Forever Young

 

 

May God bless and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others

And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young

May you stay forever young

 

I’ve been recently thinking about one of my favourite childhood books, The Fox Cub Bold, a continuation of Colin Dann’s wonderful The Animals of Farthing Wood series (any grandparents looking for gift ideas…). The story follows a young cub called Bold (I guess the title gave that away) as he leaves the nature reserve White Deer Park, which his parents had worked so hard to arrive at (meeting along the way), in search of adventure. Along the way he meets different characters, first he tries to abandon his family heritage, his famous father, and tries to make it on his own. However, as life happens, Bold finds himself in need of help, and as in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar…, he ends up relying upon the kindness of strangers out of necessity and also because he develops as a ‘person’ enough to be able to ask for help.

 

May you grow up to be righteous

May you grow up to be true

May you always know the truth

And see the lights surrounding you

May you always be courageous

Stand upright and be strong

May you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young

May you stay forever young

 

When I was a child I used to go to my grandparents’ house and get up at four am and gaze out into the darkness looking for foxes that never came. The time sat waiting for the foxes was irrelevant, all that mattered was the opportunity to see the foxes. This then made me think about time. Many people have an annoying (in my opinion) habit of mentioning how much time has passed or how much is left. I find this very uncomfortable as for me time is an irrelevant factor which should only be measured through personal growth. If one is the same person at thirty as at ten or the same person at seventy as at fifty then that would speak of a life wasted. Life is a hard journey but it is a journey. As with Greek myths the truth of the story lies in the journey and things such as birthdays and New Years (ignoring the fact that each culture has its own New Year all defined by arbitrary moments) are irrelevant and the only landmarks that one should come upon within the landscape of one’s life should be those of personal growth

 

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

May you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young

May you stay forever young

 

 

So, happy New Year and in the words of Bob Dylan

 

May you stay forever young

 

‘till next time!

‘Twas The Post Before Christmas…

 

I was thinking long and hard about whether to have a Christmas entry or not and if so how should it be? Joyous? Cynical? Dismissive? Then I was listening to two of my favourite Christmas ‘pop’ songs and I realised how I was to approach it.

 

 

The first song is a (relatively) rare song by a band called The Wailers (not that one). The song is called She’s Coming Home and it tells the story of a boy who is waiting for Christmas as his love ‘went to school last September’ and how he is glad ‘it’s finally December’

 

He then tells of all of the fun things that they will do together in the short time before she goes away again ‘we’ll have lots of fun, singing Christmas Carols with everyone, my love for her I’ll show when I catch her under the mistletoe. ’ and even the refrain ‘o, can you see what a merry Christmas this will be… she’s coming home to me’ is heartbreaking in its diction. And the second verse ‘(kiss) her every day until she has to go away, I’m walking in the snow, wishing she wouldn’t have to go, o, can you see what a merry Christmas this will be she’s coming home to me’ the longing palpable along with the certainty that the happiness will end.

 

 

The second song is from the excellent Phil Spector record imaginatively entitled A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector

 

The song is Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love.

 

They’re singing “Deck The Halls”

But it’s not like Christmas at all

‘Cause I remember when you were here

And all the fun we had last year

 

And as I was listening I realised that this is the crux of the matter. What is the meaning of Christmas? What do people long for most at Christmas? The answer must be surely that people, at Christmas, simply want to feel loved. Whether it is the child opening his stocking from Santa or the homeless man being given food in a shelter no matter who you are, rich, poor, male, female, all other arbitrary distinctions, everyone wants to feel like they belong and that they are loved, not by the world as a whole but by those whom one cannot live without.

 

Whilst it is important to remember those in the world every day, given the social and emotional pressures and significance of Christmas, whilst we are enjoying ourselves cast a thought to those who are without for as the song goes

 

Santa knows that we’re God’s children

(and) that makes everything right

 

 

But be careful as you walk in the Winter Wonderland (how many song puns can I fit in?! Gah!) be careful, unlike Fraud, not to slip (groan), and to leave you on an actually funny note…

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lady goes into a post office and asks for Christmas stamps. The guy behind the counter asks which denomination? Flustered and surprised the woman replies ‘I dunno, five catholic and three protestant please.’

 

Merry Christmas!

 

‘till next time!

