonica playing of Hammie Nixon. Altogether, this new (to me) sound was almost too much to take.

"Everybody ought to make a change some time," sang Sleepy John. And that's about all any of us needs to remember...