 

 

 

 

Sameness

 

I have recently finished devouring Michael Lewis’ book Flash Boys. For those of you who don’t know, Michael Lewis worked on Wall Street for Salomon Brothers, however, despite his rise within the company, the whole red-braces- throwing phones at interns vibe wasn’t for him so he left the company and subsequently started writing books (firstly his memoir about the time as Salomon Brothers) about, mostly, numbers. Mr Lewis has written books about the 2008 market crash, using statistics to win baseball and so forth. All of his books have two things in common- they all contain brilliant characters who could never exist in real life and secondly all of the books are true.

 

A figure mentioned prominently in his book The Big Short was a guy called Michael Burry, the only guy to predict the collapse of sub prime mortgages and a global catastrophe. With one eye, medical training, a wife that he met on match.com. (Aaron Sorkin, in his film script version put it this way

 

I met my wife on match.com

My profile said that I’m a medical student

With only one eye, an awkward social manner,

And 145 thousand dollars in student loans

 

 

She wrote back…

 

 

You’re just what I’ve been looking for!

 

 

She meant honest)

 

 

and a mild interest in the markets, he went on to do what no one else had done- how? He decided to read the mortgages.

 

 

Similarly in Flash Boys there is a guy working for the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) called Bradley ‘Brad’ Katsuyama, a bank which had the policy of hiring people with ‘RBC niceness’, you must be nice to work here (goodbye the BSDs of Wall Street (I do not wish to explain that abbreviation)) something that Brad believed in as to get the best from his customers was (rather bizarrely) to give the best to his customers!

 

Makes sense really.

 

Realising how Wall Street firms were working against their own clients, ‘Brad’ started the IEX, the Investors Exchange, to try to cut out the greedy irrelevant middleman.

 

However, the market did not like this. This terrible system which caused millions of homelessness (the only person from Goldman and Sacks to go to jail was, a programmer, Sergey Aleynikov for emailing himself his work (worthless outside of the Goldman systems and most of which he had gotten free from open source) every day for two years (no one said anything) and then deciding to leave as the money/perks were less interesting to him than the work) protected itself for one thing can be seen without doubt is that ‘sameness’ is something that must be protected.

 

If you regularly read (thank you!) my blog you will know how I write of the great minds who change the world but are ostracised for being different. As Nietzsche said the average person sees something extraordinary and fears it whereas the great person sees it, grows excited and berates themselves for having not done it a hundred times before.

 

Thankfully for us there are the likes of Michael Lewis out there to bring these exceptional people to our attention, the people feared by those who say ‘if everyone was the same it would be boring’ not realising that they are…well…you can decide!

 

 

‘till next time!

 

 

 

Bob Dylan and The Critics

 

Last week, on Radio 4, Adam Gopnik (who? – a lifelong fan of Bob Dylan-ah)

mused on Dylan’s

 

“utterly predictable lack of gratitude” towards his Nobel Prize.”

 

Saying

 

“The terrible and intriguing truth…(is that) people are tragically impressed by indifference…and pitifully contemptuous of the charming”.

 

The Dylans of this world, Gopnik says “impress us as the true egotists we secretly are”.”

 

Ok, so, it seems, in preparing his Point of View, Mr Gopnik failed to do his research with Dylan giving an interview to the Telegraph (it is “amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?”), reports from the Nobel committee (“I appreciate the honour so much. The news about the Nobel prize left me speechless.”) Or even in the Guardian where Ronnie Wood (of The Rolling Stones) spoke of seeing Dylan the day it was announced

 

“…He had seemed happy, but sheepish about it…We said, ..Bob, … it’s really good about your Nobel prize.’ And he went, ‘You think so? It’s good, huh?’ And we said, ‘You deserve it.’ And he said, ‘That’s great – thanks.’

 

“He didn’t really know how to accept it, but he thought he had done something pretty good,” said Wood.”

 

 

Even the Vatican weighed in calling Dylan just a songwriter (I guess making King David just a guy who wrote pop hits God liked to tap his feet to)

 

Firstly, along with Lifelong Fan (great credential!), one of the Nobel committee (nameless) came out and called Dylan “impolite and arrogant”, personally I think that insulting a person in public is impolite (especially hiding behind anonymity) and assuming that what you say/your award matters is arrogant (the same award that (according to what I’ve read) overlooked Einstein for years for being liberal and Jewish, he was eventually awarded it for “his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect” – no idea either- they were then shocked when he didn’t bother to turn up)

 

But none of this is new. Critics have always tried to make a name for themselves (G.Marcus…) attacking Dylan. In a televised 1965 press conference Dylan was asked questions like

 

—

 

The University of California mimeographed all the lyrics from the last album and had a symposium discussing them. Do you welcome that?

 

Oh, sure. I’m just kinda sad I’m not around to be a part of it.

 

…

    

…your songs are supposed to have a subtle message.

 

Subtle message???

 

Well, they’re supposed to.

 

Where’d you hear that?

 

In a movie magazine

 

…

 

You seem almost embarrassed to admit that you’re popular.

 

Well, I’m not embarrassed, I mean, you know – Well, what do you want, exactly – for me to say. You want me to jump up and say “Hallelujah!” – and crash the cameras or do something weird? Tell me, tell me. I’ll go along with you, if I can’t go along with you, I’ll find somebody to go along with you

 

…

 

Have you ever played a dance?

 

No, it’s not that kind of music

 

It is

 

Well, what can I say? You must know more about the music than I do. How long have you been playing it?

 

 

—

 

One thing that annoys me about critics is how they always assume to know the work, and to be able to explain the work, better than the person who made it. Even when Dylan writes lyrics such as

 

Try to be pure at heart, they arrest you for robbery,

Mistake your shyness for aloofness, your silence for snobbery,

 

people still serve their own agendas, trying to hide the fact that they themselves could never create anything new so they have to explain or tear down what already is (every move made in music by Dylan is savagely panned and then when The Beatles/Stones/Young et al do watered-down versions they get praised)

 

Yes he won an award, good for him. It is fair to say he has changed mine and many other lives (still is) so let’s give him all the plaudits he deserves for his work but to give Dylan the last word

 

And tho I know you’re dissatisfied with your position and your place

Don’t you understand, its not my problem?

…

Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes

You’d know what a drag it is to see you

 

 

‘till next time!

 

 

—

 

Not to hide behind anonymity I can be reached any time at

 

Thegreaterfool2016@yahoo.com

 

Why What We Believe In Doesn’t Matter

 

 

The more exposed I am to people, the media and the general hubbub of daily life in the 21^st Century, the more I realise that our opinions really don’t matter to anyone, maybe not even to ourselves.

 

I rarely listen to myself as I find that I am only repeating what already has mindlessly (tee hee) wondered (tee hee again) around my head, indeed I am tempted to record my speaking to use as a cure for insomnia.

 

In a poem published in The New Yorker, and later a lyric on an album, the late, extremely great Leonard Cohen wrote

 

Steer your heart past the Truth you believed in yesterday

 

Indeed he lays out a litany of all of the things that one should steer one’s way past

 

Steer your way through the ruins of the Altar and the Mall

Steer your way through the fables of Creation and the Fall

Steer your way past the Palaces that rise above the rot  

 

 

Indeed, this process takes

 

Year by year

Month by month

Day by day

Thought by thought

 

Given Mr Cohen’s lengthy process of writing (he said that when you feel you’ve spent too much time is when your real work begins, although when he met Dylan for lunch once Dylan asked how long Hallelujah took to write and Mr Cohen lied and said three years (it took 5), then praising a Dylan song (I&I) he asked how long it took (15 minutes).

 

How much of his new thought is influenced by his time sent with Ramesh Balsekar, a Advaita Vedanta nondualism teacher (everything is consciousness and there is no free will (and maybe no will as in you or I, dear reader)), cannot be known but given the life Mr Cohen spent exploring theology, to name but one practice, it seems quite stark that at the end he finally realised the truth of his nature- or as he saw it.

 

For me, what we call free will (which I have recently started to think is actually control) is that of interpretation. We live (it seems) in a universe in which things happen either in a deterministic manner or not but regardless there is so little of our lives that we have control over, if a fuse blows then we cannot cook dinner, if someone puts their hand into your pocket and removes your wallet you may not be able to go on holiday- little things of which we have no control determining our lives (in different/differing degrees).

 

Everyone knows of Einstein’s comment of God not playing dice with the universe and there is so much out of our control. We live in an age which might be falling into the end of ‘globalism’ (I’m sceptical to the claims that people have of living through times of significance, after all it took Rome hundreds of years to fall) however the fact is so much of it is out of our control so all we have left is to do what little we can to try to make the world a better place and

 

Steer your path through the pain that is far more real than you

That has smashed the Cosmic Model, that has blinded every View

…And say the Mea Culpa, which you’ve probably forgot

Year by year

Month by month

Day by day

Thought by thought

 

 

‘till next time